(Beginning of) 0.4's Endgame (Atlas) feels a lot more boring as compared to 0.1's Endgame

(Haven't really played 0.2 or 0.3, so 0.1 vs 0.4 is the comparison i have encountered).

Played 0.1 up until, like, t13-t14 maps. In 0.4 i stopped playing after completing 12 maps (just logged back in to check). Thinking about why, i would give a following reason:

Atlas management has been effectively removed from them game.

In 0.1

- Extra content (Expedition, Delirium, Breach,...) was a property of a Node (same as a Map Boss still is), not a thing you added by using a Tablet when running a Node.

- Tablets themselves still added numerical modifiers to map, but they were (irreversibly) used on Towers (which were more frequent) and applied their modifiers to Nodes in a radius around that Tower.

These two things added some need for thought and decision-making and also some.. forced variety.. to your interaction with the Atlas. Essentially, 0.1 gave you an imperfect Atlas and asked you to figure out how to make best use of it.

By 0.4, however, these things were removed, and all that's left on the Atlas itself are Map Bosses and Corruption, which are... a bit of variety, but not much more.

Sure, now you (i would assume) can just farm whatever you want and don't need to deal with an imperfect Atlas, but... dealing with an imperfect Atlas was where the fun was. Repeatedly running the same maps with minimal thoughts in-between them gets boring very quickly (for me at least). Please bring the fun back.



And a more general observation at the end:

- You made an Atlas... and then stripped it of any reason for existing

- You made a genuinely fun and interesting and self-sufficient crafting system... and then kept an economy-focused filter as you game's de-facto standard filter

- You made bosses with telegraphed, dodgeable, non-oneshotting attacks... and then let players erase their mistakes by giving them infinite, safe and (relatively) quick healing.

GGG, please make up your mind on what game you are trying to make; are you making something distinct and different (as you said you were) or are just making PoE 1 (2)?