PoE has devolved into a glorified farming simulator.

I came and later supported GGG because PoE is an ONLINE ARPG. I stopped playing single player games 15-20 years ago. In "online" ARPGs there's ladders / ranks and if most of the content is accessible to a broader audience it comes down to lack of difficulty, which means there's more time sinks.


The difficulty on the EXP ladder now is measured on how quick you can EXP to 100 without sleeping, while the difficulty on the Delve ladder is how many months you've efficiently farmed the same content with the least sleep to give yourself a best chance reaching the lowest depth of delve and both of these ladders for a while now only <= 0.001% of the player base that's left playing / supporting cares, which is on GGG to remedy / fix.

There's hundreds of other single player games just like PoE, because it's the same game design from playing back in 1993-1994 on Nintendo and then Super Nintendo. One way to remedy / address this is by making at least 25% of the content of the game inaccessible for "farmers".

When there's a consistent Phrecia event rotating alongside the main league the game is also in a much better state (retention wise).