Honest beta review as it sits, 7 out of 10, still decent

GGG you made a beautiful and creative game, with a well thought out skill system and have a game vision that many games fail to achieve.

Well done

Like any Beta, it has some issue to repair or reconsider because some of that great vision might be getting in your way from achieving 10 out of 10.

If you have 100 players and 50 players think you are no less than 10 out of 10, and 50 players think the honest number is more of a 5 out of 10, you score is actually 7

Despite the devout defenders begging you not to change a thing
and the disappointed players begging you too do something

They both do the same thing, try to get as loud as possible to make you feel that they are the majority

You are still stuck at 7

The only way to improve your score is to adjust your perspective. First make sure your objective, if you are in either group you are jaded.

then sit back and take a look of the concerns, are they valid. I see four major ones

1 Server issues and crashes, easiest to fix, frustrating for everyone

2 You only get one shot to beat boss mechanic change, no self rez until the end of fight. Boss and difficulty reset every. that sucks. leaving group players lying on the floor during boss fights with friends. This leaves a bad taste in many of your players mouths. The joy of wearing a boss down removed from the game is sad. For the sense of accomplishment in stages has been lost. Not everyone enjoys all or nothing.

Bosses becomes stop blocks to the flow and fun. It doesn't add challenge for them it adds frustration and the game crawls

3. No optimization in options menu for physical limitations of your players, big miss. people get old

4. Loot, like it's extremely rare

Great game, change isn't always ruining something, sometimes a wise choice can make it better

It's a beta right

GGG if this your hard-core dream though, sticking to your guns is okay too. You will just have to accept a smaller player base by the end of Beta. ( I know you're flying high on the numbers now, that changes, it's over fluffed with casual players at the moment) One choice will give you a larger player base year over the year, the other will give you a much smaller die-hard player base that will grumble but be fiercely loyal and less likely to leave.

(if your servers struggle, that might be the better choice, smaller group smaller resources)

I am not sure there is a right answer

A stockholder is going to want to keep the numbers growing, a purist is going to want it to be kept, well, pure

It will be interesting to watch, sadly your time to decide is short. Every one player who leaves will warn three of his friends off the game. The diehard player will rejoice in no change and stay, but since all his friends play already, the player base will be slow growth after the initial first year.

You will get much more YouTube content with no changes, many good and many bad.

you will hover as a 7, that is not a bad number

Best so and so of all time, marketing hype

( that number is not the sum of the opinion of people who love the game but a number of all opinions of the players who tried the game)

I think these thoughts fair

Pretty much everyone agrees its a good game under everything, but most of us are pretty blackpilled because we know they probably aren't willing to change certain things like loot drops or player mobility. We had ruthless league years ago, it failed spectacularly in terms of player count, and we got ruthless 2.0 as a game, it points towards them being very aware of what people are complaining about now for years and still going ahead with it.

Personally i like that zones/bosses reset.
It means that you have to care about defenses and positioning and keep your survival/damage/crowd control in mind

This is an upgrade in skilled play from poe1 where you just one tap everything.

Im playing a cold build right now and it actually feels valuable to build freeze stats to keep enemies at bay, if i built pure damage like in poe1 id get punished.

Right now im still weak to chaos but for the most part jve had a very smooth experience playing frost sorc with ice nova, frost bomb, the crowd control is way more “active” as a defense compared to just maxing res and stacking life in tree.

It also makes bosses tense and exciting; its kind of like a middleground. More punishing than softcore, less than hardcore

I also love the new loot system.

Norma items can be crafted, and it feels good to find a nice white base and actually go frequently “gamble” to try and roll good mods, and then exalts are more common.

I have a great 90% spell damage, +2 cold gems staff that ive been using since level 1, feels good that i made it myself

Id rather get less loot if everything has an obvious value (rare=regal shards rather than filtering 99.988889% of drops out)

I sometimes wonder, what people do irl that they struggle with this difficulty level?