Does anybody at GGG play this game besides Hardcore players?

And do so without a build guide?

I rarely ever ditch so soon. Usually spend my time tinkering. But dude. What the hell was even this patch?!?! No seriously. What the hell are yall doing? Bro. It feels 10 times worse than the first iteration of the game.

Listen. I get it. People like elden ring and dark souls and its so damn trendy I keep seeing soulslike as a genre definition and 180 billion clones of the same concept as this rogue ass nonsense appears in every damn game. Bro!

Can we stop please?!?! The game was already a top down elden ring you didn't have to make it nightmare mode. You didn't have to nerf defenses (and before any nerd says "but defense", remember....sometimes the best defense is a big ass bazooka.)

I'm sick of this damn nonsense where every new patch 1000 things get changed because some dumb youtube nerd content creator made something broken and everybody followed the same damn guide so now I get punished for my regular ass build because some dumb nerd found out you could pee upside down while doing a kickflip to get 80 million damage everytime he throws a rock at a 90 degree angle bro....STOP! For the love of god....stop blanket punishing us for niche interactions you didn't plan for. Sure this kinda stuff is great for viewership oh my god...the views. Yeah forget nerfing the interactions that make stuff like that spike into infinity no just gut some skills, buff some enemies twirl around and nerf drops take off 2 damage here 8 damage there.. Like bro...if you're gonna keep doing that just let everything be broken.

Our drops suck.
Our defenses suck.
Our damage sucks.
The entire GROUND sucks (theres so much random bullshit on the ground exploding)
You didn't fix off screen or fail to load ground explosions in temple ascendency.
Evasion sucks.
Theres too many random downsides randomly appearing in places they shouldn't like why the hell does my ascendency have downsides that can kill me?
Why does my passive tree have passives that make me go negative in progress?
Sure skill gem tomfoolery fine go nutty on the supports so its like putting together a puzzle whatever.

But shit like "Hey bro...we can give you 30% more crit damage, but everytime you crit you explode into 1000 pieces"
Can we bargain? Can you give me like 15% more crit and I just not blow up??!?!

And then you guys do this weird ass logic where you'll make mobs run faster attack faster and cast faster than us and then give us skills that require other skills to cast and take twice the amount of speed it takes for a monster to throw a fireball at us. Like whats the point?

Why am I fighting mobs who are clearly playing poe 1 with no combos and no combo requirements they just cast 1 fireball and it can kill you. Meanwhile my ass is on the sidelines like hawkeye polishing my arrows first, concentrating really hard, aiming, then I gotta say "boomshakalaka" everytime before I throw the damn arrow. Just let me shoot the damn shot! IM GONNA DIE LET ME ATTACK! We don't need all these long ass wind ups on everything.

This game feels like it re-introduces problems from POE1 that POE1 already fixed for quality of life pacing etc.

I'm not even gonna get on about build variety.

But the lightning damage favoritism is ugly...its noticeable, its apparent, and its ugly.

300% crit damage on a mob, 50% more hp on a boss, invincible enemies that you can't fight cause they got a mana barrier that drains your resources faster than the strongest mana pot, enemies that can block AOE's but you cant, rares with light radius and stupid pools on them, alchemy orbs more rare than exalts, meanwhile these broke ass vendors got nothing but trash blues with stats that don't even make sense. Got me over here looking like a gambling addict just to get a rare in the campaign. No crafting of any significance whatsoever, meanwhile they got us out here still losing resists on the way up when our gear is rolling 9% fire res....don't disrespect us like that bro...

Talkin about combo gameplay but you ain't got no animation cancels so we can stand there doing kung fu while indiana jones just shoots us in the face....
Takes off life scaling in the tree then gives us garbage life gains as we level....smh disrespectful ass game....

+1

Nobody at GGG plays this game in any form, if you think there are hardcore players who work at GGG then you are more delusional than a flat earther.

GGG makes their game decisions based on social media influencers and popularity.

What is currently popular is Souls Like games which is why POE 2 is effectively a souls like game.

Currently if you want to get your 3rd ascendancy you have to pay 1 Divine to a Bus Driver, never thought I would see this Lost Ark cancer shit in POE yet here we are.

Paying others to play your game because it sucks so badly.

Agreed, there is no chance anyone at GGG plays this.

But I worked for the industry for two years and I will tell you this is not uncommon. In the games industry Id guess less than 10% of the company plays any game and among the executive staff that probably drops to one tenth of a percent.

This game is wholly owned and operated by TenCent. One of the most nefarious big game companies out there.

I just absolutely despise that punishment comes from so many angles.

I spend a few hours to juice up some maps, only to hardly find any loot, to oops something 1 tapped me from off screen, to for some reason my amelioration omen didn't trigger (which btw I feel forced to buy), which also I can't run amelioration and resurgence together anymore because they changed it to one combat omen per instance now, to nice my hours of XP is gone because I'm level 92 and thats 10 levels over the highest enemies I can fight, to let me slam half my currency tab into the 29 white bases I've collected, for no return, well I better gamble ALL my gold on stuff then, oof nothing there either.

Let me repeat that tomorrow I guess hoping to win yet again in this gamble fest.