POE2 0.4 Season: A Total Letdown! GGG, Pause POE1 & Focus on Polishing POE2 Core

As a long-time player who’s followed from POE1, I went into the 0.4 "The Last of the Druids" season with high hopes—only to be thoroughly disappointed. The exodus of players on the international server is plain to see, and the season’s flaws are no longer hidden. The core issues boil down to three key problems: broken balance, disjointed difficulty, and empty content.
1. Absurd Balance Changes: Nerf Strong Builds, Leave Weak Ones to Rot
GGG’s balance philosophy this season is utterly baffling. Overpowered builds get gutted with no nuance—last patch’s viable options like Deadeye or Lightning Arrow are now unplayable for leveling. Meanwhile, already weak builds receive zero buffs; in fact, they’ve become even more useless due to overall game adjustments. This forces players to crowd into a tiny pool of "surviving" meta builds, killing all joy of build creativity. Their so-called "balance" isn’t about narrowing gaps—it’s about eliminating fun, leaving only mindless repetition of the optimal path.
2. Disjointed Difficulty Curve: Torturous Campaign, Boring Endgame
The campaign’s difficulty is unreasonably high—not due to clever mechanics, but cheap monster spamming and pointless map backtracking. AI-generated maps are filled with dead ends and narrow corridors, making traversal more tiring than fighting. Even a few yellow mobs can one-shot you, turning the campaign into a pure chore. But once you finally grind through to endgame Maps? They’re laughably easy. Map mechanics are dumbed down, bosses offer no challenge, and after a few runs, the grind feels hollow—no sense of "endgame progression" immersion at all. This "suffer through early game, get bored late game" design kills any motivation to keep playing.
3. Empty Content: Half-Baked Season Mechanics, Broken Endgame Promises
Beyond the new Druid class, there’s almost no fresh, engaging content. The Vaal Temple season mechanic sounds creative on paper, but the actual experience is half-finished—customizable maps and rewards are barely compelling. Worse, the endgame system overhaul GGG teased was delayed to 0.4.5. The current endgame is just the same old loop with no exciting hooks, leaving players with no long-term goals after a few days of grinding. There’s zero season retention.
Core Demand: Stop Splitting Resources—POE1 and POE2 Can’t Thrive Together
It’s obvious GGG’s ambition outpaces their capacity. Trying to maintain POE1’s seasonal updates while pushing POE2’s development results in two half-baked products. Season 0.4 reeks of rushed work: map design, balance tweaks, and content polish all feel hurried, falling far short of player expectations.
I beg GGG: Temporarily pause POE1 league updates and divert all resources to POE2. Players don’t want "two unfinished games"—we want a complete POE2 with solid balance, reasonable difficulty, and rich content. Continuing to split focus will only drive more long-time players away, ultimately betraying the trust we’ve placed in the franchise over the years.
I hope the devs take player feedback seriously. Season 0.4 is a clear warning sign—instead of stretching resources thin and damaging the brand, concentrate on making POE2 the game it deserves to be. To fellow players who feel the same: let’s upvote this thread so GGG hears our genuine demands!

Nah. PoE2 should be paused in favor of a clearly superior game.

Seeing the ratio of players on launch of 0.4 and 3.27 which is around 1,6:1 I'd think what a great idea it would be to kick the fundament again. And I believe your suggestion would be the ruin of the company because I honestly think that the amount of players that come from PoE1 in the slight hope that it might suit them better this time is not just a few percent. Last time they did that was 0.2 and guess what it had by far the lowest amount of players.

Lol PoE 1 is a pretty stable game. What they should do is stop "leagues" in PoE 2 and just release updates until it's done. They don't really care about player feedback like endgame being really bad and the game being to slow so who cares about it being EA if they want to test bugs the hardcore audience is enough. PoE 2 need to stop the leagues it's not done and the patchwork they already build on top is already causing issues and bugs.

This is worse than 0.2

- They fixed none of the core issues (no life on the tree, melee being weaker than every other archetype, build diversity, forced combos).
- They deleted crafting, which single-handedly made 0.3 the best league in poe2 so far.
- They buffed monsters to the point where it almost feels like 0.2 launch.
- The new league mechanic takes ages to set up, ages to do, and rewards you with a couple regals, some quality and maybe an exalted orb.

I'm 3 days in and already bored, and with christmas coming soon I don't see them making any significant changes.

PoE1 should be sunset and left to standard until PoE2 hits 1.0

This update is a joke and they did not test abyssal tablets either, I am swimming in divines already. Also, stop with the CBT design. Infusions, charges, no one uses it because it is not fun. Someone on the dev team is obsessed with forcing it down our throat, I can only imagine the temper tantrums when that person learns that people found a new way to have fun and not use the totally cool and awesome "combo mechanics".