0.4 is a step backwards from 0.3 - Temple

0.4 for me feels like a huge letdown, we were promissed an endgame patch and it didn't get delivered, everyones expectation were high for the annoucement.
I completly understand the situation, with limited man power some features need to get cut to make the release date and with druid being higher on the priority list it feels like a reasonable decision considering the circumstances so i wont delve into this issue further, even tho personaly id rather have not gotten a new league mechanic/druid but got the BIG endgame rework.

Now to adress the elephant in the room: Fate of the vaal league mechanic
Wen i watched the announcement i had pretty low expectations, it didn't amaze me and i was pretty scheptical that it would be fun, but i wanted to try it out anyways especially if it could be rewarding then even if it wasnt the most fun thing in the world it would still be doable because we would be able to "do 60 maps and then do a 10 temple session"

Hate being correct on this but wow, did it even get playtested or did Jonathan just vibecode it and ship it?
The amount of effort and tedium needed to set it up is so high and the reward so so low, not to mention it doesnt even do the bare minimum of explaining which would be fine if placing the wrong tile could be later moved or if it didnt brick pathing randomly by sometimes connecting and sometimes not, like wtf?
Even during campaign i went into the temples as often as possible to get gear upgrades but even then they were mid at best, felt like a total loss of agency over gear progression after 0.3. Last league i was constantly upgrading loot from the floor because the abyss items were so common, it honestly was so much fun and not to mention all the currency that dropped on the ground.
Now its like, 50/50 chance of having a table with an exalt mod and a forge that gives you a socket (completly garbage) or gives you between like 7%-?% quality gear, not so bad but still nothing worth running the tedious temples for. Honestly the best part of the mechanic was the free currency that dropped upon completing the circles, thats it. id rather it had just been a "poor mans ritual" or seomthing other than this.

Now in maps, wow i dont even want to go into the temple anymore went maybe twice and the rewards are all the same, complete useless once you have the most mid 1ex trade gear. And the circles are useless too since they dont even drop anything upon completion like damn ok, guess im ignoring those too now.
Not to mention the clear of misscomunication of like "youll be able to do 60 maps and then do a temple session", how was that even suposed to work with the layout reseting 90% once you kill the architect and you only get like 6 tiles per run, and you can't bank them???

Mapping is just so much more fun/ rewarding than the temple.

Imo the concept could be improved with the following changes:
-Make the tiles show how they connect to others, even future tiles, maybe add like arrows out from the squares to show
-Have ingame info on how they interact/upgrade
-Make the minimum rewards scale with palyer level (aka no more regal/exalted benches in endagme)
-make the monsters drop stuff (not a big deal, if the other rewards carry its wtv)
-make door's pathing less jank

Optional feature: Remove it from the game honestly.



For me 0.3 felt better because obviously it was more rewarding, it was less intrusive to core gameplay and it had a good mix of challenge to reward (even tho some mods like disable regen, and that invulnerable storm or wtv should be removed and on death effects should be halved at least) and it gave player's a lot of agency because of the crafting options.

FOTV is not fun, not rewarding and has low agency. In my view as it stands it's a major downgrade and i hope that in the future GGG will take a different direction in their league design.

TLDR: Players will put up with tedium/not fun if there is a reward tied to it, if not its the same as not being there and wont engage with it and could even be detrimental to the game.