Biggest complaint and solution for poe 1/2

I genuinely love these games.

However, one thing I don't like is the feeling I constantly have while playing that all the effort I put into the game is pointless. I only have so much time to play, and it often feels like 95% of the time I spend playing is going back over stuff I've already done multiple times in the past. I want to enjoy new content, but I do not want to replay a bunch of old stuff to get to it. And by the time I often can experience the new stuff, I am tired of playing the game because I've already done all this.

This has been something that people have been disliking for as long as the game has existed.

I have a potential solution, I doubt I'm the first person to come up with it, but maybe people could tell me why it wouldn't be a good solution:


Exile League: A SSF League that's both persistent like Standard League, but also gets the new content.

Potential problems with ideas like this and ways to fix them:

Problem: New leagues often have encounters within the campaign that unlocks further encounters later.
Solution: Highlight areas with those encounters on the map. Ideally but not required: have those areas scale with the character's level.

Problem: Conflicting character UI from league to league.
Example: The equipment UI for adding a ring slot on one league, or maybe a talisman slot. Both leagues might use the same location on the equipment screen, that would be hard to show both spots simultaneously.
Solution: Either a tab system to cycle through the different equipment screen ui versions, or a drop-down menu that has all the various slots in one menu.


Problem: New content would be too easy for already established character builds.
Solution: I actually don't think it's too much of a problem, as players can self regulate their own difficulty, and since it's solo self found, they can't influence other players' experiences.

But one solution could be a difficulty system, where players can customize the difficulty of their maps with a new "skill tree" that is endless. I envision a vertical scrolling tree, kinda like poe1 delve's map. Maybe to unlock the node, you have to beat that node's area, and after it's unlocked, it opens up the connected nodes to be able to be unlocked by beating those...and so on and so forth. You can then activate/deactivate each node, and a node could be something like: "Creatures in maps have 5% more health" or increased pack size, or more bosses at the end of a map. These nodes would apply to all non-campaign content that they play.
Every so often, there could be reward nodes that maybe unlock the ability for certain content types to be replaced by or drop currency from old leagues that aren't in use anymore or increase the drop rate for different content types. Each league might increase the variety of nodes that can generate on this tree, and since it's endless, you just have to reveal new nodes to be generated. (I'd have a few different loadouts that could be saved as well)