General Feedback

I play maybe 2-3 hours per night after work.
I play scrub-core only.
I don't do races.
I generally don't follow builds beyond "Oh that looks like fun, I'll try using those skills next time."
I level up to around 65-75, get bored with that character, and reroll as something else.
Melee all day.
I watch ziggys videos mainly for his excellent haircut.

I consider this casual play. At a guess I'd say it's how the majority of people play.
There's more serious power gamers. There's less serious "I killed Malachi on normal, I'm done." kind of gamers.
But that's where I'm at. As long as GGG keeps adding interesting mechanics with the temporary leagues, I doubt I'll get bored and I'll probably buy more supporter packs when I don't have a gargantuan stack of bills to pay.

And now I'm going to waffle on about PoE for a bit. Disclaimer: I'm a boilermaker. I'm not a programmer. I'm not a developer. I didn't go to university and study 19th century Russian literature, or philosophy, or economics. All of this is just "what I reckon". Feel free to disagree vehemently.

Personally, I think PoE has consistently been getting better. The giant list of gripes we have as players keeps getting smaller and smaller. I have confidence they will continue to iron out the kinks. So far, they haven't lied to us about what they are working on. If they say they are working on trade improvements, I'm going to believe them. We're getting more channeled skills soon and that sounds damn awesome. Frickin lazer beams.

Melee Combat and Armor
There are some fundamental problems that remain, the state of melee combat chief among them. You can tweak the numbers as much as you want, but at the end of the day ranged characters can kite, melee characters cannot. So the big physical attacks ranged characters can dance around, will kill melee characters. At the moment there are a few ways to mitigate this physical damage. Lightning coil, insane amounts of instantaneous leech, etc etc. But the thing that is supposed to mitigate physical damage (armor), doesn't. Unless there is a fundamental change to melee combat, ranged will always be vastly superior. I have two ideas to address this:


The Normal/Cruel/Merciless/Maps progression
GGG has said a bunch of times that they would look at adjusting the progression as more acts were added. To be honest I thought that with the addition of act IV, one of the difficulties would be removed. But they didn't do that. Instead we trudge through 12 acts (11 and a bit, if you get the last point-reward and jump into maps as soon as possible.). Personally, I think this is overkill. And it's just weird to me that the act IV boss is harder than a lot of low tier map bosses. Aren't maps supposed to be end game? Why is it that we get to Act IV, go into maps, level up there, then go back and kill Malachi later? The process just seems long-winded and arse-backwards to me.
But again, I trust that GGG has long term plans to address this.

Act IV
Act IV feels incomplete. I don't know how else to describe it. The world map is an undetailed mountainside, there are obvious doorways in highgate leading to nowhere, the Kaom/Daresso areas are just given to you with very little explaination or nuance and it just feels so damn short.
Acts I - III felt so much more alive. Act IV felt rushed. I think act IV needs an overhaul, to bring it in line with the the quality level from previous acts.

The Lab
I like that the lab exists. I like the ascendancy class system. I like the ascendancy enchantments. What I don't like is how easy it is to die in the lab due to lag. Thanks to lockstep it's relatively rare, but it happens.
Beyond that though, I really don't understand people's aversion to the lab. They'll happily trudge through 12 acts before getting to maps, but paying someone 1c to run you through the lab three times is unbearable? 300 pages of lab hate, and I still just don't get it.

The economy
I like the PoE barter system, I really do. But it's lack of automation hampers the free exchange of items. Personally, I'll trade anything. I'll take the time to go back to my hideout and sell a 3alt item. I consider it my small effort to improve the economy, and thus the community. But most people won't. For most people, 1alc to 1c is the lower limit to what they'll spend their time on. Unless we get cross instance trading with the ability to sell in-stash items, this won't change. And, unlike in real life (where I'm something of a pinko-lefto-socialist-card-carrying-commie-bastard), I think free and fair trade brings prosperity for all.
The cross instance trading is the fix I mentioned because it's what GGG will most likely do (having been mentioned in a few interviews). That it hasn't happened already I'm going to assume is because of some complicated code-wizardry I'm not at all versed in.
But it's not the exact fix I'd like to see. The solution I'd like is more like this:

And failing all that... We as a community could/should just pick a global channel to have legit live auctions. "I'll open the bidding at 10c, do I have 10c? Yes, the man at the back with the moustache, do I hear 12c? The lady at the front with the moustache. 14c? Anyone? No? Going once, twice... Sold to the lady in the front row." Etc etc.
In fact, im kind of surprised that the streaming community hasn't picked up on this idea already. I'd watch the shit out of that. A well known streamer (cough), perhaps one with excellent hair (cough, cough), who perhaps went to New Zealand recently (cough, cough, cough), doing live auctions of big ticket items in PoE, seeing huge amounts of wealth being shifted around very quickly. Yeah, I'd definitely watch that. But then, I tune in just to admire his excellent haircut.

Cosmetic changes
No, I'm not talking about MTX. I'm talking about two things: The HUD, and the change of Zanas voice actor.
I'm sorry, but the chained ladies just looked better than the lion and skulls. I'm not going to start, or get drawn into, another "SJWs are ruining the intranets!" argument. For me it's just about how the two HUDs looked, and GGG, I like your old stuff better than your new stuff.
The same applies to Zana. I get that for retcon reasons, what with the new atlas and shaper and whatnot, new dialogue had to be made, it didn't gel with the old dialogue and maybe the old voice actor wasn't available. I don't know the reasons behind the curtains. But that the clichèd Russian lines were removed around the same time as the game going live in Russia... Seems fishy. Maybe I'm being paranoid, and if there are announced reasons for these changes I missed let me know... But... Goddamn it I really liked Zana before. Zana was interesting. Now she's just so... so... british. I know, I'm probably just being butthurt and hating change for the sake of hating change. But damn it, it was good before. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

The Atlas
So far, I love it. I haven't progressed too far yet (around tier 7-8 atm) but it's been great to have some structure to mapping. I'd have more to say on this, but I tend to start new characters rather than push characters towards top-tier maps.

Leagues end
The break between leagues has gotten smaller and smaller. From memory, there was pretty much no break between this and the last league. While this is probably a good thing for GGG, I'd really prefer a 3-6 week break between leagues to consolidate my stash, play with old characters, experiment with builds and generally fuck around and slow down between leagues. But that's me. I'm the kind of guy with six stash tabs full of uniques sorted by level requirement because I like collecting them.

Community
Finally, I'd like to say how much I appreciate the PoE community. I know it's easy to jump on the bandwagon and say "It's a cesspool" (like every other online community). But it's just not true. I've been around a while and I've seen online communities. Good and bad. Trust me, folks. This is one of the good ones. Path of Exile has one of the most helpful, friendly communities I've seen. Sure you get some wankers in global-1, and you get some total jack wagons on the forums here (myself included on occasion), but for the most part I see goodness when I interact with other players. I see a willingness to share, learn and forgive. And that gives me hope. There's no other game like this on the market at the moment, and it's a great game, but that's not what will make Path of Exile a survivor, it's each other. I know that sounds cornier than a pack of tortilla, but it's the truth. Keep being awesome.

Thanks for reading this wall of garbage, feel free to disagree.
-Scale Enlie