It's not a good idea to make POE game wide harder

You know, most players including me play this game for fun, not for some sort of "hardcore challenge" like spend 2 minutes to dodge Glacial Cascade from Hailrake in The Tidal Island if we go there as we reach the first waypoint, or been dashed to the face by a dozen of Bone Rhoa summoned by Kadavrus the Defiler in The Fetid Pool, or been shot to death by over-the-horizon strike for many times in later game, or been chased to the death by random common rare monster in later game.

The former gamestyle of POE is based on fast clear, movement speed from diffrent souce can stack, quicksilver flask with a adrenaline suffix mod, all flasks gain charges when killing monsters and have no cooldown, high damage vs low threat enemies, and other mechanisms, all those are designed for fast clear, and this created a KOEI-Musou-like gamestyle which appears as fast and mindless farming and screen-wide blowing up monsters.

Then suddenly GGG said we should "slow the pase" and "increase the challenge", then those fast clear mechanisms are all nerfed someway and we are been punched in the face by even Act 1 monsters, so we are becoming more like Dark Souls? Bloodborne? Sekiro?

Then you can see, even those Dark-Souls-like games have very high rating among players and game medias, but they doesn't sell so good, because most players are not confident to finish those hardcore games, or not happy to fail dozens maybe hundreds of times to practice "skill", for them, games should bring relax and fun, not "challenge", so they go to Twitch and Youtube to watch others play those games instead. And when it comes to a choice to make, players are always more willingly to play softcore games, like GTA V, it's still a little bit challengeable, but we can say it's super easy when compare to those Dark-Souls-like games.

Yes of course it's GGG's choice to decide to make POE harder or easier, but it's players's choice to play a hardcore game or go play an other softcore game, you choose to make a hardcore game to please those "Elite" players, you must face a significant decrease in the number of normal players.

And yes I know that GGG said they don't care about the number of players, well, I'm gonna say it's just a mysterial confidence, which is they belive they can "teach" players how to play this kind of game, players will eventually understand and come back.

Will it work, let's wait and see.

I don't think it will work anyway. Because, don't think D2 style of slow and hard way is still working now, at that time we literally don't have many video games to play, many of us can farm Mephisto for dozens of thousands of times just to get good equipment to clear Act 4 in Hell difficulty, can anybody do that now?

No, nowadays, general gamestyle is fast and lite, look at DOTA2 or LOL or Fortnite, they are all build on this conception, allowing normal players to have fun, not forcing them to have "challenge", for those "Elite" players, they can fight for a position in the ladder, which gives honor, not loot.

So when we come back to POE, my suggestion is, backroll all the gamewide nerf like support gems nerf or monster pack size nerf, or monster damage/aggressive/movement speed buff; make some super tough content which 99% players absolutely have no chance to finish, these challenges will need well planned build and act, maybe even extremely good teamwork, but doesn't give any loot, only reward with unique character/skill skins or hideout decorations which can only access in this way.

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Super hard challenge example:

1, Like the trial of the Labyrinth, but much much harder, maybe cannot regenerate/recharge life or ES and a super long way with a limit of movement speed like no more than 200% of base.

2, Using a given set of gear and passive skills, to go through a set of scene, for example, Kaom's corruption which ends with he slaying his warriors.
This kind of storyline should have several difficulty option, first is easy to do to watch the story, only the hardest one gives reward.

3, Super enhanced bosses, for example:
The Shaper with the ability to summon his clone at the beginning, two clones in phase two, three clones in phase three, and get invincible for a few seconds after taking a given amount of damage.
The Elder, every given amount of damage it taken, it reflect a screen-wide shockwave which damage you with 65% of life and ES, and it gain action speed over time. Super Elder is a one portal fight like The Labyrinth.
Every boss can have a super enhanced form to challenge.

4, Survive in endless waves of monsters, cast more and more random monster buffs or player debuffs on the battle ground over waves. Monsters give no experience or loot, dying doesn't lose experience either.
There's a week ladder, rewards are given in every monday the ladder ends and new ladder begins.

5, Many other games can learn from, like Overcooked, It takes two, and so on.