Why is this game only for hardcore players?

Im casual player playing for fun and I m wondering why is this game so hard.
During campaign i die many many times to rare mobs, even if I try the 'end game biild' from guides. Cant understand why the campaign Cant be relaxing and fun But its...like a nightmare. End game content should be challenging indeed But with current state i Cant reach it.
I resigned at lv34 and uninstalled. I thought the game is being updated each new season to make the game more and more fun and bring new players. But I was wrong

It is hard to understand ggg's reasoning behind this changes.
Like adding wave 30, Uber Ubers and stuff is a AWESOME Idea, it gives the Top players some challenges without ruining the day for average or even bad players. But adding horrible overtuned and in some cases unfair rare mods to the core game simply makes the game unfun for the 99%

ggg remember: This is a game, it is supposed to be fun and not a second job!

For two reasons:

1: that's how the game started out. A hardcore game for ARPG veterans. But it changed during developpment and became more forgiving (yes it did, even if it isn't apparent).
2: GGG suck at balancing. They simply can't find the sweet spot to make the game accessible to both casuals and hardcore.
The recent league is an example of that: the new archnemesis mods are tough, but an experienced player will overcome the challange, albeit with a bit of frustration here and there. But a casual will just get frustrated.

This game is both a blessing and a curse

Sometimes I wonder if the push for annoyingly hard content has something to do with real money ingame item/currency trading.

Elitism. The game is designed so only the smallest percent of the most dedicated players can ever fully appreciate and experience it, and the devs hold these players up on pedestals while pissing into the crowd. Because that's the kind of elitist gamers they were (or wanted to be) before becoming developers, and while it's clear none of them really play/test the game or have any of the skills required to complete the content they release, they still think that's how gaming is supposed to be done.

And so we have updates like this. A game that was already new/casual player unfriendly gets a significant ramp up in general difficulty, and the new content focus is on uber uber bosses that 99.99% of their players will never defeat outside a carry, and fancy new items you have a trivial chance to get while farming them hundreds of times.

I don't know - most of people abandoned real HC mode of the game long ago. We started as pure HC guild, now like me and 2 other players play it on HC. :-)

And yes I died already 2 times - first 15 mins in game (not an issue). Second that I was managing inventory on T2 map (lvl like 75) while rare with lighting totem spawns was there. My mistake, I should have hunted that rare bat more thoroughly and not manage inventory in the middle of totems :-)

There are lots of games for casual players. I actually like that they made their money and arent trying to maximize profits and want to actually just create a unique gaming experience.

I play hc and ssf and I like gauntlet as well but I think the current attempt to make the game hard is very bad. I think the current version of the game is just incompetence but I like that it is unfriendly to casuals in theory.

I do think that in red maps, this scaling would actually be ok. It's dmg spikes in leveling and early mapping, which is killing players. They need to tune down this curve so that it's accessible for casual players, players in HC stop dying when leveling and off-meta builds can be played.

I ma not sure if at this point GGG wants to attract new players at all.
Because, form business perspective it makes little sense. The game is not new player friendly + it looks and feels dated in many areas. The campaign, especially the first act are absolutely terrible. It eventually gets better somewhere around Act 6, but overall it is not great experience.
There is a good chance that new players would bounce back anyway.

They realized this long time ago and decided to make new campaign (in PoE2).
So, it makes sense to discourage players from joining now and make big marketing push when new (hopefully better) campaign releases.

For reference, I managed to play Grim Dawn campaign many times, but here, I struggle with second playthrough. Not because of difficult, just because how I disliked the experience, especially when compared to fun of mapping and the rest of end game activities.

If you followed some of the interviews a while back when the "hard mode" idea was floated out you could tell that CW's enthousiasm was peaked at that point. Their personal ideology is based on what they enjoy the most themselves which is hard and punishing gameplay.

Obviously GGG has data to go off of so I am sure this "making acts more difficult" is based in a scenario where the shift in difficulty between the campaign and maps was often too large and they see a very large drop off in player retention at that point. The idea being that if the game is scaled early on that players might hang around longer if the shift to maps is more gradual in difficulty.

That being said I remember a few leagues ago trying to introduce a friend that has 1000's of D2 hours under his belt to poe and he quit as his marauder was getting destroyed despite the fact that thematically it should be a somewhat tanky character early doors.

The learning curve is too steep for new players, even those that have a lot of arpg experience. For me personally I have played the campaign often enough that the thing has turned in to a necessary evil that you have to grind through before you start the end game and the way this patch has slowed that down even more had me taking breaks because it was so tedious. I have 1500 hours in this game and this is the first time I had time to play early in the league and just wanted to not play after wailing away at an einhar beast that couldn't touch me but took a couple of minutes to actually kill.

It has become clear that this game desperately needs a beta testing system for leagues. Unfortunately I get the feeling that GGG don't hold player feedback in high regard because GGG knows best.