Quality of Life League

Ok, lets be real. I get that you need to keep the league rotation going to keep the game alive and that that involves new content, but the game is in desperate need of some QoL changes and rebalancing work that isn't a rushed half-baked bug-riddled build-killer.

What I suggest is that you make a league at some point in the near future that is a QoL and rebalance focused league that, rather then adding a whole new branch of content, goes back to old league mechanics and polishes them up. This league could add a smidge of new content in the form of things the game sorely needs like an Auction House. My idea is that you can use this league to test how an auction house would work in a limited capacity. (and hopefully figure out that making trade less terrible wont destroy the game) Add an Auction House NPC or something of the like that you can interact with to list items for sale that you can add to your hideout that allows you to list items and search through listed items to buy. Limit this mechanic by adding a piece of content to maps that is a chest guarded by monsters that has a chance to drop one of two items: An item that you can give to this new NPC or hideout object to list items and an item that you can do the same with to buy items. Make it so this item is consumed when you list or buy an item so that players will have to seriously consider if any given item is worth listing and/or buying with this new system.

This will allow a few things. First, it will allow you to see just how impactful, if at all, a real in-game auto-accept trade system would be.

Second, it will allow you to see what kind of value players assign (in currency rather then wasted time and fun tax) to the ability to use this auto-accept trade system when some of them start listing the items that allow you to use it in the current manual-accept trade system.

Third, this will require few if any new resources to be made and no balancing and testing work for new build possibilities like a normal league would, freeing up that balancing and testing time for use on existing content to buff more underpowered builds, nerf more overpowered builds, and fix more bugs in existing content. The extra budget and time that would normally go into resources for the new league could also be put into new resources for existing content to make the game look and feel better overall. (Personally, I would love to see Rogues harbor get a waypoint icon on the quest screen and be made into a private instance rather then a public one like how it is with every other old league mechanic as well as to get the ability to mark affinity for Heist on normal tabs and the ability to put quest Contracts into your stash.)

As for suggestions on what QoL changes should be made, better tooltips first and foremost. The current ones are so broken that people legitimately believe third party programs like PoB to be an absolute necessity because otherwise the game misleads you constantly with buggy tooltips.

You could also add an interface to directly manage your hideouts Desecrate pool so Specter users would have easier control over the Specters they use.

A big one would be improving the search function in the skill tree because the barely visible flashing effect being the only thing search does leaves people with any sort of vision impairment high and dry. Make the search function in the skill tree bring up a list of nodes, or maybe make it work like Ctrl+F does on a web browser where it has a number displayed that represents the number of nodes that match your search with little arrow buttons for you to use to snap the screen over to whatever node is actively selected in search and double highlight that node.

Maybe upgrade the currency stash tab so that you can just right click the currency you want to use on the item placed in the center without having to then also left click the item, thus reducing necessary mouse movement, number of clicks, and therefore the risk of RSI from too much time spent crafting in PoE.

You could also add an inspect option to the right click menu that can be used to see a characters (or minions) stat screen, gear, passives, etc with a toggle in the options to make your characters private so people cant inspect you for ammunition to bully you with. (because that is a real problem in games with an inspect feature, and they all allow it to be toggled off in some way to prevent that while still allowing you to essentially show off by leaving it public if you so choose)

Another good one would be to fix whatever causes PoE to ignore system power settings relating to screen power timers. (I set my screen to not turn off for a reason, please leave my system settings alone)

It would also be nice to be able to have greater control of my zoom. I don't know why they insist on PoE being zoomed in so far when there are builds that have skills that are bigger then the screen at the current max zoom distance.

On the subject of zoom, it would also be nice to not have to have the map displaying over the entire screen most of the time, the ability to zoom out the screen corner minimap would be a fantastic QoL fix.

Considering you have made now three different varieties of unarmed build a thing, it would also be nice to see a feature to allow you to lock gear slots so you don't die because you accidentally clicked on a dagger that dropped while playing unarmed.

Maybe even add a push-button interact to the K&M system so we can press a button to open doors, talk to npcs, and pick up nearby items without needing to click on them.

You could also use this as an opportunity to add cross-play to the game to really bring PoE into the modern era of gaming where cross-play has become the expected standard. I know I have plenty of friends who only don't play PoE because they play on Playstation or Xbox and they wont play if they cant play with me and there's no way I'm the only one who has experienced that.

You could also add an improved tutorial interface, something that brings up a window with a section for each existing league mechanic that gives you a rundown on how it works and what you can get out of it. This could also include a beginners section that clues you in on necessary information that all new players currently have to either look up or ask other players about like the fact that if you don't cap resistances you WILL die, how much life you should aim to have by the time you reach level 90, some basic info on how modifier lines on rares work, what modifier lines exist, and so on.

I'm curious what other QoL fixes other people have thought of that they would like to see. I know people have talked about a colorblind mode and better contrast between white and faded white text such as what you see in the maven progress interface on the map device. What else does PoE need to make it better and less cumbersome to play?