SSF experience in Atlas is WAY worse than PoE 1 - Currency drops for gear crafting

As of 20 Dec 2024 and a SSF player but in the "Trade" League as a lvl 78ish and running Atlas, struggling hard to get past T7, not because of power, I absolutely explode EVERYTHING, yet map still takes 20 minutes just because I feel compelled to absolute full clear every map due to lack of waystone drops:


First.. Running T6-7 maps.. why am I getting T2-3 waystone drops.. those are beyond useless. And at an average of about .5 to .75 Waystones per map, with most of them being lower tier waystone drops? 3-4 tiers below the current map is insane and a waste of a players time.

Waystone Drops are not even remotely close to sustainable at low tiers for reasonable progression through the map tiers to complete the "quests" to gain Atlas passives that are much needed and frankly compulsory to make Atlas tier progression. I fully understand that gets better at higher tiers once one can get the atlas passives to increase Waystone drop chance... but as is we have NO CHOICE but to spend those first dozen or so passives just to increase Waystone drops.

It is absolutely ridiculous to spend a 6-8 hr session (accounting for, fuck, i need a piss and a sandwich, knock on the door, take the dog out, etc...) which amounts to probably 12-15ish maps if one is doing a complete clear to get the most out of a Waystone JUST to have a chance to get at LEAST a same tier waystone just to to get 3-4 Regals and get MAYBE one or two and Exalts. That's way more than a full day for us folks that don't make a living streaming. I'd bet the VAST majority of players don't even get 10 hrs a WEEK to play.

After about ~500ish hrs in PoE 1, MULTIPLE toons I quit PoE, as much as I loved the actual gameplay, because of the ridiculous grind and hrs spent to just get a few chances to MAYBE having a chance to craft a decent piece of gear for an upgrade. And we had the crafting bench and multiple avenues to actually craft gear upgrades, which is the heart of actual progression in the game.

Realtime gameplay mechanics: There's no other ARPG that even comes close. Incredible job GGG, PoE 2 is amazing from that standpoint. Gear / Atlas progression: There's work to be done. Particularly for those of us that don't have 4-5 or 10-12 hours a day to spend just looking at the trade website and would rather spend that time actually playing the game:

Here's my suggestion: On map clear, and have not gotten a Waystone drop one should be GUARANTEED at minimum a waystone of the same tier when killing the last rare mob or map boss. 99.9% of your players and supporters are not Twitch streamers. I'd be the vast majority us us don't want to deal with random other players, this isn't a multiplayer game for the most part, though that option is available, it's clearly not designed around the mp experience. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Second, but just AS important. Give us some feedback on the CPU hardlock issue. There is NO way that "balance patches" can be more important that a hard crash bug. I understand just how difficult software development is. I AM a software developer. "Slam is too strong" CANNOT be more important than "Our software doesn't run reliably and freezes the entire system of our clients". I'm not the only person running the latest versions of Dx12 and / or Vulkan and Windows.