My PoV on season 0.2.0 as a senior software developer and a casual player

Firstly I must state that I have not played the season 0.2.0 for a while now because I did not find it enjoyable. At all!

And now to the feedback:

* To me it feels like GGG has forgotten that they are living on the cosmetics that the player base are buying, i.e. they NEED a large player base in order to keep developing and keeping the servers up. And the easiest way to see this is by looking at the recent feedback on PoE 2 on steam. Only 35% of the recent feedback has been positive! It DOES NOT matter if hardcore players who play 12 hours plus each day seven days a week likes the game or not, GGG NEEDS the wider audience to like the game in order to keep developing and maintaining the game.

* Loot is abysmal, I think I got three drop items up to level 68 that I could call ok (not even good). Everything else I have had to buy. And to be frank, I have been lucky and gotten around 20 exalted. A friend of mine had gotten 5 exalted up to level 68, if that is the case you cannot even buy the items you want (or need). This leads to a feeling of always being underpowered.

* Mechanics for survivability is a joke, the only reasonable way to keep yourself alive is by going with Energy Shield. Anything else and you get randomly one shot during ordinary maps which makes the game feel like a joke. And since you NEVER EVER get any good items (i.e. high armor / high evasion), again, you feel underpowered.

It feels as if I (as a casual player) only get punished for no reason and at times deadlocked at impossible boss fights either for doing too little damage, which leads to having to perfectly execute 200 dodge rolls in a row to avoid one shot mechanics or having to go back and grind maps in order to get currency to buy stuff (since it never drops). Where is the fun in that?

The currency rates right now might be ok IF you actually had any other way of finding equipment. And do not tell me "just use the trade site", who has the time to spend online trying to sell stuff if you value your time and want to enjoy things? Its just another useless waste of time which could have been used to enjoy the game instead.

For the current economy to work there needs to be some way to offline trade equipment, because no one wants to spend time online just to trade (for example when you are deadlocked behind an impossible boss). Id rather just play another game in that case.

And maybe PoE 2 is not the game for me, but since I (and 65% of all reviewers recently) find the game to be not fun, then we are back at my first bullet above...

Personally I feel that if GGG continues this way then the game might die in the future since only hardcore addicts will remain, and at some point they will stop spending money on cosmetics.

They need to take a step back and review their business model for PoE 2 and what audiences they want to target. But for me, the current PoE 2 is not a game I will continue playing if it stays this way, I value my few hours available to gaming too much for a game that honestly only feels grindy and not fun.

Lots of random thing here, and I could probably structure it better, but to be honest, I cannot be bothered to do so. :)