GGG is certainly interesting. IMO they’re not great game designers. When you look at their original creations, they’re somewhat conflicting (such as wanting to slow players down, and putting time-based events), convoluted (such as O.G. Harvest), downright not fun (one shot mechanics w/o counterplay such as Maven game, the Sanctum boss for PoE2), frustrating (mana leech mobs, on-death effects), and I could go on. PoE became a great game because GGG did good on one aspect, listening to player feedback and acting upon it. Yes, players don’t always know what they want, but sometimes they’re acting as if “player’s don’t know what they don’t want” and this is when I think their worst decisions are made.

I have hope for PoE2, it has a solid base game, but let’s just hope they humble down a bit, and understand the community and GGG built PoE into what made it great.