I have over 20,000 hours in Path of Exile. I don't say that to appeal to authority, but to make it clear where I'm coming from. I've played through countless leagues, watched the game evolve, adapted to almost every major system overhaul, and defended GGG through plenty of controversial changes over the years because I believed they were ultimately making the game better.
This is the first time I genuinely feel like Path of Exile has lost sight of what made it special.
I'm not going to speculate about conspiracy theories like the PoE 1 developers intentionally trying to push players toward PoE 2. I have no evidence of that, and I don't think it's a productive discussion.
What I do think is undeniable is that ground loot has been getting worse and worse with all the nerfs and system changes, and Allflame is easily the worst it's been.
The frustrating part is that GGG knows players aren't happy with it.
During the Mirage League Q&A, the developers acknowledged the overwhelming feedback regarding poor ground loot. They specifically said they were increasing loot for Mirage and that they intended to do even more in the following league.
Naturally, many players—including myself—expected Allflame to be the league where those promises would finally materialize.
Instead, the opposite happened.
The primary ground-loot strategy was again nerfed, and nothing meaningful replaced it.
That leaves only a few possibilities:
1. GGG doesn't want Path of Exile to be centered around ground loot.
2. They believe the current state of ground loot is acceptable.
3. They somehow forgot what they had publicly discussed.
The third option seems extremely unlikely, which means we're left with the first two.
And both of those create a much bigger problem than simply "less loot."
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Right now there are essentially four ways to acquire valuable items:
* Kill monsters and rely on ground drops.
* Do mechanics with predetermined rewards, such as Ritual windows or similar systems.
* Kill bosses for their specific drop tables.
* Gamble through mechanics like Stacked Decks and other RNG-heavy systems.
On paper, that sounds like healthy variety.
In practice, it creates a serious progression problem because only one of those reward types naturally scales with character power: killing increasingly difficult monsters.
Here's where everything falls apart.
The primary way players increase map difficulty is through map modifiers, but those modifiers mostly just scale ground loot quantity and rarity.
This creates a major problem: if ground loot itself isn’t valuable enough, then making maps harder stops being meaningful. You’re simply taking on more dangerous content for rewards that don’t scale in a satisfying way.
That breaks one of the core ARPG loops Path of Exile is built on.
In a healthy system, difficulty and reward should scale together: you improve your character, you take on harder content, and that harder content gives meaningfully better rewards. That loop is what makes progression feel rewarding.
But when the best currency comes from running easier maps quickly rather than engaging with harder, more dangerous content, that loop collapses. At that point, there’s little incentive to push your build further once you can comfortably clear basic endgame maps.
Instead of asking “how strong can I become?”, players are pushed toward “what’s the fastest, easiest content I can spam for profit?”
That shift fundamentally undermines the ARPG experience, where investing into a stronger character should always translate into being able to tackle harder content for better rewards.
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So here we are 20k hours later, and I'm finally seeing the game I love so much be taken out back for some unknown reason. They were fully bought by Tencent in 2024, so maybe that has something to do with it?
During the Allflame Q&A, Mark emphasized that if player numbers aren't growing, then there's only one direction they can go. This was concerning to me because it felt like the devs' focus was centered around player metrics and business growth rather than what dedicated players found fun and what kept them playing.
It's almost as if they are saying that, at this point, players with 10k+ hours who play 6+ hours a day are becoming less of a priority because they're likely to move on anyway, so the focus shifts toward making the game more accessible for new players.
Historically, GGG built its reputation by making a game for passionate ARPG fans, trusting that if the game was exceptional, the players would come.
Lately, that philosophy feels less visible.
Whether that's actually changed internally or not, it's certainly the impression many veteran players are walking away with.
For the first time since I started playing, I struggle to recommend it to friends.
As much as it pains me to say it, if someone asked me today which game to start, I'd probably recommend Path of Exile 2 instead.
I never thought I'd say those words.
GG, GGG.
