Lost all interest after 12 challenges. Zoom leagues are just terminally boring to me.
Stuff like 20% of all builds using cyclone is just the icing on the cake.

Honestly I still drool over these wings but my god I really don't want to go back to 4th grade power point shows.

Unfortunately I cannot make short posts anymore so apologies in advance. Always been an ARPG fan and out of the major ones out right now PoE is my preferred (that does not mean its good though)
1. Performance. I have a performance rig (2080 TI, Threadripper etc.) CoC Ice Nova barely gets 10 fps in high density maps. constant latency spikes upwards of 1000 ms since Legion despite a dedicated wired connection is insulting. I can only imagine what slideshow hell the average PC gamer has to go through especially if they want to play any particle heavy build.

2. Delirium Rewards/Mechanics: Oh boy some horns you cant see and 2 back attachments that don't go with any of my sets or really a whole lot of other sets in general so ill probably never use. neat to own but probably never used. To my knowledge there is no explanation or hint as to what the effects of delirium actually do in game (I could be wrong but I also didn't look for it extensively) beyond it makes stuff harder.
Kosis... I've encountered him 20 ish times? killed him twice on a 100 ex build (barely.) according to path of building my combined DPS is 15.7 million. It takes me a solid 2 minutes of damage to down him if he doesn't one shot me with 7k hp and high defenses. so is he regenerating 10 mil damage per second with a billion hp or does delirium reduce the damage we deal by 90% or does he just have crazy high defenses?

T14+ 100% delirium maps... forget about it. i understand wanting to make the game harder but good grief. please take the streamer and skewed kill data out when deciding these things. There's dozens of people that play the game for 20-35 hours at a time and wrap up with something to the effect of "well i think that's good for today. 87 Sirus kills between straight farming and viewer requests for assistance only died twice on my 2000 ex budget build. have a good night everyone"
Our group attempted a 100% delirium Forge of the Phoenix last night with like 75% IIQ no extra damage mods or reduced defense mods. running an Aura support, a Curse support, a dedicated mana guardian, a boss killer bleed build, CoC Ice Nova and a Heraldry stacking character 35 minutes just to kill everything up to the Arena with the exception of Kosis who was literally unkillable because all of us combined couldn't damage couldn't down his energy shield and actually damage his life before he would summon his orb and regen it completely (and yes i know chaos damage bypasses it but not everyone wants to play a chaos build and by no means should it be a requirement in order to clear content. that is precisely the reason we stopped playing D3) oh and despite all the support and buffs to defenses and steelskins and vaal molten shells and whatnot. the phoenix guardian still one clapped us pretty much instantly.
oh and i really like the kill 500 map bosses under the effects of delirium which means either play reaaaallly fast and ignore loot until after you clear everything, exclusively play maps where the arenas are pretty much right next to the start of the map if your build doesn't focus on speed. or get and then use at least 170 delirium orbs so that it guarantees the delirium wont decay by the time you get to the boss.

3. NERFS: Thank you for nerfing easily accessible builds that would allow players to experience a good portion of the game without needing a high budget or great luck. yes it shouldn't be an afk auto scroller but it shouldn't be reduced to nearly impossible to play without significant investment only to get 1/3 of the performance from its previous versions. Also thank you for removing the value of several game economies for the sake of what was it again? oh yeah making the game more challenging for the high end players and streamers and a major turn off to the other 80% who give up after dying 500 times in low tier maps because the build they WANT to play just cant compete with the meta. Nothing screams fun to play like hearing your guild mates screaming in discord because the build that was fun last league now functions as a flaming port-a-potty speeding down a hill and would much rather play a different game than feel like every bit of effort they put into playing what THEY WANT (both in builds and in content) is completely wasted. quick example. delve and fossils. its decent exp and a nice shade of blue, but that's about it now. if it wasn't an endgame challenge (curse the completionist in me) I wouldn't bother. all the fossils that sold quickly for 4-20 chaos per last league now barely sell at all at 1 chaos per now.

sorry for the rant. this is a biased opinion that is most likely not shared with all, the 100 ex or so build was sheer luck because we got a couple good drops including a mirror recently that we split amongst the group like we do with pretty much everything.

TL;DR. if you want to get rid of the meta, buff non-meta so there's less need to only play the 5 major builds. Its unnecessary to remove crafting methods from the game because one source dominates how the items are made. make a second source and change the chances of the actually overpowered rolls. tired of seeing the same unique items equipped on every single character? redesign some of the 500+ uniques that either don't get picked up or vendored immediately so that they are also viable (even to a lesser extent)... There's a difference between a "challenging game" and a "be a
tryhard or bust time sink" game

PS: can you please increase the chance orb to unique rate even a 1/2 of a %? "Leave it to Chance" i'm 8 for 10 after using 5500 chance orbs (and scouring or trashing) still no uniques. Very abysmal rates and I don't have 20 ex to spare on trash to treasures (because i've spent 3000 silver coins and haven't gotten one either)

Usually when I reinstall the game (because yes that's a thing) when a new league that looks interesting comes out, I play all the way to maps with 2 or 3 characters.

This league I didn't hit maps with any character because frankly, the mechanic just didn't engage me. Probably time to uninstall it again.

Full disclosure, challenges don't engage me, and mapping doesn't engage me. I get pulled in for new gems, new systems, and new story. I really enjoyed Metamorph because right off the bat there was a person to talk to who had a story to tell. The system went with my play style, in that I enjoy clearing the entire map. I didn't have to rush as fast as possible every time in order to maximize my results. Sometimes I made creations that were too hard to fight in one go, but it was fun to be able to wear them down over multiple fights and get the sweet sweet rewards.

I've enjoyed Metamorph, Bestiary, and Abyss the most so far. I didn't play in the league that introduced the Veiled items mechanic, but I find that fun too. The Temple mechanic is also interesting, though I didn't care for the timer. I strongly dislike timed events generally. While Abyss was kind of timed based on killing enemies fast enough, the fact that there were abyssal belts and jewels offset it with a new and interesting loot. Delirium doesn't really change the way the game works with item drops, it just dumps a ton on you if you successfully run your butt off through the level. Frankly, that's both boring and stressful.

But I guess for the 20% of people that play endgame, it must make the whole game like endgame. Repetitiously grinding areas as quickly as possible for fat stacks of loot. Boring and stressful. Having to min max to get value out of the mechanic, rather than the mechanic rewarding multiple play styles seems counter productive to growing a player base, but I'm no expert.

Just a filthy casual that enjoys the depth of customization of PoE, until that customization hits the wall of "You must do this much DPS to pass" or else.

almost 60% death rate in single orb delirum maps should be an immediate red flag that something is wrong this league

Too many monsters, too much rushing, and not enough meaningful rewards. I left after about 3 weeks into the league. I can't speak for others, but challenge difficulty had nothing to do with my decision to leave.

The world is in quarantine and PoE is dead average right now. A record setting 132k, and now normal league numbers at peak time. That's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ weird situation right there.

I guess it's convenience that it is one of the worst leagues performance and gameplay wise. Built for the boom and zoom streamers and racers, hard as hell to appeal to that fine 5% HC audience, and you damn well better be able to 1 shot an entire room because if 1 Delirium mob touches you, you can kiss your 6 health ass goodbye.

Please, for once, shift your attention from Twitch and realize 90k are gone. 90 thousand people are gone because you don't care about feedback, you care about killing god king Mathil and having a round when Raiz dies in HC. Just like at Exilecon with PoE 2, when Chris said he was hoping to kill Mathil with the demo, right? Watching streamers and seeing them struggle is a measure of a league's success and how good you balanced it, right? 60% of 1 orb maps having deaths is a sign the team did peachy, isn't it?

Well damn, you lost me. $2k spent and thousands of hours, but this isn't the game so many people bought into, sure isn't the one I liked playing. You did what Chris Wilson wanted to do according to himself, make PoE fast as hell and crushingly difficult. I hope the ultra hardcore audience you'll have left can keep up in stride because eventually, PoE is gonna shift so far up the "Dark Souls of ARPGs" ass that only the masochists who need it as a living will want to play. It's really sad to see this game I highly enjoyed playing become a nightmarish slog where I'm forced to play the meta build of the league and not play with anyone at all.

this league is trash, its nothing but speed running. lit everyone i know tried it for around 2 weeks max and then quit.