Gaming

It looks cool, but frankly I'm far more interested in how it's going to be monetized. I bought into PoE early access back in the day but stopped playing after a few years because I got fed up with how its game design is compromised in order to accommodate its business model. Specialized stash tabs for currency, maps, cards, etc. are basically a mandatory purchase, since inventory management is hell without them. Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but IMO deliberately introducing game design problems, such as tedious inventory management, so that you can sell the solutions is a scummy practice. The same goes for drop rates, which are frustratingly low in order to force you to trade instead of finding your gear yourself, since in order to trade effectively, you need to buy a few premium tabs. Even though I actually made all these purchases to overcome these artificial hindrances, being squeezed like that left such a bad taste in my mouth that I just couldn't enjoy the game anymore. If they keep this up in PoE2, I'm going to steer well clear.