Make the game flow to make money flow (your way)

Here is what I consider your goal : make money while having players engaged in your game and maybe your lore.
To keep player engaged, I think you need to make the game "flow" and avoid unnecessary times of managing inventory, waiting in general, and stuff like that.

I consider the core of PoE to be : farming (clearing maps or chain killing bosses), boss fights (skills challenges), crafting (upgrading) items
Most of the fun of the game comes from this cycle : Different ways (leagues, uniques and [classes+ascendancy+tree] ...) to clear maps and/or kill bosses to get stuff that improves the way the player chose to get into the power fantasy.

Skill challenges -through bosses- can become a part of the game if the life mechanic to kill them is taken out. Instead it can be sort of a timer you need to survive, or clear conditions linked to a timer.
Crafting in and of itself can also be a minigame inside PoE (like gathering quests or other specific endgame quests)

If you keep PoE 2 free, I believe you will make the most money out of character customization. Today, some of the money you make is because the game is not optimized for inventory management, so you sell "stash tabs" instead of making it easier to use for everybody. Which can be something you don't want to change, but I believe this will make the game more "clunky" and in the end you might make less money. That being said, some of the changes I advise could be behind a paywall.

Here's where I come from in order to play down my point of view : Around 1 400 hours on PoE 1. But I never managed to get to endgame content (except mapping) mostly because I played hardcore and dropped my characters as they died. Also because my computer had big freezes at the time when there was a lot of stuff on the screen. So I died a lot because freeze happened in clutch moment (big spawns of monsters, big animations, multi-layered rares with a lot of stuff goign on). This is not an issue PoE team should consider though, I just have an old PC.
On PoE 2 I'm at 120 hours and play on Standard. I'm at T15 and didnt do any endgame bosses
Whith that in mind, here's my 2 cents. If I ask a question, it's not ironic, it's because I don't understand your goals/intent behind some mechanics.


What's Good
PoE - Thanks for making those games <3 big loves
Gamble is nice and fits the lottery/randomness themes of the game
Graphics, audio and effects give a nice feedback
Charms (automatic defense flasks)
Boss fights

Major Changes
Flamewalls of rares disappear on them dying. Monsters dont explode on death. Those 2 are just slowing the game when "you have to" play safe. It's a hindrance for weak builds and/or weakly skilled players also it's hard to see what's dangerous (poisonous clouds, poisonous ground ...). It can be a choice to filter them out of endgame/farming though. For me it just slows the game, now I wait 3 to 5 seconds after kiling a rare just to make sure I don't get killed by some DoT stuff I cant see.

Show monsters on minimap like trial of chaos. This would make "only 1 portal" policy fairer and reward careful play. It rewards plannification. Which can be a choice to NOT reward and instead have a game mostly rewarding builds (meaning, farming to buy a build that is theorycrafted by a few people) and reaction speed (meaning, rewarding "young/reactive players"). I'm below average in reaction speed, so I'm in dangerous situations really easily because vile vultures and the like attacks from offscreen.

At the end of an instance, loot on the ground get automatically identified and vendored, giving gold directly to the player

Customizable filter ingame (like being able to select items that we want highligted, currency and stuff ... the same as what external filters does but just ingame) this could be behind a paywall typically

Loot is generated at the end of a map on a vendor-like tab system with a tab allowing for custom filters to show what interest the player. This vendor-like tab system would be considered "player inventory" and would open the stash too so that you can transfer any item you want directly to your stash. "Identify All" "Transfer all visible" "Vendor all" buttons

Minor Changes
What's the point of making us walk on corpses, sometimes going back on our path? Automatic gain of sacred water and other similar ressources

What's the point of identify scrolls? Make it like portals and an "automatic identify" option

New option to be able to "show" chosen dangerous mods on magics/rares/monsters. Like "cannot regen above 50%" shown in red if I choose in options that it is dangerous for me. So when I mouse over a mob, I don't have to read 5 lines in 0.5sec while trying to survive to know how I should play against it

More predictable campaign maps so that experienced players can play through it faster

Launch a Temple of Chaos/Trial of Sekhemas through map device in hideout

Clearly show elemental status of player when burning/frozen/slowed ... maybe with flames on the sides of the screens (when I move through maps with burning grounds, with all the clutter it's hard to know when I'm burning or not) Curses could have similar "really clear" effect instead of just an icon on the top left

"Action no longer valid" when opening the door in trial makes 0 sense to open chests and/or buy stuff at the merchant

Allow going from trial of chaos to hideout. Put the rewards at the beginning of trial of chaos so that we dont have to go back to stash/waypoint

Make chests and pots like "items" so the character doesnt go to open them without the proper command (in my case, I use "alt+click" when I want to interact with items). This would help avoiding missplays linked to chests in packs and/or pots in packs

Tweaks and Improvements
On the minimap, mark with an arrow what is outisde of the minimap (checkpoint) with a color marking the distance (from red: far away, to white: close)

When showing big map in a bright/light environment you can't see clearly the map. Need to make it contrast to background

Only show gems that can work with selected skill when using the "all gems" button on a uncut support skill gem

Make the first gem you get linked to lore (maybe found on the body of a special type of enemy/human)

Sekhema Asala speech is not the same as text shown for some dialogues

Make a relic stash tab (free or not, I don't care. Not a problem if we can automatic identify)

Highlighted rares in vendors tab


As of now I'm happy to play the game while listening to podcasts and stuff, which is one of the main reason I play, to keep focused on something else.