Why my friends left PoE2 to go play Diablo 4 S7

My friends left PoE2 to go play the new season of Diablo 4. This was very frustrating and moved me to make this post. The TLDR is that Diablo is inferior to PoE2 in terms of gameplay depth and crafting mechanics, but PoE2 is terrible for group play, despite being superior overall.

*Issues with Group Play in PoE2:

1. Loot distribution
In group play, loot is increased by a small margin for each extra player, and shared or distributed evenly between all players, putting you at a loss compared to playing solo. If 4 players are in a party and 4 Divines drop, one player could take them all while others get nothing, because the Divine orbs were rolled for the same player? This creates frustration and reduces the incentive to play in groups. No one wants to share loot - NO ONE. Sharing is not fun. In Diablo 4 you have privacy and no one will know what dropped for you. At least in PoE2 we could have an increase in the loot quantity so that we don't have to share at a loss compared to solo play.

2. Difficulty scaling vs group death
Monsters become harder in group play, but there’s no significant advantage in playing as a group to justify the increased difficulty. If one player dies during a map or a Pinnacle Boss fight, they can't be resurrected, making the group dynamic meaningless. All you can do is watch your friend on the ground, dead. The entirety of the endgame is maps and pinnacle bosses where you cannot resurrect friends. I'm in favor of the 1 try mechanic but this makes it useless to play as group in the endgame unless you were already capable of soloing the content. Plus I'll have less loot if I take friends with me on my maps.

3. Group finding User Interface
Group finding is overly complicated. Feels like it was entirely coded in a Monday morning and left as is since then. Players must go to a specific city in a specific act at the right level to find groups of others who are at that lobby/Act. There’s no global lobby or region/level filter. When you are in the hideout, the group finder doesn’t display anything; players must return to the city. Can't you guys develop a more robust advanced group play finder? Could you please include the functions present in Diablo 4 where you can input tags in your group and don't have to type out as much, since console players have no access to physical keyboards? Without better group loot and group finder UI it will be PoE1 all over again, where most players build powerful characters to clear maps solo in seconds and 99.9% of playtime is spent alone, in what ends up being a "solo multiplayer game".


*Endgame Barriers:

1. Cost of builds
Endgame builds require expensive items costing a sum of 10 to 100 Divines. Even the cheapest builds for easier classes cost at least 10 Divines, creating an insurmountable barrier for many players. Players can’t gradually work toward a goal; many hit a wall and quit, because they have a hard time getting that type of money. For which trading items is the solution… but the trading system feels like it came straight from the XVI century, when you had to physically sail to another continent to sell something in bulk.

2. Archaic trading system
In 2025 you can't deny it's possible to get a trading UI inside the game interface and also include remote trading from the trade website for when we are offline. That will increase liquidity and options by over 2x. I have to be online at my PC because it can't be automated. Even WoW had a better auction house system over 20 years ago. How can GGG be sleeping on this for over 10 years with this archaic trading system? Ironically the current trading system is the most multiplayer it gets in PoE1 and PoE2 as most people only see other players when they are trading, instead of playing and having fun together.

3. Console UI is seriously handicapped compared to PC UI
Taking into account how clunky console inventory management is already puts console players at a severe disadvantage. Adding to it the fact that PC players have access to overlays that can search for item market prices and help set a price makes it even worse for console players to have any chance of making honest money. Could it be possible to implement an automated price finding system to help all players find the right price for their items and make it easier to sell them?

4. People complain about dying and Maps being too hard
Please do something to keep people from leaving the game when they reach endgame. There are 4 slots on the map node box. Can't you implement scarabs again or something similar? Add scarabs to change the difficulty, or to increase it. I would love to have more aggressive monsters and better loot. Maybe also add an item that with the waystone in the node slot could give the player extra lives while reducing his loot amount or rarity. There are ways to make everyone happy. Make the game harder for those who want it while not alienating players who are bad and hate the single life mechanic.

Hope you guys can improve the game and focus on playability instead of useless content as Diablo 4 has done.