'Let's fix every problem anyone has': Path of Exile 2 director says its massive next patch should pull the game out of its Dawn of the Hunt depression era

Path of Exile 2's early access journey hasn't been a gentle one. Its last major patch, 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt, was disastrous for player morale, bringing an all-fronts barrage of nerfs that left fun hard to find. Today, however, Grinding Gear Games revealed The Third Edict, a huge expansion that has all the makings of a massive comeback in 0.3.0.

In an interview with PC Gamer, Path of Exile 2 game director Jonathan Rogers said it wasn't until the "rude awakening" of Dawn of the Hunt that the game's player reception rollercoaster clarified what kind of attention it needed.

"0.2.0 was certainly pretty difficult. One of the things we found was that when 0.1.0 came out, all the positivity of everyone experiencing a bunch of new content overwhelmed all the problems that people were having," Rogers said. That novelty, however, had worn off by the time Dawn of the Hunt dropped, so there was nothing to soften the blow.

"When 0.2.0 comes out, all that positivity—it was like, 'Well, yeah, we played that already.' All the bad stuff that's wrong with it is what's left," Rogers said. "And the problem is that we hadn't really done enough to address that."

The Third Edict is, in short, a big one. As proof, take a look at the full 0.3.0 patch notes and watch how tiny your scroll bar gets. You'd be hard-pressed to find a single system that didn't get some substantial revision in the patch, and PoE 2 has a lot of systems. The massive scope of that slate of overhauls, Rogers said, is a result of GGG working to make necessary across-the-board improvements to the basic player experience.

"0.3.0 is definitely all about, 'Let's fix every problem anyone has that we can find,'" Rogers said. "0.2.0 had a bunch of nerfs in it. It's not exactly going to make anyone happy, right? At the same time, we weren't fixing a bunch of shit that needed fixing. I really think that things should be a lot better this time around, because everything you wanted, we've tried to fix."

Of those reworks, Rogers said the removal of support gem limitations is "both the most exciting and most terrifying." It might introduce more headaches down the line, but it's a move that will help deliver what's always been a core promise of Path of Exile.

"We're probably opening up another Pandora's box of balance issues there," Rogers said. "But that's where the build diversity comes from. And that's what I really want to see: The huge variety of different builds and interesting things happening again. That's what I'm excited for, and if we achieve that, then I'll be very happy with how 0.3.0 is going."

From blowing the lid off build diversity, to retooling class balance and combat rhythm, to smoothing out itemization and crafting mechanics, The Third Edict seems like a regimen designed to reinvigorate the basic acts of picking cool abilities, getting cool items, and blowing up cool skeletons. Nailing that, Rogers said, is what will let GGG focus on expanding the game, rather than revising it.

"That's the core system stuff that we need to get right," Rogers said. "It'll be nice to get to a point of being able to add content again, rather than having to reorganize the core systems."

Given how much reorganizing went into 0.3.0, it's hard to imagine GGG will be worse off.