Update is out next Thursday.
They added act 4.
They're removing the cruel difficulty (previously you had to run through acts 1-3 twice consecutively, now you run 1-4 + 3 small "interlude acts" that serve as fodder to level you up)
They added new tiers to support gems and removed the restriction that stopped you from having multiple of the same type supporting different skills.
They added a new auction house system that allows trading buying items from other players with no need for them to accept the trade, so if an item is listed on the trade site you may always buy it instantly.
There's a lot of balance changes and additions to the crafting system, too. It's looking like a biiiiig patch.
time to line up for the slop!
I played Patch 0.1 to level 98 and it was also not good. When I saw the Patch 0.2 patchnotes, I decided to not play it at all because I knew how bad it would be. I didn't have to play 0.2 to know that it would be bad. The summary of my post is that most of the "improvements" in the 0.3 patchnotes are just reverting things to how they were in POE 1. The essence of Patch 0.3 is that being like POE 1 is good and being like POE 2 is bad.
The fundamental design ideas of POE 2 is bad. Making up weird rules like having no life nodes on the passive tree or limiting each skill to only 1 weapon type is bad design. Designating 1 weapon type to each character class is a bad game design. We're seeing them go back on some of these bad designs, like splitting reward and difficulty on waystone mods.
The reason that POE 2 sucks is probably Jonathan. Jonathan has said that he likes the things about POE 2 that most other people do not like.
There's like a 50% chance that Patch 0.3 is as bad as Patch 0.2.
I think that one is a good design decision. If you play a life based build in POE2 you don't have to waste half of your tree on life. That's one of the most creativity-stifling parts of POE1: every class has like 2 or 3 templates for trees that you have to start with, sets of life nodes that you have to grab. Every life based build has a similar shape near its start (grab all the life nodes near your start) then there's a few variations of which other life clusters you grab based on what direction you're pathing to. In comparison, POE2 has a lot more freedom because you actually invest in stats that are specific to your build (unless you're ES then you're in the same situation as POE1). The main thing holding back POE2's tree, IMO, was the way many nodes are pure pathing nodes that have no reason to exist except to make paths between parts of the tree longer; they're adding a ton of new nodes this patch so that problem will be reduced.
I agree with you regarding the 1 weapon type per skill restriction. It's very creativity stifling, and it means unique weapons are very pigeonholed into specific builds since there are a limited number of skills that work with each one. That could also use being more like POE1.
I am aware of what Jonathan said his reason for not including life on the tree. I don't believe Jonathan. Everything that Jonathan says is a lie. Jonathan is a liar. People never take away things from you to give you more options.
The real reason that life nodes are not on the passive tree is that Jonathan wants to punish str stacker builds. In POE 1, 10 str = 5 life, 2% increased melee damage. In POE 2, 10 str = 20 life. In POE 2, int only grants flat mana, but in POE 1, int gives ES % as well. If there were Life nodes on the passive tree, then it would scale the life granted by your str pool.
In the 0.3 patchnotes, it says "The Giant's Blood Keystone Passive Skill now halves the amount of Life granted by Strength." This punishes life builds for trying to get more damage by dual wielding 2H.
They don't want builds to scale their life with the passive tree. They don't want builds to scale their life with strength. This forces builds to scale life by having it on your gear. Also it just makes ES better.
This is just kinda wild to say, he wants the game to be fun so it sells more and people don't get mad and leave (been pretty unsuccessful so far, though); you probably should apply a bit of Hanlon's razor here. He's been around in GGG a long time and is new to being the one in charge of the flagship game that's in production; most likely, being in POE2 development with little testing gave him a lot of space to work around with wonky design ideas like that, and not having much pushback let it get to his head. But, fundamentally, is there any reason why the passive tree has actually suffered from POE1 to POE2 because of not having life nodes?
I agree that they're trying to force people to scale life by having it on gear, but when the alternative is giving it on the tree (where it just becomes mandatory) I'd much rather be forced to get it in as many slots as possible so I can still choose my defences and damage scaling on the tree. If anything, the game suffers from a lack of offensive options on the tree, because while in POE1 in a hit based build you'd have a balance of attack/cast speed, increased damage, crit chance, crit multi, and penetration (which you also were balancing with life and defences), in POE2 those stats are much more scarce outside of increased damage, so you basically end up stacking increased damage with a few sources of pen to bring enemies down to 0. This is a worse state of affairs than POE1, but will hopefully improve with this patch.
It's not wild at all to say that Jonathan is a liar. It's observable. Most things that he says turn out to be lies. He told people a date for a new POE 1 league and at the same time privately canceled all POE 1 development, multiple times. When Jonathan says that loot drops had been buffed, it had been nerfed. If Jonathan says something, it would be more logical to expect the opposite.
Jonathan wants the game to be fun for Jonathan. This is something that Jonathan has said when defending his poor design decisions. He has said that if a design decision is not fun for him, then how can it be fun for anyone else. He does not consider that other people enjoy things that he doesn't like. He's not trying to make a game that POE players like. He's trying to make a game that he likes and then he expects that other people must enjoy it. That is why POE 2 is being designed in such a narrow way.
Honestly the reason that POE 2 sells is on name recognition. If it was called something else, it would have way less players. Name recognition loses impact over time. POE 2 is having less player as people realize that POE 2 is designed in Jonathan's vision.