i was referring to god-tier as that was the language used in the original post.
Although i didn’t go attempt to find the original quote by Chris Wilson, i think it’s fair to say that PoE has an extremely significant problem in that they nerf stuff because of what the 10-hours-a-day players are doing, in turn significantly impacting the average player. Generally they just seem to not be that worried about beginners or “average” players.
designing a well balanced crafting system is hard.
back to the OPs original point, i have a lot of sympathy for this point of view:
i have a bazillion affixes, like everyone else, and it seems like a design problem that we all accumulate a bazillion affixes and have nothing to do with them. i really liked the gold sink dungeon idea. not thrilled with the execution, but there are many other forum threads on that subject.
typically the way you would handle that is that some criteria of success would be probability based, i.e. you could potentially burn through crafting material to get the desired outcome. this is essentially what PoE does.
this immediately creates a system where, if RNG is not kind, you are screwed in terms of being able to do something without the game being a ridiculous time sink. it also, to a certain extent, encourages trading. if you need 2000 alts in PoE, you trade for them, you don’t farm them. you then, however, have to farm something to trade. and generally that means more time spent in the game. or less time playing and more time using it as a trading simulator.
to a certain extent that’s ok, UNLESS, it starts blocking off portions of the game from lots of people. the argument has always been, in PoE, that if you want god tier stuff, if you want to do the annoying fucking content hidden behind RNG, you’ll just have to get gud and play a lot.
that’s a valid “design decision”, but that’s also why i’m playing LE instead of PoE (well, technically, i’m playing PoE, but much, MUCH less).
So, again. as a system i think FP is ok. i disagree with the OPs assertion that it shouldn’t be constrained. it should require some amount of time/farming investment to make ridiculous OP gear. it’s just not reasonable that it should be “easy” in any sense of the word. FP creates that constraint, but i’m sympathetic to the argument that it’s a somewhat clumsy way to do it. i find it to be “abrupt”, as does the @RJCA (I think).