My feelings about version 0.5, Exploration is dying

First I have to say there are some good things in the update. I liked the new bosses. Manually created realms for main quests was necessary. I had fun in rediscovering the game, I still love the overall atmosphere of the game.

Exploration was, I think, a major attraction of the game. We were sold the feeling of an infinite number of worlds to explore to find different resources, unlock crafting recipes by finding merchants, etc. We had to carefully choose the biome and difficulty to find a particular resource. Now, merchants are completely useless, we find the same ores regardless of the biomes, except for a few rare resources. From halfway through the main quests, we see those same green and blue rocks everywhere.
From the very beginning of the game, we had to create different realms to progress, now we have 8 portals that open one after another with a single map. We mindlessly follow the main quest without ever having to create a realm ourselves, to the point where you had to redo a tutorial outside the game to explain to new players how to create realms, this crucial element in the game's initial concept that is dying with version 0.5. Exploration has become only an optional part of the game for nostalgic players, it's sad.

I think you should remove these 8 portals, and just like before ask player to create a few realms before to give them some special card to reach a particular realm like the player realm cards we already had before to reach our friends realms.

As for the game's difficulty... by wanting to level everything down, we end up with a nightmare mode playable solo, whereas it should be a real challenge even for a group of multiple players, it's ridiculous.
Upon reaching the watchtower, we're told there are Apex dungeons with horrible creatures that will tear us apart... with a default mode so easy that it becomes a real joke.

Ascended realms were supposed to be the worlds to farm to obtain new resources and T4 essences and unlock equipment of the same tier to then be able to conquer the Apex dungeons.

Players reaching this stage don't even need to farm to create T4 equipment, which (at this stage of the game's development) is normally only useful for defeating these "Apex" creatures. Sure, we still need to create T4 equipment if we play in nightmare mode, but ascended realms no longer add anything to the game we're already at the "end" of the game; farming T4 to run the same dungeons in a loop is no longer interesting.