Developer Questions and Answers

Why are some skills given flavorful names like "Anger" and "Clarity" when others are flavorless mechanical names like "Added Fire Damage" and "Life Gain on Hit"? Shouldn't "Cast When Damage Taken" be called "Panic" or something? Seems like as more content gets added over the years there's increased need for flavor names to differentiate everything. Eventually there will be multiple gems that "add fire damage" in different ways.

Hi Chris,

You managed to lure a perpetual lurker out onto the forum. :D

Most of my questions will have been asked in one form or another in the past, but I will try to frame them for specific cases if it helps:


1. How do you feel about the current balance for the low-end currency recipes that require the player to collect large numbers of fragments (e.g. 10 magic items) or 40% total quality to create basic currency items? While I recognize that part of the game is in choosing which items not to pick up, the game seems to actively encourage new players to collect items in ways that seriously undermine their time efficiency and progression in game.


2. Do you have any plans or ideas for revamping/fine-tuning the general mob AI? As examples for discussion:

(a) The current mob AI is very easily exploited to either run past mobs without being chased or to pick off individual members from what should be a trained, cohesive group of guards (e.g. Gravicius' guards or any group on the other side of a doorway). Perhaps some packs could call to their brethren when spotting the player or possibly have a greater retain-aggro radius to permit more effective chasing? I realize that such a change would have impacts to racing (or buff leapers), but do you feel that the AI could be more reactive to the player?

(b) Mob/minion pathing is often cited as an issue and can be particularly obvious in combination with synch problems. For example, in merciless sceptre I don't recall a single voidbearer that did not desync on a doorway; typically, they may do so 2-3 times before actually entering a room (voidbearers being out of sync is an example of a mob whose ability becomes more dangerous on sync issues, since they have farshot). Narrow passages have been a particular problem for pathing: are there any solutions for this?


3. Is there any leeway to allow for longer instance timers, perhaps just on the player's most recent instance (even an option to 'hold' a single instance while online)? My obsession with Point 1 often leaves me babysitting instances to keep them from timing out on me, which can be frustrating.


4. Any chance of having scaling options for the HUD? My concern is for the position of vendor trade windows more than the life/mana globes, since using eyefinity can cause item details to be lost under bezels.
[ALT-Enter to a rescaled window from fullscreen is a workaround for this issue ... can't believe how long it took me to clue in to that solution.]


Thanks for hosting another Q&A session! I certainly enjoyed the last one and would love to see them more often. Candid communication with the community, such as you often engage in, does a lot to ensure both player confidence in and connectedness with the development team.

[Edited to clarify mob AI vs player minions.]

any chance you make the second weapon slot available for more than the 2 users who currently don't use it for leveling gems?

Do you have a timeframe for when Cutthroat leagues will start being a thing?

You mentioned engine improvements for 1.4 some time ago. Any improvements you can go into details on? Even something as boring and user-unrelated as "improved animation rigging for armor" would be cool to hear about.

will the beautyful ui globe globe ladies survive the introduction of act4?

edit: i see really good questions coming at a amazing rate, if this goes on expect an answer on next week monday :)
haha

Hmm.. I guess something for new and old players:

Will support gems, when linked with an active gem, ever state that it (the support gem) does not effect the active gem?

I'm pretty sure some times it does not register with the 'quick bar' icon, so that's one way to tell. Other times I feel you can link it, it will increase in mana cost, damage modifiers will apply and show on the bar but it doesn't do anything. Am I wrong?

Some examples off the top of my head: molten strike with fork or faster proj.

EDIT: I'm 99% sure I have from various interviews/posts (I try to stalk you guys) that it is a mechanical/engine/gem labeling/coding issue. But could/would the fix be worth it to fix even if it means going through, 1 by 1 and adding special ... 'tags' or tooltip fixes for unique issues?

If a new player sees on the 'quick bar' icon that a certain support does affects the icon/skill damage/mana don't you see that as an issue when the support gems special rules (fork for example) are not visible/do not exist?

BTW there seems to be a lot of new players lately in the forums, very cool. Awesome news on Russia. Keep it up guys!

How do you guys feel about the interaction between frost wall and kinetic blast? It only seems logical that when kinetic blasts hits a wall, the smaller blasts will proc. This isn't going to get nerfed right? D:

I've touched base with you on this before, but I'd like to throw it out there since I'm sure I'm the only one asking about this topic:

1) What's GGG's stance on updating the game's voice acting? (Adding voiced lines for Oak, recording lines for other classes to give dialogue options in line with the Scion's level or near that point, etc.)

2) The voice acting is the only characterization we get for the different classes. Would you consider recording a few more context-specific lines so we hear from our characters more often at interesting points? (New line every ten levels, different lines when rare monsters are defeated, line when a rare unique drops, etc.)

3) Will we ever see the high-res versions of the 2D unique item art in some sort of in-game gallery?

Thanks a ton to you and the team, Chris!

Here is my question to you Chris Son of William

What is the level of Desync?