Developer Questions and Answers

Hey there,

It would be lovely to hear something about Trading improvements (knowing that the game is heavily trading based, and is really lacking at that area).

Long ago (before Hideouts came to play), I felt that there were room for instance based player shops/markets. http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/848024 - Now, it seems just logical to do that.

1. HC/SC Build Balance + Melee/Ranged Balance

I'm UX designer, and i was wondering at what point you will take a deep look into build mechanics and fix it.

It's way too unbalanced. Everyone playing flameblast because it's safest (ranged) cheap and with super clear speed.

I think you never looked at your game from "top". You started something from scratch and you're building it now like a puzzle, adding and removing one piece, but it's about seeing the Big Picture, not by adding new nerfs/buffs because you're chasing down your tail over and over again.

I love the atmosphere of Path of Exile, but if you want to bring more people to this game, Act 4 isn't enough.

Stop adding new "expansions", start thinking about the core of problems.

1. As i said earlier balance between HC/SC and melee/ranged
2. If you are running 3 month leagues you should give some different "fun" challenges, rather than no brain grinding and clearing maps - its not exciting, not even fun.
3. You know the psychological aspect of players - It's mostly gambling attitude - Waiting for the Big Drop. But this is not the way to keep players and obtain new players who can potentially buy something from shop.
a) Players are bored with running act1>act2>act3 progress and same quests over and over again. It's a terrible option. Running through acts just to run maps over and over again ? Come on, I could give you thousand of new ideas and give players some fun time while lvling up.
b) Solo vs Party playing - very unfair in terms of magic find, exp etc. Players should have opportunity to have some "only" solo drops and some "team" drops.
For example, there should be few big drops only for solo grinding and few big drops only for team (2+) grinding.
c) Trading systems are dead - channels - come on ? Spamming all the way ? People are making additional programs for trading, but it's your job to make those ! Also here i could give you some ideas.
d) Drops vs trading vs currency vs grinding -
Standard league has inflation - it's the economic system where you saw that it doesn't work well, so you started making short-leagues, because long-league would be the same as in standard.
If you could remove crap items, and add new useful uniques + better crafting options to remove inflation and balance the number of uniques VS currency, that could save the system.

But here is another problem, there is still no real crafting in short leagues, because its not enough time to gather all the resources to make something good. This in my opnion needs total rework.

5. Remove crap unique items or let people transform crap uniques into something valuable (more currency recipe, or salvage for some crafting materials).
6. Let people choose if they want to see "white items" on the ground or only yellow etc.
Simple line Show only: "harbinger bow(white)" + "uniques" + "currency". We only need some specific items, i hate wasting my time looking at the ground for 5 minutes to look for granite flask between 12395 other white items.
7. Let people choose if they want to see visual effects of other party members skills or even your own (discharge lag, CoC lag).
8. Skill gems drop - after few weeks you have like 100 usueless skill gems. Let people transform it into some currency etc.
9. Give some skills that will give melee classes a way to survive heavy physical dmg.
10. Add some melee skills that don't need items - bring some kung fu down there (so i can respec later to melee build if i want).

Cheers. Make this game a better place, you have a lot of work to do, but you have the best potential in the market.
Diablo 3 is dead, made for teens without any skills. There is no other game like this, but.. you need better UX/Game designers in your company.

What about desync?

How many new gems do you estimate to release with chapter 4? Will there be any we have already seen? Will there be fishing rods of power?

"

Morti666 wrote:

Are u guys are considering to change the ratio the persistently rising number of totally unnecessery worthless unique items? what is GGG's reasons and goals with that? i assume thats a lot of work time and design and ofc money which is obviosly a waste of time if players dont even pick up them anymore, i like thats not all the uniques are soul takers, binos etc. but what can we expect in the future?

Way to phrase your question in a "constructive non-hostile way."

I always wanted to ask if there will be an option to inspect other players, that you can see what gear they have. There was such option in di*blo 2, only added by program (in WoW this doesn't matter because stats on gear is flat). This will be interesting feature, because for quitе long time there have been added so many items. Some are legacy others modified or crafted and for the owners of those items it will be a show off to let others see their accomplishment, and others to envy. It's one thing to see visually buffed character and other to inspect character and see his perfect or nearly perfect items that he wears.
This feature its not mandatory but it will be cool to be seen. This can be optional so someone who wants to, can do it. Sorry for my bad english.

Trading system, when is it gonna happen? Will it ever hapen?

That's all I wanna know.

"

Villeneuve wrote:

Will the balance between solo and party play be addressed? Right now it's impossible for a solo player to run high level maps with even close to the same efficiency party does. Not to mention parties are much safer than solo. Or that they offer better rewards than solo.

Not only that, trying to play solo and farm only dominus for example you need absurd amount of IIR, 450+, on top of damage and survivability, just to drop all rare items, and party with dedicated mf-er with 500/80 ends up at 700/130. So not only party farms with a lot higher speed, they get a lot more mf, which ends up in a lot more uniques per hour farmed.

Why every aspect of this game is pushing people to party?