Developer Questions and Answers

What are your overall design goals for the future of the game and how do you plan to address some of the biggest issue facing the game?

In particular:
Over-relying on one-shot mechanics and massive burst damage(which in turn leads to an overly steep difficulty curve at higher levels, strong gear dependency, and greatly limited build diversity for certain content)

The need for a better trade system

New content or ways to play the game to keep things fresh after having leveled dozens or even hundreds of characters?


Also, how do you plan to adjust the difficulty system and overall leveling process once act 4 is added? Will you be simply dropping Cruel difficulty altogether or doing something else?

Will you guys ever consider a League where new content can flourish on a regular basis and not have to lose all our progress every 3 months? I can't be the only one who hates the fact that out of a 3 month league, we're only playing as a thriving community for two. I'm just tired of having to restart everything so soon.

So, is there any hope for us casual/semi-casual players who can't compete with the top tier % but would lvoe to have more time to get there (while enjoying new content and not having to resort to old standard/hardcore which is a huge turn off to many).

Not sure if these are asked or not, cannot check so many pages:

1. The in-game dialog all mention monsters keep attacking each other in Wraeclast, is there still plan for this feature?

2. and plan for the the sight blocking mechanic in Diablo 1 that you can not easily know how many mobs are hiding behind the door?

3. Will atziri be kept as current form for long or is there a chance the whole Vaal story will be introduced as another arc? (act 6? 7?)

4. I remember the lore once said Wraeclast is just a small island close to the continent Orieth. is this changed? is there still chance to go back to our homeland?

5. I am pretty sure the current comic is to reveal the story behind Act IV, is the selling good? Will there be another series for Act V?

6. Any plan to make masters really interact with the background rather than just stand in the middle of fights, being ignored by monster, plus invincible?

7. Whats the current studio size? are you still expanding or satisfied with current group and just slowly introduce new blood to replace those leave?

8. the old trading vs self-found and solo vs party case: whats the design philosophy behind it? will solo and self founder have more and more difficulty competing others since more and more contents (and necessarily more difficult encounter) are introduced in the future?

9. How much do you need us pay to introduce fishing and templar pants?

Act 4 related questions (More set up as yes/no for a teaser, since it may be early for the juicy bits):

Q: Can we expect to see new item base types, with new implicit as we see the entire game world expanded in Act 4?

Q: Can we expect to see any new affixes added to the pool used by magic/rare items of various types in Act 4?

Q: Can we expect to see a new class with the release of Ac4? (Or would this be delayed until a later point down the road.)

Q: Can we expect to see any new classifications of weapon types or damage types with Act 4?

Q: Can we expect to see any new skill classifications (other than the already public "War Cry")?


On MTXs:

Q: If you had to pick between adding a Panda Bear pet (like the current bear cub), a Baby Elephant pet, a lil dragon MTX for Summon Raging Spirit, or a miniature Giraffe running on a tiny treadmill hideout decoration... would you consider your job very easy or very hard?

The ultimate question here: Will you add PANTS into the game when Act 4 come out?

Oops, I forgot those
http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Potions#Throwing_Potions

Do you plan on releasing any new 76+ maps in the future? The extremely small pool of level 76-78 maps makes for a repetitive endgame mapping experience.

Related, have you considered "untying" map levels from specific maps? For example, make it so any map can be any level, with higher level maps still being more rare. I think it would add a lot more variety to endgame play. I would love to play a level 78 mountain ledge.

Hi GGG,
I am playing 2h melee builds since beta and I feel lonely.
Are there any improvements coming with the big patch
that could finally convince more people to play melee?

There have been some great suggestions about this topic in the forum,
one of the better ones is the idea of a new item (Hilt - like Quiver)
that can only be geared together with 2h weapons and gives you what
melees actually need, defensive stats like maxres, effects like
"30% of incoming dmg is dealt over time", "cannot be slowed" aso.

You tried to improve melee builds with every patch but it did not help.
We don´t need more dmg, we need defensive stats and the possibility to get
faster out of dangerous situations. Balancing this only through already existing
items is almost impossible or atleast linked with alot of work.
tyvm

Development of Masters

related to my suggestions as there was no GGG comment
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1201796
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1187256

1. Daily quests - lvl 8 masters needs to be re-invited every day for doing dailies. This is kinda "annoying". Is there planned change in this matter?

2. Daily quests - 1 hour/day job - the need to be online every day or bundling at 1AM 2x dailies could be addressed. My suggestion was to create weekly alternative to cut down a bit the need to be online doing dailies. Is there some plan to address need to be online at daily basis?

3. Master Missions - are there planned more types of daily missions for every master?

Hello :)

My Questions:

1. Are there any plans to make more conversion type support gems? There is for example phys to lightning. Something like fire to lightning etc. Maybe even element to phys?

2. Are you considering to add something like Avatar of Frost or Avatar of Lightning (Avatar of Phys and/or Avatar of Chaos even) to the Passive Skill Tree in addition to Avatar of Fire?

Thanks for reading my post :D Like your game by the way :)

Hi GGG,


Would any other shield type skills be available other than Shield Charge? As I was thinking that something with shields could be quite interesting to implement and open up play ability further, for example in Diablo 2 there was the "Smite" skill that allowed users to use their shields to bash enemies as a melee skill and stun them. Would a similar skill be added to PoE in the future? or are there are lot of development challenges in adding such a skill?

Also would it be possible to get Double Strike or even another AOE skill of sorts to be working with Facebreakers?