Stories from Development: The Undying

Wow! Great read and explanation of what to me was always rather obscure npc dialogue.

Zdzisław Beksiński - I wonder if you were inspired by his work.

That's cool I always wondered about that line. What is he talking about stay out of the shadows they bite, and I'm glad to see I was right about there being more to it. I was always just like why are you so scared man I will kill all the things lol. I see how this would have been to complex, but for someone who played way before act 3 this would have been a real coming to terms with how good we thought we were. It was still fun the first time I played act 3 two party members died at Perpetus the bear trapper, and I was the only one left after first getting to Piety's ball of death while saving Tolman lol. Oh the good ole day's of PoE now we all just just go Slayer and faceroll things, I mean Slayer isn't OP no nerf's please.

sounds interestig, kind of like the reassembling skeletons in dank souls. it could however be annoying on subsequent characters (unless You could use the gem from another character, then it could actually make the campaign less of a chore to do again).

the problem with multiple difficulties no longer applies, and the idea of shooting them from a safe spot would be solved if they retreated when there is no reachable player in the area.

as to the problem with hc leagues, there are already worse things than that in the game. if the monsters would just have a ton of regen, but not much more than regular damage, then it wouldn't be so bad for hc people.

new players would be confused, yes, but with npcs explaining it and not as much punishing damage, it would not be as bad, btw love the reference in the Hagan line (i always thought he had some bad experience with a shadow class fella).

even if this never goes to the campaign, it would still make an excellent map mechanic, though probably too much work for a single map. A league that would add shady areas with monsters that would have to be killed in a specific manner would be interesting, though probably might come out tedious in the long run, and cheased with a few builds, forcing specific meta, though that happends anyway.

"

Fips_PoE wrote:

Zdzisław Beksiński - I wonder if you were inspired by his work.

Yeah. "wonder"
should have left a mention in the post. very disappointing that they didnt.

"

Directing players into a lethal encounter to make sure they understand it is dangerous was probably too aggressive, especially with a hardcore permadeath mode in the game.

Have only a handful of Undying wandering around in the warehouses close to the instance gate so the player can experience how strong a few of them are firsthand. Also, what's the point of a hardcore permadeath mode if you're not going to punish the player for making mistakes? I guarantee after one death to the Undying, people would learn not to go there.

"

If the City Stalkers can't go in the sunlight, then what stops you kiting them around and hitting them while you're out of the shade?

You guys already have AI that can flee from the player (Blood Apes), just use that. Have them flee to a preset point in each warehouse instead of fleeing in the opposite direction of the player.

"

If you recall the early versions of Act Three (prior to the 2.0.0 and 3.0.0 simplifications of it), you'll remember it was already a rabbit warren of fetch quests and obscure instructions. Adding to this the inability to travel in some areas and the requirement to later go back to places you've already been was not a step in the right direction.

Diablo 2 was way worse in this regard and it was still perfectly enjoyable.

"

While it was cool to use a Support Gem to be able to kill the City Stalkers, this would disrupt people's builds substantially. Having to spend an Act playing without one of your existing Support Gems was too much for many builds. It's also really hard to communicate.

Make it a high cast speed low mana cost Curse, or even an Aura. A player who doesn't bother to read the strange new gem he just got from a quest reward is a player who is probably too brain damaged to play this game anyway.

"

Another practical concern was how difficulty levels were handled (this was eight years before we removed them - at the time, Path of Exile had Hard, Cruel, Ruthless and Merciless as its difficulty levels). If you had the white Support Gem from the first difficulty level, what prevented you from taking it to the second one and immediately being able to kill the City Stalkers?

Why not let them do it? It would be an interesting and unexpected sequence break. If it couldn't be done without the Act being restructured, just have it so that only a higher level Anti-Undying gem can effectively remove their regeneration, and the only way to upgrade your current gem (or get a new and better one) is to do the quest again.

All in all it's a pretty sad story considering how mindless the game currently is. Having some actually challenging enemies would be an improvement.

Aha, so it's not just a random voiceline. Nice.

Could be a theme for a map still, maybe use a shrine instead of a gem :D I don't think we have special shrined based map yet =)

"We wanted Path of Exile to be brutal"

Now you turned it into a casual fest where only clearspeed matters.. GG