Experiences from Path of Exile so far

posted with the permission of Chris

I was invited to alpha test Path of Exile by Chris, who I have known for several years now, and have known for quite a while that he was making a game. As we are both avid Diablo fans, I was keen to see what he could do with a game in the genre, and also see what I could do to help the game get off the ground. I’ve also known a couple of the other guys from GGG through Chris for a couple of years or more.

I’ve been testing and playing PoE for around six months now, and it’s interesting seeing the changes that are made, and being able to give advice on what works and what doesn’t. As much as giving feedback about what doesn’t work, the first thing to know is that reports work best with screenshots and explanations. Just because X is more powerful than Y doesn’t mean Y is bad. But it does mean that the designers need to give something to Y to make it interesting and viable. The second thing is don’t forget to give feedback saying what does work, and why as well. If they know that things are positively received, they will also feel better about their progress. Also knowing whether something will work for people other than you is important.

I think when I offered to help with testing, Chris thought I would just give it a quick run through, then leave it alone, as most of the others... when most people had 1-2 characters, I made 5 characters for each class, and ran through what was available at the time with each. I tried going through in as much of a rush as possible. I tried killing everything. I tried running through multiple times with different characters. More of the game has been opened up since then, and every new build, I try a new character from scratch. I think the other couple of people that have dedicated days worth of play time to the game have more or less kept the same characters, and not mixed and matched as much.

At the beginning of the testing, it was difficult when you have this awesome game to test out, and can’t talk to anyone about it because the game hasn’t even been announced. As soon as the game was announced, and I was told I was allowed to, I started showing PoE to my friends. Comments varied from “Wow, that looks awesome”, to “I thought you were playing Diablo 2”, to “oh G-d, another Diablo clone”. As the game has progressed, I’ve been able to show people some of the cooler features added in graphically. The waterfalls are amazing. I’m looking forward to some of the new graphical improvements coming up as well.

As the versions have progressed, I’ve collected various items and gems to hoard for later. Collecting these has meant I’ve been able to adapt and test various strategies as a moment’s notice. This strategy isn’t working? Try another. Find out something isn’t working... report it. Find out something is overpowered, report it, and chat about how to improve the balance. Find funky new awesome items, let GGG know. Find little weird things that possibly aren’t meant to happen... report and offer suggestions. When things need to be tested, I am usually able to help out.

In the last 6 months, I have clocked up over 150 hours of play, with 16 characters currently on the server. At one stage I had 9 of the top 12 characters, including 1st and 2nd. Often I would delete characters that got killed. Due to the experience I had with the game, and being someone that wasn’t working on game professionally, Chris asked me to help with shooting some of the scenes for promotional videos. While my laptop doesn’t have a particularly fancy graphics card, or the resolution needed for filming, it handles the game at full specs most of the time, and on medium all the time and I played support characters for the central film PC. During filming I got the first PvP kill (in a non-pvp scene). Like most bugs, the GGG guys have been very quick to fixing issues when discovered. At any time there are between 100 and 500 things on the list of things to address, and the list keeps growing as more interactions are found, and shrinking as bugs get fixed, new items get added, new graphics are designed etc.

The balancing of skills has been superbly managed, as builds with differing power levels have been tested to gauge how players will combine them with support gems. Many of these skills trade off lower damage for a useful effect, such as freezing. For example Ice Nova does significantly less damage now that in the earlier builds, but now chills opponents. Some of the magic modifiers have been changed to enhance or correct ranges of item modifiers that were deemed too weak or too strong (Energy Shield regeneration being much higher than in the first build I played, and Quantity of Items found modifier being halved).

With the gems, the run through the game initially got them about midway through level 3, and after about twenty times running through the game, the gems I had equipped from the beginning were maxxed out. Of course, half the fun is finding new support gems to pump out super skills, and levelling up the support gems as well. With the plans Chris has for the game, I’m expecting that to max out gems in the full release will take running through the game in its entirety probably ten to twenty times, which will definitely be a challenge for people like me who like to collect things and max all of them out.

Chris, Jonathan, Erik, Rhys, and others from GGG, along with myself and many others have been keeping tabs on the PoE forums, and noting down feedback from people looking over the site. I’ve definitely had discussions with Chris about some of the opinions posted in threads, and how to expand the game, for example the types of items, and Normal/Magic/Rare/Unique items. It’s clear that Magic items are currently underpowered, and for the economy this is going to be fixed. Chris has been very good at considering various ideas put forth, and the merits and detriments of each suggestion, and taking feedback from testers into account.

One thing that I would like to see is more people reading the forums before posting to reduce the number of threads on topics that have been answered already, and a collection of data that has been announced publically, so that people can be directed there to answer questions efficiently. Lots of things have been covered in the dev diaries, some things have been alluded to and others have been intentionally kept quiet. A lot of people have misunderstood leagues. Leagues are not different games. They are like ladders on Diablo 2. You play the same game with modified rules. They are going to make PoE a great game. As will all the players, and the atmosphere of the game.

It’s great to see the vibrancy of the forums after the announcement of the witch, along with developer discussions and screenshots of the week, so that the community knows and can see that the developers are taking an active interest in the community’s development as well as working on the game, and as a place for the community to give feedback.

As always, I’ll keep tabs on this thread, and if people want, I may post another update after a future build has gone live.

You lucky dog you. That's cool that you're in the alpha, I have one question. Is it the best ARPG you've ever played?

Interesting read and post, considering this is not the norm. atleast not on the forums of the actual game anyway

Be interesting to see how your testing compared to an actual testing job, i did it for just over 2 years and spent most of the time writing detailed reports and then repeating the same step over and over and over . still get a good laugh when i hear kids want to be real testers yet they think its actually just playing the game as you would come release or in most MMO tests

with the game gaining more hype its only a matter of time before the flood gates open and the forums become very messy. some of these posts should be in their own announcement forum and stickies enabled because it does have a big sense of no official forum topics

as for the game itself i think the whole skill system is what i am most interested in trying out, cant think of any games where this system has been used which i have played

bring on the next class announcement :-P

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Oasisbhrnw wrote:

You lucky dog you. That's cool that you're in the alpha, I have one question. Is it the best ARPG you've ever played?

It will be the best i've ever played... what is more important at the moment is making sure the game gets to that point so that when it's released, everyone has an awesome time.

I've tested some parts of the game extensively and other bits less so. I'm not working for GGG, so I get the more enjoyable side of the Quality Assurance, than the incredibly repetitive long drawn out side that is done in-house.

But i am someone who will munch my way through, and find the most broken combos in the game when i'm playing hack and slash

It is good to know the opinion of someone who's played this game.Now I know I m don't looking forward unnecessarily.Thank you.

Thank you for this post! I have a couple of questions that I hope you are able to answer :)

How does PvP feel? Does it feel like Diablo 2, does it feel like DotA, does it feel like WoW Arena?

As far as re-playability goes, do you still enjoy reruns after doing them so many times? Does farming the end boss for the best loot get annoying quickly? Do you think the different leagues will help re-playability?

Do you think GGG is on the right track concerning itemization, skill system, crafting system etc?

If you are taking the time to answer these questions: Very short answers will be enough for me, because I know you are still under some sort of nondisclosure (which is totally fine) :)

"A lot of people have misunderstood leagues. Leagues are not different games. They are like ladders on Diablo 2. You play the same game with modified rules. They are going to make PoE a great game. As will all the players, and the atmosphere of the game.
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Nah its a MMo. Hope you didn't start this thread to prove you know more than me :P.If so I win har har.

Nah good read though dude. Will be cool to see more posts from you in the future on this.Nice paragraphs too. Made me actually read it instead of running away because of a giant block of text.

Awesome read. Very good to know that they are not only testing the functionality but have given "hardcore" minded people like yourself the chance to extensively play the game. Usually there is far too much balancing needed after the release of a game(beat D2 with a lvl 18 pally when it first came out) because they did not have proper testing of the skills and items.

Thank you for devoting so much time to make the game better for the rest of us.

Great post. You never really see information like this coming out about a game. Very interesting.

What was one of your favorite moments? Favorite monster? Favorite gem combo? Favorite ice cream flavor?