Developer Q&A: 187 Questions Answered!

I fixed the spelling/grammar of a few questions and slightly reworded a few others if the context wasn't clear.

Do you follow a development methodology, such as Agile development using Scrum?

We use an ad hoc methodology that has evolved over the years to serve our needs. The cycle length of patches varies a lot depending on how large they are. It works really well for 2-3 week content patches, and scales down to patches that just involve a few small changes. More complicated production techniques are required for large expansions.

If about 10 years ago you had all the knowledge about game development you have right now would you still develop your own game engine (like now) or use an external one (e.g. Unity, Unreal Engine, CryEngine, whatever) and why?

We'd still have developed our own one because ten years ago, there were no commercial game engines appropriate for our needs.

Do you use a build server with nightly builds?

We use a very comprehensive continuous integration system (based on BuildBot). We do builds more often than nightly - they run every time someone commits a change.

How does QA integrate into the development process?

They either work on checking resolved issues in our trunk version of the game, or performing quality assurance on patch candidates before they're deployed.

I'm curious about which programming language you use to make this awesome game what it is.

C++

I love playing games and Path of Exile has been my go to game for the past few months. Me being only 16 i'm looking into going into a field that is involving computers and I've contemplated game design or game programming. Do you have any tips for how I can get started towards this dream?

Get some easy game development tools and start making games! Good starting tools like GameMaker don't require previous knowledge and they let you learn the process and some programming techniques as you experiment.

Are you thinking about a Linux port?

We'll certainly try to make sure that any cross-platform work involves a linux port eventually. At the moment it's very Windows-specific.

What sort of long term goals do you have as a company? Will you stick to the plan of making your 'ideal' arpg or do you plan to eventually branch out into another game?

Grinding Gear Games was created to make Path of Exile. We have grand plans for the future of Path of Exile. We have not started development on any other games.

I know this would be a huge job with re-writing etc, but will you ever consider re-doing some of the engine to take advantage of DX10-12, and not strictly stick to DX9?
Has this ever been a topic internally that you actually considered?

This is something we've been discussing internally, but it's a huge task. We need to continue to support DirectX 9 because of the Windows XP users, so a port to DX11 would be an optional version that people with more recent operating systems can use.

Is the current graphics engine based in the one you guys started in ~2010?

Yes. 2006, technically!

Could any of us work for GGG? what are the job opportunities in the game industry?!

Absolutely. We've hired from the community before. Knowing the game is a big plus. You just also have to be very good at game development! The games industry is a great place to work, but it's sometimes a bit hard to get into because companies want experienced staff members. Note that being able to legally work in New Zealand is an important component in applying.

What is the best/worst thing about being a gaming company based in New Zealand?

The best part is getting to live in New Zealand. The worst part is that it's hard to hire people.

GamesCom in Cologne. Would you come next year?

I would absolutely love to bring some developers to Europe to meet our fans over there. It's a very long way from New Zealand (24 hours of flying!), which also means that it's expensive. We'll make a trip over, but we don't know when yet.

Did you guys upgrade to Windows 10 in the Path of Exile headquarters?

Our developers use whichever version of Windows they want to. Some upgraded. I'm waiting a few more weeks but I did upgrade at home.

What version control system do you use for the game's source code?

Subversion. And, no, we don't want to use Git.

Would you guys ever do a video diary of the day to day life in the office?

We'd like to, but these can be very disruptive and at the moment we're working on improvements as fast as we can.

Given the recent shout-out to devs working late for patch 2.0.2b I was wondering how much of a grind is working at GGG? How often that happens and do you feel it's really productive?

It's usually really good, but sometimes emergencies occur. The guys involved in 2.0.2b really wanted to deploy it that evening, so they stayed late to make it happen. That's why I thanked them in the patch notes thread - they went above and beyond.

What kind of MTG is played at the office?

The guys are playing an Origins sealed league at the moment. Previously there has been a lot of Tiny Leaders and Vintage.

Are you guys at GGG ever going to upgrade your N64 to an SNES or even an NES?

In the new office we also have a PC hooked up to a projector so that people can play regular PC games. Gang Beasts was super popular and now they're playing Rocket League.

How many cans of soda is consumed at GGG in a week?

500-600 drinks per week, not all of which is soda. There are juices and stuff as well in the fridges.

What's on your folks' reading lists right now? I'm looking for some new authors to check out.

Many staff members are enjoying Brandon Sanderson's work.

Soup or pie?

The relatively unanimous answer among developers was Pie.

If I ever come to New Zealand is it possible to visit you guys in your office? (played with the thought of doing my vacation there)

It's certainly possible to arrange, but please email contact@grindinggear.com first to make sure it's okay at the time you're coming. Sometimes we're too busy to allow it.

How many hours do developers and staff spend sleeping in the office?

I think I am the only person who has slept overnight at the new office. Though I guess it was during the day after an all-nighter for The Awakening's launch, so maybe it doesn't count.

Do you have any stories or pictures of George the peacock?

I miss George. It was cool and weird to have a peacock wandering around near the office a lot of the time. Here's a video of him we took a few years ago.

I'm a computer science major who has just returned to college after five years. I've been eyeing internships all over the place, but mainly in the gaming industry. Does GGG ever plan on doing summer internships?

We don't, sorry.

How often are developers required to play Path of Exile in a typical week?

Developers aren't required to play Path of Exile - they play because they choose to. Much of the play occurs on our internal servers rather than the live realm (so that we can test future patches), though some developers like Mark have prominent characters in current challenge leagues.

At what vendor did Chris get his Horror Reef shirt? That shirt is amazing.

A shop in Rarotonga (Cook Islands) in 2001.

To Chris: Do you yourself browse reddit, or do other people on staff look through and bring your attention to hot topics?

People link me forum posts and reddit posts to read or respond to throughout the day. Outside of work I often read reddit (including our subreddit) recreationally, hence my activity there in the evenings and such.

Why the name Grinding Gear Games?

You grind for gear in our games.

Chris: Were you born a troll, or does one become a troll with power?

The latter.

Who is the best fisherman at GGG?

Let's just say that on the day that we were filming the shaving video, I asked "Does anyone have a fishing rod in their car?" Carl did.

Chris, are you still bald?

Yes. I shaved my head for you guys and I'll keep it that way.

Will you update the GGG website? I think it is quite outdated.

Yes, eventually!

Will there be some introductions of the (old and new) GGG staff members?

That'd be cool. I'll talk to Bex about working it into the news.

How was your holiday?

Good, thanks. Vegas is pretty crazy.

Tell me something I don't know about the Albino Rhoa Feather.

Despite aggressively trying to find one on the live servers, I never have.

When will "Build of the Week" return?

We're planning for it to return soon. It's a lot of fun to put together and gets great feedback. We've just been focussing on post-Awakening fixes so far and haven't yet filmed any BotW episodes. Bex has been posting some links to interesting build guides in the news recently for players who are hungry for build ideas. The Build of the Week series will probably focus on special builds.

When does the next season of races start? I had a ton of fun last season!

At the end of next week! We should be announcing it tomorrow.

Will we see Endless Ledge in the next season? I think that I'm not the only one who can't wait for it.

Yes

Will there be any guild improvements in this league?

We're aware of the requests for several guild quality of life features (like ctrl+clicking items into the guild stash). We're working on some more urgent stuff before those, but we do intend to add many of these features over time.

Why can we not control click into and out of guild stash?

Any interaction with the guild stash involves database activity. Allowing people to do this was previously deemed as too much activity. Due to database improvements, it may be okay now. I'll have the team look into it.

I have also a small issue concerning guild stash: Why isn't it possible for guild leaders to change the guild stash tab order?

This is a quality of life issue that we need to fix. There are some minor technical issues related to distributing the information to people watching the guild stash, but these can be solved.

Will you please release APIs that will provide better trading functionality than what is gained by indexing forum data?

There are APIs coming that should improve the integration of services like poe.trade with Path of Exile. They'll allow for more responsive/convenient indexing of people's items and will help reduce load on our site. I don't have an accurate timeline but it's something like a month.

An API to see if players are currently online is in its final steps of completion and we'll be making it available to sites like poe.trade so that that data is more accurate.

Trading is a huge, core part of your game, and it allows players to act as content for each other instead of relying on you to put out new acts and features. How high on the priority list is improving trading between players?

There are a lot of questions about trade in the questions thread. We're working on several different things that make the process of getting items onto sites like poe.trade easier. These are improvements that are very possible in the short term (a month or so) and will have a big impact in the short term. There will probably be other improvements in the future - advanced tech such as cross-instance trading would of course be awesome, but requires significant investment. We're very excited about the trade API changes we're working on and look forward to talking more about it when they're closer to being ready.

Will the Thanksgiving microtransactions be making a return this year?

We generally don't return holiday microtransactions from previous years, especially if they're marked as exclusive. Sometimes we don't make microtransactions for a specific holiday if we're working on other important stuff at the time. There was no Valentine's Day microtransaction this year, for example.

When a mob or a horde of monsters drops a bunch of items (mostly "white" even in merciless mode...), i have trouble to see the light blue color of the divination cards...It is almost white.

Ah, you can set up an item filter to change this! Check out www.pathofexile.com/itemfilters

Have you ever thought of adding the bandit quest reward choices into the passive skill tree - visually? Like little icons below the starting location maybe.

This is a pretty cool idea. It's not something we've discussed, and isn't something that I can guarantee we'll do, but I'll discuss it with the team.

It would be nice if the base stats would be visible somewhere (no increases from gear). Is this possibility?

I agree that this would be useful. I'll raise it with the team also.

Will you ever introduce inventory tabs (similar to stash tabs but with a limit)?

I think it's unlikely, because constrained inventory space is an important gameplay element to us. It promotes interesting decisions about items and discourages players from trucking everything that drops back to the vendor. It's also important for maps. Paying for inventory space in the field is also paying for gameplay advantage, which we don't do.

Since there has been a lot of new content in Act 4, will there also be new hideout decorations incoming?

We have some cool Act Four decorations that we can add for hideouts. We haven't had time to do so yet, sorry. Good point though!

How much have you thought about developing a new endgame that isn't maps or the goal of lvl 100?

I think it's quite safe to say that more end-game activities are coming in the future.

Has the addition of another character class ever been considered?

What str/dex/int ratio would it have? We covered all seven combinations with the existing classes.

Can you discuss how you arrived at the current implementation of jewels? They ended up being so simple compared to other item types in POE (no level req, only 4 mods, no quality bonus, three different bases but no implicit to differentiate). Was this simplicity a deliberate design goal from the start, something that fell out of early balancing, something that you went with to get them out and hope to revisit later?

We're pleased we took the time to work out what jewels needed before we committed to their design. The beta gave us lots of data that allowed us to iterate in a live environment. The simplicity you mention evolved in the first conversation about jewels. We like things to be as elegant as they can be while still adding complexity to the game. As a self-contained system, jewels are a pleasure to work on.

You can view the distance to the jewel sockets as a level requirement. The four mods restriction is to make the mods more impactful. If we did six, they'd be individually a lot weaker.

What is the highest number of deaths on a single character?

I don't have an answer to that question, but I remember back in 2013 when we had to ban bots manually (before there were good tools for this) and I ran into one that was a day old and had died over 1000 times.

What unique is currently equipped the most throughout all of POE? What unique is currently equipped the least? (Gotta be veil, right?)

In Warbands, the most commonly equipped unique is the Survival Secrets jewel. The most common that isn't a quest reward is Tabula Rasa.

The least commonly equipped unique is Powerlessness. It's 91 times less commonly equipped than Veil of the Night in that league.

Note that this data may differ from the data generated by trackpete - that's because he's just looking at the top people on the ladder and we're looking at everyone.

Have the folks at GGG considered possibly adding in an auto sort option for each page of your stash?

While the answer to this specific question is no, there's some interesting experimental stuff that is very loosely related to this that you may get to see in a month or two.

Will there be a way to click a button in your tree to export it to your website so you can show your friends and make changes without having to experiment on the real thing?

Already done! You can view your passive trees on the website in the place you look at your characters' items. The link to their passives can be shared and you can modify those trees.

Will Warbands/Tempests be incorporated permanently into the game?

Elements of them will be, but they weren't designed to be ported across in their entirety.

Why are there no divine/eternal hybrid flasks?

We feel there doesn't need to be, but we can and may add these in the future.

What do you consider the biggest compromise you've made to the original vision of the game?

Adding more item allocation options. It's meant to be Free for All :-(

In Act 1 you have to travel through Merveil's Lair because Piety blocks the Emperor's Road with Spikes. But what would have been the standard way people would take to Sarn from the forest encampment on? Cross Kraityn's bridge to the other side of Lake Constance and travel on to the northwest?

You'd follow the road over the bridge and through the Vastiri Plains to Sarn. This can be seen on the Map of Wraeclast posters.

Have you any thought on letting the waypoint in our hideouts being movable?

This unfortunately isn't a practical change. The waypoints are built into the hideout as part of its layout - they're a tile rather than a decoration. We don't allow tiles to be changed, so unless we overhaul the entire system, it's unlikely the waypoints will be moveable. Sorry!

Could you maybe design/add a Mannequin for your Hideout on which you can put weapons and armor to show off (also with item mall skins)?

This is something that's on our "very cool to have" list, but we haven't started development on it because we still have higher priority improvements to make. It's intended to be a future microtransaction.

Plans to add crit effects for physical and chaos damage, like shock for lightning?

It's discussed occasionally and would certainly be cool to introduce in the future. This is unexplored design space.

Any plans to have base leech affect more than just physical attack damage?

No. There are also elemental leech stats for that.

Is Neon's death to Thornflesh in Tempest somewhat related to the removal of Thornflesh shortly after?

Yes. That's one reason we play the game - to find problems.

I have hoarded a large volume of gems - (I realize about the current ease for obtaining gems in Awakening). But could there be a craft to consume excessive gem drop?

Low-level, non-quality gems are very easy to get. It has always been possible to get a lot of them from early quest rewards, and it's now cheap to get them from vendors. At this stage, we don't plan to add a sink for these gems.

Zana map mods are interesting and (IMO) fun. But presently they are largely counterposed to using Vaal Orbs on maps and that usually works out better. Have you considered changing the additional cost to apply Zana mods to corrupted maps to be a flat 1 Vaal Orb instead of 1 Vaal per chaos spent?

We're happy with the price being 1 Vaal Orb per chaos spent. It's consistent, suitably expensive and people are using it. To make it a lot cheaper would probably cause an overwhelming amount of use.

Do you have any concerns about people using multiple dummy accounts to try to manipulate the market and/or get a louder voice in the trade scene? It seems like 80% of the trades I try to make that use the public board either ignore me completely (not AFK and I ask for exactly what they're offering), or re-direct me to a different account to make the actual transaction (i.e. a dummy account so they can have multiple listings on the board at one time). poe.trade isn't much better.

It's pretty common for players to have a second account for the purpose of trading. Because map portals are limited, players often don't want to leave their maps to perform a trade. We don't have any concerns with players having alternate accounts.

I've heard some rumors of people using a tool that can scan players' inventories so they can get first dibs on rare items like mirrors before they're publicly listed. Is such a tool possible? Is there information that can be pulled from the servers that's not available on the website?

This is not possible. We've spent a lot of time looking into it and haven't found any evidence that this is real. If you have any information about exploits like this, please let us know.

People can see items that are equipped on characters that don't have privacy options set, but they cannot see items in the stashes or inventories.

I would like to know if you plan to rebalance damage values in the near future in high level content and act 4. Because with boss mechanics the way they are, and the values of especially physical damage, playing melee is kind of a challenge (and not a good one like ZiggyD's unique challenge). Any build that has to stand still to deal damage is worse off than a build that can run like a chicken while dealing damage (Whispering Ice, totems etc.). That really kills build diversity...

There's an element of truth to this statement. Damage is higher than it has been for a while. Having said that, build diversity is also at a high, especially in the end-game. We recently sampled builds used by both level 90-95 and level 99-100 players and were very impressed with how varied they were. It's a big difference to the 1.3.x series of patches.

We are keeping an eye on physical damage and mitigation options.

Would you consider changing the map system to give us the option to run low level maps with a higher level (kinda like Zana, but in a doing it yourself-way via the map device: E.g. put in a mountain ledge on the left side and a torture chamber on the right and you get a lvl 74 mountain ledge. Let's you get rid of low level maps and still requires finding the high level ones.)?

At face value, this is a cool idea. However, we want people to run a variety of map types as they have a variety of different challenges. Being able to run high-level versions of the same lower tileset over and over would become boring a lot faster. There may be another way to achieve the same goals, without the repetition.

Will you add Forsaken Master crafting for Jewels?

Jewels only allow four mods. This is a big deal for master crafting, because it's so much easier to get a good three-mod jewel (to throw a fourth mod on) than it is to get a good five-mod rare. At the moment it'd be pretty overpowered.

How does something like Lightning Penetration interact with a Voltaxic Rift? Is the conversion done prior to the gem's damage bonus being applied or afterwards?

Since no lightning damage is dealt (it's all converted to chaos), the actual penetration will not affect the damage. Converted damage is affected by modifiers to either the type it was converted from or the type converted to. So the increased lightning damage from the support will apply to the converted lightning->chaos damage.

I'd like to know about the actual game engine. Is there any intention on changing it, or adding options for us to lower the detail of particles or something that help us to improve the performance of our game? since this game is pretty heavy and lot of us have serious lag issues and can't really play in hardcore leagues or run high risk maps, etc.

We are working on engine improvements over time. As you can see from recent patch notes, performance improvements are made whenever possible. We're very aware of the problems for some users and want to improve them.

Invasion bosses aren't used much in POE at present other than in one particular Tempest. Have you considered making Zana's signature mod (+1 invasion boss) more accessible and/or making it more appealing?

There's discussion of changing her signature mod to something else.

Are there any plans on making the forsaken master missions when you meet them out in the wild more consistent in terms of on how you start the mission with the master? Currently on most of them, as soon you talk with them, the mission begins. On other masters, you need to click "start mission" (Which IMO is what it should be). Maybe also put an amount of XP that the master would get if you completed the mission before you do it?

This was decided on a per-master basis previously but could be reevaluated. I'll talk to the guys about it. Showing the amount of experience that would be received on mission completion is a cool idea.

The melee skills without an inherent AoE (Viper Strike, Puncture (melee), Glacial Hammer, Heavy Strike, Double Strike, Dual Strike, Elemental Hit (melee), Vigilant Strike, and in practice Infernal Blow) feel extremely weak right now. Firstly, is this true in your usage numbers? If so, is there any plan to make these skills see more use?

Usage shows that these are popular choices for single target skills.

Chances of adding a "remaining mobs in area" to the Map Description when we hit tab?

We're considering doing this once the number of monsters remaining drops under some number like 20 or so.

Is there going to be another cut-throat event?

Yes. I can't announce when, but it's something we enjoy running.

I'm loving the lore object additions to Acts 1 and 2 to bring them in line with later content. Will we see more of these inserts in areas already in the game? Are you planning anything else to expand the lore of Wraeclast and Oriath?

Absolutely. There are plans to keep pushing on optional lore material for players who are interested in finding out more about the world of Wraeclast.

Elemental Proliferation was nerfed hard, without much apparent mind paid to beta feedback. Is it intentional that it was left in a broken state (mainly due to its radius of 12 at max level), or was this just a way to avoid having it dominate the meta in 2.0, with plans to revisit it later?

We're happy with the current state of Elemental Proliferation. It's being used in several different builds and it isn't dominating the metagame.

Are there still undiscovered vendor recipes?

I think they're all currently discovered, but I haven't personally checked. Whether they're all on the Wiki is another question, though. I was surprised to see a Regal Orb one get added to the Wiki last week, years after people worked it out.

The team plan to add more vendor recipes!

Freeze/stall when opening strongbox or new effect being loaded.

While this has been improved a lot, more fixes to further reduce the problem are being worked on.

Are there any plans to introduce uniques that affect specific skills? (eg. a unique that allows you to also summon ranged weapons with the animate weapon skill). Most existing uniques are pretty general - I assume thats a design decision?

We prefer uniques that have open-ended uses for certain builds. By saying that they only affect a specific skill, they're essentially ruled out for builds that use other (similar) skills.

Having said that, we're experimenting with effects that improve specific skills. For example, there are several unique jewels in testing that do this.

Are there any plans to introduce different more mitigation-based defences for Dex or Int characters, beside MoM?

Yes. Over time we'll be adding more defenses for all play types. An example is Fortify, which was added for melee characters in 2.0.0. Note that these defenses aren't likely to be single-point-investments for massive mitigation. They'll require some specialisation.

When you play maps the chance for a decent rare drop is very low. (I define decent as it has one or more properties that fall in the bracket of of its ilvl or just below and the other properties are also at least midrange.) Playing maps give you a lot of rares and it feels like a waste of time to pick them all up and vendor them. The suggestion forum has several topics about this subject. I am very curious if the dev team discussed about the general quality of rares and if there are plans to do something about rares being not rare at all and about the crazy small chance to get a decent rare in maps.

Evaluating rares is a key skill in Path of Exile. It sounds like you're well on the track to mastering it. As you became more experienced and gained better items, your criteria of what you define as a decent rare got higher. Right now, you're classing a very narrow band of lucky rares to be decent.

The drop rate of rares starts off pretty rare, but as players find ways to improve item drops, fight harder monsters that drop more items and just generally play faster, they see more and more rares. This reduces how special they feel. While we agree that it'd be awesome if we could make rares actually rare, that'd really disrupt the early levels. Also, players would riot.

Is there a chance of us being able to have an ice theme pet? I would love an icy wolf!

I have passed on your feedback to the art guys!

Is Barrage going to get a buff? Its only use it to provide cast on crit but it itself isn't a good skill.

We're going to buff many skills that need buffs. 2.0.2 started that process.

What are the current plans to address the unviable nature of mine builds? (trap builds are fine where they are)

Our data shows that some players are playing effective mine characters. Having said that, we'd like it to be more. Some of the planned mine improvements fall under the "can't talk about future content", because they're special.

Is GGG ever going to buff pure phys/chaos builds? I kinda like how POE allows players to make their own builds, but I kinda feel that the game is geared heavily towards elemental. If you play heavy phys, you would gain A LOT of damage from running hatred + herald of ash. Pure phys allows stun and passive tree leeches but that's all it has. The highest in the game that I can theorycraft all include elemental damage. Does GGG have any plans to change this? Skills that cannot produce elemental damage, for example.

While adding elemental damage to physical builds is very popular, we also want to reward players for focusing on physical damage. We're likely to fix this by adding options for people who are pure physical (or chaos) rather than penalising those who add elemental damage.

Stun does work with elemental damage btw.

What is the average length of time it takes for physical items to be processed and shipped (on GGG's end)?

Several weeks, which is, in my opinion, too long. This is something we're working on improving. At the moment we're using a shipping facility in America. We recently ran out of stock on many of the t-shirt sizes, so a new order has been placed. Very sorry for the delays - we're actively working on solving this.

Are paid leagues with custom mods that people can privately have still something being thought about?

Yes, I'm very keen for this. We haven't yet worked out a timeline of when to schedule it for, but it's probably worth us soliciting feedback from the community so that we can find out what kind of options you guys would like.

Will you do anything to additionally increase the incentive to clear areas? Even with the added content (such as strongboxes), I mostly find myself impatiently running through content until the late-game.

We've found that if it feels mandatory to full-clear areas then players who don't like this style of play disengage. We work hard to make sure there are interesting and rewarding things to find if you're the style of player who likes to clear areas.

What does GGG think of the idea of masters who do not add stats to items, but instead modify existing mods? This seems especially necessary for items like potions and jewels which have fewer maximum affixes. For example, a potion crafter who will (for a cost) change a flask between similar mods such as Bubbling and Seething prefixes while retaining the same suffix. Or a gear/jewel crafter who shifts resistances from one element to another, without increasing the total resistances given.

This type of crafting system is not what Masters are designed for. It could make a standalone system elsewhere.

Will you guys be updating this official site's Item Data web page at all? Currently there are many inaccuracies on it such as a level 60 Dunes map and no mention of jewels, but also several of those sub pages like the Weapons list are not up to date at all despite you guys adding the Maraketh weapons. A Rusted Hatchet in game does not need character level 2 to equip for example. Yes, the wiki does exist and it's usually updated pretty fast, but it seems rather odd that the official site of all places does not have updated information.

Yes, this does need updating, thanks for mentioning it. We have some vague plans to generate a lot of data automatically for this page, but we haven't yet allocated resources towards this.

Why were the "Low" graphics settings, specifically texture work, taken out of the game options and instead only made changeable via the production_config.ini file?

They weren't removed, but I suspect that you upgraded to a 64 bit version of Windows. Low texture quality isn't shown there. The reason for using lower texture quality settings is not performance, but memory usage (and in some cases, load times).

Are some unique items still gated behind ilvl? Is there any possibility this restriction can be removed so that people can find these at any point and possibly continue playing for longer?

Yes, a few uniques only drop from high-level Maps. This is intentional as a reward for playing maps as opposed to other end-game activities like running bosses or farming Atziri. We've tried to remove this restriction where we can.

Are you happy with Divination Cards drop rate? Have you considered having all of them require more cards to complete a set but drop more often so that players could actually feel the progress?

We're pretty happy with the drop rate for most of the cards. We're also discussing increasing the drop rate of some that are slightly too low to encourage farming (as we do want to see more farming for Divination Cards occurring).

We frequently see the suggestion that the stack sizes of the cards should be increased and the cards should individually drop more frequently. I actually argued for this in the design phase, but I now see that I was wrong. The other designers explained that the cards need to be impactful when they drop, and finding 1/50 of a unique is not an impactful thing. I agree completely and we're not planning to dilute the cards in this way.

It's worth noting that as we add new cards, we don't reduce the drop rates of existing ones. As we double and later triple the number of cards in the game, the overall number of cards that players find double and triple also.

Do you have any intent to make it so the Divination Cards aren't affected by level penalty to drop rate in Merciless? The stated idea iirc was that it would be something where the players choose the areas they feel would best suit their needs farming for a specific item, but in practice cards below Act 4 aren't worth it because of the penalty.

Very few Divination Cards can only be found in lower-level areas. Those ones are designed to be found as you play through naturally, so they have increased drop rates. If we made the level penalty not affect them, then high level characters could trivially farm sets of them with their high clear speed. This would lead to us reducing the drop rate, hurting normal players.

Are there any plans for random events or seasonal ones? Something like a gimmicky quest for folks to do on holidays (New Years, St. Patty, Halloween, Xmas) instead of just another microtransaction?

Content like that takes a lot of time and money to put together. We'd rather make it a permanent part of the real game than just run it for a few days. Also, gimmicky holiday quests can hurt immersion.

Do you guys have plans for more extensive PVP modes + balancing?

We released a PvP update in December last year. There are a lot of modes that we can use once we run more events. Currently our focus isn't on PvP, but we'll do more with it in the future.

Tell us a funny/weird story from the office, or how you reacted when weird things happened (kiwi hat, item corruption) or how you reacted when people finally found something that was in-game for a long time.

Unfortunately the reaction when kiwihalt and item corruption occurred wasn't a funny story. Having things go wrong like that is a very serious event and wasn't fun to deal with. I'm actually doing a 20 minute talk on this at the New Zealand Game Developers' Conference next month..

Is there any way to make animate weapon workable with mines and traps (even totems perhaps might be a bit op), it works with null's inclination so it doesn't seem to far-fetched anymore =).

Yeah, this could probably work. It's the kind of thing that would be cool to have but isn't a development priority right now. Bang for buck and all that.

Any plans on buffing "unwanted" affixes on gear? Namely thorns and flat life regeneration? Or low tiers rolling on higher level items? Or awful bases like coral amulet past lvl 10.

It's intentional that there are mods and items that are bad for some (or most, or all) builds so that the good ones feel good.

Are you going to make the decoration stash sortable? This would mean the possibility to change the position of decorations by myself for example.

This is a change we intend to make.

Have you considered making more enemies evolve in higher difficulties? IE: Hillock gains a zombie leap, Malachai gains more AoE, etc. I'd like to see Hailrake get his Ice Spear back in Cruel, and gain Arctic Breath in Merciless. Extending it to other enemies would be even better, with new skills or support gems added to existing ones it'd make for more dynamic gameplay without being a straight stat check.

Lots of them do already! We'll certainly be adding more.

Why can't we save our hideout? It could be nice when we worked a few hours on a beautiful hideout to save it.

For sure, I'd definitely love to get this in. It's a fair amount of work (both from a database and user interface point of view).

Is it intentional that some map bosses are still borderline overpowered and almost undoable when you are in the level range appropriate for the map? I think of things like the museum triple boss or Orchard. Do you plan on rebalancing them?

Players asked for challenging map bosses. We completely agree and want a variety of experiences in maps. Some are harder than others. We don't like the idea of rebalancing everything down to be the same.

Can we get some more old development screenshots? I really enjoyed the ones that were posted!

Sure, I'll try to dig some up for a future news post!

Would you guys ever consider making more implicit mods variable? For instance, global crit on daggers, stun duration on maces, elemental damage on scepters, accuracy and crit multiplier on swords and block chance on staves are all static values. If they were variable within a small range it would give the blessed orb a bit more value and also allow for another crafting step in creating end-game weapons. Speaking as a wand user I can say I quite like being able to use blessed orbs to eke out that small amount of spell damage on my end-game wands.

We'll review them.

Hey GGG great job with the game i really like the old school style this game got, but i have 2 questions. Poe is a really great game but will it ever have some kind of weekly event in game, not talking about racing but something like double xp event more magic find event and more?

We really don't want to run double-experience or magic find events. We feel that they're cheap tactics to bribe players to play and aren't great for the overall health of the game. They hurt long-term player retention because they're less incentive to play on regular days if you're expecting some double-items event to come up.

Oh, and forgot about Lightning Warp, what is such a huge problem about it that it isn't fixed since beta, we need to walk a little after every Warp so that animation can play normally.

This is being worked on.

What is the stance on things like potion macro usage, and the punishment(if any) for using them...and other cheats/hacks. I have reported a few now with video evidence and nothing seems to get done...other than I got a forum warning for my trouble.

You're not allowed to use flask macros or other third-party software. People lose their accounts over this every week. Reports are appreciated - though they don't always result in banning because we want to be very sure before we ban someone based on something that we haven't detected with very reliable means.

Is there any progress on setting separate keybinds for weapon swapping? I'm trying to run a bow/dagger hybrid and am a bit miffed that I can't have the same hotkey for my main dagger skill (on chest) with my main bow skill (on bow).

This is held back by technical limitations. Fixing it is hard and is not a short-term thing. I understand it's an annoying problem, so I'll try to find a better solution.

Aurify curse, are there any plans on this gem making it into the realm?

Yes. It's very likely going to make it in. I can't give you a version number for it though.

I have a bunch of friends that would play the game if it was better looking. Are there any plans to improve the graphical state of the game?

Yes, we are constantly updating the game to make earlier content keep up with the quality of newer additions like Act 4. If you look back at how the game looked years ago it was very different. Expect things to continue to improve.

Are you considering giving Beyond bosses their map-dropping power back?

In general, we're in favour of more monsters dropping more types of things. It's a real shame when classes of monsters can't drop certain items. However, the maps dropped by special bosses like Beyond demons were providing almost overwhelming incentive to run maps with those mods on them, at the expense of all other mods. So yeah, if we restore their map drops, it'll probably be in a more complex form. Alternatively we'd have to make them harder to spawn, which we believe players wouldn't like.

Will we see some new Vaal skills? I'd love a Vaal Magma Orb that bounces like 30 times and jumps off walls too, just bounces everywhere around a room. A Firestorm that spawns Molten Strike effects where the fireballs land, or just brings down a giant meteor. Frost Wall that freezes your character for X seconds but makes you ultra-resistant to damage while frozen. Those Vaal Curse "zone" ideas that were once mentioned!

Nice ideas. More Vaal skills will likely be released in the future.

Can we get some goofy April Fool's Day races next year? :) Three hour 50 Jonah Unchaineds per map? Endless ledge with 10000% rarity? 12 minute burst race where everyone's character suddenly bursts after 12 minutes like the Volatile Blood effect and no one wins? One hour Atziris Everywhere?

They're cool ideas, though we're wary about putting too much development time into stuff that is special for just one day. I'll make sure the race guys see these ideas, but we do like to surprise people with stuff they weren't expecting.

Are you considering making rare flasks, maybe just with four mods like with jewels?

There are two reasons why we haven't made rare flasks. Firstly, there aren't enough flask mods. The flasks start to look pretty similar once they have that many mods. Secondly, it's already hard for people to remember what consequences their flasks have with up to two mods. Having four special things occur when you use a flask (with five flasks on the bar) is a problem.

Will there be any way to have our portal connected to our hideout instead of the town? Like a default behavior to check somewhere.

We want players to still have to go to towns occasionally so that they can talk to NPCs and show off their microtransactions to other players ;)

With my summoner, I gave up using the Stygian Revenant due to the irritating sound they constantly make if not moving. Do you intend to change something about it ? Like mute spectre, or changing audio, or whatever you feel suitable.

The audio department knows about this. They are considering alternate audio for the spectre version. The timeline for this is medium-term.

I was wondering, will you add at some point option to inspect people's gear?

You can look at characters' equipped items on the website, if they have their privacy settings set to allow it. We are very close to adding a button in the game client that loads up this page for a player.

Any upcoming plans for summoning? Or are you content with what is currently implemented?

Summoners are powerful! While we plan to improve them and other builds more in the future, we should note that substantial AI improvements might need numeric nerfs to accompany them.

I haven't seen it mentioned for a while, but I remember from a while ago the mention of a general goal of 10 acts down the line. Does this 'goal' seem like it's still the broad end-game goal for PoE, or was it/is it more of a "we plan to expand on PoE for a long long time" type of phrase?

This was a "we plan to expand PoE for a decade" type of phrase. I'd love to add many more acts and other content if we can afford to do so. Keep buying supporter packs pls.

Do you feel, in a broad sense, that PoE is in a high-point or mid-point right now in terms of features/development of the game over its lifetime? For example, right on 1.0.0 was an insane high point because of the publicity, new players, and immense new content that came out. on the other hand, while still very enjoyable, some of the other patches (nemesis patch as an example) were a bit "slower" in the feel of the game's overall hype and 'expansiveness' if that makes sense. Would you feel like PoE is in one of these higher points right now?

We're certainly at a high point in terms of popularity with The Awakening (it was more successful than Sacrifice of the Vaal or Forsaken Masters!) In terms of development, the game is only going to get larger and more complete as the years go by. In comparison, the version we have here is primitive :)

Any Words of how far the German Translation is?

Die Übersetzung ist fast abgeschlossen.

There are other factors to sort out as well for European launches, such as pricing in Euros, European press, European community management, translation of the news, etc.

Are there any more divination cards in development? Half of the maps are lacking any card drops except for the The Gambler. There are "ghost" divination cards that not many people get to see because they are located only in Normal and Cruel difficulties, considering how fast players level up the exp penalty makes them very hard to obtain. Here is the list: Birth of the Three, Lantador's Lost Love, The One With All, The Scarred Meadow, The Wrath. Will these cards get its own place on maps?

We are working on many more divination cards. There will probably be 250 or more in the game when all is said and done. 12 new ones will be enabled next week, for example.

Two of the cards you mentioned aren't actually in the game at the moment - they were previewed but haven't yet been turned on!

The Wrath and The One With All do not drop in maps, but can drop in areas with at most 25% penalty. We took the penalty into account when balancing the drop rate of these items. The Scarred Meadow can drop in at least one map.

In the Microtransactions store, will you have a subscription based system? What i mean is, you pay for 30 months of let's say... 50 points every day (daily) and its more then buying 1500 points (approx for a month with the above example) Will something like this be implemented?

An optional subscription system is something that we've been considering, but we'd need to make sure that it's both appealing to users and also fair for people who have paid in other ways.

Did you intend Warbands to be softcore and Tempest to be hardcore from the beginning of the design process? (I kind of feel that compared to older temp leagues it's switched around this time)

Yes. Tempest is about choosing whether to engage with difficulty or not (you can either maximise your time in Tempest-affected areas or avoid them). In a similar way to Beyond, this is an experiment to compare to unavoidable difficulty like Invasion bosses.

Warbands is the "here are some guys and they drop some cool items" design for a standard challenge league.

What are your thoughts on spell ideas that do no damage? (say, a spell that makes you invincible for 2 seconds but has a long cooldown, or a vortex that pulls enemies toward your cursor after a delay)

Utility skills are popular and we plan to add more. Vaal Immortal Call does something similar to what you describe there.

I noticed in an old screenshot you posted that Crossbows were an idea for another weapon, what sort of things stopped you from adding it? Say, didn't feel right with the rest of the weapons, wanted a reload animation but couldn't give it a nice look or smooth feeling?

We haven't yet released all of the weapon types that we plan to. Crossbows are one of those maybe-future ones.

How much time does it take to implement a new skill gem? (Creating, fixing bugs, balancing, etc)

The process takes several weeks of many different developers. There are usually a lot of iterations and direction changes for any given skill.

This is longer than we used to take! We have much higher quality standards now. At one point we released one per week (with a staggered schedule where their development overlapped). Part of the current process of making skill gems is to test them alongside whatever other content we're working on at the time.

Hi GGG, I was wondering if you would comment on how you feel that the implementation of the supporter only Divination Cards turned out. It seems to me, and I gather many others, that the final product on many of the cards ended up landing much farther from the mark than the designers of the cards intended. Does GGG have any plans to address these concerns or any plans to alter the way that the Divination card process works, both in reference to the card's functionality and to the design process.

Most people we've talked to are very happy with their Divination Cards. Providing that the supporter engages with our system for how to submit them (and doesn't ask for something we can't do), the process generally goes very smoothly and results in a good card.

We view the process as a huge success. It's orders of magnitude easier to handle than the process for either custom uniques or Grandmasters. This is why we have almost 100 Divination Cards made so far in a few months.

I'm sorry to hear you aren't happy with the process. You haven't submitted a card yet - can you get in touch with me so that we can discuss any specific problems you have?

Is there still a chance for a Brazilian or South American gateway?

Yes. We're waiting for our server host to open their Brazilian Data Center. They say it's this year.

Will you be adding last login timers for player accounts that reflect their last time signed into the game?

This is a frequently requested feature and we do plan to add it. I don't have a timeline for this change currently.

When are the challenge leagues ending?

We haven't announced a date. You'll hear a few weeks before the end, but there's still plenty of time left in them.

When a divination card says that the item is corrupted, does it mean that the item is for sure the specified one but corrupted or does it means something like "the base is the specified one and we apply a vaal orb on it"? I mean, if I complete "The Fiend" set, can I get a rare belt instead of headhunter?

It means that it has a corrupted implicit mod for sure. It guarantees that outcome. If it's a map, it just makes it corrupted because they don't have corrupted implicits.

Are you going to translate your lore in different languages in the near future?

French, German and Brazilian Portuguese translations are on their way. These will work on our international version of the game.

Pets being kept between logins was supposed to be in a patch soon after 2.0. Is that still on track?

Yes, it's still being worked on and is getting close. There are complexities that we've had to solve related to pets in hideouts.

Is Flame Totem in a good spot?

It's powerful, but I've personally argued in favour of keeping it that way for these leagues. It doesn't dominate in maps, but is a cheap build for levelling. Its balance will be addressed at the end of these leagues.

Will Master Mods have price changes again now that people are aware of them?

I'd expect changes, but probably at the end of the current leagues.

Any plans in a future budget to hire talent for game cinematics?

This is expensive, but would be awesome in a theoretical situation where we have more money than we need to add what we want to the game. Plus, good cinematics are always getting cheaper, it seems.

I love everything you do GGG, but I've got an issue: Desync is gone, but 1 sec long lag spikes came to take its place.

Those aren't unrelated… if you're playing in Predictive and your connection lags, you get desynced. If you're playing in Lockstep and your connection lags, everything freezes and you notice it. It's likely that if you were experiencing bad desync and now you feel everything freezing, that there's something you need to investigate on your connection. This is often stuff like using a dodgy wireless connection. Please check this thread for more help.

Are there plans to make Leo easier to level? 50% of daily quests seem to be CTF or 3v3, which almost never find matches.

Yeah, this needs changing.

Are there any plans on giving pets a use? I'm thinking of that they run in the direction of map packs, or only do that behaviour when the remaining monsters is less than 10.

No. Because pets are purchased, this would be a purchasable advantage.

What does GGG's financial situation look like? Are you making enough profits?

We're making enough to keep developing Path of Exile and to create more expansions over time. Our team is currently at the largest size it has ever been. We're actively hiring. We'd be able to work faster and to keep expanding with more funds, so please don't stop buying those supporter packs! :)

Can you please fix the "disconnected from server" issue that can happen when a player tries to teleport back to a map where the teleport is at a point with too many mobs/loot?

We are still working on this. We've made it occur a lot less often since the release of 2.0.0, but there are still some small things to fix that cause it to occur occasionally.

Do any of the developers go for the summoner play style?

Yes. This directly led to the recent Spectre microtransaction, for example.

How often does an inside joke make it into the game? Work-, or colleague-related references that get put into item descriptions or quests etc that no player is likely to ever notice.

It's mostly inside jokes, but you're not an insider. We try not to point them out because it ruins the fun. An example of one that people know about is the Woodful Staff.

Are you thinking about buffing Life Leech?

We're looking at this.

Are you going to change the difficulty of acts? For example Act 4 Normal is pretty hard and then in Act 1 Cruel it feels like the difficulty drops down quite a lot.

This is something we're also looking at.

Are you going to change map drop rate from maps?

We're pretty pleased with this at the moment but are monitoring it. 2.0.2 helped a lot. We have more players playing maps than we ever had before.

Now that the big push for act 4 is over, do you guys intend to tackle the large queue of diamond/eternal uniques?

Yes. I had a meeting about this just yesterday afternoon!

Master Missions in Maps block map mods. You literally cannot see half of them sometimes.

The UI guys are aware of this and we'll fix it.

Up until 2.0 every desync death video had at least one comment that said this is the reason he/she doesn't play Hardcore. Now with Lockstep introduced, is there an increase in HC players?

Yes.

Also why did you remove the credits with music? Will you bring it back?

We had data to suggest that the credits playing when you finished Normal difficulty encouraged some players to stop playing at that point (as they had won the game). It's now only available from the title screen (and that version doesn't have the metal music).

It's irksome to see a unique drop in Act 3 of Merciless difficulty only to discover that the unique is a Normal mode item class. Have you ever considered enforcing minimum item-level requirements for unique drops based on the difficulty mode?

This is factored into how often the uniques drop. If we removed the lower ones, you'd find fewer uniques.

Alt f4 - why keep this function?

Because it's part of Windows.

Do you think there should be more effort done at obtaining and keeping new players? How do you think you can achieve this?

Yes, for sure. We've put a lot of effort into this in the past year with changes to the early game (tutorials, changing where you get Support Gems, how sockets spawn). There's always more that can be done. We just have to make sure it doesn't interfere with existing players.

Regal Orbs sound great on paper, but their targets only seem to gain a single affix as a result of the transition from magic to rare. This makes them very hit-or-miss and kind of obligates you to use them alongside Exalted Orbs to fill out the remaining affix slots. As a player who rarely finds either, this makes for an often underwhelming and anticlimactic Regal Orb experience. Do you have any plans to change this? Could you give them a chance to grant multiple affixes instead of just one? You could allow it to use quality to improve the likelihood just like Jeweller's Orbs and Orbs of Fusing.

Regal Orbs are not a particularly rare currency item. This is because they are hit-or-miss as you say. If we made them more powerful, then they'd have to be rarer.

For advanced crafting, a Regal Orb adding just one mod is actually better than filling in the remaining ones with random mods.

Do you feel that with all the cool league content that has been added (strong boxes, corrupted areas, rouge exiles, ghosts, bloodlines, shrines, etc) are you concerned that the extra content is starting to get saturated and is possibly taking away from the main game play more than it is adding?

This is a good problem to have - it means there's lots of cool content to be made available.
A part of 2.0.0 was to tone down the additional content in certain places so that it's not overwhelming. We do want players to run into the right amount of interesting stuff to do while playing.

Given the free-form nature of Build creation (Passive allocation, Skill Gem Selection, Equipment Selection, and mechanics knowledge), how do you go about safeguarding the game from creative combinations that your player base would regard as broken? Any memorable player-found mechanics that really caught you off guard (ie "Why didn't WE think of that?!" moments?)

We work hard to make sure that the core mechanics are robust and that they work well when min-maxed to extreme levels. We have confidence that if a crazy combo exists, our players will find it and that it won't ruin the game. They may require some balancing if the players outsmart us and use them in crazy ways we didn't predict.

A memorable example of a player-found interaction is this one.

How do you make the distinction (or do you even believe there is one) between a very powerful build and a build that is "broken"? How do you balance rewarding careful and clever community build creation and the need to maintain a balanced meta-game so that not everyone is running around using a single build/skill mechanic?

When an overwhelming amount of players drop what they're doing and shift to playing a new build, it's often too broken. When gameplay is removed, it's often too broken. This stuff requires a lot of tough judgement calls. One of the goals (that we're still working towards) is for players to feel they're playing a broken build without it actually ruining the game.

As a magic finder character (IIR 450 IIQ 140) I would like to know what are my possibilities (from 1 to 100%) of getting for example a unique such as a Shavronne's Wrappings Occultist's Vestment, a Mjloner or even a Mirror? Can you give me please a exact number in order to know if it is worth it to be a MF in PoE.

You'll find those if you play long enough.

Any feedback on how you feel the recipe for The Goddess Bound and its reveal (enigma) went? Any chance to see it repeated for new or unknown recipes in the future?

That was awesome and I think it'd be cool to do again in the future.

Can you please fix Hakalomana Lake corrupted fishing zone? Instead of spawning its signature fish Hakalo, it is spawning Stone Fish, which should be exclusive to fishing in the Kalajav Mountains. This is frustrating because my fishing collection has been sitting on 227/228 fish ever since 2.0.0.

When you encountered this problem, was the Foreign Fish Tempest active on the area?

One person claimed the sound effects from monsters being hurt apply very frequently and are the cause of some performance issues, and that's why the -nosound launch option helps. Are you working on sound-related performance fixes?

This is being investigated, thanks.

Can we please get some modifications to the map overlays?

One of our developers has been experimenting with a system for this. It's not close to being ready, but headway is being made.

Are the other two heralds still being worked on? Anything you can tell us about them?

They're currently not something we're working on, as their original mechanics were filled by other mechanics like Counterattacks, Fortify and the new Warcries. We'll certainly see more in future!

Are you satisfied with current keystones? Are there any new keystones in mind, or changes you are thinking of for current ones?

We're always looking at exciting new options for the skill tree. New keystones are part of this process. A keystone has to be extremely robust to justify addition to the tree. Ones that fail these high standards make good Unique items.

Do you plan to add a restart button to the exp / hour calculator ? It would make it much more useful and accurate.

Good idea - I'll talk to the team about it.

Who comes up with names such as: Daresso, Kaom, Shavronne, etc (pretty cool by the way)?

Erik (our creative director) and Edwin (our writer).

It feels like the chance of 6-linking was increased in 2.0, can you confirm this?

The chance was not changed anytime recently. Having said that, we've added so many systems to make this easier over the years (corruption, Vorici, quality-fusing, etc), so I'm not surprised that it feels easier now than it did before.

I have a question about the gfx-engine. Is there any plans to add physics like ragdoll effects to the game in the future?

This one is tricky because the game cares a lot about corpse positions. If the ragdoll system predicted the wrong corpse location on the client vs the server, that'd be bad. Having said that, lockstep solves this kind of problem for a lot of players.

How financially successful are the random goodie box microtransactions? Are they any more profitable than normal MTX or are they about the same?

They're very popular. Popular enough that we don't plan to run them often. While we introduced one for the Emberwake Race Season, we don't plan to add one for next week's season.

Will you reduce tradechat spam?

Yes. We worked on this today. A subtle consequence of us turning trade chat off by default is that the average player in the channel types more lines now (as they self-selected to join it). We've split it into more channels.

Will you add an option to rework the text of the auto-afk-message and/or turn it on/off?

Yes, this is a change that is planned. We'll probably add user interface options for setting the auto-afk message and for disabling the feature. Regular afk messages can be set with the /afk command.

How tired are you of us players screaming about this or that being overpowered and then complaining about nerfs ;)

We realised that it's generally different players in each group, rather than people who complain about both simultaneously. As long as the complaints are phrased in a friendly, positive manner, we're okay. There are a lot of passive-aggressive questions in this thread.

Many players have a tendency to always get either 40 health or skill point from Bandits Reward in normal difficulty. I see that the option to get either maximum mana from Alira or maximum resistances from Kraityn is still available. Do you think this is the right approach for the game?

These are picked more than you think.

In addition, we absolutely think that offering choices is the right approach for the game. We do not plan to remove less-popular choices. Balance changes can and have been done that affect the result of these decisions.

Why don't you add more 3D unique art in the game?

We are, at the best pace that we can. 2.0.2 introduced 15 new pieces of 3d art for Unique items, for example. These art assets are expensive and time-consuming to produce, so the pace isn't going to be very fast.

How many people have finished 8/8 in the Tempest and Warbands Leagues?

92 players. I should have posted about it in the news when we hit 50, but I was overseas and forgot, sorry :-(

Will map bosses get the same audio treatment as Merveil just did in patch 2.0.2. Since personality and/or boss-recognition is non-existent in maps.

Maps are somewhat separate to the core game and their bosses aren't part of the Path of Exile story. That's why they don't have personality or voice acting. Having said that, improving the atmosphere and immersion around map bosses is a great goal to work towards. We really like it when players have memorable experiences with map bosses.

Please make a kick player from hideout button.

You can always build a box around them out of decorations.

Is this a troll thread? Looked through 30 pages and no GGG answers. Don't think I'll waste any more time here.

Yeah, best not to.