Q&A with the Developers!

There will be a reset soon?
Perhaps a fresh start with all joints stations ?

Q1: Does projectile weakness curse increase chaos damage/s of essence drain? I mean, if I curse monster X with projectile weakness, and shot X with essence drain, what will happen? My guess is, chaos damage/s will be increased, after hit it doesn't matter if monster drop curse or not, it will take increased damage and spread increased damage with contagion. Is that true?

Q2: Have You consider changing inventory from 12x5 to 10x6? It would be much more efficient, especially with that 8-squares giants. On the other side, 12x5 looks nicer.

Q3: How rarity works on monsters who get "hit" from spreaded (contagion + essence drain)?

Q4: Can monster abilities be preloaded when creating new instancy? (crab->spitter/body eating monsters/exiles)

Q5: Does anyone acknowledge doubles (items) in PoE? I mean, not like copied, but dropped. It's often than randomly I think. ie. kill boss on map = rare uniq, kill exile on same map = same rare uniq (different roll). Or kill normal monster = double map. Is this something, or am I creating some conspiracy theory?

Q6: Do You know essence drain sometimes doesn't spread with contagion? Mostly when monster is killed with projectile (is that ok?) not DoT, but NOT always. I observe that with low max-hp mobs. Or sometimes contagion+ED combo just stop spreading in the middle of monsters group (not duration expired thing). It's like <1%, but it happens.

Q7: Why iron grip doesn't work with essence drain?

Q8: Why essence drain have critical strike chance in description, but damage does not scale with crit chance/multiplier? Can I crit with it, or not?

Also talisman league is pretty cool. Great job GGG. Hugs for everyone. ;)

Since Carl, had not really much to say about my questions on the last Frontseatgamer episode due to time issues i would like to ask some of my questions here once again hoping for a more detailed answer, thanks


- Power Creep:
Since 2.0 PoE seems to hit some form of power creep and it doesn't seem to go away or getting ajusted with the anouncment of the 2.2 expansion. Power creep in games like this is very dangerous and hard to control if it already has infested your game. I would like to how the DEVs are feeling about power creep in PoE, how to keep it in check and how to find nice balance between inovativ new powerfull, impactfull mechanics to keep the game interesting and fresh and absolutly broken outclassing overshadowing stuff added to to game.

Right now, powercreep feels very real in PoE - characters are able to deal much more damage and clear much faster than back in 1.0-1.3 (even without burn prolif). Carl mentioned that powercreep is inevitable in his opionion on the podcast, i agree at some point as long it isn't going out of hand.

- Difficulty:
Diffculty is a very important factor in a game like PoE. When a game is too hard, nowbody or very few people would play it, if a game is too easy, people get bored very fast and leave. PoE has had it's phases were it was very hard and it's phases were it was realtivly easy. I would like to know what the DEVs thinks about difficulty in general in relation to PoE, is it better to have a moderatly hard or a moderatly easy game - what is the goal in terms of overall difficulty for PoE in the future. I would also like him to elaborate on "artificial difficulty".

Do you plan on bringing back low life attack builds? e.g low life spectral throw

1.
Do you think that the overall game complexity is too high? I am a veteran player, so haven't seen any guides in game for new players you have made; however I experience I need to explain many side mechanics (strongboxes/rogue exiles/nemesis/corrupted areas/...) to new players I/our guild introduce to this game.

Do you think that you will ever finish/slow down with adding side mechanics? I mean, It would be easier for new players to encounter more linear game, like more acts instead of side encounters (I hear new player are often surprised/discouraged by diffculties system and too much repetition)(however I know that you dont want map-only end game).
Personally I would like a new story in act5 (btw there is no snowland) (act 4 is all about bosses and finishing story of dominus who's finishing story of Piety who's...)


2.
What graphic library are you using? C++ (as you stated earlier its the game language) is a very deterministic and very close-to-hardware language so your game should run without any performance problems - honestly comparing your game to other 3Ds your game runs very poorly. Have you considered any major changes on this field? Do you know whats the problem?

I see that game client is not processing mouse/keyboard events while on loading screen (seems instance loading and events are in the same loop) - is this the cause of missing posts on chat?
As a result if I click on loading screen Win7 thinks the game is not responding - I dont anwyay think it's a bad design but it might confuse new players about game client.

3.
Whats going on with map bosses? Many of them are on inadequate Tiers (eg Fire Fury on Crematorium vs Volcanus - both have same skills but Crem is much harder even it's 1 tier below) and dont match Terrain/acts theme.

Question on vagan missions with puppets: I used my pure Righteous Fire marauder, he used Searing Bond, my question now is, if a puppet spawns both in the aoe of my RF and in the effect of his searing bond, who is the kill awarded to?

Will we have any ability to respec our ascendancy choices? If so is it possible to change from one tree to another in doing so or are they not exclusive to one another?

- What is the difference between chests and trunks? Is it only aesthetically or are there differences in drops?

- Could you please add more unique maps, I really love them.

First question:
What is the point of doing three times the same story quests and areas over and over again? The game will be better and less boring with a different configuration. Each act have a different difficulty. For istance act1 (normal), act2 (cruel), act3 (merciless), act4 (nightmare) where nightmare is a new challenge with moar malus and some new mechanics.. for example each pack of normal, magic or rare monsters have a bloodline mod.

Second question:
Why in the hell is not possible ctrl+click in the guild stash?

Third and last question (check the image http://imgur.com/gMISZHI )
Are there any plans in the roadmap for the UI improving? I have some suggestions:

1) Moving up the "stash" text is possible to insert 3 row of tabs like the picture, for some ppl like me with over 30 tabs will be really useful.

2) The bottom space below stash inventory is useless. With another filter box or a fixed selection like ilvl, map tier or similar, the stash management will be more simple and efficiently.

3-4) Inventory and equipment table are too big also with a resolution ov 1920x1080

5) With many new things to collect: talismans, jewels, charms (maybe?), maps etc. the inventory management in some maps is a pain. With the resizing of the equipment screen, more space will be available for an extended inventory without redesign of the whole ui.


disclaimer: I'm not english native speaker.

Is there anything in the pipeline to address the issue of portals and disconnects?

It can be very frustrating to disconnect when close to the waypoint of Solaris, and having to start over all the way from The Battlefront because your portal is gone.


With the release of more acts the difficulties will get scrapped up to the point where there's just one playthrough. What are the goals for the extent of the storyline? Are you happy with the point where players transition to maps, both in time played and in character progression? What would you like to change (beit in the near or distant future).