How Stacked Deck came to be

Hey everyone, I'm Noshei.

I've been playing PoE since Beta and have generally been a pretty big fan and supporter. Over the years I've supported GGG through buying supporter packs as they came out and at a level I could afford, but I was always disappointed that I couldn't afford Diamond or Eternal when they were available. Mainly because I've always wanted to leave my own mark on the game.

So I was very excited when I found out that GGG is still selling unique designs and that I could afford to buy one. This was maybe a year and a half ago. Since then I've been racking my brain for cool and interesting ideas. I've send a handful of different ideas to GGG to see what they thought, none of them panned out, until Stacked Deck.

Stacked Deck started out as an idea for a very different type of unique, something that didn't exist in game, as I'm sure many unique ideas start out. I sent my idea off to GGG and was shocked when the next day GGG got back to me saying they needed a bit of time to think about it. This was a first, with all my other ideas it got shot down almost right away.

About a week and a half later I get another email, this time from Chris himself, saying the team liked the idea and laying out the initial design. This is when I got a huge shock, they didn't want this to be a unique item, but a currency. I, as I think most people have, assumed GGG would never work with supporters on a currency. So I was very surprised, and very excited to get to do something that hasn't been done before.

From here everything was handed off to Tom to hash out the specifics. We discussed how the currency would function and what the results would be, as well as thoughts on the art. To go along with the currency I also had a Divination card design available that I wanted to use for this currency. So the design of the divination card was discussed a bit, but mostly took place on the divination card submission form. Filling out the form was interesting, I think I selected 20 x Wisdom Scrolls as the currency, since Stacked Deck wasn't an option.

The Total time to hash everything out happened really fast, from the time Chris emailed me to the time that the design was sent over to the art team took less than a week. And this is when the waiting game started, unfortunately art takes much longer to create than a few lines in an email. I also assume that the designers (or maybe programmers) were working on the necessary code for implementing the currency, which also takes a lot of time. It took about 3 months to get the art for Stacked Deck back to me (this over lapped with the release or Prophecy, so work on Stacked Deck was sidelined for a bit). And it took a further month to get the Art back for Lucky Deck (the divination card).

At this point I was super excited to see my idea coming to life. Tom was gracious enough to provide me a super vague idea of the planned release time frame, which increased my excitement even further.

And then the second Dev Q&A got posted yesterday and I saw Chris's comment about confirming a new currency. With my inside information, I figured he was talking about Stacked Deck, and decided to ask GGG if I could post a teaser. GGG was ok with me posting the art for Stacked Deck, and that resulted in a nice bit of hype over at Reddit (though I also posted it as a reply to the Dev Q&A at the same time).

Finally, we reach today, where to my huge surprise the Lucky Deck divination card was included in the announcement. I wasn't aware it was going to be released so soon, but I think the timing was perfect.

I'm really excited for the release of these 2 items I have helped create, and would like to extend my sincerest gratitude to GGG for being such an amazing company and allowing their community to participate in the design of their game like no other company ever has.

Good job posting soemthing that literally said nothing about the new currency

Very Exciting. I hope that nothing is revealed about Stacked deck until people find it ingame.

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schultz94 wrote:

Good job posting soemthing that literally said nothing about the new currency

lol, thanks.

HYPE

I have to agree with schultz94 here.

What does this currency do? Why is being added?

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LostArtz wrote:

I have to agree with schultz94 here.

What does this currency do? Why is being added?

There might be a couple hints in there.

I left my husband

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Noshei wrote:

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LostArtz wrote:

I have to agree with schultz94 here.

What does this currency do? Why is being added?

There might be a couple hints in there.

I'm guessing something to do with wisdom scrolls or item identification. Like Identifying an item with a stacked deck will give better rolls or something.

it sounds as if they were working on this anyway.