Community Q&A with Chris

Do you believe the armour mechanics need to be reworked, so as to make it more useful against larger hits?
Considering just about every attack in Merciless is classed as a "large hit", armour essentially does almost nothing. I believe there was a dev quote yesterday stating that armour was intended to block monsters that throw needles at you, and do little if they were to throw a tree at you. Unfortunately everything seems to be armed with trees. :(

On a side note, I certainly don't envy Chris for having to read/answer so many questions.

Is 120 skill points going to be the max skill points for one character or is there a chance that the number will increase at some point?

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Vhlad wrote:

Q: In public games, is loot denial by body blocking an intended metagame or might this eventually be addressed in some way?

(potential ways to address above issue: (a) larger pickup radius, (b) better character pathing around obstacles (c) soft/walkthrough-able party members, (d) a true individualized loot option for audiences that find it appealing, (e) some other idea).

+1 this.

I think you may have to set aside a day to review and answer all these questions... I'll make it worse for you!

1): Are there any plans to add in more critical hit mitigation options, either as gear or passives that aren't just in the Marauder starting area? I've found +Crit strike chance and damage monsters the most dangerous by far thus far.
2): What are your plans to diversify monsters in the future? Some of them, particularly in act 3, are quite same-y, particularly the barbed snakes and the undying.
3): Are you thinking about buffing ignite at all? Burning seems to be the least useful status effect behind freezing and shocking. If so, what sort of ideas have been thrown up?
4): Are you honestly happy with the current balance of offensive builds and passives against defensive builds and passives? For me it feels like defensive builds die at a medium pace and kill relatively quickly, and offensive builds die extremely quickly and kill extremely quickly. If yes or not sure, why? If no, do you have any changes in mind that you think will help solve it?
5): If you could start from square one but with the knowledge of everything that's come so far and what everyone has said and is saying, what would you change in any aspect(s) of the game?
6): What is your favourite bit of Wraeclast lore, setting, backstory or favourite character? What bit, when you either thought of it or someone else at GGG described it, made you really go "Ooh, we have got to get that in there"?
7): Are you considering any ideas to make customisable skills that players could create completely from scratch within a set of rules of some kind? It'd be a huge undertaking and honestly unecessary, but at the same time it could be really cool.

Thanks for the Q&A, good luck with it, and here's to good progress.

Do we have any hope of getting an Oceanic server that has a good ping to NZ?

What inspired the Roman look and feel of Act 3?

I think it's seriously cool. Thanks.

Hello Chris,

Will the game in the near future (hopefully) gonna support SLI?

What do you feel would ruin the economy faster?
a.+50% IIQ per party member added
b.someone who multi clients 5 dummy accounts to solo run normal bosses for the chaos recipe
c.granting a low number of random orbs as a race reward

Any thoughts on making grouping actually more in line difficulty wise vs solo play?

Why was the decision made to reduce viable end game builds to nothing but stacking life nodes and +health on every piece of equipment?

Have you thought about changing the way that IIQ/IIR works? Currently in parties the party is granted + 50% IIQ/member added to be stacked on top whatever IIQ/IIR of whoever gets the killing blow. Have you thought about perhaps also adding a +15%IIR per party member added yet disabling any IIQ/IIR from equipment in party mode. This way a full party maxes out their 250%IIQ/75%IIR which would bring party play a lot closer to solo play drop wise.

Have you given any thought to changing the penalty to currency drops for being over leveled in zones by granting a larger level range buffer before the penalty kicks in yet make the penalty more severe? Many players in both default and hardcore have to grind zones many times 5/10 levels below their level for safety/gear yet are constantly punished by a currency drop penalty. Currently once you over level a zone by 2 levels the currency drop penalty of -2.5%/level kicks in. Perhaps this should be change to a 8 or 10 level range before the penalty kicks in yet increase the penalty to -10%IIQ/-20%IIR. This would allow those players that need to farm lower level zones for equipment to actually gain some more currency they can use in crafting/buying the gear they need so they can actually progress yet it would also go a long ways to combat high level players from solo farming bosses for recipe drops.

When will the dps stats on the character sheet actually be correct? Meaning why does my dps show 1200 against mobs my level yet also shows the same dps when fighting mobs 10 levels lower then me. Also why does my dps stats show a accuracy of 87% against mobs my level and the same accuracy rating against mobs 10 levels lower then me? Also when looking at the dps of a skill that does a direct dmg hit and a aoe dmg hit why does the dps screen not show the aoe dmg. Example ice shot.

Also speaking of accuracy why does accuracy have to go down every single level yet there are not enough accuracy nodes to be able to maintain a 90%+ hit chance at higher levels?

Are you happy with the way that auras are currently working stacking wise? When looking at most peoples gem set up they are using 3 damage auras and a reduced manna gem. Do you feel this is a by product of the have to use every skill point on life nodes to even have a chance to survive and not being able to use any skill points to boost dps enough to actually kill anything in less then 5 attacks?

Final question: Chris are you going to choose the normal Dev approach of cherry picking all of the easy questions people ask or are you going to stay true to the GGG stance of transparency/not avoiding difficult topics to discuss?

Why is Increased Item Quantity and Quality not in the passive skill tree? I'm sure out of all the things of 'what to put in there' this has been discussed?
I'd be very curious as to what spoke against it.

edit: Oh yes, I think I know why. If it has been discussed what spoke against it was that people would eventually make pure farming chars. And that would have been a wrong direction for what PoE should be like.

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Jojas wrote:

Why is Increased Item Quantity and Quality not in the passive skill tree?

They were in the passive tree in closed beta.
Both removed for balancing issue.