Developer Questions and Answers

Has the staff ever seriously considered adding something in between softcore and hardcore? I think there's a lot of players who feel softcore isn't punishing enough, thus making playing the content less interesting in the long run, but they also feel hardcore is a bit too much for them. Kripparrian discussed this topic on a podcast a year or two ago, it's something I've always hoped for in an ARPG but nearly all games in the genre stick to the tried and true softcore/hardcore.

Has any thought been given to creating a series of cosmetics/pets/etc that can be earned through in-game means such as earning achievements, completing difficult content, as drops from rare, unique spawns (either creatures or objects) or as crafting recipes that might require other rare drops as materials?

Creating more reasons to grind content and increase player engagement with the game might help smooth out the spikes and dips in player population numbers. I know I'd play a lot more if there was stuff to play for.

How are we supposed to trade while in delve, temple, nexus, betrayal timed encounters? No wonder noone replies anymore. Are there any plans to automate trading and make it more engaged and worthwhile? Like noone even bothers selling 1 alch maps a month into league.

1) Do you have any kind of plans for trading system?
2) Do you think about implementing damage meter, death recap, training room or dummy to the base game? It would be nice to see numeric values of our damage types beside those things.
3) What do you think about The Lord's Labyrinth, Ascendancy and Enchant system in the future?

Layers of RNG can be good and keep players playing, however, when it comes to gating content behind many layers of RNG can be quite frustrating. Are there any plans to allow players to progress faster to the level of content they are interested in? Delve takes a while to get to a decent level. Atlas progression league after league with map drop RNG is burning me out. Why is it such a hassle to get to higher tier content?

PS4, or even Xbox, cross play. Is this ever going to be a thing?

I tried it out on PS4 and it seemed playable enough for me, but not being able to be part of my guild where I've already sunken real money into stash tabs turns me off pretty hardcore.

There's been a ton of talk on reddit about "player agency" and how the game feels saturated with compulsory content. Every ten minutes it seems you're forced to switch contexts to go deal with something else.

While you can ignore that something else, it's not *really* an option given how it blocks future rewards. Don't run your temple and you'll never see an incursion again. Don't run Delve and you'll never get anymore sulphite. Contrast this to Breach's content model: you can run breaches forever and save up your stones for later (or to sell). Breach never blocks you from your rewards.

There's, like, five leagues (including Nexus in the current one) that do this blocking stuff to you now. It's a ton of micromanagement -- and then there's all the Atlas stuff on top of it! I couldn't handle it. I've been here since v1.0 and I've never bailed on a league so early. It's not that it feels like the game has "too much content", per se, but that it seems to have too much non-optional content constantly vying for your time and attention.

Has their been talk about the office about this? Is it seen as a problem and will it be addressed in the future? Is it perhaps intended as the model for PoE's gameplay from here on out?

Have you thought of improving guilds(Guild Premium tabs, build Hideouts, Shared Guild Crafting benches, Guild communication systems, Guild "uniform" MTX's...ect..) Instead of sticking with this idea that we should have "pleasing trade interactions" and just allow us to have a REAL trade market. NOT an Auction House... A LIVE trade market.

When the league is or seems to be received in a negative way, like with Synthesis and previous leagues, what is the mood like in the office? Is it negative, stressful or is it more positive, hopeful while you try to fix bugs and generally figure out where to go?

Second/Side question: What is the staffs side chic- I mean side game they are playing right now?

In current POE (Post-Legacy), when we read the manifestos that determine which builds we might run and which builds are guttered for a few years, we repeatedly come across terms such as "retention", "data", and "metrics".

We rarely come across terms such as "fun" and how much fun a new league will be or how "not fun" an old league was. The times I can think of where "fun" was a key component of showcasing a new league, it was specifically in terms of "fun" the <0.01% of players will ever access.

When can we expect "fun" to be a core component of POE's development in the future, and less of a focus on "retention"?

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To me, it would seem that the game is increasing its 'systems' in order to overload and distract the player longer than before. A player who wants to kill Uber Elder has to interact with mapping, but is enticed to be distracted by Delve, Betrayal, the league mechanic, Incursion, and anything else that may be happening. The player is less focused on their goals and this draws out their experience - perhaps prolonging their activity in the league, perhaps not. The game seems to have an ever increasing focus on creating large gaps between what some players experience and what most players might see others experience on twitch.tv or reddit - also, another distraction.

By Chris' own admission in the GDC interview, this is a goal of the developers.

I remember when POE was an indie game and the main goal of the development team was to create a game they loved to play. I don't mind clear speed meta, I think power creep is an inevitability, but it's clear that this is both not the game Chris would have loved to make and also not a game that Chris loves to play.

I know this because when the language being used to describe leagues and new additions to the game are money making terms and not what's important - fun.

I'll leave this interview for GGG to peruse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqNiSsp5Lq0