Developer Questions and Answers

Will you ever consider opening up old leagues (maybe voided?) for those of us who either were not present for them or ran out of time to complete the challenges within them?

Now that you rolled out the ability to pay for private leagues, I'd love a second shot to play older content between leagues or to attempt to finish challenges I didn't get to finish because of real life commitments.

Any plan to improve minion tooltips? We know the team saw it, but since then everything has been silent.

Since 3.7 is going to rebalance melee can we hear about what kind of role GGG envision melee builds should have? What do GGG like about melee gameplay, what do they dislike?

From GGG's perspective have previous melee rebalance's been successful, or well received? If not, how has that impacted your process when addressing any/other area's of the game?

Do you have game testers? and if so... for how long do they test each league before it comes out?

To bandwagon on the various trade related comments/questions --- this isn't so much a question as a suggestion/opinion.

I get the feeling many players, including myself, would like to see at least a partially automated trade system introduced to the game. It's been suggested numerous times that such a system be limited solely to 'consumables' (I.E. - maps, Crafting Currencies/Supplies, etc.) and therefore have a limited impact on gear progression.

Time and time again the concern of rampant botting or sniping of items has been brought up in defense of the current system, however it should be no secret to you that trade bots already exist for the purpose of mass currency trading and have been highlighted numerous times on reddit. Likewise players can set-up notifications to snipe items as soon as they're listed on the various trade-sites with many racers dedicating a significant amount of tabs to this purpose at the start of a league. This is something I personally have zero issues, but it's almost as you ignore this is already possible and then use the fear or concept items being too easily purchasable as a scape-goat to ignore how easy it already is and to improve trading as a whole.

The reality is it's only as difficult as opening a trade-site, entering the exact item parameters the item needs to meet/exceed, and then searching through listings until you find the right combination of price to perceived item value. It's not difficult at all, but it can be extremely frustrating sometimes. I for instance would love the ability to instantly buy an item for the price it's listed at even if player selling it was offline/DND/AFK. Naturally, it goes without saying GGG stance is against this, which I find somewhat odd because if that same players was online you'd have zero issues with us making that trade.


On the subject of disparity - please get a grip. There will always be disparity between players especially with those who have been playing your game for years and are capable of playing SSF all while reaching end-game content (Maps+) and players who are still relatively new and don't know how to best utilize their resources. Hell, I can't compete with the people that make multiple mirrors per-week in the 1st month of a league and I've been playing since Ambush. Making out player disparity to be purely trade related completely ignores the plethora of other factors that going into determining how successful someone will be at playing your game such player skill, game knowledge, what skill(s) they're playing, and even if they're following a guide. It's a far more complicated subject than the trade manifesto makes it out to be and trying to pinning the issue solely on trade is outright misleading. It's perfectly logical that someone who engages in trading constantly would make significantly more currency that someone who doesn't. THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT OF TRADING.

It's kinda funny though, you'd think if you wanted to close that disparity you'd make trading more readily available rather than continuing to hide it behind, APIs, Indexers, trade-sites, premium tabs, etc. After all, you want to close that disparity, right?

Also whatever happened to cross-instance trading?

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Ideally what I'd like to see is a Auction House similar to what Runescape has with the G.E. - you would search for items much like you do via the current trade-sites and be able to make offers for those items right within the same system. These trades would not occur instantly - the seller would have to either decline or accept the trade offer. I'd be okay with the trade going through instantly if the buyer offered exactly what the seller wanted. To be clear though I'm not asking to be able to que up an unlimited number of these trades either. Limiting the ability to put offers in on a maximum of 5 items at a time should be more than sufficient to combat large-scale item hording.

At the very least I don't see a reason why you can introduce an automated system for consumables other than because you simply don't want too.



If nothing else, just stop for a second and consider where the game would be today had XYZ never made an indexer & website. How many 10s of thousands of people would have quit because you were to stubborn to bother to make your own site until 2017? Would PoE have even succeeded long-term? Trading is important to your game - that doesn't mean it has to be a bad experience.

Do you think the obviously longer bug fix time this league will cause you have less time working on next league? Will that cause you have to spend more time on fixing bugs next league and further affect the next league? Do you think a league like 2.6 will help you overcome this difficulty, if it exists?

How do you want to address that the game has gotten a lot easier since all the power creep? I think this must be one of the priorities. The game is simply too easy right now with all the power creep going on.

Also, please no synthesis core, none of it.

What is the canonical status of the old masters. Did they ever met the exiles?

I've noticed over time that gem quality bonuses have become more and more homogenized. Can I ask why? I've always appreciated it when a given quality bonus adds flavour to a skill. It's a little disappointing to see X% increased damage on the majority of active skill gems.

Why does a dead hardcore league character get transferred to Standard instead of the softcore version of its league ?

Is there any plans to change or remove accuracy from the game. Leveling melee characters is really jarring when you feel those missed hits, even more so on single target attacks.

Spells aren't affected by it and you dont have to be in melee range for a good amount of spells.

I am not sure what you could do to it to make it better other than remove and replace it with another stat.

But I am no developer at GGG so what is your plan to deal with the jarring early game of melee accuracy pains?