Developer Questions and Answers

Can we get an automated trade system for everything except gear (armors and weapons all rarities)?

Can we get a Developer based tutorial on the crafting system? The system this league just turned me off, and I quit very early. I feel that if this was more intuitive or a good guide provided by developers that I could have referenced, then it would have been less confusing.

Hi GGG. I wondering, how's the process looks like when you're discussing major topics like - league key features, ascendancy overhauls, league mechanics going core e.t.c And overall what's your planning process usually looks like?

What I would like to ask is are you aware of the fact that most of the in depth info on your game, mechanics, tricks and just general rules of of gameplay are most often found on auxiliary sites and you have to spend hours to get your info and sometimes it takes a few good hours to fully grasp the concept of some gameplay requirements? It feels like you guys could do a lot better in that area and I guess it's common ground saying it's not exactly new user friendly and unless you've got at least a knowledgeable friend that can help you out or are willing to split your playing time by half searching Google in the first month or so, you cant really play the game cause it's too much info and too many places to get it from. I wish you guys would have a centralized helping base to guide newbies, it's a beautiful game you've made, but it feels like its collapsing over itself due to heavy complexity. I know you guys work hard, so this is in no way disrespectful. Have a good day!

Are you taking measures to make sure 1-hand Maces and Axes will be on par with Swords, and staves and 2-hand maces with other 2-handed weapons in the melee rework? On a side note, Crit vs RT vs EO seems to have a strong prefference towards Crit. Plans on changes?

At what point in a league is it decided if the mechanic is shelved or implemented?

Do you intend to remove cyclone's current stun immunity if you will make it a channeled skill and make us to invest in "Chance to ignore interrupts while channeling"?

What's Bex', Chris' and Johnatan's favorite breakfast?

People really disliked the fact that you enabled mods on nexus bosses, any plans to revert that change and maybe remove the mods in Delve too and rebalance the bosses to be more challenging by default?

Edit: Another thing im dying to find out is if you ever intend to make players able to choose with what content they engage that does not involve trading or grinding(scarabs) for instance toggling 1 or 2 masters to appear, or even uncaping sulphite and making alva and jun hand out maps to their respective content once you aquire the required inteligence or run 13 incursions.

So you have plans to slow down game?

and second question:

Do you have plans to balance game hardcore games in mind? i would like to play hardcore again.

Tala Moana, I wonder how do you see working at GGG compared to how dark overall gamedev industry looks like?

There's been quite a lot of posts recently regarding how companies abuse people who like what they do including salaries, overtime hours and massive layoffs. I wonder what's the status of things in NZ & GGG?

- Are you going to take enought time to properly rework synthesis before incorporating it into core?

- Are there any plans on reworking old content such as ghosts, the lab, strongboxes etc. ?

- When can we expect fossils and resonators to either get their own tab or become stackable?

- Do you have any plans on re-introduing Harbringers to core game? What about Cadiro?

- When will the currency tab get updated with the newer orbs (binding, harbringer, ancient, engineer etc.)?

- You have put a lot of powercreep into high-level item crafting. How happy are you with this strategy? How has it affected build diversity?

- Are there any plans on improving the leveling process? any chance of getting a hard mode or reworking quest rewards? Maybe give orbs that 4l items without re-rolling them?

- Is there any chance that Bestiary will be reworked to be more engaging? Maybe add more choice on recipies and allow targeted beast hunting?

- Are you worried about the game becoming more and more like an arcade style shooter? Do yo have any plans on adressing player recovery and dps and monster hp and damage? (What are your comments on the long thread regarding these issues on the forum.)

- What is your stance on mystery boxes? Are you not worried about the ethical aspects related to problems with gambling? How big would the economic effect of removing (paid) mystery boxes be?

- Are there any plans on reworking boss mechanics as a part of the melee oriented patch (3.7)?

(And as a side comment, you really should not spend a lot of time and space for "light" non-game related questions. There has been a lot of criticism of decisions made by GGG as of late and this has created a bit of a rift between the developers and the community. You would do well in trying to bridge that divide by engaging with the actual critiques instead of small talk.)

Since you and Digital Extreme seem to get along well, what are your thoughts on doing a Devstream on a regular basis?

I see multiple reasons this would be beneficial to GGG and PoE.

1.) Getting out news and hype up the community by showing of WIP projects are good marketing tools. This goes along with some of what Chris said at GDC about hyping up players before new leagues.

2.) Reddit is a place for discussion of the current state of the game. Just being subscribed to r/pathofexile I see the same topics over and over again. From my experience with Warframe and the according subreddit the amount of posts concerning issues that were acknowledged during a somewhat recent devstream seem to go down a lot. There does not need to be a solution ready to present but knowing that the devs are aware of the situation and knowing where they stand on it (looking to change it or not) is sufficient to take some heat out of the hot topics.

3.) Devstreams cater to the players that are most invested in the game, and help conserve that diehard playerbase. After all the discussions and complaints we should not forget that people that voice their opinions do so because they care enough for the game and want it to be better. There is a certain work involved with posting on reddit or the forums. Responding shows that you care about the players that try to come up with suggestions to help the game improve and grow.

4.) Transparency and contact to the playerbase is a feature that many players value highly. You have shown that you are willing to commit some of your time to appear on podcasts like baeclast to answer questions, though these are mostly related to the upcoming new league. Having your own show on a regular basis gives the players a more consistent way to get in touch with you, so that it feels more reliable.

5.) Showing off. Having a video from ziggy in the beginning of the league and hyping up the release is awesome. Doing a devstream close to the release you could show live footage of him playing making it more authentic and allowing to show and discover some of the new features live. Chris mentioned that you have a large library of assets that you have already made but not used yet. Showing off some of these assets creates free hype, let the players speculate what these could be used for and maybe you will get new ideas for new MTX or gameplay content based on player speculation.

There are probably even more reasons that I did not think of right now.


Second question:
How many players did you estimate or plan for to participate in the chase of endgame synthesis items?

The chase of any endgame content has certain buyins/investment costs, be it the value of a map(+sextants, rolling etc.), shaper/atziri sets, Sulphite scarabs or Offerings to the Goddess. These range from 5c for an Offering to ~75c for an Mortal set.
Crafting has always been the most costly activity in path of exile but
chasing for a 1000ES chestpiece has a buyin of at least 25 exalts (for the base). The difference is tremendous and maybe even more so due to fewer players engaging with the league.
Of course a base with the right implicits can be worth multiple mirrors by itself, but with the data of how much wealth an expierenced player accumulates throughout a league, did you expect so few players to be able to participate in the chase for endgame synthesis items?

Third Question:
Followup to the second question: How much time does it take to estimate/balance the costs and droprates of items especially when newly introduced?

Would you consider reworking the support gem system?

At first when I got into the game I thought supports were supposed to be transformative, kinda like picking up an item in the binding of isaac, but they turned out to be more like +damage and that's it.

I'd love support gems to move away from just damage, and toward significantly making supported skills unique, concentrated effect reducing the radius to like 2, and from the lost radius ratings increase the damage by like 4 times. Then, supports like volley and spell cascade would gain more ground, and supports that don't make a visible difference except adding 10% dps will be optional.


And instead of scaling damage from those supports maybe a craftable wild support gem? Or base damage scaling off of improving weapons and accessories, because there, you gain power through reaching higher levels of rarity.

Basically having "Story Support gems" for utility and damage increase until getting wild support gems to replace the latter.





Another thing is, would you make a custom league mod where traded items need to be unlocked with a new character bound currency before reselling?

call it an orb of transfer, and you encounter enough to unlock an item per 1 hour of gameplay past act 10. People who don't resell a lot will have an abundance, and it will make build enabling uniques easier to acquire.

For the programmers in the office:
- curly bracket on the same line as the statement or on the next line?
- tabs or spaces?
- Pascal case, camel case or snake case?
- I remember seeing that your engine is written in C++. Do you use any cool language features like CRTP, trailing return types to deduce return type, things like that?
- Are there any "weird" restrictions on what features of the language you can use?

I understand if you can't reply to all of these because it's related to the core of the game, but I was always interested on what kind of magic do you do with the code so that everything works as well as it does now (it's kind of remarkable tbh).