Developer Questions and Answers

You have said before that you don't want an auction house. But with so many players wanting an AH why don't you try implementing one for just a league to see how it goes? Wiether that be a full blown AH for all items or just for currencies, maps, fragments, divination, essence, fossils, eat...

A growing complaint I have heard recently, as both a long-time player of the game and a streamer. Is that the recent patches have added too much complexity, and new players feel too intimidated / unable to approach or interact with the new content added with recent leagues such as Bestiary, Betrayal, and especially Synthesis.

Does GGG have any plans to address this either by adding more information to allow players to understand the choices they are offered better when it comes to league content, (Synthesis was particularly obtuse in this regard), or to make sure that future league content is more easily digestible?

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Personally I LOVE the complexity and interactions added by mechanics such as Delve fossils, Betrayal crafting, or Synthesis implicits. However, I do agree that at least the basic levels of the system (looking at you Synthesis) should be a little more transparent/accessible to new players. I'm not saying anyone should be able to pick up any old item and make the best base ever to post on Reddit. But I think there should be more easy-to-do style crafts.

A good example of this is the crafting bench from Betrayal, the rewards from each master, and the syndicate chart was a little confusing, but even if you made "incorrect" or "bad" choices, at the end of the day you could sit down on your bench, and craft something and see a benefit with little/no understanding of the more complex aspects.

One of the problems I have with most leagues is that the monsters/bosses from the league mechanics always seem to be so much stronger than regular monsters/bosses. So I'll go into an area and be clearing it fine, but then I'll come across the league mechanic and will struggle to clear it because it's significantly stronger than the rest of the monsters in the area. When I first start in a new league, I don't even bother trying the league mechanic for the first few zones because I know I will just end up dying. Additionally when I end up making it to maps, the league monsters end up becoming a nuisance because they take so much longer to kill than even the map boss itself. Is making monsters from league mechanics so much stronger than other monsters a design choice? Do you think it deters new players from playing when they have significant difficulty completing the league mechanic in the first few zones?

Another issue I have with leagues is that the game is becoming bloated with so many of them becoming permanent mechanics. At some point it seems something is either going to need to be removed or new leagues are going to have to stop being added to the game. Do you think there will come a time where there are too many league mechanics that become permanent additions to the game? Do you have any ideas or plans for what you will do when this happens (for example, removing mechanics, rotating mechanics each league, etc.)?

How do you tackle testing on a complex game like POE. It seems there is no way everything can be done by testers, especially if the smallest change can break a lot of stuff. Did you manage to automate some of it? Got any good stories about it, numbers? I know how helpful automation can be but also the pain of maintaining it. Is it even possible on a scale of a game the size POE? Maybe in-house bots?

When are you going to fix game freezing and infinite loading screens on PS4? Because I've posted this question so many times. The game is sometimes unplayable. Please answer when you're going to do something about this!!!

Have you planned continuing main story of Wraeclast and Oriath after events of Act 10? Maybe even discover new places like for example Ngamakanui?

And have you considered publishing new PoE comics or even books?

One more question: I feel like we have to spend an ever increasing amount of time with micromanaging our stash/inventory. Currency, maps, divination cards, essences, various other league specific items, fragments, quality gems, etc have to be sorted after every map. Also, if you play "correctly", you are highly encouraged to do the chaos recipe and possibly keep other crafting recipes in mind.
Is this considered an issue and is there any chance to get some sort of "sort inventory/stash" macro?

Pets can you add so pick like currency

Is the Krillson questline actually completeable?

can we have a trade update just like tencent poe? It's not necessary to have a market that we can search any item exactly, but can we can just set some limit on this market such as we can only buy maps, propheys, chisels and etc. To avoid
there are someone want to control the market, we may set a price ceiling such as 1exa.