Developer Q&A - Part I

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Because people tend not to play content that doesn't have map drops, we picked the option where league content drops maps.

... and nerf the droprates of maps and currency from regular mapping to the ground, so its impossible to sustain anything without playing the content that player doesnt want to intaract with (incursion, betrayal, synthesis for exmaple). well you've failed and picked up a bad option.

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The honest answer here is that we believe that game systems like Delve will become boring if you have unlimited access to them, and so it's important to limit their access by requiring regular Path of Exile play between sessions of special content.

you are limiting my access to the content that i'm enjoy doing - delve - and i'm limiting my access to your game and limiting your access to my wallet. "we believe" is not a reliable data, run the 1 month event with free delving and watch active players count, you may discover many new things.

no new game engine in 4.0 (and forever, i guess), so the game will look like 2000s garbage.
no trading improvements. thats surprise.
rare drops are shit and will be "improved" in 4.0.

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Do you plan on improving the drops from map bosses so they feel as rewarding as the rest of the map

:D its like "the rest of the map" is rewarding as fuck. go through red map, gain 1 alchemy, 1 chisel, 1 jeweller, no map returns or couple mid-tiers and here you go. extremely rewarding.

overall, lame QA. devs are obsessed with creating artificial scarcity everywhere - loot, maps, crafting, restrict content, rng everywhere and from what i've seen it will not be improved. i will not support further.

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v3nomu wrote:

Another day with damage control. Lots of answers with little to no real information.

These Answers to some of the questions is the reason why i fell inlove with this game and GGG in general, also reason why i rock the PoE shirt in public and not just at home to hide my gamer shame. im proud to be apart and a supporter of this game and its legendary Dev studio.

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It has been 18 months since you posted the Trade Manifesto. Do you still stand by it?

This question prompted a long discussion. Many hours of senior developers talking about trade. Our conclusion was: Yes, we do stand by everything we wrote in the manifesto. We are not adding a Trade Market to the PC version of Path of Exile.

Dude, trading in its current state is AWFUL. Relying on 3rd parties to bandaid the problem is pathetic. You need to make a proper system, and you need to do it soon.

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trixxar wrote:

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Quantifier wrote:

Thank you.

And thank you for not changing trade to cater to some people. The game needs trade to be inconvenient, and even though I'd appreciate being able to flip with ease without having to deal with obnoxious people, I understand that would be absolutely terrible for the game.

My experience with the early days of D3 cemented that fact in my mind.

Hahah, such a perfect example of someone burned by trade in D3 that they cant think rationally. Never mind that the D3 market let you trade REAL money and had nothing to do with stopping people from spending 20 minutes getting one map.

But the old diehards can't let go.

hum... or insted of spending 20 minutes you could just scroll down the list or look for one at a higher price point

I'm not happy with a lot of answers, but at least it's fair and now I know what to expect.
Thanks Chris, still love your game.

Just add a "make an offer for a item trade" while im AFK or Offline would save me alot of time and energy.

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sofocle10000 wrote:

Bah, a lackluster Q&A session as intended.

Our mighty TencentGGG overlords "know best what's the BEST for it's player base", but can't be bothered to comprehend that "you can't have your cake and eat it too at the same time".

Best post regarding the dismantle of the "trade stance":

Spoiler

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j33bus wrote:

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As a player who wants to delve and only Delve, is there any way to reduce the reliance on mapping to access Delve content?

The honest answer here is that we believe that game systems like Delve will become boring if you have unlimited access to them, and so it's important to limit their access by requiring regular Path of Exile play between sessions of special content.

The other factor that is Delve-specific is that rewards from Delve are strong, so it'd be an economic problem if people had more access.

Having said that, Scarabs and other game mechanics can help you trade for more Delve time.

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It has been 18 months since you posted the Trade Manifesto. Do you still stand by it?

This question prompted a long discussion. Many hours of senior developers talking about trade. Our conclusion was: Yes, we do stand by everything we wrote in the manifesto. We are not adding a Trade Market to the PC version of Path of Exile.

Ok so here's the thing both of the answers are fine alone, and together they are total incompatible nonsense. If you think it's important for trading to be an awful experience that's fine, and if you think it's important for content to be trade it's fine. You cannot have both, it's insane. What these two statements together read is

"If you want to play your favorite part of the game more, you need to play the part of the game that we made intentionally awful and miserable more."

Tradeable content cannot be a solution to giving players choice when you intentional make trading bad. If you want to keep trading bad you have to make obtaining content without trading easier not harder. If you want to make trading awful that's fine, but then you have to treat it like it's an awful part of the game.

Hopefully all the players get it that TRADING can't be "touted" as a "core aspect" in PoE, and is simply the pretext used for addressing "balancing drops" in the way they currently are.

No one WANTS or NEEDS a FULL BLOWN AH, as long as TencentGGG actually manage to implement asynchronous trading (the kind that actually lets players trade in a TIMELY MANNER even when offline would be best, but lets settle to the cross instances one for starters), and a satisfying experience regarding said CORE ASPECT when you have a GLOBAL PLAYER BASE, which can't be bothered to actually keep their promise of SELLING for a stated price, except for the first few minutes, as a later request will further prompt a price recheck if the item is at least somewhat "valuable".

But please be the ostrich TencentGGG, keep it up and enjoy what's coming. Hopefully real alternatives to PoE will start appearing as soon as later this year and we'll get to see if their stance doesn't change...

PS: Not to mention that addressing trading "properly", would help "retention" by a landslide, even if no further QoL would be applied...

I like that people think tencent is behind the lack of a AH when the chinese version of the game has one honestly im glad that ggg doesent cave to every demand of the comunity as that will just spiral the game into trash

please dont start cycling past leagues "in and out" as in delve is in for 3 leagues then it is out for 3 kind of stuff.
the only league mechanic i currently dont really involve that much with is bestiary, the only thing i would be sad about with losing bestiary is that einhar would leave with it, and i love that npc.

i would like more delve access, even if the rewards were cut down a bit.

i am sad too hear that we will have too live with the current shi*** trade interactions as they are now, litteraly the worst thing for me about poe. Personally i dont think a web browser in the game is going to fix anything, but at least you wont have too alt tab all the time, unless it is slower than normal browser.

For fuk sake still no luck with trade what a face slap...come kiwis catch up to the 20th century..... it drives me crazy

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Bex_GGG wrote:

Hey everyone, we've done our best to gather all the most pressing questions into the first part of this Q&A. Let me know if there are any missing and I'll make sure we get them into part two's answers next week.

Not long ago after synthesis were launched i've already played 56 hours straight with only 3 hours sleeping. With having better atlas than the most of the streamers yet i got no t16 from elder t16. I thought im just bad.(unlucky i would say) Then Chris himself said in the reddit that you guys reduced map drops. My question is. How in the world when im putting more effort + resource (sextant + monstrous tresure + double beyond + 120+ qual 30% packsize + plague (prophecies) and on top of that gilded scarabs which cost almost 1 ex (50 - 60c) people like Raiz who plays SSF gets more maps than me. When he played less than me used less resources than me and so on. I have nothing against Raiz. And it's not about him getting a lot of maps in first days of the league. It's about almost every popular streamer getting them. For me there is only one way to play this game. And it's playing from the start straight 3 day, making atlas min maxed, getting elder orb and selling maps. I still got a lot of currency out of this league. But it's not about how much i got it's about how much i shouldve got.

tl:dr for my opinion ur just increaseing droprate of certain players and also decreasing droprate for the most of the players. Cause of hype. Cause what casual player does is go to the random popular stream and check what that guy doing. He goes and does the same. Gets almost nothing. Comes back tells this to the streamer. Mostly streamer doesn't give a damn about what viewer says unless it's a sub. Even he does answer in 99% time he says something similar "yo you are doing something wrong".

Well i get it. If person plays 3-4 hours per day he doesn't even notice map drop nerf or buff. Or any buff or nerf. Cause by the time we get to the maps they start doing act 3 or mostly 4. And by the time when they get to the maps were doing t16 elder maps.

Please next time when someone comes with this absurd idea (map drop nerf) consider it 100 times before implementing. Cause i don't think any of you play this game 17+ hours per day. Cheers!


edit: all t16s that i run were at least 100+ qual 25%+ packsize 4 sextant + prophecies + scarabs. I run about 7 t16 / 20+ t15 / 20+ t14. Not even single t16 (even guardian maps were completed to just have any sor of t16 drop)