Developer Q&A - Part I

thanks for taking your time for this.


i would like you to go deeper into the topic of "players doing services for other players", groups of players will always dominate leagues.



you think it's enough to enable people sharing some master benches while basically the whole game consists of "services" and being successful in the game is heavily dependent on players sharing their efforts?

i'm pretty sure, making clear that the game doesn't support services yet is even worth a dev manifesto entry so we can point to it in "omg, i got scammed" posts we love to see so often.

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Do you have any plans to make sustaining maps less tied-up with past league content like Betrayal, Delve and Incursion?

We have two options. We can either make it so that you don't get maps during past league content (and buff the non-map rewards), or have some reliance on those systems for providing map drops.

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

Tbh i dont get the logic here.
One player can do one thing at a time, correct? He can either spend 30min in delve or 30min mapping, he cannot be doing both delving and a map at the same time.
Why are you nerfing map sustain because delve exists, i mean, can't both have the same rates, because you are either delving or are mapping?
Why mapping should have lower sustain because delve/other exists?
I am honestly confused by the logic here

A guess:
Aim was to make everyone poorer so they spend more time in the game farming towards their goals, thus improving retention. Actual result was opposite, people saw little to no progression and left the league early because of frustration.

thank you for not nerfing the shit out of delve for people that actually understand mapping is the core game everything else is optional/additional side content. I love hitting up delve when I got the sulphite to do it cause I know theres a very good chance of it being lucrative. The same people that said reduce loot from breach its just fun and I want to run it all the time are now the ones saying breach is nerfed shit now and barely worth doing.

Trade is fine and already extremely easy [trade bots need to be seriously cracked down on]. Maybe people should try actually playing the game instead of just wanting to buy their way through it.

speed meta absolutely needs to be shut the hell down, setting a max speed cap of say 150 or so ms. I think this would also allow more content to be designed to be enjoyable for more builds.

Flasks need to be seriously looked at, right now they refill so fast the only time you might lose the buffs is during a boss fight IF you dont just insta kill them. imo flasks should more of a oh shit I could really use a dps boost right now, or some extra defense instead of what are basically now just permanent buffs.

also seeing all the people that said they were quitting or not spending another penny last league, and the one before that, oh and the one before that still here. specially with their fancy looking mtx purchase from those leagues under their names. LOL

i missed the q&a piece, so here are my 2 cents:

stay creative and on the path of evolution! It is absolutely amazing what you have innovated in the past 2 years!
just get a little more QA in there. Bugs are bugs, but game elements should feel thought trough.

The "Tile play" of sythesis is your perfect answer to slow the game down for those who do not want to speed farm the same map over and over again. I like it a lot!
Main Problem of the synthesizing process is the 99% needed "player interaction". Life search... whoop whoop. No one likes this.
i wish you would see exit nodes the same way as reward nodes. once i step on it, this is where i will spawn after the collapse.
The tile with the nexus portal in it should have the same lifetime as a map. To take out some of the pressure.

Its amazing how many different endgame possibilities you managed to fit into the same game.
Now we just need a bit more choice which masters missions we encounter on the atlas.
Ideas:
-every character you create can align with one master (spawning only his missions at a higher rate) and choose to share it with your account. atm you are effectively reducing your income when starting new characters.
-atlas dailys should also be character bound. atm i have to be cautious when the reset hits and do all the dailys with my highest char.
- long time stuff like betrayal should be shared. needs a little code to not totally wreck lower chars.

question on the atlas: why do we loose the bonus chance to drop exactly the adjacent maps on the road once completed? if we did not loose it, we could free the atlas with way less trading.

But please never cater to the casual experience like every other studio does. PoE is the best game ever, that's why we complain so much ;-)

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Will there ever be South African servers?

We can add servers to a new region once we know we have access to a reliable server host at cost-effective pricing, enough local players to justify the region, and tests of the servers meet our reliability standards. I don't know which of these issues has prevented South Africa in particular, but will bring it up with the server team to make sure it's considered.

Please make it happen! I would love South African servers so much. I can even help faciliate server hosting.

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ichbinwerichbi wrote:

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Dobster wrote:

One thing I've noticed about PoE after playing some other ARPG's is that the loot drops are awful and you very rarely, if ever, use them for your character.

In PoE if you get a good loot drop it's either currency or a rare unique that you will trade for currency so you can buy what you need for your character. Again this forces players into having to use the awful trade system.

PoE is a crafting/trading game and not a looting game.

The excitement of having loot drop and getting an upgrade you can use is just not there in PoE. I really hope this could be addressed in the future.

and what do you think the things you buy come from ? :-) I had not so good drops for my char but really good drops to sell. And other people the same. So its really funny to interact. If you dont like play ssf

these things people buy come from crafting or are looted by people who don't play efficiently. almost always they will pick up turds and once in a blue moon it will be something that sells for a decent amount. i'm talking about items that are at least one exalt. the only rares i pick up are high ilvl top tier bases and even then almost nothing has value.

i know it's a catch 22 and there will be few items on the market if everyone played "efficiently" (as defined by the current meta). but let's face it: if you sift through heaps of trash, you're not gonna be wealthy at the end of the league and complain on the forums about "the 1%".

We have to option to skip past leagues encounters by not starting them. But the map sustain is balanced around doing all past league mechanics... It looks to me like the past leagues mechanics are mandatory if you don't want to rely on the very bad trading system implemented by GGG.

Seems like wasted effort reading this. Lots of maybes and PR nonsense.

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Adolan wrote:

Trading MUST change GGG,

Cross-instance trades MUST happen.

I can't understand why we need to drop group / leave map / leave Lab run / leave etc, just to do a trade.

No AH, I get it. play interaction etc, no probs.

But please allow players to trade as smoothly and as fast as possible so we can get back playing the game we love.

My AH experience in other games is that they are shit so I have no issue with not having one in PoE. Only thing I'd like to see is implementation of a pop-up "buy/sell" toggle that allows completion of the transaction without leaving your instance as Adolan references above. This alone would improve the trading experience by a huge margin.

You guys are awesome and well respected, keep up the transparency and communication with the community -and even if you create a league where 1,000 ES Vaal Regalia's are craft-able, we'll forgive you. :D