Developer Q&A - Part I

"

Do you think there is room to make higher end crafting more accessible to the average player?

We certainly want more players to experience the fun of crafting and make some cool stuff, but we have to be very careful to not damage the economy in the process.

High-end crafting is expensive for a reason - because it can make really expensive items. To make it more accessible, that means reducing the costs associated with it which reduces the value and exclusiveness of the best items in the game. We feel it is critically important that in an Action RPG, the absolute best items are exclusive and very valuable.

I'd like to propose that accessibility to crafting mechanics may be less dependent on cost and more on confusion. In some cases, players have items and try to use them, but the unexpected results are disappointing.

I think systems could be added to make crafting clearer without reducing the cost. For example, in Warframe, when players reroll a Riven mod, the resources are consumed, and the result and original mod are presented to the players, who can select to either keep the original, take the new reroll, or reroll again (if they have the resources necessary). This allows players to try and learn crafting risk-free, by seeing how crafting affects what they have. A similar mechanic could be used for many orbs in PoE.

The Synthesis league crafting system is particularly confusing for players who aren't consulting external resources and performing incredibly complex calculations. For a player who is just playing the game with information presented in the game, three nice Fractured items are selected with the expectation that the product will be, in some way, the combination of what the player likes out of those three items. However, the result is often total garbage, and the player wonders what the f*** the point of this crafting system even is.

For something like Synthesis, I think it would be incredibly helpful for the game to reveal some of the mechanics in-game: for example, after placing three items into the device, it displays what properties could be taken and what sort of properties they could become. It doesn't have to display hard percentages or math calculations, but at least give players some indication of what could come out and how the properties on the three items interact.

Most importantly, this would allow players to swap one item and see how it changes the calculus. Learning by seeing the changes to the input mechanic is a far more effective teaching mechanic than a text-heavy or formula-heavy wiki or a massive spreadsheet of properties and percentages.

1. Thanks for making a great game

2. Many of us, myself included, prefer betrayal syndicates character-bound (their current state) over account-bound

3. Please bring back inquisitor's %mana regen from the old pious path

"

Soulrift wrote:

"

Do you think there is room to make higher end crafting more accessible to the average player?

We certainly want more players to experience the fun of crafting and make some cool stuff, but we have to be very careful to not damage the economy in the process.

For example, in Warframe, when players reroll a Riven mod, the resources are consumed, and the result and original mod are presented to the players, who can select to either keep the original, take the new reroll, or reroll again (if they have the resources necessary). This allows players to try and learn crafting risk-free, by seeing how crafting affects what they have. A similar mechanic could be used for many orbs in PoE.

horrible idea. so now i've got a ilvl 85 elder ring with 12 warlords mark on it and I can spam aug's and cancel it every single time till I got a perfect max life roll. then i could regal it knowing if i didnt get a perfect t1 resist roll i could safely cancel it back to my perfect 12 warlords and perfect life. then once i got that resist i could ex slam it till i got a perfect second resist knowing i could just cancel it back to my warlords, perfect life, perfect resist. so now theres tons of perfect/almost perfect 12 warlords, perfect life, 2 perfect resists on the market waiting to be crafted.

leave game dev to the pro's and people qualified to know wtf they are doing.

It was really interesting to read, thank you for your answers.

Also I would like to ask if there will be possibility to buy supporter packs from previous expansions.

I was about to buy another Q stash a few days ago. And now the Q&A and last post of Chris on Reddit just piss me off. Really. Close to all my mates left the game or play a few hours per month at best, and I wonder if I'm not going to do the same.

And the best part is : I felt the same at the end of betrayal and was about not playing POE, but surprisingly Synthesis main mecanics is quitte good and made me stay. Synth is just a scapegoat here.

But still GGG keeps making the same mistakes AND adding new mistake on top of them. Just want to repeat Blizzard's failure of not listening to your players ? Keep pilling up bugs, ignoring Quality of life feature requests and masturbating with art/mtx we don't care about and when a serious alternative comes out I'll gladly leave the boat (and I bet I won't be the only to do it).

"

BestUsernameEver wrote:

No trade overhaul means only SSF for me from now on :(

I guess you didn't read properly the answer about map drops. GGG promises are still a pain in the ass.

"

Atlantis_arch wrote:

"

BestUsernameEver wrote:

No trade overhaul means only SSF for me from now on :(

I guess you didn't read properly the answer about map drops. GGG promises are still a pain in the ass.

The whole game is SSF, especially since trade sucks so bad and they nerf drops across everything with the unfounded expectation that magically everyone can trade for what they want. Adding SSF was a total waste of time coding without improving the drops, just play a regular character and it is exactly the same experience.

GGG be like "What is Trade Market? Don't you guys have a browser to trade?" Lul. uninstalled this game, now im just waiting Lost Ark.

"

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.

You already nerfed Delve, fossils doesn't drop even behind walls, even in deep 300. You created an infinite and FUN dungeon, then you taked away that fun.

Not fixing trade...
Boooooh
Absolutely unacceptable to have a modern game that requires using an external website outside the game to trade. Really fun spending 1/3 + of my playing time dealing with buying and selling things...