Live Interview with Chris Tomorrow

Bleh. Twitch is always on permanent buffer when I'm sharing the network, and currently all three other PCs are connected.

Guess I'll just have to wait for it to appear on youtube. Today? Please? If possible? :D

I asked this in the chat but figured it would be useful to post it here:

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Has it ever been considered to do Keystone Races? Starting every character off at a certain level and giving them all a certain keystone by default, and monitoring how the players build around it? It would be an interesting way to get good data on unused keystones

Perhaps also starting players off with a set amount of currency to roll gear to start off these characters.

Not even a question about end game and maps, you re so bad...

Wow, another reason why this company is top notch. Face to face with your fans. No hiding behind some false promises. I <3 GGG!!!

Just keep doing exactly what you're doing, this is one of the greatest games I've ever played!!!!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw-4wUkE9Zo

interview again

I quite liked the interview, it gave some interesting information. So yeah, appriciated:).

Excellent podcast, I love hearing about the internals at GGG!!

1) I was very surprised to hear that the only league i play (Hardcore) will have substantially less PvP events than other leagues. Surprised because it seems to indicate that you are using the wrong data when planning the PvP schedule. My strong suspicion is that you are incorrectly using player (activity) metrics, rather than character metrics.

While it is true that at any given moment, a majority of players are playing PvE on the 4 month leagues, that doesn't translate to PvP. Because the 4 month leagues feed permanent leagues, there are by definition more characters on the permanent leagues.

I suspect you based things on league statistics we were given a glimpse of. I can understand why you might have made this mistake.

51.3% Domination
20.5% Nemesis
25.6% Standard
2.6% Hardcore

This data initially seems to indicate that Domination should have the majority of PvP events, and that Hardcore should have a very small amount. Yes, only 2.6% play Hardcore at any given time, but 20-25% have characters there. Just cuz they are on Nemesis right now, doesn't mean they won't pull out their wealthy Hardcore PvP chars for such events.

Permanent leagues have more characters by definition, because they are fed by all other leagues. Not to mention characters created before temporary leagues existed. Below is a more accurate picture of how to plan pvp events, from the little data i have. You can simply use character numbers since you have access to that.

76.9% Standard (Domination + Standard)
51.3% Domination
23.1% Hardcore (Nemesis + Hardcore)
20.5% Nemesis

Normalized:

44.8% Standard
29.9% Domination
13.4% Hardcore
11.9% Nemesis

This bolded data is closer to what PvP frequency schedules should be based on.

One caveat: given that release coincided with Dom/Nem, it is possible (maybe even likely) that the data is abnormally skewed at the moment, due to this one-time massive influx of players. I.e. more characters in 4 month leagues than permanent leagues. If that's the case, you could still be basing your schedule of events on the wrong data. You must use number of characters as your metric, not players. Please ensure that after Dom/Nem end, the next PvP season has a completely reassessed event schedule based on things returning to normal.


2) A related issue i'd like to cover is your optimistic theory that people will participate in more leagues than usual, merely for PvP. The problem with this is that PvP is gated by PvE.

I think the theory is wrong, due to a combination of significant barriers, which together make it unfeasible. 1) The large investment required to build up wealth from scratch to compete in PvP; 2) The time investment required to trade for PvP items.

Playing in a given league requires a tremendous investment. Most if not all players commit to just one league as their Main. E.g. players who started Nemesis left their wealthy Hardcore characters behind when it started.

Imagine a player has a heavy investment in Standard and no other league. There is no way he will start playing PvE on Hardcore to build up the tremendous wealth required to then compete in PvP.

In reverse, because Hardcore feeds Standard, you may gain a small amount of Standard PvPers that you normally wouldn't have. I can tell you that despite having a large graveyard of dead Hardcore characters' items on Standard, i will not be participating in PvP there. I initially considered it, but quickly realized it's unfeasible. The overarching reason for this is the large time investment required to trade for all the items i'd need. Time during which i can't trade on my Main league! Not to mention a Hardcore player's dead characters on Standard are weaker/lower level than their Hardcore ones almost by definition. They died, after all.

Similarly, no one who Mains Nemesis is going to suddenly start investing tremendous amounts of time on Domination to build up a roster of PvP characters to be able to compete there. Especially given your no-cross-league trading policy, which works directly against your theory. Edit: in fact, this multiple-PvP leagues theory is a recipe for explosive RMT if ever i saw one.

Consider the absurdity of a player attempting to start PvPing in a league where they have little to no wealth, and have to compete with players for whom that is their Main league. It's just not going to happen.

I think mainly what you are going to see, is players focusing on either Hardcore or Standard for their PvP. Whichever of the 2 permanent leagues that gets fed by their 4-month of choice. The permanent league where they have access to the max tools that they need. A month or so into 4-month leagues you will get a certain percentage of those players dabbling in a second PvP league. But i think that's the extent of it. Standard and Hardcore will be the main PvP leagues.

What about 3, or 4 leagues? There's no way, it gets exponentially harder! A second league is tough, let alone 3 or 4. No one wants to trade for PvP gear on 4 leagues, especially when they don't normally play on 2-3 of them.


I play permanent Hardcore only, and forcing me to PvP in other leagues i have no wealth in just isn't going to work. I'll play the Hardcore events, assuming you make a correct, substantial number of them. Otherwise i'll be very sad, and presumably just end up in the permanent cutthroat league, and not by choice.

I also fear that the PvP season rewards will be unfeasibly based on this idea of people PvPing on several leagues - that's a massive screwup waiting to happen.

Any chance of a summary? The squeaky guy is like nails on blackboard to me.

Yeah, I would like a summary too. I know it was very early for the speaker... so... I can understand :) Me too, if I should do an interview at 9h of the morning... even with 2 coffee cups, it will not be clear and loud :)
Also, there's too long speaks about internal GGG stuff at beginning (...and well, I don't know why... are u recruiting ?).

So... yep, a summary plz.