Primera parte
What gave you guys the inspirations for the past leagues? How does the process of coming up with the main idea of the league work?
The inspiration comes from all sorts of different places. Generally the ideas evolve over many years until they're eventually used. Ambush came from a plan back in 2007 to have mods on chests. During its development, this was limited to only special chests, and then fights were guaranteed. Legacy ended up very similar to the initial plan for the Prophecy league. Essence was inspired by a "Monster Boxes" idea we read on reddit. Torment was inspired by the treasure goblins in Golden Axe. Coming up with league ideas isn't the hard part - the tricky part is choosing the one that best fits what the game needs at the time.
Are there any hints or tricks you can share for how to obtain the unique Unset Ring, Angler's Plait?
We think that the fun of items like this is working out how to get them. I honestly don't know the trick for this one myself.
Chris, have you and Hrishi played much Vintage? If so, what is the current record?
(This question relates to Magic: the Gathering). We have playtested vintage decks against each other and then participated in tournaments together. I think the record is that I have beaten him in playtesting and then he has beaten me in the actual tournaments :-)
Are there any plans to extend the skillbar? We could use a few more skill slots for sure.
We have a plan (though no ETA) to add an alternate skillbar that you can reach by holding down a key. This would be ideal for skills like Heralds that you want to cast occasionally but don't need to be on your main bar.
Will there ever be an auto-sort button for inventory and/or stash similar to Titan Quest mechanics?
Unlikely. I had a good conversation recently with David Brevik about how large items that require manipulation in the inventory help simulate the "weight" that items have in other RPG systems. It may be inconvenient to have to organise items, but it makes them feel real. Simplifying this down to auto-sorting or single-slot-items is a road we don't want to take our game down.
Which "Boss-scenario" like Atziri or the Shaper was the hardest in terms of time, work and brain cells spent? :)
In terms of released content, The Shaper for sure. There's some unreleased stuff that has taken masses of time...
Has the development team ever thought of creating new types of skill gems such as Shape-shifting? And is it a possibility of something coming in the near future?
New types of skills, yes! Shape-shifting in particular? Perhaps not. We certainly think about it often, but that particular concept has some significant animation requirements. It'd be like trying to introduce an eighth character class, as it'd have to work with all the items and skills.
Are there any plans to make spells like spark and cyclone feel ''smoother'' by not being easily blocked by terrain etc?
Certainly, though it's tricky to do in the way that some community members have suggested. However, work is underway to smooth out the terrain so that there aren't small blockages that stop motion.
Will there be beta phase for oriath update? if it does, when it will be? and what will happen to the character on it? does it treated as league character? (back to standard when beta ends) or got deleted completely?
Yes. Sometime later during the Legacy league. Beta characters will be deleted at the end of the Beta, just like with the other Closed Betas we ran in 2012 and 2015.
Are the technical values of the 'Bandit' rewards going to change in 3.0 (eg changing them all to passive points), or will they be the same bonuses attached to different quests?
In 3.0.0, there's only one set of Bandit quests. We haven't decided what rewards they'll have, but they'll likely be based on the current normal difficulty ones with some tweaks (to make the non-life ones more attractive possibly?)
Once 3.0 drops, what's going to happen to the Achievements for beating Cruel and Merciless?
If you have already completed them, you get to keep them. If you haven't, they change to achievements for killing specific bosses.
When will this game be released on xbox? An estimated date or month would be amazing
We're aiming for "very close to the PC release of 3.0.0" which is targeted at "the middle of the year".
If you guys at GGG play PoE in your off-time from the office, what are your favorite skills to play? Does anyone in the office play on Standard/Hardcore or do you guys always jump to the temp leagues?
Yes, absolutely. We play both upcoming leagues and also the current league on the live realm. I asked around to see what skills people preferred, and it was a really wide variety. Regarding Standard, at least one senior developer has been playing the same character (in the late 90s) for several years now.
I know this may be far in the future, but do you guys plan on eventually making an offline version of the game once you guys move on to the next game and aren't able to devote resources to maintaining servers and such so that the game can be preserved forever and played years from now like Diablo 2. (I know many of us still play D2...including Chris.)
We don't plan to do this, and the reason is because the game will never be in a state where the servers have to be shut down for financial reasons. Running the servers is inexpensive - it's running the studio to create new content that consumes most of the resources. Making an offline version is masses of work, unfortunately.
What is the current plan for languages? I read about a german portation quite a while ago. Sure it won't be at a high place on the list of priorities, but i would be a nice QoL. :)
We're trying to find people to help us with German, French and Spanish translations. Last week we asked for help in the news and over 500 people contacted us! We're blown away by the amazing response!
Why don't you make particle reduction options for better FPS?
Honestly, because once we have finished our optimisation work, it won't really make much of a difference to have particles reduced.
Do you do systems simulations on multiple spec variations to determine balance? Do you use Machine Learning to grow the tree/balance stats or to find anomalies? Any other systems automations you guys use?
We do run simulations when developing new systems. I personally did the Prophecy simulation myself. We don't use machine learning. There is a lot of automation on the build/testing side of the game, but not so much on the game design side. Making things fun and addictive is more of an art than a science in our opinion (we design on gut feeling more often than trying to optimise some data).
Will we ever be able to zoom out farther?
The short answer is "No, because the game isn't designed for this". The long answer is that the farther your view distance is, the more stuff you have to render (it's a quadratic relationship). In addition, there are specific distances that the server sends you objects at, and if you can see more terrain, you won't necessarily be able to see the objects on that terrain. There are a few places in the 3.0.0 expansion where the view is pulled back slightly, but we control those carefully and you'll see what I mean when you play it.
Are there any plans to better standardize the tagging of skills and their respective gems in order to make the mechanics more understandable and accessible? An example of where the current system falls short is the relationship between "increased duration" and "burning arrow".
The team are aware of some inconsistencies here and want to solve them. This is a large refactor that we're postponing until critical 3.0.0 work is finished. Things like double-dipping have to be out of the way first, for example.
When 3.0 hits, what will happen to characters who are in Cruel or Merciless at the time? Will they have to start from Act 5 even though they're overleveled?
This is something we're working on, and don't need to have ready for day one of the Beta (for obvious reasons). Because of that, we'll probably solve it and implement it after the Beta has started. The intention is that while some characters have to start in Act Five, some equivalencies are defined so that others can start later on.
What is the plan for existing league mechanics coming 3.0? With Legacy League meant as a way to 'say goodbye' to old content it suggests most of this is being removed or re-examined. The Zana mod system in the league suggests the same. Are we getting Leaguestones in 3.0? Are all the leagues staying, or going?
The plan varies from mechanic to mechanic. Legacy isn't meant to say goodbye to them, but provides a great opportunity to play with a lot of craziness happening simultaneously. The Zana changes are because we can't run regular Zana mods at the same time as Leaguestones, and to provide an alternate experience for people to make their maps more difficult and rewarding. We haven't decided about the role of Leaguestones in the future of Path of Exile.
For those of us wanting to work in the games industry regarding programming, what qualification/ experience does GGG look for? (for the programming team specifically) If you were to give advice to someone entering the industry based on your own experience what would you say?
Get as much practical game creation experience as possible, and put together a portfolio of work that you've done. A compelling portfolio is honestly more useful than the degree paperwork, assuming you know everything the graduate does. Algorithmic knowledge, modern C++ with STL and low-level performance stuff are important for us.
Do any of the devs have small games as personal projects they work on? If so, what are your favorite tools/frameworks to work in? I've been wanting to work on a game for fun for quite some time now and I've tried out LibGDX, Unity, and Gamemaker and would love to know what others think is the best tool for a solo project.
There are quite a lot of hobby projects in development. Unity is a popular choice for that, due to rapid prototyping speed.
What I miss most is some reward for full clearing every single location or map. I am really a slow noob player, but I do enjoy full clears a lot.
This is a playstyle that some players enjoy, and some don't. While I personally want to see more rewards for doing this, we have to be careful to not make them feel mandatory. By the way, the current Legacy Leaguestones do encourage this a fair amount (to get maximum advantage from the stones you have equipped).
When will the Russian voice over be implemented? (Russian question)
I am very sorry that this is so delayed. It requires a large overhaul to how patching works, so that Russian users receive that data and non-Russian users do not. We want to avoid patching more than a gigabyte to the millions of non-Russian users (just like how we want to avoid patching English voice acting to people who have their language settings set to Russian). Currently this is in the queue for "as soon as people are free", but those people are working hard on critical 3.0.0 features. We have several Russian developers inside our studio who remind me daily about this feature.
Why is there so little group-oriented content in the game? (Russian question)
Because it is important to us that all content is possible solo. This is a base design philosophy of the game. You should never feel forced to group up to be able to do something.
Will there be any new server locations in Russia? (Russian question)
Maybe. Currently we can only offer Moscow, but would happily do more if we were able to in the future. There are economic and reliability issues that need to be solved.
Do you plan to implement new weapon types? (Russian question)
Yes. I don't know when though.
Why are all MTX in the shop for armoured warriors and not for mages? (Russian question)
I think this question highlights the need for easier searching and sorting in the shop. There are spellcaster microtransactions, but it's clearly not easy enough to find them.
Do you plan to sell character skins? (Russian question)
We do sell lots and lots of armour sets, so I'll assume that you mean changing the underlying character itself. This is something we have considered, but we note that the character is usually covered in armour, so it's hard to see the base model. We are planning cosmetic improvements to all character models in the medium-term future, but weren't planning to sell those.
Do you plan to implement option to see original (English) names of times when pressing alt or in trading tabs on regional clients? (Russian question)
This is a feature that would be very useful, but is actually quite difficult because the localisation system is designed to replace the English text with the foreign text. This means that the equivalent English text for the Russian name isn't available for display. I'll definitely bear this request in mind if we're improving the system later.
How many GGG employees does it take to change a lightbulb? (Russian question)
Honestly, we'd probably just call someone to do it for us so that we can work on the game instead!
Will we ever be getting microtransactions that are from the past? (Such as items from the Microtransaction shop, and Challenge rewards such as the red/blue seraph armor sets.)
If we said they were exclusive, then they're exclusive.
Virtual Reality, when?
Never. Yay.
As someone who has recently finished school and is now looking for a Study course. Is game design (as a major) something you would recommend (or who would you recommend it to)? I've only been really passionate about games in the past but have little programming experience. Are there other ways into the gaming industry besides programming?
There are many types of roles you can do in the game development industry aside from programming: design, concept art, high/low poly modelling, texturing, rigging, animation, visual effects, sound, marketing, production, testing, etc. Pick something that interests you and pursue that!
Are their plans to further buff the under-powered unique items? The recent buffs have been a huge success, but there are still many uniques that are "dull" - even when found very early on in the game.
Yes
Do you still play other ARPGs at GGG in order to get inspired? I am thinking of games like Diablo 3, Grim Dawn etc.
Yes, our team check out many different games and the reason we're all here is that we love ARPGs.
When will the microtransactions from the last mystery box be available to buy and will this box be available to buy?
The non-exclusive microtransactions from mystery boxes are available for purchase around a month after the box stops being sold.
Why did you choose to call skins and effects awarded by completing challenges "microtransactions" instead of, for example "cosmetic items"? It bothers me every time i see this term used in announcements to describe stuff that cannot be bought.
You're probably right.
Currently the game contains some examples of partitioned content. IMO it was just a kind of natural product of the different expansions being stacked on top of each other. In some cases the earlier content hasn't been updated to work with the parts that have been stacked on top of it. For example, masters -- there aren't masters for jewels because the jewels came out after the masters patch, or there aren't any lab trials in Act 4. Does the team have any thought process or idea if they will kind of give everything an overhaul to make it all seem a little more harmonious in 3.0?
Your point is correct, in that we're occasionally slow to update old systems for new content, but both the Jewel example and lab trials in Act 4 are intentional. We don't want a Jewel Master currently and we purposefully design the trials to be Act 1-3 content (they wouldn't have built trials in or around highgate).
The Divination cards are still a sour spot for me (probably others as well). Can you provide a little more information about what happened in the process of releasing them that took them from a way to deterministically farm an item to just another currency? Was it just a communication issue that got our hopes up? Unrealistic expectations from the community?
Many cards can be deterministically farmed and provide the item relatively easily, because the item is something reasonable to obtain for that amount of effort. The system can't give top items for a low amount of effort, but it does provide a way to find pieces of those items that can be traded for or combined to receive the desired result. To answer your question, I think we could have been clearer about expectations. If you make a divination card for a unique like Skyforth, it is not realistic to expect that every player can now get a Skyforth.
The only reason for me i don't buy mtx is that i once Sold Boots with footsteps mtx on it. Could you Change this somehow? That this is not possible or the mtx is removed and returned on selling?
I think you're mistaken. This has never been able to occur. Since day one, you weren't able to vendor or otherwise destroy items with microtransactions on them.
Also, will you ever made the MTX bound to character window instead of items? It's a horrible act to find old and lost MTX because my chest is flooded with 200000 pages of old leagues.
Yes, in 3.0.0.
Which brings me to...I saw a post about an entire guild banned because one person did something against the rules. How exactly is that? If someone on my guild does the same thing and nobody knows can everyone get banned because of it? Because I don't really know the people of the guild to risk my account like that.
We don't ban everyone in a guild if a single person does something bad. We ban the whole guild only under special circumstances where we have compelling evidence that the entire guild is botting. We can't talk publicly about how we detect and handle Terms of Use violations in any more detail.
Do you guys intend to improve mystery boxes in a way that we don't end up having multiple copies of the same item? Multiple portal effects of the sae portal for example is pretty obsolete.
If we made this change, they would have to be massively more expensive than they currently are. Is this a tradeoff you would prefer?
Will you ever be in the mood to create a system with account bound names and not globally bound? It fucks me up every time I can not create my character just because my name is already taken. Its ridiculous at this moment, you can even type gibberish and the name is already taken.
Our character names are designed to be unique. Significant work would be required to change this, and it would introduce issues like impersonation. We added a system where character names (but not the characters themselves) expire after their account hasn't been used in a year. This helps a lot with regards to making the bulk of names available. I understand this doesn't address your concern to the extent you want, so we'll stay on the lookout for other ways to improve it.
How was the initial planning for the Passive Skill Tree? How long did it take to become functional and be implemented in the game? (Brazil question)
The very first version allowed multiple points to be allocated per skill. It was quickly clear that it was more interesting when these were turned into pathways, to allow progression around the tree to other areas. Our early versions also had a shared central start location (with the three attributes branching out in the different directions). The tree even had a hole in the middle so that you could see your character, just in case it was attacked while you were allocating points!
We had a functional version of all of this as soon as it was designed, but it used temporary art. We kept the functionality updated as the design evolved over time to what we have now.
What technologies did you use to develop Path of Exile, especially modeling, animation, engine, and programming language? After the game was 'done', did any technology ever hindered the development? (Brazil question)
We use a custom game engine, written in C++. Modelling and animation are done in Autodesk Maya and exported to a custom format that the game loads. None of this technology has hindered development, as we invest in solving problems as they crop up.
Ctrl+F "Trade" - where are the answers to all the trade questions?
I'll likely address this in the next post.
Segunda parte
Any chance Siosa can be moved out of the library after completing the quest?
Our intention was to make the gem vendor someone other than Siosa, but that 3.0.0 NPC hadn't been added to the game yet. I'd personally prefer to remove the gems from Siosa and move them to the other NPC once 3.0.0 is released, because Siosa is an NPC who can't access your stash (for security reasons, when out of town). The team are still discussing which way to go with this.
Can you please relay any information regarding Summon Spectres, and other summoner quality of life mechanics?
There are many changes we want to make to both Spectres and summoners. I spoke to the team to see what they wanted to reveal here, and an example they're comfortable will make it into 3.0.0 is that the movement speed cap on Spectres is being increased so that they can get the same movement speed increases as other minions. I'm hoping we can go into more detail about other changes before release, but the team are being careful to not overcommit to changes that may not make it into the initial version.
We plan to post a minion life/damage/armour spreadsheet and small manifesto about 3.0.0 minion balance improvements next week.
Any chance we can get the move command to be not a spell? I like to map move to space bar but to do that I have to use up a spell slot on my hotbar to do it.
This is a frequently requested feature that the team are very aware of. It's currently in the "would be really great as a QoL update" list, but isn't done yet. Core 3.0.0 work has to come first.
Do you really expect to be able to release 6 acts at once without months of gamebreaking bugs? How do you plan to smooth out the 3.0 release, what do you have in place to keep the gamebreakers down to a dull roar? Have things improved much behind the scenes since, say, Perandus launch?
The number of acts doesn't necessarily increase the number of bugs, because bugs generally come with new features rather than new content. Having said that, there's a lot changing in 3.0.0 so there's a lot of scope for problems to creep in unless we find them. To deal with this, we've expanded our QA team over the years and it's currently the largest it has ever been. In addition, we're running a Beta for 3.0.0 specifically to find problems before they affect the live realm.
Have you given serious thought to providing people who don't like Labyrinth-style content options to play the rest of the game without going through the content they do not enjoy? Is there some reason it's not being done? Is there any chance it might happen in the future?
This is discussed occasionally but there are no plans to change it in 3.0.0. We're worried about the slippery slope of players wanting the rewards from a system without engaging in that system (although we do understand that Ascendancy classes have been so successful that they are no longer considered rewards but instead intrinsic parts of your character). I am sure we will continue to discuss this and related topics.
Is anything planned between when the Legacy league ends, and when 3.0 is released?
We don't yet know the release date for 3.0.0 accurately, but as we get closer to the Beta, we'll have a better understanding. If we need to fill time between the end of Legacy and the release of 3.0.0, then there are a variety of interesting events that could be run.
Would you consider allowing ignore lists to be longer?
Absolutely. It's entirely a technical issue on our side where we need to make sure the realm infrastructure is happy with us sending the longer lists around. It's probably fine, but good to test extensively before doing so. There are other improvements we need to make to ignore lists as well, like allowing you to view/edit them.
With SSF support officially in the game, are there any plans to further extend or expand upon the concept? I'd love to see an "Ironman Party" style using fixed parties that can trade between each other, with the restriction that the party has to be formed before any member ever enters The Coast, can never break party, and does not have access to a stash of any kind.
This sounds like more of a "custom league" thing, if you want to play with a small group of your friends under specific rules. That's certainly something that we'd like to support.
With all the talk of trade improvements over the years but very little concrete to show for it, it's clear that GGG wants to take steps, but is being held up by various concerns. What actual goals and restrictions are you guys working with in your efforts toward improving trade? Are there concerns that these goals are even attainable?
Being able to trade items is critical to the success of an Action RPG. This is why Path of Exile has no item binding and why SSF items can become regular items with the click of a button.
Given that we want trade, the next question is how easy the trade should be. It seems obvious to jump to the answer of "as easy as possible, of course!" but more care needs to be taken. The easier that trade is, the more trades that traders can perform, increasing the utility that items provide to them. This has a few consequences:
The gap between traders and non-traders widens. This gap is apparent when you see feedback that the game is too hard for some people and too easy for others. Most of the time, that is proportionate to how much they have traded.
Item pricing becomes more skewed towards only very-cheap and very-expensive. Items either become trivially cheap or unaffordable. If you have ever felt that it's going to take too many 1-alch sales to finally save up for that 80 exalt item you want, then this is the reason.
Progression is trivialised. While trading for an item to get a leg up on difficult content is of course fine, being able to trivially and cheaply quadruple your clear speed on a whim isn't something that should be expected on your first character in a league. In addition, the fewer item upgrades you make on a character before capping out your items, the lower chance you have of sticking around for a decent portion of the league. Upgrading items more times (in smaller steps) is more fun than jumping right to the perfect gear.The existing community tools (combined with our public stash tab API) already put us pretty far down this spectrum, compared to the old days of trade chat. We already view this as a crisis. That is why we are hesitant to add more convenience features.
I know this explanation doesn't mention any solutions, but the things we're experimenting with aren't ready yet. Thanks for your patience.
Will Act 9 and 10 be released right at the start of beta or just in a later phase?
Acts 9 and 10 will probably not be featured in the Beta.
As an avid and religious coffee drinker, I must know: instant or brewed? What brand(s)? @heads of GGG
Jonathan and I do not drink coffee. Erik says "I'm not exactly a connoisseur but rather a quantity over quality guy in this case so any excessive source of caffeine including energy drinks does it for me."
Aside from the founders, there are some serious coffee drinkers in the office. Their dedication scares me.
When will we be able to organize the MTX tab?
This is all fixed in 3.0.0 by removing the tab.
Will you return the credits sequence to the game with 3.0? Perhaps after Act 10?
It's still in the game, on the main menu. We removed it from playing automatically when you finish the storyline because it was causing people to stop playing (perhaps thinking they had finished the game).
Have you ever considered color-coding map mods? For example: Green for things added to the area (strange barrels, twinned boss, etc.), Blue for general area changes (increased item quantity, monsters have onslaught, etc.), Red for character specific mods (curses, less block chance, etc.).
No, and the reason we don't want to do this is because coloured mods are a limited communication space that we need to use in the future to support game mechanics that haven't been added yet.
Do you regret making all skills available to all classes? As an SSF player (this league anyway) I don't think the Siosa gem thing was a good idea (probably a very unpopular opinion though). I feel it made gem drops in the wild completely irrelevant and made it too easy to get anything, you don't have to get work to set up your build as much. Just farm or craft gear (also made easier with divination cards (which I'm fine with due to their rarity) and essences (also pretty fine with this due to RNG nature of essence rolls of other mods)) and buy your skill setup.
We don't regret it - it was already trivialised by trade, which was something that wasn't available for SSF characters. There's too much class lock-in if you have to find entirely wild gems for off-class skills (it would drive people to level another character just to claim a quest reward, which isn't a fun emergent behaviour).
What kind of office antics do you guys do? Things like messing with each other or little pranks?
Generally very few. It's honestly pretty civilised here.
Do you have plans on releasing more acts after the expansion or do you guys wanna focus on something else for the future?
There are a lot more expansions coming, and they'll likely cover many types of content. Only one of our five expansions released so far includes a new act for example! We'll likely continue to make more new acts in the future.
As far as the Xbox launch goes... Will we retain our MTX and support pack purchases, or will it be completely separate from PC?
They are completely separate.
How do you plan to handle the zone-specific divination-card drops in patch 3.0 when there is only one play through? An example can be "The incantation" that only drops in cruel/merc western forest. But there are many others.
Many cards need to be re-homed to new thematically-appropriate areas. Like all the Prophecies, we're going through them with a fine-toothed comb to make sure it's all set up correctly.
Are Kitava and the Beast the same entity? The Karui appear to be pretty sure that they're the same, but some things, like the Pantheon image, seem to imply otherwise.
They are not the same entity.
Would it be possible to make yellow top 50 death messages from HC Challenge League and SSF HC Challenge League appear in both? I'm interested in seeing who is dying in both and it's confusing when someone types "reeeep" and you don't know the context because you didn't get the death notice from the other league.
This is a very good point and I hadn't considered it. I can't promise that we can make them cross-league but it certainly does highlight a problem with the shared chats there.
When the team was designing Path of Exile's currency system, was there discussion around whether the currency would be exclusively used by players to craft or was the expectation always that currency would be balanced to act as a sort of replacement for gold in other games (e.g. chaos & exalted orbs more often used for trading than for crafting)?
I don't think there was any expectation that it was going to be exclusive for crafting - the intention was that people would use it to trade but that it would have a useful underlying use. It is called the Currency system, after all!
Why can't we control+click to guild stash? Why can't we move guild stash tabs around, like we do with personal stash? (at least for guild leaders)
Simply because these haven't been implemented yet. They're things we'd like to get in but rely on senior people finishing with other urgent tasks. It is surprisingly difficult to implement due to the security model of the stashes.
I've graduated as a game dev a few years ago and ended up in the fin tech sphere. While I enjoy programming I don't see an equitable process for living in the gaming sphere in the Syd environment. I am aware that the NZ gov has been pushing hard for studios to receive funding (resulting in a nearly 3 times boom in the local industry). As such the only real way it appears to me in Syd is to either treat it as a full time job and take out a business loan or slowly build it as a hobby. Seeing as you guys started from scratch I thought I might ask here; what processes or methods did you undertake to try and move from the "garage gaming" unit to a full blown studio, and more importantly, to keep developer retention that you would be willing to share? Thanks.
I'd only recommend starting a studio if you already have some money (either from your savings or from friends/family). Starting by borrowing money makes it very difficult. It's both hard to get loans at good rates before you have anything to show (they want to see validation that your business will be able to pay them back) and the need to earn money so urgently can encourage releasing too early or with too aggressive monetisation. Treating it as a hobby is probably a sensible way to start. Or working for someone else who can pay you to make games!
We didn't receive government funding but did burn through our entire life savings, got into debt and also raised money from friends. I wouldn't really recommend that plan to anyone else. We don't really have any tips for developer retention other than providing an interesting project to work on, free drinks and smart people to work with!
When you started working in the passive tree, how did come to your minds passives like Avatar of Fire, Blood Magic, Eldritch Battery or Chaos Inoculation? What's the process behind thinking how these kind of passives will/would work in the game? I mean, e.g it is not like I'd say "hey, let's add something that makes ES protect Mana just because" There must be something that made you believe that it is important that this passive should be in the tree, so why and how do you know what is needed or not. They are mechanically different to any other and they are really cool to play with. I believe that there are also other 'complicated' passives like these that didn't make it to the final tree, can you please let us know about them and also if it possible that you might add new nodes in the future? Thanks in advance.
Initially, we didn't have any keystone or notable passives at all. We never predicted that we'd add something like keystone passives to the tree, but once it was suggested, it was clearly an awesome route to take. The idea was to add things that have a positive impact but also a large drawback (for example, turning something off, like your shield slot or life pool). The set we came up with is mostly still intact, with a few extra ones added over time. We don't have firm plans to add more currently but would like to in the future if we think of any that fit well.
What are some ARPG mechanics from other games that you don't think you'd ever like to see in Path of Exile? e.g., things like D2 mercenaries that so far are not part of PoE.
Gold, set items, stacking potions (like Titan Quest), inventory-occupying charms, stat jewels that socket into items (we put them in the passive tree instead). Some things like mercenaries and durability might make a showing if we can work out a good way in the future.
How many of the employees are native New Zealanders?
Most of our team are New Zealand citizens, but we have recruited an increasing amount of talent from overseas in the last couple of years. I love work visa paperwork so much.
Will controller support be integrated into regular POE once you're done with the xbox version?
No. The controller makes it a different game because of skill function and balance changes required. If we did add controller support to a PC version then that version would probably play on the Xbox One realm rather than the current realm. We don't plan to do this currently.
What sort of content makes good game designer portfolio work? I have a mainly programming background but I really want to work in design (not art).
Game design and game programming are different things! If you want to be a game programmer, create small games, make it really clear which parts you worked on, and present a portfolio showing a variety of work in the type of programming that you are best at. For a designer, design small games/systems and present a portfolio showing these. It's much harder to find work as a pure designer because everyone thinks that they're a game designer.
What is necessary to develop a game like Path of Exile? How many people are currently working on the game? Who has the longer beard/hair on the staff? (Question from Brazilian community)
Developing Path of Exile involved quite a large investment in infrastructure, in addition to the game itself. Things like the online realm, good client-server security, logging, the game engine, developer tools, customer support tools, billing/payment infrastructure and so on are all things that people don't really consider when they scope out just the game itself. We currently have about 95 staff, most of whom are working on the game (some are customer support people who work on supporting the game). In terms of beards and hair, I believe that our head gameplay programmer Mark takes that crown.
Well, that's another set of questions done. We'll try to do more in a follow-up post! Thanks for the questions as always.
Tercera parte
Hello GGG! I want to ask you, why do we have no place for perandus coins or for Breach fragments in the currency stash? Now we have 5 breach fragments and perandus coins as currency, as well as cartographer's seals and rhoa feathers, but we have only 5 misc slots in currency stash. It would be very good to see all these items in one place like the currency stash. Thanks for your time!
This is a very good point and it's possible that we will expand the currency tab in the future to hold more things. I'll see what I can do for 3.0.0.
Is the base structure for leagues changing with 3.0? I get the feeling that it may be, considering how major (and brilliant) a change leaguestones are, and the fact that it's been openly stated before that you don't want to clutter the game indefinitely with more and more league mechanics.
While it is true that we don't want to clutter the game, we aren't changing the base structure of leagues. There will still be leagues, they will still either be added to the game or not added to the game. Historic leagues may be added/removed from the core game, Zana mods, Flashback events, Legacy events, etc.
Are there any completely undiscovered/unknown recipes or vendor secrets? What about vendor recipes that only a select few have ever used and are not public knowledge?
Nowadays, the amount of secret information there is limited. In the past, it was fascinating to see what would happen as people found vendor recipes and kept the knowledge to a select few people. We will likely add more vendor recipes in the future so that people have a lot more to hunt for!
The Legacy league is a clever and more easily sustainable rework of the 1 to 4 (IIRC) week long Flashback events of the past. Considering the role of those events as the season filler in-between expansions, would this league also be a recurring thing once every 3-4 seasons or so?
It could well be. It does take work to create Leaguestone mods for the leagues added in the interim though.
Can we expect UI quality-of-life improvements? Even relatively small and obvious changes take months and years to appear. There are still no convenient character and friend list sorting, moving tabs around is a pain, I can't see who is in my ignore list (or remove particular people/see what I ignored them for), and so on, and so forth. I realize some of these require design considerations, but come on. Surely a fancy new act 2 chicken physics can share some of its budget allocation with more tangible improvements.
Instead of trying to justify the improvements we have made or to merely promise there are many more coming, I wanted to shed more light on the reasons why some of these improvements are slow to be finished.
In general, if an improvement only requires a UI programmer, then it can be made rather easily. In the past we had only one UI programmer, so there was a long backlog of such improvements that we found it hard to get to. Nowadays we have three, so we have had time to add features like adding item highlighting in stashes and item filters. The delay occurs when other types of programmers need to be involved. For example, for moving guild tabs, there's just no server-side support for this. A server-side programmer would need to add the ability for the tab locations to be changed and then expose this to the UI guys. While this wouldn't take incredibly long to do, the server-side guys are extremely busy working on very important issues like deployment, realm scaling, anticheat, and so on. To unblock this process, we need to hire and train more talented server-side programmers, and they're the hardest ones to find (dozens of applications per interview and dozens of interviews per hire). This is something we're actively working on.
Even though the dev team constantly implements performance improvements and is proud of it, I feel like the game's performance is actually becoming worse year after year on the same hardware configuration. Maybe it has to do with the general increase in enemy and effect density, but I can't even open a Breach or party up without it becoming a slideshow very quickly (sometimes actually slowing down the instance itself, as reflected by server-side lag). And I'm playing on HC—these sudden performance drops are deadly! I keep seeing this concern echoed by the owners of high-end graphics cards as well, so it's definitely not the case of me having a potato PC. What are the plans in this regard?
Our telemetry lets us see the actual performance values, and while they're improving when we make improvements, you're certainly right that there's more going on in the endgame these days with the amount of mods that people are running. This also affects the server, as you correctly point out, which is an entirely different area of optimisation.
I don't think the solution is to substantially reduce the amount going on in the Path of Exile endgame. While it can be hectic, that's what people enjoy playing, so a scorched earth policy of changing it to be much simpler would probably be negative overall. I think we can make some small tweaks to endgame content to modify the worst offenders and will of course continue to push on both clientside and serverside performance. There's plenty we can still improve in various places.
Are you or does the team feel that they're done developing maps with new terrain and bosses? I'm not referring to reworking old maps.
We're definitely not done developing maps with new terrain and bosses. We did a big pile of those for the last expansion (Atlas of Worlds) and there are a pile more new areas and bosses for The Fall of Oriath. Future expansions will continue to include new terrain, maps and bosses.
What's something the entire development team didn't expect people to do in Legacy league, or something nonsensical you don't understand why people do?
What's with the "Ethical" SSF thing? I think I missed the start of that meme and now I'm really confused. Is this a serious thing or a joke? Can someone please explain it to me? Thanks.
I do not fully know the profit you have made or plan to make, however have y'all considered directing a poe movie or even tv show?
That'd be pretty cool, but I suspect it'd be a big distraction away from making the game. The only projects that we've been invited to participate in haven't had the budget we'd require to do our game world justice.
As someone who also develops software for a living, i was curious what the dev setups are like: hardware or software, vim vs emacs, vs IDE, etc.
Most of our team use regular desktop computers with a wide variety of hardware (so that we encounter real-world problems before it gets to QA). I personally use a Razer Blade 14" laptop as of February.
In terms of development IDE, the programmers use Visual Studio 2015 (moving to 2017 soon). Those that use linux prefer vim, I hear.
Are there are any plans to make older supporter packs available again?
Definitely not. We told customers that they were exclusive.
Will we ever get 3d art for the race version of whispering ice, or lightning coil, or even voltaxic rift? There are a lot of old uniques that just don't get 3d art.
We're systematically adding 3d art for old uniques and old race rewards, but the amount of resources we can allocate to this is limited. Sometimes supporters have generously contributed to accelerating a particular item that they feel strongly about, but for the most part we just try to assign this project as much budget as we can afford alongside our other commitments.
Realizing that the logistics of such a thing are at least somewhat more complex, have you guys given any thought to (or are there plans for) attending gaming conventions, etc. closer to the Atlantic Ocean?
We'd love to attend a gaming convention on the East coast of America or in Europe, but haven't been able to make it work yet. Travel time is really difficult, and we're somewhat tethered to our office for almost all of the year as there's always something urgent happening. The West coast of America is easier for us normally because most of the journalists are there and because we can travel while we would be sleeping, losing very little of the workday.
Any plans to give us the chance to rotate the camera? At least in the hideout?
The normal answer is "The terrain art is designed to only be viewed from the normal game angle" or "We want people to focus on playing the game rather than fiddling with camera controls". However, it may be worth considering the merit of custom camera controls in certain situations (like the hideout example you gave). The community could certainly do interesting stuff with it.
Suggestion for multi-language: Would be a nice idea to copy the language style of Guild Wars 2. On it, you can play in your language and while pressing the Left-Ctrl key, game looks entirely in english, to see the names of objects in this language to help players on trading pages.
This sounds like a very cool system, but the way we've designed our language stuff is that English is replaced by the foreign language. We'd have to significantly change the system to support this, but I think there would probably be value in that .
A lot of players would wish to create their own unique items or divination cards but can't fork out 1k because they have financial reasons or they are just too young. Do you plan to do competitions for example "a fan art competition" and let winners create and put a pair of them into poe without paying the hefty fee of 1k?
I think that's a good idea for the future. Unique items cost $2.5k now rather than $1k, btw.
Have any of you had to swim to work recently?
Almost. It got pretty bad for some of our staff a few weeks ago.
Will GGG add a button to Reclaim All microtransactions from a character or a way to locate them?
We are trying to design this kind of functionality into our new microtransaction system for 3.0.0.
What is going to happen in Standard with regards to past leagues? Right now, we can't get any league-specific items any more since Zana was changed. Is this how it will stay, and we will only get them through divination cards, or will there be something different?
The currently-running Zana mods are for the duration of the Legacy league because we don't support stacking Leaguestones with the traditional Zana mods. The team see it as a great opportunity to experiment with different mods for Zana. The plan for standard in the future hasn't been fully decided, but the intention isn't to get rid of the old-style Zana mods.
With the recent SSF support, is there ever going to be a mode with boosted drop-rates for people who don't want to trade? The only reason I don't play SSF is because I hate the scarcity of 5/6 links, uniques, and currency more than I hate having to trade for every single gear piece past level 60.
This is unlikely. The game is designed around its current drop rates and SSF mode is meant to be more challenging due to the inability to trade. Even in SSF, people are reaching top-tier content quite quickly.
Why are you withholding the option to create a Custom League with a player's own set of modes?
This isn't a case of withholding an option - it's a system we haven't implemented yet. There's quite a lot of player demand for custom leagues, so we're likely to assign it to an update in the future. As I'm sure you can imagine, there's quite a lot of work that would need to go into the interface for creating and managing these leagues.
That's our third set of questions complete. We may do another set in a follow-up post!
Cuarta parte
The in-game system of skills and crafting is amazing in its logic and variety. Have you thought about creating a PoE card game, or maybe adding a mini-game that you could play with some of the NPCs? (Question from Russian community)
We briefly thought about it but decided not to go ahead with this type of idea. We want to make sure to build on the strengths of PoE's core gameplay and we felt that a built-in card game would be a distraction at best.
Do you plan to add new secrets and traps into Labyrinth? (Question from Russian community)
The team intend to keep updating the Labyrinth over time like any other game content. I can't promise new traps, but it'll certainly get attention (both in terms of content tweaks and ongoing rebalance).
Is it possible to have separate ladders for each region as well as the common ladder? (Question from Russian community)
Yes, this has been discussed a few times recently and has a reasonable amount of support behind it internally. I don't know a timeline yet - probably after 3.0.0.
Will we have a Path of Exile client for Linux? (Question from Russian community)
As we port Path of Exile to more platforms over time, it's more likely that a Linux port will be created. At this stage there is no strong financial argument for it and it would also significantly increase our QA costs, but it may happen one day.
Why are there no rare or unique Leaguestones in Legacy?
There are no rare Leaguestones because there aren't enough mods to support it yet. It'd be cool to make unique Leaguestones, but we decided not to include them in Legacy league because of time constraints. There are many other leagues to work on, as well as 3.0.0. Maybe you'll see rare and unique ones in the future if we continue to expand that system.
When and how was the first concept/idea of PoE born? What was the first steps of its actual realisation?
Jonathan and I had talked about creating an Action RPG for some time prior to us starting Path of Exile. We knew that Erik and Brian were interested in being involved, but we just needed to find the right time to start the project. That time ended up being November 2006, once Jonathan had finished university. Initially we worked on getting a rudimentary online realm up (without 3d graphics) and an item system. Being able to log in, move around and manipulate items was a core early goal.
I was wondering if there has been any consideration of a form of a side pouch for dedicated currency pickup, as inventory slots are valuable and I usually can't afford to carry all the currency that would otherwise enhance my experience of maps and such without sacrificing that space I would otherwise need.
This is a cool idea that the community occasionally suggests. I haven't talked to the team about it recently but it sounds like the kind of thing that would be considered for a later expansion.
What's the process like for getting various new ideas through into testing/development?
An idea is either proposed in a design meeting or through various channels like the "Feature Request" list in our issue tracker. Once it has approval from senior team members, then an early prototype is made to test viability. If this is given the green light then developers work on getting a testable version of the feature across to Quality Assurance. After a number of iterations it gets its final touches like translation and is then added to the appropriate live patch (which could be one that is months away).
Are there any plans for a new engine or engine update so the game doesn't look so dated?
The team are constantly updating the engine and the game's graphics to avoid it looking dated. For example, 3.0.0 has significant improvements to the water tech. I suspect that the areas you feel are dated are the older assets in Acts 1-3 that haven't received attention for a while. We're gradually going back and replacing things (like rocks in Act 1 for example) to address this problem.
Please help settle this once and for all. Is the Atlas mechanic of not having a map unlocked causing it to go down a level (basically allowing for more shores and more strands etc) a real thing? It's very rampant among the community to do this but no one has provided proof that this actually works.
If you have no other maps above or equal to Shore unlocked and then a higher-tier map drops, it will go down a tier to become a Shore. This is useful if you want to trade higher-tier drops for ones with a layout that you prefer over the better items and experience from the other map.
Can tell us something about the "development history" of double dip mechanics (Poison and Ignite mostly)? Was it 100% intended, the result of some miscalculations from the design team, or some unpredicted behaviour of the game code?
It was a consequence of how the calculations used to work. Many years ago when it was first noticed, it was seen as just a harmless quirk because it wasn't particularly overpowered. Over time, as more tools became available to players, it certainly became overpowered and was scheduled for an extensive refactor. Fixing it has been a lot of work but will be worth it.
Why are bosses given complete immunity to certain ailments rather than "reduced effectiveness" or "Unaffected by X"? The latter prevents bosses from being trivialized, while also not gimping legitimate builds that rely on targets simply being under those ailments.
The team intend to tone down or remove outright immunities, potentially as early as 3.0.0. This requires other solutions to the same problems, which are under development.
Why do some of the Master currency offerings seem so... bad? Vagan sells 10 alchemy for 8 regrets. Are you expecting the market/drop rates to significantly change in the future?
There are two types of deals offered by NPCs for currency exchanges. Regular NPCs and Masters. Both are priced to provide a range of values that the player can trade within. If the player-driven trade values stray outside this range then the players can use the NPC values as a fallback. So far this hasn't happened and the player-driven exchange values have generally stayed within the limits we set up. This is a good thing, but does make some of the NPC currency offers appear a little pointless.
Is it OK to feel guilty for killing an albino rhoa? The poor thing was scared and running away, and I slaughtered it. Does that make me a bad person?
Yes.
Why is the Six Linked Sockets fusing orb requirement on Artisan bench so unfairly high? Will this requirement get lowered anytime soon?
I'm sorry that you feel it is unfair, but it was actually set at a rate where there's no penalty for using it compared to the expected number of Orbs of Fusing required to roll the item by hand. It's high because that's how rare six-linked items are.
Would you rather never eat cheese again, or have to eat it with every meal?
My doctor would be very disappointed with my initial answer to this question.
Please let us ctrl-click on items in our inventory while not in town to drop them
This is a great convenience feature for players who know what they're doing, but would be a major liability for new players who may try to lift the item and instead toss it to another player. It's unlikely to be added in this form, but I'll bring the suggestion to the team.
Have you considered adding a new damage type to game? (Psychic/mental please)
Over time, the concepts of burning and poison have almost become their own damage types. We're conscious to not spam too many of these new damage types because the game is already very complex. A new damage type would only be added if it either substantially cleaned up a current system or added more to the game than it cost in terms of complexity.
Could you separate daggers, staffs and scepters into melee- and caster-specific base types? (e.g. dagger that can only roll spell caster mods)
A while ago we introduced a system where the presence of melee- or caster-specific mods on these hybrid base types would bias the generation of the remaining mods in that direction. This helps quite a lot. It's possible that we may one day do what you're suggesting and actually break out some of these hybrid items to be purely for casters or purely for melee.
As Path of Exile grows, and in turn Grinding Gear Games as a company, have you thought of developing other games (in particular -- an MMORPG)?
We don't have the money, time, expertise or desire to develop an MMORPG. Path of Exile is more than enough work for all of us at the moment!
Why does the guild stash work differently than regular stash tab? (e.g. moving tabs, CTRL+clicking items, swapping cursor item for stash item etc.)
The reason is because the guild stash is an entirely different system. It may look like a regular stash, but that's where the similarity ends. With normal stashes, the game server you're connected to has full control of them, so it's easy and fast to move tabs around and fully manipulate items. A guild stash is shared between several instances so involves synchronising all changes immediately with our master database. We have both security and server load considerations with this, so the actions that you can perform are limited to ones that we have verified are safe. It's certainly possible to add the other functionality that you're describing over time, but these are harder features to implement.
Will the beta for 3.0 be like standard regarding league mods?
The Beta for The Fall of Oriath will have just a Standard and Hardcore league. We intend to start the next full challenge league alongside the final launch of The Fall of Oriath on the live realm.
Hi Rachel! Thanks for the interview! Could you please introduce yourself and tell us about your history in gaming?
Hey, sure thing! I'm Rachel and I'm part of the management team in the Customer Support department at Grinding Gear Games. My history of gaming is quite long, going back to Tetris on the original Gameboy, and Spyro on PS1 (really hoping for a remaster sometime soon)!
Nowadays I spend my free time on quite a few different games. Currently I'm playing World of Warcraft (ongoing), Legacy league, Horizon: Zero Dawn, and a few days ago I installed Overwatch so I'm really enjoying that at the moment! 
There's a few other games I'm pretty excited about this year too; The Fall of Oriath (obv) looks phenomenal, plus Red Dead Redemption 2 later this year!
Could you please tell us about your current role at Grinding Gear Games and what an average work day is like for you?
Okay so, first thing I do when I arrive at work is go to the kitchen and get a coffee. After that the day kind of blurs together in a flurry of questions, emails, meetings, and screen glare. During the morning shift we have the blinds closed and the lights turned off in the Support office, effectively making our workspace a cave. It takes us a minimum of four hours to decide what to do for lunch every single day, usually because someone will ask and then everyone gets distracted by what they're doing until one of us remembers we're hungry.
In terms of work my day revolves around training new and existing staff, keeping our internal resources up-to-date, responding to player enquiries both from support@grindinggear.com as well as my own staff email. I also spend a signific
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