Herniweb.cz Interview
Herniweb.cz have also posted an interview (in Czech). Here is Google's translation.
Czech is a very difficult language for automatic translators, so the translated interview is difficult to read. We'll be posting an English version in good time. Last bumped on Oct 21, 2013, 7:52:23 PM
| |
Hi there, I'm the editor of Herniweb.cz and fortunately it was me who was asking the questions. Here is the interview in English, hopes it will be interesting reading.
1) Can you introduce yourself and your team? How many people are working on Path of Exile? I’m Chris Wilson, the lead producer of Path of Exile. We have roughly 12 people working on Path of Exile fulltime, plus several contractors. 2) Can you introduce your game? How long is it in development? Path of Exile is an online action RPG set in a dark fantasy world. We started prototyping it with a small team in late 2006. We scaled up development substantially in 2008. 3) How about meeting other players. Will PoE be like others MMORPGs or more instanced like Guild Wars? And what is maximum number of players in group? Path of Exile is indeed instanced. It’s an online action RPG, rather than an MMORPG. Players meet each other in towns which hold 30-100 players depending on the size of the town. Once they have a party, they can venture out into randomly generated instances with a cap of between 4 and 8 players. The entire game is also playable solo. 4) Game will be running on your servers? If so will you be able to guarantee their trouble free work (no lags, no unexpected shutdowns)? Path of Exile is a persistent online game, which means that we host all the servers for ourselves to provide a cheat-free environment. We have put a lot of effort into our server infrastructure and will make sure that they run smoothly. We are planning on having servers in both America and Europe. 5) You said that you will be using micro-transactions. How? Any chances to buy best equipment, more inventory space or faster levelling potions? Path of Exile is both free to download and free to play. The microtransaction perks that we sell are entirely cosmetic without providing a gameplay advantage. For example, alternate spell effects, skins for items, dyes, dark pets and extra animations. In addition, we’ll be offering some paid services such as character renaming and character transfers between realms. 6) We love dark atmosphere and visceral combat because we didn't see it since Diablo 1 and 2. There was many cartoony ARPGs in recent time (Torchlight, Mythos or even Diablo 3), was your goal to make darker game for mature players? Yes. We’re trying to make an dark cut-throat world. We feel that the gritty realism makes for a more immersive gaming experience. 7) Will be possible to play without others players help just as lone-wolf? Yes. All of our areas can be played solo. 8) What about game story, MMORPGs almost always lack in this aspect. Will PoE be different? Are you planning some cutscenes? In Path of Exile, the player has been exiled from their homeland to the post-apocalyptic fantasy world of Wraeclast. Starting with nothing, they must fight to survive and grow more powerful in a very hostile environment. As they explore further into the continent, they discover why things went horribly wrong. We prefer to tell the story through environmental detail rather than forcing the player to read a wall of text. At this time, we don’t plan to have any cutscenes. As an indie studio, we would prefer to spend our budget on gameplay. 9) Will it be necessary to complete some story related quests to progress into another location (like it is normal in offline ARPGs) or game world will be freely accessible? The game world is not initially freely accessible – the player must play through the areas in a somewhat linear order and complete the quests as they come to them. It’s similar to an offline ARPG in that way, because it’s possible to play the game entirely solo if you wish. This ensures that the challenge of monsters that you encounter is pretty fair for your level. 10) Game worlds are usually much bigger in online games, how big will be the one in PoE? We’re initially releasing the game with three acts. Once the player has played through these areas on the first difficulty level, they can then attempt them on higher difficulties, where the monsters’ life, damage, behaviour and item rewards are scaled up dramatically. The world areas in Path of Exile are randomly generated each time you play them. The items and monsters that are encountered also have random variations. More content will be released periodically after release – we have a lot of new areas and features planned. 11) Are you planning to add enough end-game content? Or are you planning more difficulties after completing storyline? There are more difficulty levels, and we’re going to be constantly adding new areas in free post-release expansion patches. Players can of course also engage in PvP tournaments at any time, if they want to test their skill against other players. 12) Gear (equipment, items) is (are) truly alpha omega in ARPGs. How will PoE handle this aspect? We take items very seriously and have put a lot of work into their depth and appeal. Players will instantly feel familiar with Path of Exile’s item system, and will notice many new improved features that add customisation and replayability. Because Path of Exile is played entirely on our online servers, we can ensure a secure economy which rewards people who trade items with other players. In addition, our active skill system is itemised. Players can level up their skill gems and trade them to other players. 13) Skill system in PoE seems very interesting. Can you explain it to our readers? Can you tell us about some individual skills? There are several individual skills that have been announced so far. Some are combat skills such as Leap Slam (the character leaps to the destination, stunning enemies that it lands next to), Cleave (the character swipes his/her sword through a group of enemies, hitting several at once), and Elemental Hit (elemental damage is added to the character’s melee or bow attack). There are of course also magical spells, such as Fireball or Ice Nova. All of these skills are available to find as “skill gems” in the game, which can be socketed into your items to grant the skills and level up as you gain experience. There are dozens of skills planned, and many are quite rare and difficult to find. High level versions of them would be worth a lot in trade. The simple skills are given out by NPCs for completing quests. The interesting part of the skill system is when you combine “support gems” with your skill gems by linking them together in connected sockets. The effect of the support gem is applied to the skill. For example, if you link “Multiple Projectiles” to “Fireball”, then your fireball skill now fires a spray of several fireballs at once. There are hundreds of combinations of support gems to augment your skills with. Some totally change the behavior of the skill, such as making it into a trap, or granting it to your minions. 14) We will kill thousands of monsters. But it is boring to smash just one type, so how many monster types will be in game? Will different kinds use different tactics in battle? Are some unique looking bosses in plan? So far we’ve announced nine types of monsters for Act 1, and there are still several other unannounced monsters in that Act as well. Subsequent acts have their own unique monsters too. All monster types have several variations with different appearances and behaviour. There are many unique looking bosses planned, such as Hillock or Brutus, who you can read about on www.pathofexile.com. 15) When can we expect releasing PoE? What plans do you have with game? Are you planning to support it with adding content? We’re going to enter public beta in early 2011. We’ll continue to add players to the beta until the game is open to all, and released later that year. We have a schedule of post-release expansion content planned. There will be additional acts, items, monsters and features released periodically. 16) There is your chance if I forgot to ask something you want to answer. (“How can players find out more information about your game or sign up for the beta?”) We’ve updated the game’s website www.pathofexile.com with plenty of extra information about the game and we frequently answer players’ questions on the forums. Accounts created on this website are game accounts, so they are automatically entered into the drawing for beta access once that becomes available. | |
Thanks for posting Alanor!
I am a poor freezingly cold soul
So far from where I intended to go |
|
Yes thanks for posting, we are all craving as much info as we can get on this game!
The path of exile holds him, not at all twisted gold, a frozen spirit, not the bounty of the earth.
|
|
Thanks Alanor, good read, good questions, and got me even more excited.
"Do or do not, there is no try" -Yoda
| |
Glad I could help. I'm also excited about Path of Exile. We've been playing Diablo 2 for way too long.
| |
This was a great read!
|
|