Developer Questions and Answers

What are your guys' thoughts on the mainstream gaming industry when it comes to stuff like DRM software, Pay2Win micro-transactions, and overpriced DLC content? Does PoE's stringent Free-2-Play model stem from your own experiences as gamers? And what effect have other games had on your philosophies as developers?

You all over at GGG are basically my heroes for simply running a good, honest game. I've never seen a game as popular as PoE where players willingly donate their hard-earned money to see the game that they love continue to grow. Thank you!

Do you guys have like a Casual Friday thing?

Do you randomly mess with each other just for the fun of it? IE, change computer settings, hide gear, steal pens....

In general, what do you guys at GGG do to have fun at the office? Aside from POE, obviously.

Is there a rule limiting how much POE you can play while on the clock? Non-debugging POE play, OFC.

MMORPGs are an economist's dream because they are living, breathing economy simulators. Have real-world researchers contacted you with regards to your constructed economy? Has GGG published anything related to game economics (perhaps a GameDev presentation)?

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What's your process for setting the rarity tier of a new unique? It must be hard to make the call between letting an item be powerful but uncommon, versus making it weaker but more common. Also, an item's power may turn out to be much different than originally intended. How does the balance team measure an item's power?

Do you guys have any plans to add an "MTX combiner" or a method to reroll MTX (as in reroll multiple for a chance of a new 1) or a partial refund (say 20%) for a duplicate.

Also, I really want to know if you're aware of significant amounts of people refraining from purchasing random boxes because of the massive duplicate issue.

I do understand you guys are still generating income from it so obviously people are still buying it. Really, I just want to know if you understand some (small) portion of us aren't because we end up stuck with 9 Seraph gloves.

How many fish have you caught this league so far?

Game-related Questions:

1) Would it be possible to get an extra "Skill Bar" for Aura skills? It doesn't have to have hotkeys, as you could toggle them on/off via clicking, but it would free up space/time on the main Skill Bar for those of us with a lot of auras that don't really enjoy spending a couple minutes cycling through aura's to turn them on every time they play.

2) There's been a lot of work put into the Lore in this game, would it be possible to have some sort of "Codex" Hideout Decoration where you could peruse obtained lore objects at your own leisure? It's a bit of a pain only being able to see parts of the lore once per playthrough, or in the case of saving the Scion once ever. (I was thinking it could maybe be a reward for the "All Ears" Achievement or similar).


"Team" related questions:

1) Does the team every worry that some of its design decisions are moving in an unhealthy direction?

2) Originally, the intent of "Unique" tier items was to have... Well, "Unique" items, that weren't going to be better than well crafted Rares, but in some cases would enable different playstyles... Is this still the overall intent of Uniques? There's a few Uniques that are overwhelmingly Best-in-Slot for a lot of builds, and I was wondering if these were exceptions, or perhaps Uniques that worked out better than intended, or if you've relaxed the original design choice for Uniques?

Have you considered running weekend events, or something similar, with the parent leagues? What are GGG's collective thoughts on such an idea? I personally believe it would bring some added purpose and excitement to Hardcore and Standard.

Why does flame dash have 3 charges?

When designing a skill, how do you determine which weapon type(s) will be able to use it?

Any chance of switching "Divine Guidance" and "Sanctuary of Thought" on the Hierophant Ascendancy tree and adding an additional effect to "Divine Guidance" that allows MoM to apply to ES and life? It seems like such a waste to have a good amount of ES and MoM that is useless most of the time. (Even with Corrupted Energy it still doesn't mesh well.)

Leveling masters league after league is a bit tedious, would it be too strong if masters leveled as the player did, every 10 levels the player achieves the master gains a level. Players would still have to do missions to gain favour, but it'd allow players who reach level 80 to have level 8 masters.

The change to Zana map mods has been awesome, have you noticed any changes to how much using Zana specific mods has increased since the change?

Skill Tree Questions

Any reason in particular the "Lord of the Dead" and "Heart and Soul" aren't reversed in their positioning, life/mana is more relevant than minion damage for builds to path through. The witch area is a bit annoying to cross over if you aren't crit/minion/area damage based.

Why is Sniper locked behind an ev/es node, usually clusters have themes to them but this breaks that rule.

How do you approach redesigning the skill tree? Do you look at nodes that are under/over performing and tweak accordingly or do you analyze it another way?

Hey chris.

Would GGG ever dwell into the depths of cinematics?

Why was Dominating blow the target of so many Skill killing nerfs?

i mean, 2.0.0 was a hard hit to the skill but gave logic to leveling it

but 2.1 completely killed the skill with a 55% less damage nerf