Developer Q&A - Part I

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BigBadWolf1776 wrote:

Things disliked:

OMG Toxic cancerous TRADE. Even for maps there is a separate site poelivemaps. Let's have more windows open, shall we?

Too many GFX. Sometimes can't see what is going on.

All the extra scripts - poe.trade, poe.items, poe.this, poe.that... Even for filters there is Neversink but noone from GGG. I guess with being streched out as is, community take part of the load.

Here it is: Being used as a beta-tester, over and over. Raw-ass leagues, multiple patches that fix the league at the end of second month. And this one is not even going core.

No wonder people leaving.

funny how their leagues are trash tier, always buggy and bloated yet the MTX items are TOP NOTCH
Never stopped to think about that?

Great questions and great responses!

To whoever asked this: "Will there ever be South African servers?" - yes! As a South African player, I've just resigned myself to playing on EU forever, but if we ever got local servers I'd be beyond overjoyed! :)

When you do something with trade. The only good thing about Diablo 3 was trading. I have enough different idiotic questions and waiting for an item when I want to buy. I do not like haggling - it's a waste of time - so valuable in this game. And so on. It's getting unbearable. Especially on the standard.

TRADE HOUSE WILL BE BEST OPTION.

Hi GGG,

We know that you do not want to introduce Auction House or anything automated in trading, but can you consider streamlining current trade interface alike my idea below? I think this would go a long way in helping players to trade more efficiently and without annoyance of current issues with a system.

It needs changes to UI, thats for certain, so it cannot be implemented completely painlessly with current technology, i think.
First, enable trading from wherever character is. All items, that make sense of course, need to be stackable.
Second when somebody message player with items request, it puts a link for this item in the chat.
If player clicks that link, he/she gets a pop-up (with customized sound), in top left part of the screen, where two options Accept/Deny are selectable. If denied, automatic message is generated and sent to the other player (msg can be preselected from several options).
If Accepted, trade view is opened (which is transparent, so game can still be played), item/items are automatically added to trade and if other player has enough resources in their inventory (of course if they requested exact value for the trade), those resources are put, to trade, automatically as well.

Meh. Kind of confirms what I have been suspecting: The game will not get any more fun for casual players any time soon.

The per-playtime rewards go up with playtime, which may be a smart decision in a way, because it makes the game addictive. But I've grown tired of it.

Still, to end this with a positive suggestion: Please, experiment more with voided events and leagues. You can go much more crazy there.

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KKRT wrote:

Hi GGG,

We know that you do not want to introduce Auction House or anything automated in trading, but can you consider streamlining current trade interface alike my idea below? I think this would go a long way in helping players to trade more efficiently and without annoyance of current issues with a system.

It needs changes to UI, thats for certain, so it cannot be implemented completely painlessly with current technology, i think.
First, enable trading from wherever character is. All items, that make sense of course, need to be stackable.
Second when somebody message player with items request, it puts a link for this item in the chat.
If player clicks that link, he/she gets a pop-up (with customized sound), in top left part of the screen, where two options Accept/Deny are selectable. If denied, automatic message is generated and sent to the other player (msg can be preselected from several options).
If Accepted, trade view is opened (which is transparent, so game can still be played), item/items are automatically added to trade and if other player has enough resources in their inventory (of course if they requested exact value for the trade), those resources are put, to trade, automatically as well.

Hm i dont understand why Auction House will be bad.


In this case, automation is not bad. You just put the item at a certain price at the auction (buy now). You play calmly and let's say if someone has bought from you for an hour (or other time).


You check if someone bought it and that's it. Why more complications here.

Poe trade pages can be used as much as possible.

In any case, the current situation is unacceptable and any improvement will be good. In my opinion, the auction house type solution is the best period

edited

JEBAĆ TĄ LIGE
DZIEKI ZA ZJEBANIE MI 3 MSC W ŻYCIU
KIEŁBASA MOJEGO PSA WAM NA RYJ

CZEKAM NA NOWĄ LIGE
ELO

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

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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.