Developer Q&A - Part I

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trixxar wrote:

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Kayowah wrote:

Being able to decide for ourselves if we want to risk a possible burnout of the only content we enjoy is too big of a financial risk. Nothing to do with "we don't think you'll enjoy only doing X content." The idea that we want to be able to play until we (possibly) burnout isn't a good business decision for them, so they have to take that decision away from us. Player retention is the goal, not necessarily a better game experience for the player.

The same reason you never let the horse actually catch up to the carrot, or the racing dog catch the little pace rabbit.

The only thing is humans are not dogs and horses and actually able to get patterns quite fast. So if this thing is not win+win, and the signs are against that direction, situation go south quickly.

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Mistwalker wrote:

Almost seems like there's some sort of agenda attached to keeping trade the way it is without any explanation behind it.

Yup.

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SCHMERZHEILER wrote:

Trade still fked, nice

People angry at the trade system have the wrong expectation.

It's like public education. It was never trying to be "good" as people subjected to it would define the word.

The "core value" devs have always held is profit, and trade in its current state is optimal at its true function: Rewarding profitable (in terms of dollars per hour acquired) player psychologies and punishing unprofitable ones.

Hanlon's razor is backwards with regard to corporate behavior. They routinely feign incompetence as cover for malice.

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j33bus wrote:

What these two statements together read is

"If you want to play your favorite part of the game more, you need to play the part of the game that we made intentionally awful and miserable more."

Tradeable content cannot be a solution to giving players choice when you intentional make trading bad. If you want to keep trading bad you have to make obtaining content without trading easier not harder. If you want to make trading awful that's fine, but then you have to treat it like it's an awful part of the game.

This.

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Fapmobile wrote:

I'm glad they don't listen to bad ideas.

Said the guy who who thought "Fapmobile" was a good idea.

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nathlar wrote:

Lets hope there will still be a player base for that time.

The objective is to ship of theseus the entire playbase into a more compliant one. The kind that type "POG" and then buy a supporter pack before logging off till next week.

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鬼殺し wrote:

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DoubleU wrote:

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Chris_GGG wrote:

there's an implicit incentive to making good (i.e. fast) characters.

Right? I read that and was like, 'well, that's that. Time for other ARPGs for me. Failing that, other games in other genres, period'. If 'good' is now synonymous with 'fast' not just from a meta standpoint but from the Mouth of Sauron himself, then I'm done. That rules out 'melee' as 'good', *unless* ranged gets a serious reality check in 3.7, and the rest of what I've read here indicates that's not happening (wouldn't want to piss off the no-lifers too addicted to their speed, who have apparently replaced us whales as the primary source of financial support -- a worrying trend in and of itself). So I think the only way to bring melee up to fast/ranged level 'good' is, as usual, to arbitrarily redefine 'melee' until it's indistinguishable from ranged...OR to give melee a lot more inherent movement -- ie 'be the ball'. Which is still inferior to just firing shit at ranged, all things being equal.

As others have said, I appreciate the time taken here to respond with such detail and clarity -- but I do not appreciate the answers. C'est la fuckin vie.

Beautifully put.

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ಥ_ಥ wrote:

Not even a mention about the sorry state the Story, Lore, and Atmosphere are in. What is this, a simulated leveling meat grinder? time goes in one end, soon to be nerfed builds come out the other?

Yeah they clearly don't give a damn about immersion or atmosphere. The game is 100% meta at this point and they should just run with it as self satire Dungeons of dredmor style.

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KopaKabana wrote:

Anyway, gl to GGG, this game has turned in something im not looking for.

This. Thanks to online only I can't roll back to a fun version.

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Char1983 wrote:

Please, experiment more with voided events and leagues. You can go much more crazy there.

No they can't. This game is a skinnerbox as all casinos are. Conditioning the base is a core element of design philosophy. All relevant controllable stimuli subjected to the base must be carefully managed or you'll undo previous gains. This is why content engagement can't be allowed to be player controlled, it would fragment the base psychologically and GGG wouldn't be able to juggle them all.

There's no such thing as a voided event in this regard.

Bottomline: I can't play standard until trade is changed because choked with unsellable ungiftable stuff too good to vendor, and I don't want to play leagues because trade is required.

The whole game screams "go away." And I can only conclude that is because I have the wrong psychology from the perspective of the designers. I have been selected for replacement.

Leaving poe as I effectively have done for now, actually rewards them. That's how casinos are. The house is always winning, even when people wise to the rig walk out.

Even if we all walked, they've reached a level where the kind of players they want would replace us. Maybe they don't even want PC players or western players at all. Consolidation of effort.

The game will evolve into candy crush if the market allows it.

I've been saying it for several leagues: If you're not playing mf player quant clear speed blond, you're punishing yourself.

P.S. We could fix this ourselves if IPL didn't make it literally a crime. Just sayin.

This forum session was more fun than all of synthesis league.

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the content usually comes with generous reward

LOL

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It has been 18 months since you posted the Trade Manifesto. Do you still stand by it?

This question prompted a long discussion. Many hours of senior developers talking about trade. Our conclusion was: Yes, we do stand by everything we wrote in the manifesto. We are not adding a Trade Market to the PC version of Path of Exile.

Trade is already toxic, keep it in current state is pretty disappointing.

I can imagine Chris with a big smile, scrolling through a full page of fake listings. Just to buy some chisels and sextants "phew I can play the game again."

I guess you are right, there is a certain thrill to finally getting invited by the trade bot you were spamming for 10 minutes.

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Plaguerat313 wrote:

I can imagine Chris with a big smile, scrolling through a full page of fake listings. Just to buy some chisels and sextants "phew I can play the game again."

I guess you are right, there is a certain thrill to finally getting invited by the trade bot you were spamming for 10 minutes.

Pretty sure he is not interested in playing poe at all.
I mean at all - without console commands like 'spawn 1000 chisels in my currency tab' ones.

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Plaguerat313 wrote:

I can imagine Chris with a big smile, scrolling through a full page of fake listings. Just to buy some chisels and sextants "phew I can play the game again."

I guess you are right, there is a certain thrill to finally getting invited by the trade bot you were spamming for 10 minutes.

This is the most irritating aspect of the game for me. He appears to be roughly my age, I'm sure he isn't going to spend 300 hours farming some stupid map over and over to get some rare hideout or map node or 35 cards to drop for some single RNG gated item, so why the hell does he expect me to? It is downright disrespectful of my time, money, and support. I can't see him messaging 50 people and waiting around not playing for hours to get a single missing map or dealing with the rest of the toxic trade garbage, so why does he think we should?

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themrpid10 wrote:

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Plaguerat313 wrote:

I can imagine Chris with a big smile, scrolling through a full page of fake listings. Just to buy some chisels and sextants "phew I can play the game again."

I guess you are right, there is a certain thrill to finally getting invited by the trade bot you were spamming for 10 minutes.

This is the most irritating aspect of the game for me. He appears to be roughly my age, I'm sure he isn't going to spend 300 hours farming some stupid map over and over to get some rare hideout or map node or 35 cards to drop for some single RNG gated item, so why the hell does he expect me to? It is downright disrespectful of my time, money, and support. I can't see him messaging 50 people and waiting around not playing for hours to get a single missing map or dealing with the rest of the toxic trade garbage, so why does he think we should?

PoE uses exactly the same tactics as Anthem - giving players almost no useful loot to stall progression. Except Anthem has a lot of competition in its genre and thus sunk because of that, while PoE is basically a monopolist and therefore can get out with it. Retarding trade system is a part of this strategy, as well as an insanely expensive craft that only chosen few can afford.

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Teodosije wrote:

Delve: Bad, hate it, don't ever wanna play it, i mean whats next? i die cause i touched floor cause its lava?

You literally just described Synthesis. You instafail when you touch the floor because it is blue lava.

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Crystal_Bearer wrote:

Oh, what I wouldn't give for those Synthesis wings. Sadly, they will ever remain out of my reach. RIP :(

Meh, azurite crystal wings are much better.

Why don't you implement an auction house as an event and A/B test your hypotheses on "consequences of easy trade"? As far as I can tell, they are purely speculative/anecdotal on your part.

I say yes to South African servers, since it was posted as a question in the QA it already proves that its a valid concern. I fear that I don't posses enough limbs to count how many times I have died to server issues in the past. There are a bunch of great ISP's to choose from. So time to look at the player region stats. The bad server performance (over a rather large distance) is the only REAL issue I think

Edit - Hosting is not my forte, is why I mentioned the infrastructure is solid (great ISP mention)

Chris, one question.

I know you are afraid to answer individual questions, so maybe just in your head.

Have you ever tried to trade for maps in the last 2 years?

Or

Have you ever gotten through your atlas without trading?

Maybe you should spend those 'hours' arguing about trade actually trying it.

IT IS FUCKING HORRIBLE.

You've ruined an otherwise good thing, at least you made your money first.