Chris Wilson and Neon answers some burning questions

Pretty cool to listen to that. I wished they would have commented a bit more on the number part of melee and not only the gameplay part. I like that it was admitted that melee is "embarassing" currently in PoE 1 and not brushed it off with every thing is fine so they are very aware of the melee situation. At the offense capabilities part of the interview they made it clear that they can bump the numbers in speed or damage.

Overall a great interview experience. I guess PoE 2 will be the better game.

Nice gesture to invite him for an interview after the dubious mobile presentation segment.

Is it just me or is Mark being groomed to be Chris' successor?

Good to hear that after POE2 releases some of the team will return on making content for POE, we'll hold them to that I'm sure.

Sad about no info about POE lifespan after POE2 is released.

The part about offenses was interesting to listen to but at the same time i honestly don't really buy it. Mark said that power has reached a level where it's causing all kinds of problems and that the nerfs they introduce are to solve those issues and free up design space. So far so good, very understandable and i am fairly sure nobody would complain if they acted along those lines, i certainly wouldn't. But looking at their actions that's either a lie or they miss the mark by a mile.

If they really wanted to get rid of the ridiculous amount of scaling available, is removing threshold jewels and nerfing ascendancies really the thing that jumps to mind? In the grand scheme of things, that stuff is borderline insignificant. The only people that get hurt by those kind of changes are the ones at the bottom of the power ladder where there aren't any issues.

If they really wanted to stop the scaling absurdities there is one very easy thing to do that would help way more than all the nerfs they've done in the past decade put together.
Remove more multipliers to attack/cast speed and damage and readjust monsterlife along with that. They can't really prevent natural more multipliers like how attack speed and attack damage interact with each other. But do we need key stones and gems with tons of that stuff on them? I don't think so.

Just change them to increased damage so there is diminishing returns on stacking this stuff instead of right now where the more multipliers you have, the more increase in power each of them brings. This is the reason why things get so utterly out of control at the high end and i just can't imagine them not being aware of this.

Also, why do they make massive nerfs to stuff that certainly wasn't causing issues due to it having fairly low power to begin with like bleed with the reasoning they want to free up design space, and then they just leave it at that. For years no less. If you feel your design space is restricted by something and want to replace it with something else that you feel is less restrictive, fine go ahead, you have my blessing. But just removing a ton of power for design space and then not even using said space for years to come leaving a mechanic completely in the dumpster? What's the point?

As we have been repeatedly and forcefully reminded by wiser minds on this very forum, nothing the GGG Devs say can be taken as a firm commitment, including anything said in this video. The proof, as always, will be in the pudding. ='[.]'=

They didn't answer a single question i had, They just made me feel worse about the game and its future.

All side-stepping the last minute decision they made to deny us the unified endgame, and it was a last minute decision as they nerfed items in preparation for the merge just before this patch.

I want answers about the negative stuff that they are afraid to address, How about some of that empathy GGG, So many of us were just locked out in the cold and you don't answer anything on these.

This was a super cool video. I'd love if the devs just sat down and talked about whatever is on their mind in long form every now and again. Does not have to be an interview, just whatever they want to say.

Thanks Subtractem for the interview.

An excellent interview. I particularly appreciated Mark's/Neon's comments in the "Offense and Borrowed Power" section about how the factually insane jump between regular T16 bosses and Pinnacle content means the vast majority of players can't even attempt that content. They don't even get to see it, save maybe to waste a set of keys once to get into the content, faceplant against a brick wall of literally billions of HP, and realize they'll never be able to complete that content. Ever. That and other things they said really dial in what they're trying to do with Path of Exile 2 to me.

Sharply limiting damage multipliers from support gems, no life on the passive tree...wherever possible, Grinding Gear seems to be lessening or outright removing the ability to Bullshit The Math in favor of Making Interesting Decisions instead. Right now, PoE1 isn't about making interesting decisions for your build - it's about figuring out how to Bullshit The Math to scale very basic, largely uninteresting decisions to levels of absurdity that simply lock out almost the entire playerbase.

Instead of saying "you need to figure out how to effectively build a ten million times damage multiplier on your skill and a ten million times damage divisor on enemy skills and we're going to offer you no help in doing that", the new game is using the opportunity to instead make the question "what mechanical, qualitative decisions do you want to make to improve your character's ability to progress further?" That is a much stronger paradigm that will preserve all the depth and complexity Path of Exile is known for without making the entire thing a math test where you can't see half the numbers.

Also quite good to see their stance on melee, and how to improve PoE1's melee with lessons learned from PoE2. I know "BETTER MELEE" is a meme in PoE1, but the devs clearly understand why 'BETTER MELEE' is a meme. It has nothing to do with the damage or speed of the skills - again, you can Bullshit The Math such that Heavy Strike deals 1B Uber DPS, but that doesn't make Heavy Strike feel good to play. Melee in path of Exile is stiff, awkward, and compromises character mobility unless you scale action speed to another absurd BS-The-Math number, at which point your character feels unnatural instead of stiff.

Ironically, the level of BS Math in PoE1 is probably a deterrent to melee fixes rather than an aid - when bosses scale to literally billions of HP, there's not much room for adjusting the relative numbers such that the stand-and-bonk skills that are apparently the only things that count as "melee" in Path of Exile do better by comparison. Where is the design space to make Heavy Strike better when the game needs to be balanced around a tenth of a percent of players casually throwing out over a billion DPS while the average player struggles to reach 100k? Make Heavy Strike good enough that the 100k people can reliably use Stand-And-Bonk melee and the 1B people will quite literally one-shot Uber Maven with it and complain about the game being bad. Again.

This all just makes me even more excited to see what this team can do with a new, modern game unbeholden to the baggage of BS Math. Mmm. Thanks for sharing the interview, I don't pay any attention to Subtractem and I would've missed it.

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SilentSymphony wrote:

who is neon?

The cousin of neo, he'll help us break free of the matrix.

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MadMossy wrote:

"

SilentSymphony wrote:

who is neon?

The cousin of neo, he'll help us break free of the matrix.

I figured it was a streamer, Since when are the devs going by gamertags.

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SilentSymphony wrote:

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MadMossy wrote:

"

SilentSymphony wrote:

who is neon?

The cousin of neo, he'll help us break free of the matrix.

I figured it was a streamer, Since when are the devs going by gamertags.

He was a POE gamer before they hired him, wrote in the forums too I think.