INSTANT BUY-OUT TRADING in PoE2 & Itemized Aisling and other services in PoE 1?!?!Summary

🎮 Jonathan Rogers, the game director of Path of Exile 2, and Rishi, a game designer, discuss their roles and work, focusing on items and ascendancies.

❓ Zen, the interviewer, emphasizes asking questions based on personal interest for better follow-up queries.

🗺️ Discussion about the endgame in Path of Exile 2, exploring possibilities of standalone endgame content independent of the map system.

📦 The conversation shifts to the homogenization of loot and the potential for exclusive rewards tied to specific game mechanics.

🎯 Marketing strategies for Path of Exile 2 are examined, focusing on attracting new players while retaining existing ones.

🕹️ Jonathan suggests future live streams with streamers to showcase in-game content, aiming to reassure existing players about the depth in Path of Exile 2.

🛠️ The challenges of balancing bosses and rare monsters are discussed, with a focus on making map bosses more engaging and challenging in Path of Exile 2.

💬 Overall, the interview provides insights into the development philosophy and future plans for Path of Exile 2, addressing both new and veteran players' concerns.

🎯 - Divination cards in Path of Exile (PoE) allow targeted farming of specific items, but their future in PoE2 is uncertain.

🌍 - Div cards typically drop in specific zones, contrasting with items that have a global drop rate but are more likely to drop in certain areas.

🔍 - The idea of div cards for boss-specific loot is debated, with concerns about them devaluing boss drops.

👥 - Community involvement in creating divination cards is valued, but their design and balance pose challenges.

🛠️ - There are considerations for allowing supporters to design unique items in PoE2, acknowledging both the value and complexity of this process.

🔄 - Some iconic uniques from PoE1, possibly including supporter-designed items, may appear in PoE2, potentially with changes.

🎨 - Cosmetic item design in PoE is tied to specific armor pieces, with discussions about potentially separating cosmetics from their functional armor slots.

🔁 - Changes to the MTX (microtransaction) system are being considered, affecting both PoE1 and PoE2.

🤔 Policy on One-Shot Mechanics: The speaker believes that completely eliminating one-shot mechanics in games is not ideal, as they add variety and challenge. However, fairness is crucial, and players should have warnings or indications of potential high damage.

🎮 Game Mechanics and Monster Design: In the context of 'POE2', the speaker discusses the complexity of monsters and the importance of designing challenging mechanics. There's an emphasis on creating diverse and interesting combat encounters.

⚔️ Combat Strategy and Monster Mods: The focus is on designing new monster mods to enhance gameplay difficulty. The speaker prefers mechanics that require players to adapt their combat strategies.

💥 On-Death Effects and Combat Dynamics: The speaker discusses the role of on-death effects in games, emphasizing their purpose to make combat more strategic rather than just adding difficulty.

🛑 Game Pausing and Player Experience: There's a discussion about the possibility of pausing the game during interactions with NPCs to avoid player frustration, especially in combat scenarios.

🔄 Respecing and Game Accessibility: The speaker is against making respecing completely free, especially for new players, as it diminishes the impact of their choices. However, there's an acknowledgment of the need for a better system to help players understand their choices without harsh penalties.

🌟 Game Design Philosophy: Throughout the discussion, there's an emphasis on balancing difficulty, player choice, and the impact of those choices in the game. The speaker advocates for mechanics that challenge players and encourage strategic thinking, while also considering player experience and accessibility.

🤔 Game Balance: Discusses the balance in Path of Exile (PoE), emphasizing the ease of acquiring currency and items in the current state of the game.

🎮 Character Progression: Highlights the debate over whether advancing a character to high levels like 100 should be easier than rerolling a new character.

🛠️ Character Respecing: Addresses the complexity and cost involved in completely respecing a character, suggesting a balance between difficulty and accessibility.

⚖️ Player Perspectives: Recognizes different player views on the cost and difficulty of in-game actions, particularly for streamers versus average players.

🔄 Game Longevity vs. League Participation: Discusses the game's goal of encouraging players to return for each league, rather than prolonging play in a single league.

🚀 Development Goals: The speaker reflects on the need to align development with player concerns and be open to changing opinions based on player feedback.

🏁 Private League System in PoE2: Confirms that the private league system will continue in Path of Exile 2, with potential for further development.

🧩 Modifications and Balance: Talks about the challenges and potential issues with adding positive mods in private leagues, especially in terms of game balance and player experience.

🤷 Community Feedback on Mods: Discusses the need to consider the overall impact of mods on player aspirations and the perceived value of achievements within the game.

💭 SSF Drop Rates: Contemplates the possibility of adjusting drop rates in Solo Self-Found (SSF) leagues while acknowledging the complexities related to trading and game balance.

🤔 Understanding Priorities: The speaker acknowledges potential changes in their system but indicates these aren't top priority currently. They express interest in adding new features when time permits.

🎮 Gaming Feature Discussion: Discussing the idea of an enemy skill filter, the speaker is skeptical. They aim to address visual clarity issues in their game without needing such a filter.

🚫 Technical Challenges: Concerns about the technical feasibility of reducing effect opacity are raised, noting that it could alter the appearance and break certain game aspects.

🌐 Consistency in Game World: The speaker emphasizes maintaining a consistent reality in the game world, expressing discomfort with the idea of selectively turning off effects.

🔄 Game Development Insights: Ongoing discussions about these features and their implications for the game are mentioned, indicating an iterative approach to game development.

🎲 Game Mod Mechanics: The conversation shifts to the mechanics of boss mods and map rolling in the game, exploring possibilities for future updates.

✨ Positive vs Negative Mods: The idea of positive-only mods is discussed, weighing the pros and cons and the impact on player experience and game balance.

🛑 Player Experience Concerns: The speaker expresses dislike for certain monster mods that feel like "speed bumps", hindering the gameplay experience.

🌟 Dual Specialization System: The game features a dual specialization system, allowing players to effectively use multiple damage types in their builds.

🛡️ Resistances vs. Immunities: While full immunities aren't included, the game allows for punitive resistances to encourage diverse build strategies.

🎯 Targeted Immunities Concern: Players express concerns about build-targeted immunities, particularly how they can excessively nerf certain builds.

🐉 Preference for Challenging Monsters: Some players enjoy challenging monsters, like those with extra life, but dislike specific skill-targeted immunities.

💥 Elemental Damage Balance: There's a discussion about balancing elemental damages (e.g., fire, ice, lightning) to ensure no single element becomes dominant.

⚡ Power vs. Diversity in Elemental Damage: The game aims to incentivize using multiple elements by offering unique advantages, like shock for lightning damage.

🔄 Adapting Builds to Challenges: The game encourages players to adapt their builds to different challenges, rather than focusing on a single strategy.

👾 Monster Mods and Build Adjustments: Discussions about how monster mods (e.g., -90% fire damage) should impact build strategies and player behavior.

🤔 Concerns about Over-Punitive Mods: There's a debate over how punitive certain mods should be, balancing the need for challenge without frustrating players.

🧩 Finding Solutions within Builds: The game design aims to prompt players to find solutions within their builds to overcome specific monster challenges.

🚫 Against Full Immunity: The consensus is against full immunities for monsters as they can overly penalize certain builds.

🔍 Identifying Items – The Town Cycle: The process of identifying items in town is seen as an important part of the game loop, adding intrigue and value to item discovery.

🎁 Double Intrigue of Item Drops: Unidentified items add a layer of excitement and anticipation, both when they drop and when they are identified in town.

📉 Reducing Bad Item Outcomes: Discussion about decreasing the percentage of bad items among drops, emphasizing quality over quantity.

🧩 Item Mods and Player Choice: Highlighting the importance of not dictating which mods should go together, allowing players to make their own decisions.

🔄 Balancing Item Drops and Crafting: Aiming to make both dropped items and crafted items equally exciting and valuable.

🚫 Limiting Certain Mods: Considering blocking lower-tier mods on higher-level items to improve item quality.

🧰 Diverse Drop-Only Mods: Discussing the potential for niche, drop-only mods that cater to specific builds without dominating all gear choices.

💠 Value of White Items: Acknowledging the unique value of white items as they offer a 'start from scratch' option in crafting.

🔍 Veiled Items and Content-Specific Mods: Evaluating the balance between making certain mods available through specific content and maintaining overall game balance.

💥 Item Sinks and Game Mechanics: Discussing the inclusion of mechanics like Valorbs and potentially recombinators to keep the item economy dynamic.

⏯️ Game Pausing Mechanics: Addressing the potential implications of unlimited pausing in gameplay, particularly in boss fights and puzzles.

🕹️ Immediate Game Resumption Post-Pause: Confirming that gameplay will instantly resume to full speed after unpausing.

📜 Maven/Eldritch Boss Invites: Brief mention of invitations for special bosses, without confirmation of their presence in the new system.

🎮 Emphasizing Skill Use Variety: The game design focuses on making each skill advantageous in specific scenarios, encouraging players to vary their skill use instead of repeating the same ones.

⚖️ Balancing Challenges: Balancing skills involves significant adjustments, particularly in making the effects of area-of-effect (AOE) and single-target skills more distinct and impactful.

🌟 Enhanced Skill Synergies: The game introduces mechanics where skills combine effectively, such as armor break combos, necessitating strategic skill combinations for optimal damage output.

👾 Monster Design Considerations: Monsters are designed with distinct characteristics, making the choice of skills and strategies more relevant and challenging for the players.

🛡️ Resistance and Immunity Adjustments: The game avoids complete immunities but emphasizes significant differences in resistances, requiring players to adapt and choose appropriate skills.

🔐 Third-Party Two-Factor Authentication: Plans to implement this security feature are acknowledged, noting the complexities involved, particularly in handling account recovery issues.

🏆 Unique Item Philosophy: Unique items are designed as puzzle pieces that may not be universally useful but can become valuable in specific builds or situations.

📈 Unique Item Design Evolution: The approach to unique items evolves, focusing on ensuring they offer significant benefits or unique properties to justify their use, especially those without inherent life bonuses.

🗝️ Magic Find Mechanics: Adjustments to magic find mechanics, such as removing player quantity and revising rarity as a mod on items, are made to balance the game's item finding aspects.

✨ Technological Advancements for Uniques: While no major technological leaps are highlighted, systemic changes allow for more creative and impactful unique items.

📊 Scaling System: Leech resistance scales with monster level, not individual monsters.

🧛 Leech Mechanics: Leech is simplified - damage done leeches life over one second without complex stacking rules.

🛡️ Leech Resistance: Monsters have leech resistance that increases with level, reducing leech effectiveness.

📈 Stat Display: Potential to show leech amount on stat screen.

🌱 Life Regen: Life regeneration mechanics remain the same, with careful control over recovery speed.

🛡️ Defense Mechanics: No removal of advanced defense mechanics like spell suppression.

🚫 Set Items: Set items are unlikely due to gameplay constraints and preference for player-created synergy.

🏆 Item Tiers: No new item tiers above rare; emphasis on unique items and mod dilution concerns.

🩳 Pants in Game: Pants are incorporated into the boots slot, adding variety to character appearance.

🏅 Chase Items: Chase items in Path of Exile 2 (PoE2) will be rare and powerful, balanced by rarity.

🔄 Itemization of Services: Efforts to itemize services (like Ashling slam) to avoid non-itemized trade scenarios.

📈 Shift in Trade Perspective: The speaker acknowledges the need to change the current trading system, inspired by the success of other games like Last Epoch.

🎮 Game Design Principles: Emphasizes the importance of avoiding binding items in the game, which is a core design choice.

🔄 Trade System Complexity: Discusses the challenges of creating a balanced trade system, avoiding extremes of either too easy or too restrictive trading.

🛒 Instant Buyouts Necessity: Recognizes that players now expect and demand instant buyouts in the trading system.

🔍 Search Function Importance: Accepts the need for an effective search function for trading, alongside instant buyouts.

🏦 Gold as a Trade Regulator: Proposes using gold, a non-tradable resource earned through gameplay, as a means to regulate trading.

🔄 Implementation Considerations: Discusses potential solutions and challenges in integrating these new trade mechanics into the game.

🚫 Botting and Security Concerns: Addresses the issue of botting and ensuring fair play within the new trading system.

💰 Economic Balance: Talks about maintaining economic balance, preventing market distortions, and setting appropriate costs for different types of trades.

🤖 Adapting to Automation: Recognizes the difficulty in completely eliminating bots but stresses the importance of a system resilient to such challenges.

🎲 Fair Market Values: Discusses how the system could lead to fairer market values for items, comparing it to high-frequency trading in real-world economics.

🛠️ Ongoing Adjustments and Feedback: Open to continued adjustments and feedback, emphasizing the need to evolve with player expectations and market dynamics.

🔄 Change Required: Implementing the discussed ideas would require significant changes and adjustments.

⌛ Duration Note: The conversation is approaching a two-hour mark, suggesting it's time to wrap up.

❓ Question Opportunity: There's an open invitation for any last-minute questions or topics.

🌐 Global Announcements Query: Interest in the continuation and customization of global announcements in the game.

✂️ Feature Removal Explanation: Explanation provided for the removal of masteries in the game, focusing on integrating special features directly into the game's nodes.

🍍 Fun Debate: A light-hearted disagreement over the preference for pineapple on pizza.