GhazzyGrimTunaChris

============================
HARD MODE
============================

Q: What is Hard Mode and what does it have to do with softcore trade? Some folks are worried about it shifting development away.
A: Allows to test for core assumptions of the economy, in a rather controlled and clean environment. Will have fewer variables to control for and have an ease of creating isolation-based testing. Also a philosophical check on how content should be handled internally. The game has been stripped down to its core and content is being added back bit by bit, creating conversations about that content. It's also a playground where more extreme nerfs can go. Also a place for radical experiments to learn more about possible systems, as it's detrimental for the larger game.

Q: Does that make Hard Mode the PTR for PoE?
A: Not exactly. It's a different experience but it's possible that things in Hard Mode could then be pushed to testing for the main game.

Q: If Hard Mode could have existed in the past, what systems would have been tested there first? And will any of the upcoming proposed changes, such as loot 2.0 be found on hardmode early?
A: Well, can give an example of one that they were too scared to implement in the main game: So as it currently stands when you go back to town, your flask and life replenishes. In hard mode (more in line with D2), you will have to then interact with a vendor to heal/refill flasks. Another example is checkpoints, right now many checkpoints are outside of boss arenas allowing softcore players to overcome certain bosses by attrition due to corpse run strategies. In Hard Mode, the checkpoints will be much further back.
A2: As far as testing new systems in Hard Mode, it and the core game share source code, the main differences between them will be mostly numeric. While there are solutions to independent testing in Hard Mode, it would be preferred to keep the two modes on the same source.

Q: How is Hard Mode testing going to yield data that will help softcore?
A: The process of making Hard Mode requires going back through and re-understanding how the content interacts together. It allows for a better understanding of certain systems, such as compelling crafting systems and allows for better identification of potential problems before unleashing those changes on softcore trade.

Q: When Hard Mode was announced, it was clear that this is something that Chris is excited about, but it left some feeling like maybe this was going to take a lot of focus away from the game and game modes they like to play, especially for those who have little to no interest in Hard Mode.
A: Chris is Management Director, not Creative Director. He handled the business stuff, which is centered around keeping players happy. Hard mode should fundamentally drive satisfaction upwards for both types of players, those who want to play it and those who do not. Those who do will have the harder game they've always wanted and the core game will be more sheltered from certain nerfs and balance passes.

============================
ITEMS, CRAFTING
============================

Q: What are the important qualities of an item in an ARPG?
A: Tradeablitity is important. That's why even SSF has the ability to migrate to trade in case something is found that has a lot of value and can be used to further a build or otherwise. Items should be random. Bases will be random. Mods will be random. Tiers of those modes will be random. The pacing of upgrades is important to the game. The ideal curve of player upgrades would be fast and frequent upgrades at the beginning (think leveling and some early maps) into more nuanced upgrades that take crafting, farming or otherwise that become more incremental. It's important that there are still items that are challenging to create and/or exceedingly rare and "perfect" items should not exist outside of extreme instances of luck.

Q: Currently in this patch, there's ways to craft 6 T1 mod items aka "perfect items." How does this make you feel as a game designer?
A: If we didn't have to take in account player expectations, then yes, these methods would be changed, but one of the lessons we've learned through mistakes over the last decade is that you can't just nerf things due to its incompatibility with "the vision." They're interested in providing new ways to get certain items better.

Q: Do you think current PoE reflects this idea of the itemization/upgrade "curve"?
A: Doesn't think that the itemization and upgrade curve is currently in a spot that aligns with their idea of how it should be and what they want for the game. Having said that it doesn't need to adhere entirely to "the rules," there should be some variance, where maybe you get an item occasionally that's a lot nicer than you were expecting earlier than expected. We're reviewing it, and a lot of it comes down to itemization in the end game, with some good changes on the way.

Q: Things like Conqueror, Awakener, and Maven orbs basically make it so that you'll never find the best item on the ground, and fundamentally hamstring the upgrade process in some ways. But if you're in the end game and you're not crafting on an influenced base, you're pretty much wasting your time. Are influences/orbs here to stay?
A: Influences are really neat and compelling which is cool, but a design challenge. The influences are tied to the respective parent content, and the end game is still being worked out. Things could change, and some content could go away, but there's a focus on making the new end game very compelling.
More Item Stuff:
Deterministic Item Acquisition/Crafting: Should be used sparingly. Relatively boring treadmill. Achieving that goal isn't necessarily interesting to show off to others. There will be some things that are deterministic, just have to make other things far more compelling and leave it to being a boring grind.

Q: So, with the implementation then revocation of Harvest crafting, the more casual softcore player that felt like they had some understanding and control over their outcomes no longer has it. The general idea is that there needs to be a push to some sort of middle ground system. Do you think PoE is in that spot currently? Or are there plans to provide it?
A: We feel the current crafting system is in an okay place, but that's in the absence of player feedback. We hear feedback that players are still wanting more determinism. We're not sure what form that will eventually take. There are places where determinism is still too easy to achieve, and there's places where it could be easier to achieve.

Continued:
Importance of mods and mod distributions remains fundamental to the item system. The fact that there are tiers and the breakdown of prefixes and suffixes remains important, especially with new modifiers being added. With the defense rework, some of these prefixes and suffixes could change. The metacrafting associated with them such as blocking and otherwise are a key part of crafting. Similarly some mods are thematic and that's important too, like movement speed being a boot thing.

Unique items even have core systems and variability. There's the ranges within the item rolls, but there's also corruption outcomes and synthesized implicits and other such things that vary how a unique is, allowing for a sort of mini system to exist for each one.

In summary: Determinism is in some aspects, positive for the game. When there has been determinism, there's usually a positive player response. That doesn't mean players should get everything, but there's also a lot of work to be done. We're not anti-determinism.

Q: So since there's still "formulas" for crafting perfect items currently, they kind have become one of the only things that exist on the high end for sale. It ends up restricting what's available for people to buy.
A: I'm not blaming harvest, it's also existing systems contributing to this. The idea is to create new crafting systems that allow for more variance of items to be created with more ease.

Q: In the endgame progression, from starting maps to pushing the absolute end-game, there's a number of roadblocks that occur to progress a player's power. Certain systems, such as skill gems, are deterministic as it is to just go to trade and get a certain awakened or alt quality. For the skill tree, you're restricted by levels for what you're able to achieve and how many points you have. For crafting, however, harvest served to allow incremental upgrades and ways past the certain roadblocks. How do they feel about these roadblocks/brick walls?
A: There's a lot of brick walls/roadblocks in the game. It can be the last Uber Lab trial, it can be getting a 6L, it can be a lot of things. PoE is a game where they put in challenges, such as bosses, and some tools, and let the players figure it out. We try not to tell players how to play, we let them work out the solutions. They would argue that if you're in Trade (since its a Trade SC-focused podcast) that Trade is in fact the most deterministic system. If you have a pile of chaos, you can get the items you need, and if you need chaos, there's ways of getting that as well.

Q: That works as an example for meta builds where crafting is being done and the items are readily available for purchase. If you are playing a non-meta build, sometimes the items you need do not exist on trade or are very very expensive.
A: By playing a non-meta build, there may be low supply, but there's also low demand. We feel very strongly that we should not interfere with the economy in this fashion, as it's basically regulation to do so.

Q: On the high end of crafting, things are fine. With a certain amount of currency, you can pretty much always create the items you want. But if you're an average player a lot of people default to purchasing the items after harvest changes, which is a shame.
A: He does think that crafting could be made more approachable and friendly to allow for this to become a tool for more players to use and craft. Some degree of tooling in the game for crafting to help players learn and understand it would help.

Q: Are there any plans for any sort of currencies or crafting that allow for existing items to be improved? Current crafting is either 0 or 100, where an item is either in-progress or completed. If you miss a certain outcome, you have to essentially use currency that rescrambles the item mods only. It would be nice to take a "miss" and improve it into something usable (which is what harvest did the most).
A: Starting with a certain item and then pushing it to a perfect item is a danger to the item progression goals we have in mind. There's some things like fated uniques which are some items that are just better, but we feel there are a number of ways that already exist to upgrade your items in path of exile. Again, not anti-determinism, but ideally want a split in favor of randomness. The example given is 70% Random, 30% Deterministic.

Q: A majority of people who are crafting right now are not crafting for themselves. It's almost never cost efficient to craft for your own build. Is this a problem?
A: This is a natural consequence of the economy, but we understand its affecting player enjoyment. To solve it means fighting against the core economic concepts of supply/demand. That being said, they would like more SSF sort of options in the game.

When Expedition is re-introduced, splinters will be nontradeable and auto-pickup.

Q: What is being done to solve the brick wall feeling casual players have as they approach gearing/crafting?
A: There's no plan currently implemented, instead, there's a lot of discussions being had, that will be supplemented with the data taken from Hard Mode to help understand what players will be doing and looking for to progress their gear. We agree it's a concern.

Q: What do you think of meta crafting? It's a useful tool in some regards, but a lot of current crafting is almost always created in a certain way alongside harvest, or aisling.
A: We recently have been looking at the progression of the various crafting systems. They feel that Eternal Orbs were a mistake, and in that same thread Metamods were a mistake. Metamods have combined with a number of other systems to be particularly dangerous. They believe this was the starting point of determinism. They want another system that's compelling in a different way.

===============================
END GAME, ASPIRATIONAL CONTENT
===============================

Q: What are the key takeaways from the conqueror end game system, and what are the things you've learned (and maybe won't do in 3.17)?
A: As far as the 3.17 end game, that will have to be saved for the announcement, its development is ongoing. They're being very careful to consider a lot of options, as it's something that's very important that they get right. They're learning from the current end game systems and the feedback on them as much as possible, ie: the Maven Atlas Passives are very top heavy and players are feeling like they have to do all of them to be able to move on.

Q: Some players really like running one map, similar to running Baal or Mephisto in D2, so are we going to see this in the future? And if not, then why not?
A: The map favorite system combined with trade allows players to specialize in the content they want to. We think it's in a good place there. We like the idea that players can focus on a certain map, but we do not want players to 100% focus on that. We don't want to go all in on it. We want systems where you can have a bias to certain outcomes but can't guarantee them.

Q: Players really want to play a certain map, and they are willing to trade for it, but the trading system is very frustrating. Then they get even more frustrated that they cannot sustain the maps themselves. There's a lot of pressure being put on trade, and how bad it is. If you let up on some of these systems would that ease up or fix part of the complaints from trade?
A: This is feedback that's being looked at for 3.17's end game development. Something that's being evaluated is the baseline juiciness of a map being raised, to take the requirement feeling of having sextants and scarabs and such off of the player and turn them into luxury items. You won't need to trade for them as often. This is NOT confirmed, this is just discussion.

Q: Do you feel like trade is an appropriate tool, is it in a good place for how it fits into overall game balance?
A: Right now the feeling is that players have to trade too much, but regardless trade will always be something players turn to and use often to solve problems. Agree that having to trade to do every map is not a good place. Even talking about potentially deitemizing some of the current juice methods.

Q: Right now the current mapping experience is interrupted 3-4+ times per map with various mechanics with their own UI, rules, strategies, etc. Is there any plans to reduce this load, especially on newer players, or introduce more player agency so that content can be seen when desired.
A: By default, you'll always have 1 league mechanic. However some of them don't stack up. In the new end-game system, it may be very different. Atlas passives may not even exist in 3.17. We want to make sure players have the ability to specialize in the league mechanics they like, though.

Q: In previous iterations, red maps were considered to be difficult content. Now they're achievable by a decent chunk of the playerbase. What's currently the equivalent challenge in this current endgame?
A: We want pinnacle fights to be accessible to good, skilled players. There's two things that you need in a pinnacle fight, which is both power and knowledge. Each league there's more power creep, more tools become available. The line creeps down over time. But when released, only the players with the knowledge and power defeat it. But once it's been out for a while, and players have it figured out and it becomes baseline, then that's when we need to introduce new challenges. The lesson here is that we need to expand/change the aspirational content often. With that in mind, the new endgame is being designed to be modular enough to have tweaks made and changes so that there's new stuff every 3 months.

Q: Was 100% Delirious, 4 Scarab, Permanent Sextant maps ever purposefully meant to be the "end game" of mapping?
A: We like the idea of people making super juiced maps and then being crazy enough to clear it. We didn't expect it to be farmed to the extent it has been, mostly due to the fringe-abuse case of fractured fossiling the maps in question. So, we've had to subvert player expectations here. The expectations of what people are doing in the end game are not very reasonable.

Q: Building a "perfect" character is one of the most satisfying things in an ARPG. What sort of content are you cooking up to make this a thing?
A: We like the idea of putting content out there that's near-impossible or incredibly difficult to solve. The problem is perceived build diversity. They either put the content out with the expectation that *somehow* all builds out there are magically capable of doing it, or only a limited set of builds are capable of it and then there's diversity issues. An example of this currently is deep delve where there are only certain builds capable of doing this content. They like the idea of offering content that needs to be heavily specialized for but as a community if this content is desired, then some exceptions to the complaints of lack of diversity must be made. One important thing to note: you will not likely have aura or cursebots to carry you through it. Nerfs are expected for them.

Q: So when previously asked, GGG stated it was okay with where aurabots were, but now you're saying that you're nerfing them because there is a player expectation to do so? That it is "requested"?
A: When the community has the amount of upset presented as such with aurabots, pushing that balance change to a later date would not be a good decision for the company. A lot of 3.16 is about certain revisions to re-win trust back from the community and this includes their balance pass. Aurabots trivialize the game for those not using them, so they will have to be adjusted. Discussions are being had as to how these changes will occur. Multiplayer is important, and some possible skill gems may open up the avenue of how people can support playing with their friends, but multiplayer or co-op doesn't have to = cheese.

There was a brief discussion between Tuna, Grim and Chris regarding creating an alternate end-game mode specifically for testing both player skill and build limits. This would be accessed similar to a boss with an item in-game, and then they talked through possible systems including incorporating systems from Roguelike/Roguelite games and WoW's Mythic+ system. The general idea is a mode that had scaling difficulty similar to simulacrum, but much more punishing with a softcap, where players would not be able to progress beyond and could not be cheesed in similar manners to deep delve (ie. no corpse running or builds entirely focused on damage alone). There would ideally be other tasks/objectives beyond clearing monsters as well. This would also ideally have leaderboards of some sort to go with it, and rewards as well, but those would cap at a certain point and everything else above that would be bragging rights. This led to further discussion about incorporating more leaderboards in general.

Further discussion about leaderboards in general went into the topic of monetization of said leaderboards where you could use them to potentially track certain stats or actions on a personal level. Philosophically, they like the idea of leaderboards and agree that more could be implemented. They are wary of any paid leaderboard participation or other paid features (such as a crafter paying real money for a name-stamper creating items that then have more value for being stamped and thus edging into RMT territory) falling down the slippery slope argument. Agree that there should be some "free" leaderboards as well.

==================================
GENERAL Q&A
==================================

Q: Are there any plans to balance skill gems in the early stages of the game, so you can level as your intended skill the entire way through?
A: Philosophically, they don't think that one skill should be used for everything (leveling through to endgame), or that you would play one skill for the entirety of the process. They also believe that playing a skill requires adding the building blocks of power scaling, through adding more supports, using the passive tree, acquiring gear and this is a part of leveling as well. It's fundamentally impossible to balance all skills to feel the same. So many different aspects of a skill can either make players prefer or hate them. Sound design, visuals and class (melee, spell, minion) can be preferred differently by different players. They believe it's healthy for the game for skills to have a range. They do note that maybe skills/supports offered as quest rewards could be fine tuned to not offer things like Flame Surge to new players (as an example). However, they don't want skills to be inherently bad, some will underperform when compared to others, but more skills will be evaluated and buffed as time allows and as necessary.

Q: Are there any designs or philosophies for making the campaign more interesting or compelling in the interim?
A: We make the league mechanic available in every zone while leveling in order to make the leveling experience more interesting. The goal is for the league mechanic to be enjoyable to come across and complete, and even worth the time. Some accomplish this and some don't, but that's the intent and desire for putting the league mechanic in each area and making it so readily available. They generally felt (prior to Act 1 redo) that the campaign was a pushover. The idea is to make the campaign more engaging. For some, that will ultimately be PoE2's campaign.

Q: Will there ever be an alternative leveling mode for PoE?
A: They don't want to say never. However, the answer and reasoning have not changed from the previous two times this was asked.

Q: Will there ever be an auction house in PoE?
They like the idea of bidding and a "real" auction house where things are bid on over a long period of time but a "buy now store" is too potentially damaging and dangerous and will not be implemented into the game.

Q: When there are ban waves of bot networks, a lot of available currency disappears from the economy which can have lasting effects on that particular league, especially when trying to acquire map juicing items needed for end game. Is there a way to reduce this impact?
A: The solution is to help reduce the need for trade for various map reagents. Easing trade of certain burdens should make trading overall better.

Q: Can you share how the team handles skill balance? How do certain skills show up on the radar for both buffs and nerfs and how is it handled internally?
A: It's often the combinations of things being discovered in relation to a certain skill that brings it to the chopping block. If things are too powerful, then they have to do something about it. Most times, the solution is to try to re-engineer the skill in such a way that eliminates the problem behavior/interaction but leaves other use cases of the skill intact. They try not to remove fun, but often things that the community finds fun is either game breaking or has other large-scale repercussions which require things to be changed.

There's an ensuing discussion about the importance of chase items and chase uniques, saying that certain things like Hateforge at their respective rarity are good for the game as a whole, and there should be more things like them that enable certain high-end builds. Other proposed ideas are turning Reliquary (the actual Legacy ones) back on at extreme rarity. 3.16 has some powerful uniques being added, the team was told "make good uniques" and Chris is confident that what he has seen so far is compelling.

Q: Can you talk about the mechanical power differences between certain skills, such as Melee versus Totems. There's a feeling in the community where certain archetypes in general are in a bad place when facing certain content than others.
A: The team is aware of this and they don't feel like they have anything they can share in great detail at this time. It's not part of the upcoming 3.16 changes. They understand the limitations of different playstyles.

Q: How do you determine what is an appropriate baseline for a skill to be at?
A: It's tricky because skills are so different from each other. They all use systems differently to scale as well. They try to make adjustments comparatively, where a skill's damage is buffed to or reduced to another's damage if that skill is similar.  Then there are playtesters that then work with certain skills, and sometimes they only work with skills in similar ways and certain interactions are overlooked and skills can be over or under powered as a result.

Q: How are some of the skills entering into a patch with rather obvious mistakes in terms of scaling or power?
A: The development cycle is largely responsible, with skill gems being worked on up until the patch is uploaded to the servers to go live, and a predisposition to cramming each league full of "stuff." Chris is still attempting to manage the overall scope in order to try to facilitate more time. 3.16 has become very big due to community requests, and that may mean there are some things that don't get sufficient QA time but they're trying very hard to manage it. Expanding the team and through the evolution of PoE, Chris compares it to "an RTS that you're bad at" where there has been significant lessons taught and learned through mistakes they have made.

Q: Are large scale Meta shake-ups good for the game? What are some of the things learned from the balance changes in 3.15?
A: One of the things Path of Exile leverages for its longevity is its variety of builds. If players only had the same build options, and they played the same thing for several leagues in a row, then they would get bored. But on the other hand some players enjoy playing the same thing, so there's a lot of people to think about. In 3.15 there was a lot of difficulty in certain players to approach the league due to the shakeup, where there was low confidence in published build guides and a large degree of uncertainty. So then they potentially skip the league entirely. We've learned that there needs to be a core set of approachable builds that are always reliable in a leaguestart setting for ease of access. We've learned that we also need to communicate balance changes much earlier. Not just so there's time for people to prepare, but to make sure there's enough time and testing to find all the problems. We want to provide the sense of security desired while still offering new and exciting changes to the meta and what is played.

Q: Is there going to be widespread numerical changes to underused skills?
A: This has already happened and is ongoing. The team is constantly evaluating and numerically adjusting skills through the patches. Philosophically, some skills may be waiting for their "time in the sun" where they get a certain combination spell, new support, or otherwise that thrusts them into the meta. If skills are buffed before that point, then they have to be nerfed later, and Chris wants to minimize the instances of this happening as much as possible.

Q: When it comes to nerfs, why don't they, instead of running skills into the ground, instead slowly chip away at a skill until it's reduced to an adequate balance level.
A: They've chipped away at skills, but perception will always be, despite the relative reduction in power, that changes to the skill will make it completely unplayable. Also, when there's something that is so powerful that it needs to be nerfed across different axes they feel it is fundamentally better to do it all at once rather than a bit at a time.

Q: What is an "okay" build/skill’s capabilities content-wise according to GGG?
A: That changes based on aspirational content being added to the game. Aspirational content will likely require highly specialized builds and will add additional optional difficulty. Some builds could be highly specialized in these areas of content.

Q: How does the team decide what systems should be tradeable and which ones should not be?
A: Generally we have the philosophy that Tradeable = Better. It means things have more value. It means you can specialize in certain content easier. We will always be on the side of making things tradeable. The advantage of something not being tradeable, aside from things getting vacuumed up like metamorph organs, is that it forces the player to engage with that system. It creates a reason for every player to engage in that content. It makes it so that doing some delve, for example, is always a good thing because of the sulphite and azurite systems.