Ziz, Mathil, Chris Wilson Interview

Ziz, Mathil & Chris

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3.15 Issues and Questions
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Q: Any additional mid-leagues changes slotted for 3.15?
A: Anything that can be implemented reasonably quickly without much dev time or testing is being added as it can. A lot of the other "big ticket items" will be part of future league releases as they require development time and testing.

Q: Any plans to evaluate Spellslinger's current status? (for context mana multiplier changes greatly affected this skill)
A: Testing has been done, and spellslinger internally looks within acceptable margins. They understand that there's still community outcry, so they are looking for specific cases where spellslinger does not function as intended. Willing to hear from the community and come to a compromise.

Q: Spellslinger, per last league, was mostly regulated to a leveling build due to the trade off in QoL sacrificing damage or otherwise. With increases in mana multipliers, a fringe use case is made even more so.
A: They want to be careful with adjustments to the skill because of the way it functions, heavy handed changes could allow Spellslinger to again wash out the meta. They say per internal numbers it wasn't highly represented in the end-game.

Q: Players are still generally unhappy with the state of flasks despite the changes to the flask system. Even with the orbs, triggers, and otherwise, there's still a fair bit of Piano-Flasking. Will GGG ever reconsider their stance on Flask Macro/Multi Keybind?
A: GGG is happy with how the Instilling Orbs are working within the flask system, with the ability to trigger on certain conditionals. That part of the flask rework is here to stay. The most recent patch allows players to control the outcome of what enchant they want on their flask, which should help more players approach the new design. Want feedback on this iteration before fine-tuning things for later release. Hesitant to publicly endorse macro use as a bandaid in the interim, as it can lead to other potential problems. Don't want to even officially add it as an in-game option temporarily. Would release a better solution than a bandaid solution.

Q: Even if it's not part of the ideal solution for flasks, there's going to be situations where it is just better for some people to be allowed macro/multibind and it seems silly to sit on it.
A: A macro/setting in the menu that allows you to multibind is not entirely out of the questions for the future. This isn't a "Hard No" this is a "No for Philosophical Reasons." Most of this is due to the fallout in implementing something then taking it back later when other solutions are found.

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Chase Items, Chase Uniques
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Q: There exists different definitions of what a chase item is. Some define it as things like HH and Mirrors, alongside the excitement of any monster being able to potentially drop X,Y, or Z. However, shorter term chase goals are more instrumental in the enjoyment of the game, such as boss drops, divination cards, and other forms of target farming.
A: Let's start by defining the term "chase." Chase to GGG means incredibly valuable in the context of the larger game, whereas "chase" used here by Ziz means doing a specific thing to increase your potential of obtaining it above the baseline.
A2: Historically in ARPGs there's been biasing certain drops to certain bosses, and while it only results in it "feeling" better or "feeling" more worthwhile, numerically it doesn't accomplish much. They feel as if they have made some concessions already towards MMO-style drops (boss loot having its own table). They believe strongly that ARPGs should retain this element of randomness, which is why drops function as they do in addition to crafting. This is a philosophy that they feel very strongly about. "If we made the changes of having everything pretty much be targetable in some way it'll be a worse experience for players." They will however, talk internally about implementing certain other chases, the examples given being hideout rewards from bosses or Skyforths.
A3: There is a balance between making things valuable, but also targetable. Example given is Aul or Trialmaster. You will commonly get valuable items from that specific boss but the boss itself is not common, which understandably causes frustration in the playerbase and accusations of RNG-gating encounters/drops. The ideal solution would be some middle ground; where the thing is somewhat accessible but the corresponding drop is reasonably rare.

Q: Recently, drops that were once restricted to Elder/Shaper guardians were moved into the core drop pool, which essentially removed their ability to be target farmable (ie. Horizon Orbing Guardian Maps to farm Mino for Brass Dome).
A: They've heard the feedback regarding these drops specifically and are discussing it internally. There may be changes in the future.

Q: Divination cards add a lot of access to the game for certain items, which is sometimes quite good for overall build diversity health (Shavronne's card), but sometimes it can be detrimental to the feeling of progression to the game where anyone can access certain boss uniques/cards due to things such as Stacked Decks and Divination Strongboxes.
A: The team isn't 100% happy with the state of Stacked Decks, maybe feel that they're a bit too common but don't want to take away the "pile of dopamine" they represent to players. They do like that div cards remain a way of target farming interesting stuff. Being able to farm a Shavs with some effort is a positive thing to the game. But with most of the Div cards leaning towards targeting the most valuable items with other things such as double implicits (no risk of poof if you were to do it yourself), it does mean that they do have to be relatively unobtainable.

Q: Are there any plans to reduce Div card bloat? There's a lot of them in the game.
A: Div Cards are paid for by supporters, so they can't be culled from the game. Instead, they've decided to stop selling the ability to create div cards and have no plans to return it in its current form.

Q; Do you feel as if the Div Card system was ultimately successful? Most players do not know where a vast majority of Div Cards drop, nor do they know a vast majority of the items offered through them.
A: They feel as if the "mid band" ones do a pretty good job, such as Humility. There's certain ones that are a bit spammy where you need a lot of cards for an invaluable item that don't accomplish this goal, and it may have been because the designer wanted the card for that specific item. Obviously the ones that have to be respectively rare due to their reward item not being something a majority of people can finish is not in the best place, either.

Q: Do you feel as if Div Cards that reward boss-specific items are a core part of what makes that item be devalued so quickly in a trade environment? (Example given is Starforge, but admits Starforge isn't in a great place and isn't currently desired due to it underperforming.) Will there be discussions about removing boss-specific unique div cards from things such as Diviners/Stacked Decks?
A: It's a topic that's being dicussed. While no hard data is available, there is a belief that Stacked Decks/Diviners cause a bias towards slightly rarer outcomes. The team has homework in watching these podcasts to get the opinions and takeaways as well as context from chat.

Q: There are several bosses in Path of Exile that do not have items which are worthwhile to farm, or make killing those bosses uninteresting. Also due to improvements in rares and general crafting, for example by the time you get to Uber Atziri you more than likely have a better pdps Axe than what Disfavor provides.
A: They have done some investigation as part of preparation for this question. They looked at the market values of the respective uniques and determined that as of now, it is indeed more valuable to kill Sirus versus Maven. Sirus' uniques are more valuable and retain value longer than Maven uniques, which were not received well and have been minimally used. Philosophically they investigate the value of boss drops in order to make sure they are compelling, but we don't react to market prices as a way to balance/buff the uniques themselves. They rely on the market to provide an overall balance, such as people killing Maven less, making her rewards more rare, versus people killing Sirus more, making his items more common/cheaper.
A2: As far as item progression in the game, ideally players will follow this pathway: White Items, Blue Items, Rare Items, a mix of rares and uniques which provide certain build enabling interactions, then these are gradually replaced with powerful influenced rare items whith similar effects (Kalisa's Grace vs. Shaper Faster Casting Gloves), then at the top level, highly customized Awakened or Maven Orb crafted uniques with multiple high power modifiers. These orbs that allow the pinnacle crafting are "more important" than necessarily making sure the boss uniques are more powerful.

Q: Specifically for The Maven, was there any thought given to her dropping Rares with Elevated Mods already?
A: I don't know if that was a discussion point, but the team is overall satisfied with the rewards of her encounter, with some discussion and thought being given to her uniques. As far as overall game design and planning, she's part of the end game that could be gone in 6 months time.

Q: Is the team happy with where Awakened Gems are currently? Some of these gems lost a lot of their chase value (ex: Awakened Hextouch from 10+ Exalts to 40c due to the changes).
A: They are keen to add some power back to Awakened Gems. Power is being returned to the Lv. 5 Versions of the Gems. There's also talk of designing new Awakened Gems to further certain utility supports.

Q: Why did the changes to Awakened Gems happen?
A: Awakened Gems were created in close proximity to exilecon with deadlines due to the nature of the pending announcements and there were judgement calls made about the design and maybe they went into the game more powerful than intended. They sat on it for a while wondering what to do about them. 3.15 felt like the opportunity to finally address them. Player feedback is that these went too far.

Q: Are you happy with the current state of Alternate Quality gems? There is a perception that a lot of the balance pass given to them was in response to Aura bots.
A: Doesn't have an answer for the team's reasonsing. Remembers the discussions but admits some of these balance passes are discussed independent of his involvement.

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Harvest, Crafting
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Q: Is the team happy with the outcome from Harvest Crafting changing to a % chance to appear versus being guaranteed?
A: They are fine with the way harvest functions as a result of "solving" the problem of too many crafts being generated per plot. The randomized monsters are "fine" and are part of the encounter of getting the crafts you have spawned, regardless of the monster types you see while encountering it.
A2: Gear progression of PoE (and other ARPGs) is based on a system of diminishing returns, where initially, there are large spikes of relative improvement (Picking up a base with terrible rolls and using an essence on it to improve it), which then filters through the available crafting systems and bases for each subsequent upgrade to become more and more difficult (or take more effort) to achieve. They feel that this progression curve is currently broken in PoE and there's a lot of power jumps where someone can make an upgrade that is much more powerful much easier than intended, and Harvest is part of that.
They hear player feedback about Harvest not being in a great state and they will discuss possible changes. Fair warning that they will NOT be re-implementing it to previous iterations. Will look at weighting. "It is already a dangerous part of Path of Exile." They maintain the philosophy that their ideal itemization process will prevent player burnout, and that these jumps in power are detrimental to player happiness.
This will still have to be worked out with a smart loot system.

Q: Are you happy with how rare Augments are?
A: Chris is happy with the rate. Points to a communication problem with how rare these outcomes are. Ziz gives the example of an item being "almost done" except waiting for a certain Augment because other crafting methods cannot produce a similar item, to which Chris replies that the mentality in that is similar to setting up your life in such a way that you're anticipating winning the lottery. Rebuttal is that these drop rates aren't rare, they are unrealistically rare to find. Chris admits that his job is more or less to philosophically decide something, but the team can still introduce numerical changes that can align both with philosophical ideals and player wishes (ie, making things a bit more common, but still keeping their relative rarity)

Q: Is it possible to make Harvest Tradeable (like Bestiary Orbs)? Harvest is still reliant on Discords and other communities rather than official ones.
A: Admits that the current situation around trading/monetizing harvest is annoying, be it the way they are stored or incurring the risks of counting on other players to properly supply crafts advertised or not just straight-up stealing items. Right now, Harvest takes some time/experience to figure out, and creating an orb to then pull the craft out of the window cuts down on the acquisition/specialization of knowledge and then in turn would lead to further numerical rate limitations of the crafts available. If everyone can trade it, then it must be respectively made less common. It is feared that increasing its accessibility and retaining the current drop rate would just further the item bloat/crafting issues that exist already.

Q: Is there any discussion about implementing Harvest at full capacity and introducing soulbound items as a result?
A: There's two problems with Soulbinding. Once soulbound, it cannot be traded. It removes the value of the item in relation to the economy. They believe that Harvest is firmly the problem with itemization, not the solution. While they appreciate the direction of the inquiry, it's not a direction they are willing to go. They are evaluating harvest rates across the board, including Oshabi's Blossom rates.

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Rares, Item Progression
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Q: Right now dropped rares are not in a good state, some progress is being made to combat loot bloat such as not rendering items not on the loot filter, but is there any plans to further enhance drop-only rares such as Veiled Items, Incursion Specific Mods, Delve Specific Mods, etc?
A: It's important to make the distinction that Smart loot isn't Smart. It's not smart in that it drops something specifically better for you. There will never be a version of PoE that analyzes what you are wearing/playing and drops a better item. The change in loot is to make what does drop generically more compelling.

Q: Is Hard Mode a learning tool for the team to understand what's important to item progression and player power and what isn't? Is it expected that a lot of people will engage with Hard Mode?
A: No expectations of player numbers. There's no harm in deploying it, it's just an alternate league flag with certain features turned off. It won't appeal to everyone, and is similar to when they introduced SSF.

Q: Are you worried it may cause additional elitism?
A: They do not believe that Hard Mode will create the same community response of elitism versus the existing HC/SC in-fighting.

Q: Hard Mode, as intended and implemented, is something that appears to the 0.1% of the 0.1% of players, and there's concern when you speak of learning lessons from the feedback provided from player experiences in Hard Mode. Players do not feel this would be representative of their experiences.
A: Getting feedback from a stripped down version of the game still provides feedback on core assumptions present in the game. Less overall features makes for easier studying and contains outcomes across a more centralized control group. There's still valuable data to be gathered from Hard Mode independent of any opinion-based feedback given by those playing it.

Q: Steps were made in previous leagues to return league rewards to their parent leagues or generically make that league the best way to acquire those league-specific items. Will there be further consolidation to parent leagues?
A: They wish for the league to be the best place to acquire league rewards, but not the only place. They want the content to have an identity, with a degree of target farming. They want that bias to exist. However, if someone hates a particular type of content, they don't want that player to then be forced to interact with a system they hate for those items.

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Tabs, Affinity, Monetization
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Q: Are there any plans for an Auto-Sort of Inventory Deposit button/feature?
A: No, that's a philosophical decision in the same vein as item weight and other things discussed previously. There are certain design/algorithm limitations in that auto-sort can't intuitively predict the space you're wanting made. Auto-deposit would then move the game/inventory/loot to becoming more of a spreadsheet. If you don't care and aren't looking and mindlessly dumping the loot, then it erodes a lot of the core fundamentals of the game.

Q: Any updates to the affinity system to make it more customizable?
A: No, but that's not because of a philosophical difference. Open to feedback.

Q: Will affinities ever exist for tabs that don't exist?
A: Well, prophecy won't exist.

Q: Will tabs ever be given?
A: Tabs are part of the core monetization. While there are people who spend a lot of money on MTX and other monetization processes, the bulk of income is from users who buy $20 worth of tabs as their lifetime investment in the game. This is something that needs proper assessment before implementation.

Q: Any chance of there being a limited Currency tab, etc, that can be upgraded later?
A: Open to this. Not sure how to implement it.

Q: Any plans to get rid of the non-premium tab entirely? Forum posting etc, is pretty dead these days.
A: Tricky because people pay for premium tabs because they're "better" than normal ones. Changing this makes previous purchases irrelevant.

Q: What about letting normal tabs trade and retain coloration/naming as premium features? What about one trading tab for everyone?
A: Not opposed to this but hits on the same reasoning as before. Also prevents abuse.

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Crafting Circleback
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Q: The community feels the T4 Aisling nerf was largely unjustified and makes the barrier of using it too high. Killing Catarina already has a massive downside. Why not dilute outcomes versus introducing the annul?
A: They believe that Aisling was too powerful due to essentially being an exalt that guarantees a high end mod as a result. Having a guaranteed minimum amount of power isn't something they want in their crafting system, so the annul is the balance. Meta/Master crafting helps reduce some of the potential risk and the cost is believed to be appropriate.

Q: Crafting is also currently quite confusing and spread across many systems that all solve certain problems differently, with some being better than others for solving individual problems across many gear types. Is there any plans to possibly consolidate/simplify/communicate crafting information easier? Content creators can't always keep up with informing the player base as things change from league to league.
A: An item planner or item explorer in-game would be a boon to help players learn about items and crafting but it's a lot of work and not currently slated for development. Could be something in place in time for PoE 2.

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End Game, Mapping, Misc
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Q: Why can we not farm conquerors at lower tiers?
A: Upon clarification that low tier conquerors provide build feedback to subsequent character's relative power, it was concluded that it would be worth bringing to the team to allow lower tier conquerors into the game for repeat farming.

Q: How do they feel about feedback that the current game is very weighted towards the end game where almost everything that's worth doing must be done in T14-T16+ content? There used to be some tradeoffs in previous atlas iterations where low tier farming/MF was a thing a lot of folks engaged in and enjoyed. Now, you have to get there (T14+), do Atlas Passives, Optimize Maven Watchstones, etc.
A: Promoted an interesting discussion internally where Chris began to realize he had philosophical differences in how the end game should ideally be versus its current iteration. They are indeed shortening the grind in 3.16, and the end game will be re-designed in 3.17. They do want the best rewards to be had from farming the highest content, but they agree that the current pacing is currently an issue.

Q: Lots of folks in the past preferred Shaping/Sealing/Eldering the Atlas to favor one particular map to farm. The current iteration, which is the favorite system, unlocks incredibly late in the atlas progression track. The current atlas is also very punishing when setting up or trying to set up certain farms due to its permanent state and the inability to undo any mistakes. How will the end game be in 3.17?
A: This feedback will be passed on to the team as the 3.17 end game is still in development.

Q: A lot of people still don't like to chain-run the campaign, and there's plans to make the campaign, from GGG's perspective, more interesting and fun, but that does not always translate to the wider player base. Are there any considerations for alternative leveling modes?
A: This is relatively close to a philosophical "No" but it's something that is being discussed. They keep having conversations about it but none have been fruitful. They admit that the PoE 1 campaign is currently boring and that they are excited for people to play the PoE 2 campaign as it will have major improvements and increased replayability. They imply that alternative leveling modes would be boring much quicker as there's far less variety and challenge. They also state that leveling in previous ARPGs such as D2 were mostly campaign focused with the end-game being static boss farming, and this is something that Chris still enjoys.

Q: There's a disconnect between the older players of the genre who certainly grew up with and still enjoy archetypes of content from previous ARPGs such as D2, but that doesn't hold true for a large part of the player base who either never experienced it or are not nostalgic for it. Endless delve would indeed become boring, but the problem is that all leveling is boring no matter what it is in an end-game heavy game like PoE currently is. The game "starts" at 70. Especially in SC, there's a mentality of the campaign being a chore because there's no consequences for ignoring crucial parts of the campaign progression. Some of this is still preserved in HC leveling due to the mode.
A: They conceded that over the lifespan of PoE thus far that expectations and desired gameplay has changed. Admit that 3.0 (and the 10-act system) was in response to shifting away from ARPGs having repeat campaigns of increasing difficulty. They knew this was not going to remain popular with the influx of newer players at the time. They still want the opportunity to try to make the campaign more interesting in the meantime.

Q: Over time players have adapted their own means of shortening the campaign with twinked gear (certain uniques, and in the past, certain rares). These things make subsequent playthroughs of the campaign feel fun and powerful.
A: They do fundamentally believe that going through the campaign once, then using that character to farm or create other items to then help second and third characters progress the game faster is overall a net positive. There's a line between faster and abusive, and certain things like the delve gloves may have borderd on Abusive.

Q: Will there ever be any alternative end-game to maps or will the end-game systems always revolve around maps. There's an upcoming end-game change in 3.17, can we expect anything different?
A: Access to map alternatives exist already, but they're fundamentally tied to the mapping system because that's the design intention of the end game. They always want you running maps as your core activity in the end game. Trade comes in to ease this slightly by allowing people to specialize in certain content and trade currency for 100% access to these systems. As with the recent changes to some of the end-game systems such as the change to the Temple of Atzoatl where you can save them to run for later, this is more or less the direction they want to head with more features like this in future leagues. It will just still be centered on the map system.

Q: During a game balance, certain decisions are made about access to content based on what "an average player" should reasonably have access to or not. Can we get a definition from the company on what an "average player" is?
A: Depending on certain criteria, what an "average player" shifts dramatically as there are major key drop offs as you move through the spectrum of players. Some people never make it through the install, some people never make it past Brutus, some people never make it through the campaign, some people never make it to red maps. Per Reddit, the "Average Player" is someone that gets to red maps and experiences parts of the end-game bossing systems. However, the design philosophy is that there's content for all of these types of players in PoE and that everyone from someone who only gets to Brutus, to Steelmage, etc, can all accomplish and have something in the game for them. People generally aspire to accomplish more difficult things than they currently can complete, and the goal is to create pathways through this. There's no clear definition of average player because there are just too many factors that are outside of their influence and control.

Q: Do you want bosses such as Maven and Uber Elder to be restricted in access to only a small set of players?
A: Having 50% of the player base accomplishing the entirety of the end game is not desirable. That would cause the scale of the game to be too easy which would alienate the players who are playing for difficult content, it would make it too easy. However, they do want people who care a lot about the game and are invested enough in it to engage in these discussions and watch these podcasts to have access to it.

Q: Any changes to multiplayer, or will more thought be given to the 3.17 atlas system so that people who play together can share completion? Currently, the atlas system does not work this way and is very punishing to players who want to play with friends or loved ones.
A: In the past there's been a situation where allowing these features enables abuse cases or shortcutting, but there's better ways to design things to be shared that don't lead to that. It's being thought about in current 3.17 development to make it more friendly for group play. Some of the decisions that are being made and to prevent abuse cases where folks have multiple PoE clients open to get 6-person benefits out of an activity then boil that wealth back down to one parent account.

Q: Initially PoE was balanced for HC Trade, but now it's balanced around SC-
A: Claims there's no record of anyone saying that. Of course there's balance around SC Trade, it's the most popular game mode. HC is meant to be hard.

Q: Defenses are being systematically nerfed league after league, which is leading to players to double down on glass-cannon type builds since there's a feeling that there's no reasonable access to defenses anymore. Why are defenses being nerfed repeatedly?
A: They are looking into the state of defenses in 3.16. There have been lots of conversations, and they agree some things are in a bad place. There's still discussions being had about what exactly the problems are that need to be addressed. It is slotted with high importance for 3.16. Reasonable access to Physical Mitigation for non-armor characters is part of that discussion as well in lieu of the Basalt Flask Changes.

Q: There's a big discrepancy between the damage monsters do and the tools players have to live through that damage. Is that something that is being addressed/discussed?
A: In the Act1 Re-spookification, when watching RIP clips and gathering other resources, there's clear evidence where some of this tuning has gone too far. Mistakes were made. In general, they've tightened up their policies to make sure that monster balance project does not include more of these extreme cases. They are still planning to proceed through Act 2-10. The idea is that there should still be instances of danger that make you pay attention. The other side of that is evaluation on their side of monster damage to identify spikes. Certain monsters should be scary, but banners one-shotting people are certainly not intended.

Q: As far as boss accessibility, will there be more fights like Shaper/Elder/Sirus where you can reasonably access their content, or more bosses like Aul/Trialmaster/Oshabi?
A: They want to make bosses more accessible in smarter ways. There's a possible Delve rebalance coming in 3.16 if it doesn't get scrapped to make way for other features/improvements, which is to make Aul, Cities, etc, more common with better access. If Ultimatum comes back, there will be a system in place to make him more common, and there's been good feedback from the community on how to implement this like using a winning streak to make him more common as it incentivises the ideal playstyle they want to see out of the mechanic anyways.

Q: So sometimes when engaging in Maven's arena, there's a small chance that all bosses will pop out at once, how does the team feel about that? Any thoughts on making it an optional setting versus something that occurs randomly?
A: The team is happy with its current implementation, but in retrospect it's a pretty punishing variant.

Q: How do you want players to go about defenses? Should they be reactive or proactive?
A: Like the flask system having both types of mods it's a discussion point that's coming up for other systems as well, and there's an importance for both types of gameplay to exist.

Q: Any additional information about Fortify change? Will other things be given to builds that are losing access to the mitigation it provides?
A: Chris says he was scolded for talking about Fortify, so there will be no further information about it until they're ready to discuss it.

Summarizing the Discussion of Build Diversity vs. Build Viability
Build diversity seems to be the measure of how creative builds are allowed to be with distributions analyzed to measure how many people are playing what skills and what ascendancies.
Build viability is the expectation of success for a particular build to accomplish player goals.
There seems to be two houses of thought that currently builds:
A:) Less Diverse due to decreased Viability
B:) Plenty Diverse, Plenty Viable, but there seems to be a resistance to approach solving the problem in a post-meta shakeup than previously.

Q: Walk us through the ideas/philosophies regarding balance patches/skill reworks.
A: There's a community-wide perception that when any skill is adjusted in any sort of way that the skill is no longer viable and that it is a dead skill. The idea is that adjustments are made but skill remains in a good place. This is the goal and average result but sometimes these adjustments are incorrect or heavy-handed, which causes community distrust. The goal is turn the dialogue towards skills that have been nerfed are still safe to play and still do plenty of damage.

Q: Why were the changes made to nerf player power involving universal systems that affect all player power, when by explanation the intent was to reduce fringe cases to acceptable margins? Was there thought given to go after influenced mods that granted access to insane power versus going over support gems that everyone uses?
A: Nerfs have occured to the top end (Explodey Chest changes) as well as general nerfs across a system universally (skill gems). In preparation for 3.15 a lot of time was dedicated to communicating these changes, and in the future, maybe there's more podcasts where pending changes are talked about for community feedback and discussions can happen about specific changes then.

Q: Generally speaking mid-league changes are not received well, but when there's a large skill gem balance or system change, what's the harm in being upfront about there being the potential that things could change just due to the nature of how many builds and systems are affected?
A: This would be ideal, but generally speaking there's a lot of negative feedback and is something that is not received well. It greatly affects player enjoyment/investment when chosen skills are nerfed, or skills are abandoned and rerolled just to be buffed again after people have switched away from it.

Q: Is player data stored and analyzed on a regular basis?
A: Data analysis does not happen in real time but is often question-prompted. So, there's a policy to not actively look for fluctuations/spikes in metrics, but rather used to try to find answers to questions that are proposed to the development and design teams. For example, a 18% drop in players in A3 around the Clarissa Quests could be due to any number of factors, but came down to being a result in the quest design, unclear layouts, and generally becoming uninteresting for players to engage with.

Q: Will healthbars implemented in PoE 2 be available in PoE 1 before release?
A: Probably not, but can ask the team.

Q: Will the skill gem system change prior to PoE 2?
A: That and all major features that are being shown alongside PoE 2 content will be PoE 2 releases.  That being said, they are dedicated to continuing to patch and improve PoE 1 in the interim.

Q: Will there be trade changes for console/ will the trade website be enabled for console?
A: The problem with overlapping the existing trade system in console with access to the website is that it becomes too efficient to trade.

Q: Visual clarity is quite rough, any plans for a visual filter?
A: We would rather solve the visual clutter problem than add visual filters.

Q: Target dummies?
A: Prefer players to test against monsters/PvP each other. Believe that target dummies are the wrong direction for these sorts of problems. No plans to offer one.

Q: Currently in game there's no good pathways to understand damage being done (in instances like spectres) or that the tooltip is unreliable in non-combat situations, any changes planned for handling this better in-game to ease reliance on 3rd party tools?
A: They want to provide that information in a better way, and include that in the client somehow.

Q: Since PoE is still a ways away and there was already talk of culling certain content to combat bloat, will there be any interim culling in the meantime?
A: Yeah, Expedition and Ultimatum will be added by culling two others.

Q: Quest rewards aren't particularly great, any changes?
A: Quest rewards are being re-evaluated to make sure they are interesting and have value, but they are not interested in directly distributing power as a reward (no 5L body armor in A10). Will not be in 3.16.

Q: Currently skill gems are still restricted to certain characters, are there any plans to allow characters to purchase all gems or at the very least expand what is available from the vendor?
A: There's some discussion being had for things that should be implemented that don't make sense (like templars not having access to the critical strike and critical damage gems).

Q: Any news on PoE Mobile?
A: Want to share, but still need time for getting it ready.