Continued...
Q: Are you surprised you have players with over 3,000 hours already?
A: Yeah, I am [laughs]. I’m ecstatic that we have players with over 3,000 hours already. That someone finds enough fun in this game that they’re willing to spend 3,000 hours in it is so awesome. So anyone that’s spent 3,000 or more hours in this game…thank you, you’re fantastic!
Timestamp: 55:45-56:08
Q: Will Arena have more functions/stuff added on? Checkpoints/modifiers/etc (like Grim Dawn’s Crucible).
A: There’s definitely some things we’ve talked about with the Arena, and sort of an endless system like that and what we can do to expand upon it. I know I’ve said this before – it was originally designed as a temporary feature that wasn’t in any of the initial literature that we designed for the game. It was really just a tacked on thing for the Kickstarter, and it’s grown quite a lot since then…and it’ll probably continue to grow for sure. It’s a great system – it’s a little on the linear side I guess, but I still find it fun.
Timestamp: 56:32-57:23
Q: Any news on multiplayer?
A: It’s coming along. We’re working hard on it. It’s feeling great.
Timestamp: 57:25-57:30
Q: Are there plans for more procedurally generated content? It would be nice if some of the story was like that.
A: There’s a lot of pro’s and con’s to procedurally generated content from a design perspective, and right now we’re sticking with the hand-built content. The Monolith system – its’ got fixed levels and as we add more and more levels to it, I think, feels a little bit better. I’m going to use Diablo 2 as an example here. There’s only a few versions of some maps and even those that are procedurally generated you still start to learn the layouts a little bit – where you’re like, ‘oh the wavepoint was here so it’s going to be to the west’ or something like that. As long as there’s enough options that can show up I think it’s still a positive experience overall. Though, I understand what you mean about having more of that. I think having some procedurally generated zones would be a very positive addition to the game, and we’re still looking at how best to make that happen. We don’t have it yet.
Timestamp: 57:40-59:05
Q: Could you do something like the lab system from PoE for Arena, where everyone gets the same random seed each day?
A: That’s actually a really interesting example, and we’ve talked about things like that – where it’s the same for everyone for a given period of time. That does solve a lot of the problems that there are with procedurally generated systems, actually – if everyone already has that seed information ready to go. We haven’t put anything in like that yet.
Timestamp: 59:16-59:45
Q: I’m afraid multiplayer will have fps issues. Some builds already have some heavy FPS consumers.
A: Yes, we’ve got a really great auto-pooling system coming that’s been going great through internal testing right now that should alleviate the vast majority of those concerns. It will provide a substantial improvement to FPS for everyone, and really big impacts for people who are playing builds like Avalanche, for example, or any of those builds that have a multitude of things that get cast really quickly.
Timestamp: 59:52-1:00:35
Q: How did you all settle on the armour formula?
A: The armour formula was designed by Trasochi, and he’s been the brains behind that for a while now. I could ask him and find out for next time, but I don’t know how he came up with it. Probably just from a vast knowledge of game systems and being really smart.
Timestamp: 1:00:42-1:01:15
Q: I’m really enjoying Primalist, but my game freezes for about 10 secs the 1st time I use Entangling Roots in a game session ever since the last patch. Is this a graphic loading issue?
A: I’m not sure what the issue is, but if it is what I think it is then the system I was just talking about should fix it.
Timestamp: 1:01:18-1:01:42
Q: Do you want all characters to build endurance/hp like they all do now?
A: I don’t think it should be a mandatory thing for all characters to build. Ideally we’d like – in a perfect world – there’s primary defenses and secondary defenses. I would say that most builds – apart from very niche ones that don’t do this for specific reasons…I’ll put that caveat in there for basically everything I’m about to say – most builds should be investing in most primary defenses stats. Primary defensive stats are things like resistances, that’s a primary defensive stat. So basically all high level characters should be capping their resistances. Things that are secondary defenses are things that are in the ‘additional defenses’ category here [has character stat sheet open] – so block armour, stun avoidance, block effectiveness, dodge, ward retention & generation.
I think endurance is in a mid-range spot between the two. Health, ward, and endurance are sort of the three main types of defense that you have directly acting on your health globe – in basically all scenarios. It’s good that health is something that all characters are going for – the fact that most characters have health as a good thing to pick up, I think is a positive thing. I don’t know if stacking endurance is really something that every character should be doing. I think endurance is heavily more thematically biased towards Primalist and Sentinel, the same way ward is more biased towards Acolyte and Mage. I mean, there’s a Primalist build that uses ward pretty heavily…which is great [laughs]. Though, I think most Primalist’s focusing on endurance instead of ward would be a really good thing, and most Mage’s focusing on ward instead of endurance would be a really good thing. Endurance is pretty new still so we’ll continue to tweak it and make changes to it. I think overall it’s really positive so personally I’m really happy with it.
Timestamp: 1:02:00-1:04:18
Q: Are there any plans to change how ward retention works or buff ward retention?
A: The basic ward retention mechanic is likely not to change very much. We’re pretty happy with it overall. The exact balance of it…I’m sure it’ll change a ton – little bits here and there for a very long time.
Timestamp: 1:04:30-1:04:50
Q: Any plans for an “adventure” mode type leveling system after beating the campaign once?
A: I talked about this a little bit earlier. Short answer is; at the moment no, but maybe at some point.
Timestamp: 1:05:00-1:05:07
Q: Is the in-game Game Guide going to be expanded on at all? It’s great compared to other games in the genre, but I’m still finding myself needing to Google things ever so often for more specific mechanics and interactions.
A: Absolutely. I agree, the Game Guide is pretty sweet but it’s not complete. We do plan on improving it and expanding it as time goes on. It’s the sort of thing that’s a living document – as they’d say. Every time we make a major change things get added to it, things get removed from it, and I hope one day it is as useful as going to a wikipedia page for the game is – it’s got all the info you need. We do try to reduce peoples need to have a second monitor open with a list of all the armour that’s in the game, a list of how certain mechanics work, and stuff like that. Having the discussions in chat be like, ‘what do people think about this build’ or ‘has anyone tried making this work’ or ‘who’s your favourite whatever’ instead of just ‘can someone explain how endurance works to me’. So keeping the chat systems more engaging as well by having that information be disseminated easier and quickly.
Timestamp: 1:07:00-1:08:32
Q: Are you doing anything to bring the speedrunning community to the game?
A: I love speedruns. Speedruuning is one of my favourite things to just sit down and watch for a while – put up on another monitor and listen to a speedrun happening for like eight hours. I absolutely love speedruns. I know there’s a few people that have done some speedrunning stuff with our game already. We’ve done a couple race events, which I think are a ton of fun, and we will definitely be having more race events. So the short answer is yes. Do I know what that looks like right now? No.
Timestamp: 1:08:36-1:09:12
Q: Define legendaries in one word.
A: Umm…awesome. Ah, one words real hard [laughs].
Timestamp: 1:09:16-1:09:28
Q: Is anything planned for magic find and group play affecting it as well as mob density after multiplayer?
A: There’s two major pitfalls with magic find; having a situation where you’re sacrificing damage or survivability for magic find. Making that trade-off is something we’ve really avoided thus far. In the Blessings system, for example, there are no Blessings that have both power and magic find in the same category. So the category will be either a magic find category or a power category.
You’re asking about multiplayer – so having it in a situation where people feel like they’re forced to play multiplayer to get gear quick enough or just get any gear at all is not ideal. Making that feeling of being forced into multiplayer or having those boosts of magic find for being in a group is a tricky situation…I’m not going to say it’s the worst thing in the world, but I don’t necessarily think it’s a positive situation. So yeah, I don’t think we’re planning on it right now…but things could change.
Timestamp: 1:09:30-1:11:32
Q: Auction house; Yea or Nay?
A: May? I’d say a regular auction house like how you’re thinking about it; Nay.
Timestamp: 1:11:42-1:11:50
Q: Do you plan to add boundary hopping to the game for all movement abilities, where it makes sense? For instance, jumping down from the top deck of that ship to the bottom deck (assuming the distance of the movement ability is long enough to reach the other side). I guess it could conflict with map design.
A: Yep, you’ve got the exact answer. Probably map design problems.
Timestamp: 1:11:52-1:12:12
Q: How long is the beta going to last?
A: Until 1.0 is ready [laughs]. Unfortunately, that’s all I’ve got for you.
Timestamp: 1:12:14-1:12:20
Q: Have you thought about making a corpses build viable for some masteries?
A: I’m not sure what that means. A corpses build – is that like a corpse explosion?
Timestamp: 1:12:24-1:12:35
Q: Anything planned with itemization similar to how runewords provide cross-class skills? For example, classes having access to teleport.
A: Yeah, we do have more itemization things planned for the game. I don’t really want to say exactly what all those are because it’ll come at a later date [laughs]. Yes, there’s definitely things we’ve got planned that will deepen itemization. I do think that cross class skills can be very interesting. With our skill speicalizations system – here’s the big problem – so you’ve got an item that gives you, let’s say, Teleport. So you’ve got this armour – that no one knows how it’s made, it probably shouldn’t exist – that has +1 to Teleport on it. So you can teleport now. Now do we give you access to the skill tree for Teleport? If not, then you’ve now got a sixth skill you want to use but only five slots on your bar.
If we do give you access to the tree – one of the really big things about how all of our trees are designed is that they’re designed in context of their own class and the passive tree you have access to – so suddenly every time we do a cross class skill you can specialize in we have to all of a sudden change all of the mechanics for it to work with the other Mastery tree and not have any weird interactions that are going to break things. That creates a lot of things that we’d have to check for so that they don’t conflict. By putting the constraint that the skill only really lives on one class we have more freedom to design inside of that skill. So there might suddenly be something that we couldn’t put on the Teleport tree anymore because maybe that node is suddenly broken when used on a Primalist. Now Sorcerer’s all lose access to this node that they liked because Primalist can also access their skill.
So probably not – I’d say is the short answer to that long winded answer.
Timestamp: 1:12:48-1:15:45
Q: What is your favourite brand of pickles?
A: Great question, I’m glad you asked. If I’m buying store bought pickles I usually go for Vlasic, but one of my buddies makes pickles and they’re much better so those are my favourite.
Timestamp: 1:15:55-1:16:14
Q: I’m really curious about the trade system because it’s a major mechanic for me, and for most people I believe. An auction house would be a good quality of life, but maybe put some mechanics in to stop flippers and abusers, like some tax after trade, etc.
A: The details of the trade system are still in flux because they interact so heavily with multiplayer and we don’t have enough people testing multiplayer yet to nail down what trade system is too efficient, not efficient enough, all these sorts of things. So we’re still working out the details of the trade system and exactly what it’s going to be. I do think there are negatives to having a completely free market, and I think there’s also negatives to having a completely open auction house system. We are keeping all those things in mind when we’re building the trade system. We’ve also played all the other ARPG’s and have seen the good and bad things that have happened in their trade systems. If there’s hopes that we won’t make the same mistakes as some other thing…than likely we won’t. Sorry, I don’t have any hard details on it yet for you.
Timestamp: 1:16:24-1:17:37
Q: Do you guys ever communicate with GGG, even if it’s just for banter?
A: I’ve talked once with someone who worked there…it was great. It was quite a while ago now. I’m not sure if anyone else on the team talks to them or not. They were extremely friendly towards us, and I had a ton of fun on the call. So if you’re listening – thanks, it was great.
Timestamp: 1:19:50-1:20:18
Q: Any plans on differentiating which side quests give idol slots/ passive points and which don’t? Something like PoE’s passives.
A: Yes, there are awesome things coming for the quest system in general. I’ve spent the last two weeks or so working on some updates to several UI panels – one of which is the quest system. It’s much clearer what you’re getting from the quests now, and I think it’s significantly better.
Timestamp: 1:21:25-1:22:04
Q: Are you surprised by the amount of interest LE has within the PoE content creation scene? There’s not many beta/indie games that get this much support usually.
A: Yeah, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised by how much support we’ve gotten…from everyone really. When we started this project I can’t say I ever expected there to be this much support this early. It’s really fantastic to see people enjoying our game. Every time I see a Reddit post, or someone on Discord, or our forums, or everywhere like that – that says ‘I’m having fun playing your game’ – it feels great! That’s the best part about it, when someone just says ‘I’m having fun playing your game’…that’s awesome.
Timestamp: 1:22:20-1:23:19
Q: Any updates on multiplayer?
A: It is coming along very nicely. We’re not stuck behind any roadblocks right now, which is a great feeling.
Timestamp: 1:23:52-1:24:00
Mike shares a small spoiler:
I can say – here’s a spoiler – gold shrines have had their gold increased…a lot. It’s a triple digit number I think.
Timestamp: 1:24:42-1:24:52
Mike shares a more significant spoiler, a new Passives panel:
I have a little teaser I can spoil for you. I’m going to open up my passive panel. Oh, my passive panel looks really weird. Look what’s going on with this passive panel. I don’t know what they did with it. It looks not quite finished yet [laughs]. Yeah, this is a sneak peek at our new Passives panel that’s coming up. We decided that the side panel didn’t offer enough space for it. Since we first made it we’ve been cramped trying to fit everything in place so it’s coming to a center screen panel. You’re going to distribute passive points from left to right instead of bottom to top. Not a lot of the basic functionality is changing here – it’s basically the same stuff. It’s just going to be laid out a little more clear, there’s less stuff that overlaps each other – let me bring my passive panel up right here [opens current Passives panel] – with the Beastmaster one you can see the top half of it is hidden because I don’t have it unlocked [Beastmaster is not Mike’s chosen Mastery], but Shaman it doesn’t hide the top half of the screen [because Shaman is Mike’s chosen Mastery] so nowhere, apart from hovering over a tooltip, does it actually tell me the bonuses that a Shaman gets. So by bringing that information over here to the left hand side [of the new Passives panel] you can always see it. It’s hopefully going to be a little more clear now.
This is only concept art so that panel isn’t actually done or in game yet – so it might change a little bit, but I don’t think it’ll change much. We’re very happy with it. Shout out to UI design.
Timestamp: 1:25:07-1:27:28
Q: Any new endgame coming with the next patch?
A: There’s not like a fully complete new endgame system coming next patch. There won’t be a new option of styles of endgame…if that makes any sense. So the endgame options will still be Monolith or Arena, but there is new endgame stuff coming next patch. Yes stuff [laughs]. There’s always new endgame stuff coming so I don’t really spoil much.
A big focus of our content in general right now is endgame content.
Timestamp: 1:27:32-1:28:41
Q: On a scale of 1-10, how much does the endgame stuff change next patch?
A: Ah, that’s so hard because it’s so subjective [laughs] – like how big of a change something is really. I’m going to put it at like a 6? I don’t want to overhype it. I think it’s a pretty sweet change. I was working on it this morning – the prototype panel is ready to go.
Timestamp: 1:29:12-1:29:44
Q: Follow-up question: Compared to this patch?
A: More than this patch was. We didn’t do a ton – actually we did quite a bit; we added three new timelines, we made all the timelines able to be Empowered, and added around seven more zones…there’s a fair bit there. Maybe a pretty similar amount, but it’s different.
Timestamp: 1:30:10-1:30:40
Q: One thing I have noticed is that a lot of the weapon attacks have a very sharp sound which, especially for builds with fast attacks, gets a bit grating over time. Any plans to take a pass at the audio for weapon hits?
A: Audio in general – sound effects – are always getting worked on. If there’s specific ones that you’d like us to look at I’d suggest submitting a request on the official forums, and then that’ll end up getting to the right people.
Yeah, there’s so many sounds in the game that, I’ll be honest, it’s hard to keep track of all of them in every single scenario. So like, as you mentioned, with lower attack speed it sounds very different when compared to higher attack speed.
Timestamp: 1:31:50-1:32:42
Q: Will there be a penalty for when you die?
A: We definitely are a little bit more lax on things like death penalties during Early Access. I think if we have a death penalty it will probably come into effect close to or around launch. Currently, there is some kind of death penalty – like you got to walk back so there’s time lost there. Personally I did like Diablo 2’s gold and experience lose. They didn’t really have gold as a real currency – it kind of was, but let’s be honest it was very rarely anything of note. The experience cost I do think is a viable penalty…that we might see, who knows.
Timestamp: 1:34:15-1:35:08
Q: Will there be more minion skills soon?
A: Yeah, there are more minion skills on the way. I know of at least two more that will appear before launch. Yes, definitely at least two more before launch [laughs].
Timestamp: 1:41:02-1:41:20
Q: Is visual clarity on the screen a high priority for you guys?
A: Yes, definitely. And as I say that I walk into a large attack. It wasn’t ironic at all [laughs]. Yes it is, and there are definitely some attacks that aren’t telegraphed well enough. I think that breath attack is one of them [laughter].
Timestamp: 1:42:30-1:42:48
Q: Is four person Arena ladder planned?
A: Yeah. I think the ladder is one of the best forms of community participation we have. The ladder does a great job of allowing you to compete with others. Playing with your friends to get high on the ladder there’s that element of cooperation and coordination that comes into play that I think is really cool. I was a big WoW raider and one of the big parts about it was that coordination aspect. That aspect of collaboration and coordination I think really helps build friendships, relationships…you know.
“Because there’s tall ships and small ships but the best ships are friendships.”
That’s for my buddy Gus, who I think might be watching. Who I’m sure just slapped his forehead and groaned, as everyone else did [laughs].
Timestamp: 1:42:52-1:44:12
Q: When balancing classes, do you consider the leveling time?
A: Definitely. We look at how it feels to play a class at different levels. A lot of that is the determination on when skills unlock. The leveling experience is definitely important and speed is involved in that. We want to avoid the scenario where people are like ‘here’s a leveling build’ and ‘here’s an endgame build’ – like where you get to endgame and you just flip the build. That’s not a great experience, especially when someone’s new to the game and they’re coming in and see a guide say, ‘oh here’s how you level; respect at level 35 to this, respect at level 72 to this’. I don’t think that’s fantastic. Though, I’m sure it’ll happen. Probably unavoidable in a lot of scenarios.
Timestamp: 1:44:14-1:45:25
Q: How do you intend to balance the game being easy enough for players who want an easy game and difficult enough to hold people’s attention? I’ve seen many posts about the game being too hard, and many other posts about people being far into monolith and the game being too easy.
A: So I think that does come down to depth and the tail on endgame systems. In a good scenario would be where the endgame systems – I’ll use the Monolith for example – the first few timelines everyone can just do with any build they want and it’s relatively easy and it’s an introduction to the system. Then the later timelines – the Empowered timelines, things like that, and any other secrets that may be found therein – are really going to be reserved for people who want to put the time in and want to learn the systems deeply. I don’t think we’re quite at the right difficulty curve yet. That’s something that we are working on, for sure.
Timestamp: 1:46:50-1:48:02
Q: What is the biggest thing that you think the game is lacking currently?
A: That’s a really tough thing to answer. I would say – I mean multiplayer is the easy answer – I think, as far as content or things in the game like individual systems and things like that, a new endgame system or something to augment the endgame play and a little more depth in the endgame systems that we do have. Those are the biggest things that would take us from it’s good to it’s great.
Timestamp: 1:48:22-1:48:58
Q: Follow-up Question: Like an uber endgame system?
A: Yeah, like the Pandemonium Event, like Uber Elder…depending on what uber you’re talking about. Anyone whose fought Diablo Clone back in the day the first time you saw it happen I’m sure you died immediately unless you were very prepared for it [laughs]. I definitely remember the first time it happened to me; I was on my way to get my Hellforge and it spawned in the most appropriate place ever…it was fantastic.
Timestamp: 1:49:04-1:49:48
Q: Will there be a trading economy or something?
A: Yes, we’re still working out the details of that trading economy system. Personally I really believe that a good trading system can really encourage a healthy community and can bring players together. One of the really important things about a healthy trading system and economy is that most of it happens –hopefully all of it happens – inside the game client itself, and hopefully it’s not just ‘open window, type in name of item I want, click buy…done’. In the real world – and lets pretend Amazon doesn’t exist and you’re in a world like this without the internet – if you want to buy something specific you’ve got to go find the person who has it, right? And I think adding some element of that to a system is a positive.
Timestamp: 1:49:54-1:51:08