Supporter newsletter 18

Issue
This is a copy of Eternal and Diamond Supporter Newsletter #18, published by Grinding Gear Games.

Hello Diamond, Eternal and Unique Item Creator Supporters!

This week we have a few things going on. 0.11.1 is deploying, along with at least four supporter unique items. Season three will start at the end of the week, along with the new Descent race type. I’ll discuss the development of this race type later in the newsletter when we do a profile on Mark “Neonspyder” Roberts.

At the end of the week there is also the New Zealand Game Developers Association conference. ( http://www.nzgda.com/news/nz-gdc-2013-programme-announced/ )

Most of our developers are attending, and there will be talks from three of the Grinding Gear Games founders (Chris Wilson, Jonathan Rogers and Erik Olofsson)

After that, I’ll be off on a short holiday, as I’ll be going to a traditional game design meetup/playtesting event organised by Martin Wallace, one of my favourite boardgame designers. I am excited to go to this event, as before working at Grinding Gear Games, I designed boardgames ( for example Endeavor - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/33160/endeavor ). As the event is in the Coromandel, my family and I were going to have a few days exploring this part of New Zealand.

Next week Rory will be writing the newsletter.

0.11.1

This patch includes three main elements:


 * a refactor of our damage stats systems, which should allow us to do more things with damage and resolve a few issues we have had up until now.
 * new art and names for helmets
 * support for Descent, the new race type that is a signature race of Season Three.

As well as those features, 0.11.1 will be including at least four new uniques created by supporters.

There is an Occultist Vestment from Nuclear_Raven that has been almost ready for several months, but required the stats refactor for one of the mods. It also required some last minute changes as the game has changed a lot since the item was initially created.

AriesEMP brings us the first of our unique flasks. There are more to come!

We have a knowledged themed Paua ring coming from iamaCyborg, who was the founder of the Path of Exile wiki.

We are also trying to get two high level spike items completed, an Imperial Bow from Chocotacos, and a Terror Maul from KingKongor. It can be challenging to get the balance right for this kind of item, both so it is strong enough, and that it doesn’t become too dominant in play.

Insider Info

Mark “Neonspyder” Roberts initially started off as a player of Path of Exile. He was based in Auckland, and had been recommended for a QA position to us. When we needed (and could afford) a new QA person, we asked Mark.

Mark (or Mark2 as he is internally known) turned out to be very useful, good at QA, excellent as a balance tester with his knowledge for high level play. It was interesting watch him do more than full days of work at the office, and then still maintain a top 20 position in the one month race.

Mark came to GGG with a good knowledge of games, and had extensive theorycrafting and balance analysis from several games. For example, Mark had over 40 pages on Rift builds built up from before he started playing Path of Exile. Mark has a Computer Science degree from University of Auckland, and describes his study as “getting his degree and playing MMORPGs”.

As well as doing QA and balance testing, Mark has started doing more game design. He was heavily involved in organising the last half of race Season Two. He has gone most of the planning for Season Three. For the new race type, Descent, Mark has used his game and race knowledge to plan the chests for the Descent.

Near the end of each Descent level, there are a pair of chests. Their contents are chosen for each class, and a player can only pick one. Once one is chosen, the other is destroyed.

Mark developed the contents of the chests to provide interesting and challenging choices. They will provide remedial and interesting options for new players, while providing an interesting set of choices across an entire race for experienced players. This was a pure game design task, and Mark has been testing and iterating the on the chest contents for much of the last week.

I am really looking forward to how players tackle the Descent races. I am especially interested to see how the strategies develop as players play through this race type throughout the season.

You can see a picture of Mark here: http://i.imgur.com/VfLfM64.jpg