Supporter newsletter 53

Issue
This is a copy of Eternal and Diamond Supporter Newsletter #53, published by Grinding Gear Games.

Hey Diamond, Eternal, Unique Item Creators and Conqueror Supporters,

Chris and Jonathan have headed to the United States for the press meetings for Sacrifice of the Vaal. They have a copy of the game with all the extra Sacrifice of the Vaal content to show people. In the office this week we are focussing on all the remaining elements for the mini-expansion.

Rory is also away this week, returning early next week. We do have a new member of the design team, Nick Kolan, who is learning our tools very quickly, and working on some important elements required for Sacrifice of the Vaal.

We have created a new shared email address for requests for supporter content and avatars: design@grindinggear.com

This email address is monitored by the designers and artists who work on the unique items and avatars. Support also has access to this mailbox to answer any queries, make sure we reply to all email, and ensure our supporters get content they are pleased with.

As time is tight this week (Only a week and a half until Sacrifice of the Vaal!), I won’t be discussing item design. I have asked Nick to talk about his first week at Grinding Gear Games as the insider info.

Insider Info

So Rory is away and can’t provide you with that insider-knowledge that you crave so badly, but fret not, as I am here to save you! Who am I? I’m the new guy! My name’s Nick and I started last week in the leadup to Sacrifice of the Vaal.

You probably already know that we’ve got quite a lot of content on the way with Sacrifice of the Vaal, but there’s a big difference between reading about it on the forums and actually putting that stuff in the game, as I learned all throughout last week.

Like any content patch, we’re adding a bunch of new unique items, skills, areas, and monsters. Unlike any content patch, a large portion of those monsters (specifically for one of the upcoming 4-month leagues) will be able to spawn almost anywhere and at almost any level, which makes playing through areas you may have already run a bunch of times a much more dynamic experience.

But creating monsters that provide a challenge at all levels of play is no simple task. Your standard unique monster shows up once per difficulty, and then maybe again (in augmented form) in a map. That means we have to have at least 4 versions of any skill they use so we can carefully balance their damage output across difficulties.

If you suddenly gave them the ability to show up almost anywhere, it wouldn’t make sense for a level 16 Hailrake-style monster to be acting exactly the same as it was when you encountered it at level 3, and definitely not as it is at level 36. I mean, we want players to be challenged, and even die if they get careless, but we’re not completely psychotic. So we make a range of versions of each ability totally separate from the original so they can be rebalanced independently of each other. For each monster. Over and over again.

So that’s much of what my first week consisted of. We have a spreadsheet of abilities used by both players and monsters alike that is approaching 12,000 entries.That’s a lot of skills to wrap your head around, and that’s just one (admittedly significant) slice of the game.

You may think Path of Exile is pretty complicated from glancing at its skill system and passive tree, but behind the scenes it is so much more dense. We tackle these massively complex issues so that, if we’ve done our job properly, you have a monster encounter that is memorable for its challenge rather than how quickly you killed it or it killed you.