Supporter newsletter 65

Issue
This is a copy of Eternal and Diamond Supporter Newsletter #65, published by Grinding Gear Games.

Hello Supporters,

This week Nick is going to discuss item design when working within the limits of what the game can do.

- Carl

Working within Limits

It's been about three months since I began working at Grinding Gear Games, so I thought it might be cool to share some of the things I've learned about the complex inner-workings of Path of Exile, since it has such a great influence over how we create new content for the game.

As a lot of our supporters are probably now aware, we have to turn down ideas for new items all the time. Sometimes it's for thematic reasons or fears about how it may impact balance, but more often than not it's an issue of how data is sent, received or tracked by the game.

A prime example is in how hits and misses are (or are not!) taken into account. When you hit something or something hits you, the game knows and can do stuff with that information. When an attack misses, however, nothing can happen at all. From the game's perspective, there is no difference between an attack missing due to your accuracy rating and a player just swinging in the air with nothing around. The same applies for monsters, which is why we don't have items that trigger effects when you evade an attack—there's simply no way to actually tell when that is.

Coming from a background in games journalism, these technical limitations are not something I expected or considered very thoroughly before pursuing game design. The limitations are a necessary evil to prevent data transfer being a bloated monstrosity, but are something those of us on the game design side of things have to wrestle with daily.

It means we sometimes need to be creative with our mechanics to achieve what some of our supporters want with their items. Daresso's Defiance was a workaround to provide a counter-striking mechanic for characters that have high evasion and dodge. Since we can't detect when you aren't being hit, we detect when you are and provide a damage-output and movement boost whose duration is extended the longer you can kill without being hit.

Having these obstacles can be both a gift and a massive pain. Often we have to scrap cool ideas simply because the workarounds are far too complex (Daresso's Defiance was pushing it!), or there's simply no possible workaround.

Then again, when an idea is cool enough, we’ll try to do everything possible to get it into the game. Headhunter took a lot of work, but as anyone who has used it can attest, is arguably one of the most entertaining unique items in all of Wraeclast.

Insider Info

This week, another piece of concept art:

http://i.imgur.com/sgEVtHV.jpg

Lavianga was Kaom’s most trusted advisor and friend. He travelled with Kaom, chronicling his life and the conquest of the South Coast. Most of the Karui lore provided in the game comes through the character Lavianga.

- Carl