Path of Exile ’s next expansion, Expedition, is coming out tomorrow, but the community doesn’t like where the game is headed. This prompted the lead developer to clarify some of the things about the upcoming update.
Path of Exile lead developer Chris Wilson went to Reddit to express his thoughts about issues that were raised during the reveal of Expedition’s patch notes.
Before anything, the patch notes contained so many nerfs. So much that a lot of people voiced their frustrations about the looming changes from Update 3.15.
Power Creep
The main reason for the heavy-handed nerfs is to somehow mitigate the issue of power creep. Apparently, developers want the game to go back to its roots and make the pace slower than it is now.
Wilson said that he and his team have reached a breaking point where power creep needs to be addressed.
While the nerfs outlined in the patch notes can be scary at first glance, Wilson assures that they may not be as impactful as they seem in practice.
“The changes we are making in Expedition are a carefully-considered set that sound daunting but probably have less overall impact on the way you will play the game than you suspect they may,” he said.
Mana Cost Issue
The lead developer also clarified the increasing mana costs of certain gems in the next update. The devs found that some support gems cost too little mana. This has prompted them to make some adjustments.
In the balance manifesto released before the patch notes, Wilson said that they haven’t come up with the final values for the support gems yet. That is why the wording used in the manifesto was vague. He apologized for this and vowed to improve their communication in future updates.
Problems with the Previous League
Now, the Ultimatum League, at least according to Wilson, had poor player retention. Most people believed that it was due to the league being too rewarding but the lead developer explained it a bit more.
He said that there were two issues with Ultimatum. The first is the massive spamming of rare monsters that populate the screen when doing the Trialmaster’s challenges. The second is that the rewards, especially if the player was successful in completing the challenges, were unnecessary due to the sheer number of items that can be picked up afterward.
He later defined that the “spammy encounters,” coupled with other issues, are the main reasons for the low player retention in Ultimatum and not entirely due to the heavy rewards.
Game Balance Decisions
There was an old Reddit post where some players have speculated that the developers were making game balance decisions based on incorrect community wiki data. Wilson said that this is not how things work.
He explained their use of internal tools that present entirely different and more accurate data than those found on the wiki.
In addition, with thousands of changes that are implemented into the game’s expansions, there will always be some lapses when it comes to relaying information from one department to another. This can cause some errors in presenting the final patch notes before an expansion’s release.
Wilson assured the community that they will continue to improve this process and welcome any feedback that can help them do just that.
So, what can you say about Wilson’s statements?
