After the Early Access reveal for Path of Exile 2, I had the opportunity to sit down with Jonathan Rogers, Path of Exile 2 Game Director. We dove a little deeper into the newly announced content coming to the ARPG including the revealed endgame, classes, as well as what to expect in the future.
DESTRUCTOID: It’s awesome to see so many popular league mechanics return in POE2 but as a Blight enjoyer I have to ask: any chance we’ll see Blight come to POE2?
JONATHAN: Yeah, we have a big list of leagues we want to redo. One of the main bottlenecks at this point is getting a huge amount of art commissioned and a lot of that stuff is still coming through the pipeline. When you already know the outline of what you’re making, it’s easy to do sort of a sequel to it, so a lot of that stuff we should be able to do very quickly in Early Access. We’re not going to do every league but we’re going to do ones that players enjoy, especially the ones that offer gameplay you don’t really get anywhere else. So while I don’t want to announce anything, Blight is certainly on our list of ones we’re pretty interested in.
DESTRUCTOID: As far as the Atlas Trees go with them now being specific to each mechanic, can you dabble in them all instead of focusing on a specific few now?
JONATHAN: One of the problems we had in POE1 was that you felt you had to all-in on one mechanic and not do any others. We put a bandaid on that by allowing multiple Atlas Trees, but it wasn’t really the perfect solution. So in POE2 each mechanic when you play it, you get points just for that, and you can only spend those points on that league. Then there’s no FOMO, you can do one mechanic and get some points for it, then jump to another and get some points for it. You can progress them all independently, and can get all points for all the trees, or in a certain league you may only want to do a few. But you don’t have to choose to specialize and then lock you out of other options like in POE1.
DESTRUCTOID: I know you said Act 1-3 should take about 25 hours for first-time players. Any sort of timeframe for going through the acts on Cruel to get to Level 65 and unlock the endgame?
JONATHAN: I don’t have an exact timeframe, but I am certain as people play through the content again and again they will get it down to a super short time. Most of our playtest in closed betas have been for the earlier acts and haven’t been including Cruel. Someone like Mark Rogers (Game Director on POE2) can get through the first three acts in like eight hours and then Cruel in like four, but he’s an entirely different universe speed-wise compared to me who can’t do it anywhere near that fast.
DESTRUCTOID: Compared to POE1, how crazy can some of the builds get in POE2 in terms of map clear speed? It looks like in POE2 combat is a little more tactical or methodical, but can you still get to the point where your build is a “Push one button and clear the screen” sort of thing or will that stay reserved to POE1?
JONATHAN: It isn’t going to be as ridiculous as POE1, but we still need you to feel like you sort of become a god toward the endgame. You can definitely can get pretty crazy with certain builds, but we still want there to be meaningful combat. That’s something we can do a lot better now with how bosses work in POE2. In POE1, every map had a boss at the end, so in order to keep the time a map might take you reasonable, we couldn’t really push the difficulty of map bosses that far. But in POE2, map bosses are only one in every four maps and you can see where they are on the Atlas. So you get to decide if you’re in boss-hunting mode or map-clearing mode. This allows us to make bosses harder and much more rewarding so they can be longer and a more involved fight that allow us to have more tactical combat for them while still allowing you to clear maps as well. The balance is something I feel we’re doing a much better job of here compared to POE1.
DESTRUCTOID: With the skill gem system being a lot different than POE1, is there still the possibility for super unique builds to exist? For example, Ward Loop in POE1 was fun every league to see players in the community try to figure out if there was a way to make it work that league, and sometimes it would and sometimes it wouldn’t. Are there still going to be sort of ‘out there’ builds like that?
JONATHAN: I certainly hope so. To me, one of the great signs of a good system in game design is when players can utilize it to do things that designers didn’t anticipate. That means there’s enough generalization of mechanics that things can emerge from the chaos of all the different things going on. On example of one of the builds we had, that we actually had to nerf because it was too ridiculous, is that we have a mechanic called Armor Break where you break an enemy’s armor by dealing damage. The armor ticks down and once it breaks other mechanics can trigger. We have a support called Corrosion, and if you put it on a poison skill, that skill will start breaking your enemy’s armor. We also have a support gem that makes it so when you break something’s armor, an explosion deals fire damage to nearby enemies as well. We also have a support gem called Exploit Weakness that says when you deal damage to something, if the enemy armor is broken, it will deal extra damage and then remove the armor break. The combination of a ticking poison gas cloud skill with all of these mechanics happening resulted in a situation where the armor was getting broken, the explosion would trigger, and then Exploit Weakness would remove the armor break, and it would create a loops of monsters just constantly exploding from a single attack. That’s the kind of thing that can happen naturally with so many support gems, and we have hundreds of support gems in POE2. We want players to be able to find interesting combinations of mechanics that can lead to cool stuff.
DESTRUCTOID: For new players who might not have played POE1 coming into POE2, and classes you recomomend for beginners? On the flip side, any tougher classes you recommend for those more experienced?
JONATHAN: The Mercenary is very new player friendly because you can hang back and it plays similar to a shooter, it plays very different compared to the other classes. I’ve noticed new players enjoy it quite a lot. But honestly you will be fine playing any class. One that I would say that is very fun and new players do enjoy it but you’re definitely going to die more often if you’re new is the Monk. It’s to technical and fast, but is a glass cannon type of character. In order to play a Monk successfully you have to use abilities to sort of dash in and dash out quickly. If you aren’t good at the more action type combat it can be a bit harder. According to our data we found that the Monk died the most in our betas, but also the people who played the Monk had the highest rating for the game which is a very interesting combination.
DESTRUCTOID: With the epic opening cinematic you revealed today, I have two questions about the storytelling in POE2. I assume that the story won’t be wrapped up over the first three acts that are immediately available in Early Access?
JONATHAN: Correct, the story isn’t wrapped up how we intended, but we’ve done a bit of work to make sure the bridge into endgame isn’t random and like ‘Oh story ends, here is the endgame.’ There are some storyline beats and some fun stuff with the bosses we’ve done that we’ve made specific to where the story ends in Act 3. However, over time, yes, the story will effectively end in Act 6. We’ve put a lot more effort into the storyline than we did in POE1 so hopefully players get invested into it and look forward to finishing it as we add more acts.
DESTRUCTOID: Are there more cinematics in POE2 outside of the intro one?
JONATHAN: Between the Acts we have motion graphics type things that explain what’s going on between the acts, but they aren’t cinematics in the same sense as this one. We do have some more interesting things that we can’t really talk about until Acts 5 and 6 are in the game. There’s a lot more storyling cinematic-style events that happen from the in-game perspective throughout the campaign which we didn’t do in POE1, but in POE2 we have a lot more of that going on which I think makes the experience a lot more immersive.
DESTRUCTOID: As for content after release, I know you have a quarterly cadence for POE1 leagues. Do you plan to do a similar league-style cadence with POE2 or is the focus going to be to get the other acts out?
JONATHAN: This is a tricky one for us because our main thing is that we have to get the rest of the actual game content in. We don’t want to distract ourself from that, especially because we have a lot of 80% complete stuff ready to be finished and put into the game that we really need to finish. But at the same time if you’re going to play a new patch, it’s important to add something that enhances the endgame experience too. We’re planning on adding more POE1 league sequels throughout Early Access. This may change but I have a feeling during Early Access we’re gonna add more POE2 campaign content and classes and at the same time as that also extend end-game with stuff that comes from that campaign content like the end-game versions of the bosses. Then at the same time we’ll probably want to add one or two POE league sequels at the same time to keep things fresh and add more systems. That’s how I see things going but we’ll have to respond based on the situation we’ll find ourselves in with Early Access based on player feedback. Then there’s other elements like Christmas coming up and the studio has been going hard to get Early Access ready so we may have a period between now and Christmas where we recover and have a bit of time off. We’re not sure when the first league will come out but we’re a studio that releases things frequently so we know how to do that.
DESTRUCTOID: Once things are more steady, do you still plan to do both POE1 and POE2 leagues?
JONATHAN: That is absolutely the plan. I’m not sure what cadence we’re going to go with, but we may do three-month expansions for both games at all times. But I suspect it will depend on what players want. If lots of people play both, we may do two months of POE2, then a POE1 league releases so you have a month of that before POE2 releases it’s new league. So it will still be every three months for both, but they are offeset by that one month so you can play both. It will all depend on what feels right, but we’ll have to see what people are playing. I imagine there will still be a large audience for POE1 and they need content as well. Our decision to make microtransactions carry across both games was driven by the idea of making sure our studio has a reason to continue to support POE1. From a business sense if we’re still making money from POE1 why would we ever stop making content for it?
DESTRUCTOID: I’m admittedly looking forward to a time where I can just always be playing some form of POE, haha. A more technical question: Delirium. The effects of Delirium when it originally launched in POE1 were quite hardware-intensive. With Delirium returning in POE2, do I need to prepare to upgrade my GPU?
JONATHAN: I hope not. Delirium was pretty heavy when it released, but if you play it today it’s much better. Those kind of post-effects stuff we know how to do much better now, and the engine itself is much better than it was in POE1, so you shouldn’t have any problems.
DESTRUCTOID: Alright time for a few fun questions. I know there’s been a hidden meaning to the Fishing Rod from POE1 this whole time. When do we get a fishing league in POE2?
JONATHAN: Well, you’ll have to play through the Atlas and find out, I suspect.
DESTRUCTOID: Hidden fishing Atlas tree, I know it! I’m sure you’ve played a ton of crazy builds whiloe testing; what’s the most fun build you’ve made that I can try to spin up when I play?
JONATHAN: It’s really hard to pick one, so I’ll go with the most recent one that I’m really enjoying. Right now I’m playing Mercenary and having a fun time with the various ice skills. Mercenaries have fragmentation rounds that blow apart ice. If you freeze a monster you can blow the monsters apart, but you can also create ice wall segments or anything frozen. You can then blow those apart as well. You’ve got a sniper rifle as well that can create ice projectiles between monsters that you shoot, which you can then blow up as well. So with all the ice skills you can constantly be blowing up things all over the screen which has been very fun to do.
DESTRUCTOID: One last question. I’m a huge fan of the content creator Pohx and his RF(Righteous Fire) build. Will Pohx be ok because there’s some chance of RF in POE2?
JONATHAN: RF is not in Early Access but it does exist. Also, there is an Ascendancy class that has a similar mechanic. The demonform Ascendancy has a similar mechanic where the longer you stay in demonform the more life you burn, but the more your cast speed and spell damage goes up as it happens. It’s a similar playstyle to RF but not quite the same because it doesn’t have the burning around you component. Unfortunately, RF is part of the skillset of one of the classes we’re not launching in Early Access initially, but it will definitely be there eventually.
DESTRUCTOID: Thank you very much for your time Jonathan, very much looking forward to POE2 and I know a lot of others are as well. Best of luck with the Early Access launch!
Path of Exile 2 releases into Early Access on PC, PlayStation 5, and XBox Series X|S on December 6, 2024.
Published: Nov 22, 2024 01:36 pm