Grinding Gear Games Path of Exile Interview Part 2

03 Sep 2010 at 00:40:02 by Paul Younger

Following part one of our in-dpeth interview  we continue the discussion with new development studio Grinding Gear Games to find out more about their new action RPG Path of Exile.

WoW-Clone?

PoE isn't a WoW-clone. You're not going with grinding, etc.

Chris: The game is very different. We're both RPGs and are online, but that's about it. Our combat system is very different. Positioning matters in our combat.

Jon: We're action-y. In some ways our servers are closer to an FPS game than an RPG like WoW

Chris: We have stun-locking. We have player blocking. You can get trapped by monsters in doorways. These are things you wouldn't see in an RPG like WoW.

So there are technical skills required of the players. Are you worried about latency for that?

Chris: We have so much client-side protections.

Jon: We've put a lot of effort into that. We think ours will be a lot better than other games in that area.

Are the servers in New Zealand?

Chris: No, they're in America. We're planning an American realm and a European realm.

Jon: We're in New Zealand. And we want to be able to play our game fast and for free.

Chris: Our testing is to an American server, and our ping is over 250ms, and we've built the game to be nicely playable at that. It plays fine for us from New Zealand now. All of our testers are in New Zealand and they think it's fine. And it'll only be better for other people. Technology has advanced a lot in the last ten years.

Good and Bad Grinding

There's a new Guild Wars trailer out that's got lots of exalted narration about how the world changes, and how it's not just grinding for levels in WoW-like small missions that have no effect on the larger world, etc. You guys, despite your company name, you're not going the grind path, the Asian RPG mode.

Chris: We feel there are multiple meanings for the word "grind." There's good grinding and bad grinding.  Good grinding is when you're having fun playing the game; you're technically repeating the same areas, since we can't make a new area for every day of the week, but you're doing the same randomized areas, and having fun playing it with friends and different random content each time. And then there's the bad form of grinding, where you're doing the same areas over and over again with pre-set monsters and predictable drops.  We feel that our random drop system goes a long way towards making the game an item lottery that's fun to grind.

Jon: We also don't want to make players grind along just to get to the next level or the next area. We want players to go through it and have fun. We don't want the average player to have to redo areas just for the experience gain.

Chris: We want to even out the interesting content, and make it all fun to do. Though obviously there will be some areas that players prefer or want to do over and over again.

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