How We Approach Console Development

Design moving forward will most surely affect PC players because of console. How could it not?

Two servers, unconnected clients. I cant even bring any of the MTX or 100's of stash tabs I have spent SOO much money on over to the new game? That alone.. omg

Please Chris, I hope you do this right. I hope this IS right.
Time will tell.

As of right now, I feel super alienated.

I just don't believe it wont change.

How is that possible? Even if not consciously, the back of your mind will be thinking about how this will play\work\appear in the console version.

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Chris wrote:

We hired new team members specifically for the the console project. They were directly responsible for the massive improvements to frame rate, client load times, memory use, as well as the introduction of the 64-bit client, DirectX 11 renderer and new audio system. These changes were immediately released to the PC version as soon as they were available. Even if you're not a console gamer, this project improved the game for you.

That's just straight up PR bullshit tbh.

You don't need to release on Xbox One to hire a team to improve the performance of your game. The Xbox team might have done this, but any team with DX11 experience could have done the same (probably in less time too, because they werent also working on a console port).

I supported this company based on the game I play, I did not expect GGG of all companies to go and use a part of my money on some alternative avenue of income that I have 0 interest in, simply to make themselves more money.

How will GGG keep up with the balancing needed for both the console and PC version if right now they are unable to balance the PC version alone? Apparently the extra devs GGG hired are in charge of porting the game to Xbox and improving the performance and it looks like they have nothing to do with balance changes. The later will have to be done by GGG's main team of devs, right? If so that will surely take away resourced that could be spend on the PC version, and right now we sure need some balancing in the game (ES vs Life for example).

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jfour wrote:

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Chris wrote:

We hired new team members specifically for the the console project. They were directly responsible for the massive improvements to frame rate, client load times, memory use, as well as the introduction of the 64-bit client, DirectX 11 renderer and new audio system. These changes were immediately released to the PC version as soon as they were available. Even if you're not a console gamer, this project improved the game for you.

That's just straight up PR bullshit tbh.

You don't need to release on Xbox One to hire a team to improve the performance of your game. The Xbox team might have done this, but any team with DX11 experience could have done the same (probably in less time too, because they werent also working on a console port.

It makes more financial sense to hire people for such large changes if you're planning on capturing a whole new market.




Anyway, thanks for the post GGG, you'll catch hell from the PC community if we get a whiff on console-driven balance decisions but otherwise, cautious and excited for the future of PoE!

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ThatsSoGoodman wrote:

It makes more financial sense to hire people for such large changes if you're planning on capturing a whole new market.

When an "indy" dev is more concerned about financial sense than their games performance/playability, that's when you know they've lost whatever magic they once had.

This is what I wanted to hear. Thank you for taking the time to address the concerns people had (myself included).

Other than flasks and the controller, would you provide your list of other differences between the console and the PC version of Path of Exile?

havent let me down yet so I'll reserve judgement because I love this game. game runs kinda bad on my AMD 390 though, so hopefully you guys can keep on optimizing! good luck GGG

so, say you're in the dev meeting and one guy proposes a cool mechanic for the act 6 bossfight that would be really cool on the pc, but could never work on the console due to control restrictions - in this hypothetical situation, does

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"The development and direction of the PC version has not and will not change due to the existence of the console version"

mean that you will nonetheless bring the cool boss mechanic to the pc version, even if it doubles the required effort and production cost of this bossfight? do you really want us to believe that you would't just dismiss the cool idea in that situation and try to look for another mechanic that works for both pc and console?

as others have said: for very simple and very basic reasons, you cannot and will not have two versions of the game that take on completely divergent paths. therefore, it is simply impossible for the existence of the console version to not impose a "glass ceiling" for the game design of both versions. although I absolutely believe in your best intentions, I see absolutely no way for the console version to not affect the monster, bossfight and skill design of the pc version in a negative way.