I Interviewed Chris Wilson and Neon after Exilecon!

[@JimOMoore]

I don't know of any other company that would stop and think, "This one streamer out of 20 we invited had a rough segment at our convention, let's give him an hour with the CEO and a lead developer, on their day off". And it's not like they used it to try and do damage control on PoE mobile, they just felt bad for you, having travelled all that way, and wanted to make it right. Huge respect to them, and thank you for your questions, and for sharing it with us.

[@CaptainLance9]

Been waiting for this, sweet interview to get to see!

[@grindum]

Hey Coach! Happy to see you here....the stream last night was great...totems🤫😎slapped

[@DaKennyMan22]

I'm glad you did this interview because hearing Chris and Neon express their mindset, philosophies, and approach to further development and how to tackle existing problems gives me a ton of confidence in both games.

[@gsczo]

Mark's mind is in the right place, I believe that guy, thanks for making this game, looking forward to play this a lot

[@fang_xianfu]

Imagine if the D4 developers sat down and spoke this candidly 😮 Chris even making a joke about Archnemesis haha :D

[@GrandDUploads]

@@flipnshifty Please watch the Kripparian gameplay from Exilecon. As soon as he found a rare item he was doing probably 10x dps and clearing just like PoE1.

[@rob1n1337]

@@flipnshifty Calm down.. it's a freakin gameplay/mechanic-showcase demo of PoE 2 in Act 3 with white/blue gear. Chris and Mark even said they won't leave the zoomers behind and are willing to show us endgame gameplay of PoE 2 before the release in the future.

[@D4z3D]

@@rob1n1337 Just let them believe what they wanna believe. They'll find reasons to doom and gloom anything and everything without any creditable evidence to validate their opinions.

[@davidbrodshaug9668]

Ty for this, I've been worried for my enjoyment for PoE 2. Slowly but surely I've gotten more and more hype after thinking and learning more and more about it. This interview answered my questions and gave away the info i needed to understand how the now 2 games are in the hands of the people who's actually able to make both (all three in reality) games amazing. Cya over on Twitch!

[@anthonylowe8819]

The more I listen to the devs talk the more I fall in love with GGG I swear

[@110kdawgg]

Props to GGG for doing this given the difficulties at Exilecon - huge props. Also, Mark you look great man, hope you got a few compliments at Exilecon to keep that motivation high - keep up the good work.

[@jordi6153]

This was a fantastic followup interview. Thanks, subtractem and GGG!

[@beka8123]

The overwhelming new players with tons of information is so spot on. I see these reddit posts of new players where in the comments there is 50 different links to tons of information and I'm thinking "Why man, that's just gonna make it worse, just play the game and do what looks fun and solve problems as they arise"

[@DoctorStrange01]

And at 50:00 they've just confirmed it'll not only be the same, but could have even more depth (i.e. complexity), lol. They're changing some things to make it easier to understand (like the skill system) but are not interested in making it any more accessible to new players, which is contradictory to what they've been talking for a while. Even the lead/director of PoE 2 said they want to get new players in, this won't happen with such approach. I am very bummed that they're sticking to their PoE approach instead of streamlining PoE 2 a bit so it can remain a complex game, but not a pain in the ass to play by yourself. I was hyped af for PoE 2 for this exact reason (them claiming it'll be easier to get into and systems being better), but in this interview they've basically said "nah PoE 2 stays sweaty cause we like it that way". I will still test it out and see how much has changed and if the changes are good enough for me to actually care getting into the game more, cause i am surely neither playing someone else's build, nor learning every single mechanic for a few hundred hours. If they've learned from PoE as they claimed here, they will make it way clearer and do a better job at explaining mechanics, cause in PoE it's a disaster :D

[@nikp3516]

Amazing interview and really gave a much better insight into the future plans. Gods I cannot friggen wait for 3.22 and the future of this franchise.

[@Skilez]

awesome interview, lots of great questions and answers. i just loved listening to all three of you. the main thing that stood out to me is: NO LIFE ON THE TREE!!!

[@JustKaz2311]

The sheer transparency of this studio is just so fucking refreshing. Much like Larian, watching devs talk about a game they actually play is night and day when compared to other studios.

[@dreg7305]

it's amazing to me just how smart those two are, and knowing that they were basically just two dudes who loved diablo and wanted to play a game that felt like a true successor to that, and never have they swayed from that vision. they are so analytical, thoughtful, and insightful, it's pretty amazing. I can't imagine how daunting interviewing them must have been, and you did a great job! cheers bro

[@Justanyo]

Amazing thing to see pop up in the feed. Grats on the interview, this was really great. I just love hearing these guys talk about their game and just games in general.

[@bystander85]

Awesome interview. Thanks for sharing. Here's hoping we can get an Act 1 demo or something before the Closed Beta. I keep getting so hyped for PoE2 and then remember how long I have to wait so it's hard to maintain the hype =P Hopefully we'll get more progress reports at least.

[@RsRich420]

So glad youre finally getting the attention from GGG that you deserve...good shit man

[@GonePh1shing]

This is probably the best thing to come out of Exilecon outside of the major announcements in the keynote. Always love to hear Chris and Mark talk about the game and getting deep into the weeds over reasoning and context for certain things. Thanks for making this happen and for being such a great interview host! You asked all the right questions, and just letting them talk it out was definitely the best way to go with this one.

[@bluemoondm8629]

I think a good way to help deal with the "what killed me" problem is: Loot Filter for monsters. Monster Filter. Like a loot filter, it wouldn't actually remove any thing, we like density. But you could set it up so that specifically powerful combos of monster affixes or ones that your build is specifically weak to would be called out. Perhaps a Red glow in the same vein as Blue and Yellow. Even an accompanying sound effect when they first attack you etc. I think this would go a long way to giving people a helpful tool to understand which monsters to look out for in particular.

[@jackwabbit9784]

Niceeeeeee watching a bit now and save the rest for my morning coffee tmrw Edit- nvm watched it all in one go, great interview

[@blech71]

Dood! Ive been awaiting this ever since you hinted it was coming. This is awesome! Thanks man! Keep the hood working coming! Bane leveling build enjoyer here!

[@30763076]

The fact we're getting the sanctum items back is really nice. Original sin gave some crazy fun gear setups, aswell as god rolled curse jewels, for the (Wasn't it hexblast with vixens) and you could do some crazy dmg. Honestly it's looking to be a really dope league, with the touch on melee I do hope we can see some good improvements for this league.

[@chicomanara]

The time to just explain stuff and how they got to think like that was gold. I will probably watch more times to let it all sink in. Great Interview, congratulations on just letting them talk, I know it is easier said than done.

[@theblueexorcist12]

Loved the interview. So glad that you got this opportunity, definitely deserved!

[@PatrickYule]

Thanks for asking about melee. Hearing that Chris is embarrassed about PoE 1 melee is interesting.

[@thomasgrimm1664]

Good job on the interview! Curious about porting skill animations to PoE1, though. According to their original plan, they wanted to have all classes meet up in the endgame. Wouldn't that have meant they had to re-rig the old models to work with PoE2 skills anyway?

[@TheTripleJski]

I'd have to guess that calamities like this one were the things that made them think twice about their sequel strategy and how to implement it. Ultimately, I think they did themselves a huge favor not letting their sequel be bogged down by a 10 year old game's technical limitations. Ultimately, I'm guessing they'll see great benefits to this decision longterm because I can see POE1 lasting another 10 years (maybe more) with the proper care and POE2 brings a whole new challenge that will be quite an interesting thing to experience, especially with all the modern bells and whistles without restriction.

[@ryanriordan7151]

Great gesture by them, and well done by you! Tech issues on both ends but no worries it was great. 57:22ish about not showing endgame zoomin, cast on death league xD?

[@mitchelallen1222]

Glad to see Chris and Mark making sure to do right by you, you are far and away one of my favorite content creators. Loved the interview

[@bdute7890]

Really like that they added weight and momentum. Playing melee sounds exciting now.

[@scottd52843]

I think POE has largely been successful because of the complexity of putting together builds. Trying to figure out how to make a balanced build that works in the POE world can be a challenge. I recently started doing SSF in softcore and love the challenge of making due with what you have. It really makes you pay more attention to crafting and the items you pick up.

[@Azure1964]

Great interview! Loved the stuff at the end from Neon on power.

[@Dylan-bf3kp]

Fantastic interview Subtractem, you are quite good at it.

[@SkiptzYT]

Newish player here, Chris talking about the situation with changing socket colors around torwards the later part or the interview was really interesting to me. I got to do T16 maps in a decent pace during Sanctum League with a WoC fire dot build with a lot of endgame advice for crafting and character building from a friend and it got to the point where if I wanted to further improve the damage I would've had to swap my build around to a different skill. The difficulty of changing and finding all the fitting sockets for my gear seemed so daunting to me because of the time Ive already spent gathering and crafting my current Gear that I ultimately didn't want to progress further because of all the things I had to change if I wanted to just use a different pair of boots. All the socket combos and gear stats were very rigid, or so it felt to me, which meant changing one thing would've made me completely Change probably all of my pieces.

[@D...777]

Loved the interview, thanks Subtractem an GGG..

[@zanec14]

a very insightful interview that more people should see

[@circaen]

Damn that worked out well. Terrible experience parlayed into something pretty awesome. Congrats. Maybe those time constraints brought out great questions, haha.

[@abigchair]

You did a great job asking questions, thanks for doing this

[@MightyVrek]

What a fantastic interview. U can actually see that Chris and Neon even as developers plays the game and see problems from player perspective. Game for gamers from gamers #GGG

[@miturtow]

Such an insightful interview, the best kind you can do with GGG devs, thank you Sub!

[@kingudanise]

I want a girl that watches me like Chris is watching Mark @ 30:38 . That's true developer love.

[@Neero_90]

50:20 this is what i always say, the only thing a new player should try to figure out is the base learning curves of the game like understanding a bit of the skilltree, follow a guide and change it up to understand why certain things are in the guide and beside that just kill monsters, eventually u will learn a lot of the game by just playing it and avoid thinking "i have to know everything instantly"

[@martinw2235]

It warms my heart to hear Chris mention "netdecking" and saying Magic is an inspiration. It's my favorite game of all time and poe is the only game that comes close in terms of complexity.

[@fok8810]

very good interview. Gave a lot of insight into the development and juggling of both projects. you can tell they still play and care of poe 1 theres just not enough time/talent available to fix everything always but poe1 in a great state all things considered

[@johnenglish6130]

Can we have Subtractem do all of the interviews in the future? These were the most authentic answers to questions I've seen from Chris ever.

[@phinguyen6399]

yeah, zizgyd also cool and pro

[@NonnyStrikes]

@ChrisWilson You bring joy when there is none. Thank you and your team from the bottom of my heart brother.

[@renaparker8323]

"I have seen fire" - Chris Wilson

[@Z0mbie432]

Wow these guys really get it I love that they mention more realistic, visceral feeling melee combat. Why can't an ARPG have better ACTION combat. I love the Dark Souls stuff and slower meaningful combat. I hope at least to some degree even if we are getting super powerful in end game that the core aspects and foundations of keeping melee and all combat skill based and meaningful stay true even in end game and beyond (pinnacle content). My fear is that hard combat really only appeals to a minority of players. I hope that if the wider audience beg for an easier game that they keep the initial vision that I personally love and fear no game will ever cater to as it is a minority of players that love harder games with real skill based mechanics even when theyy have maxed out characters. The devs here are truly the most in line with my idea of a perfect game, even able to surprise and surpass my expectations of what was even possible today as well as convince me on mechanics like very little cooldowns being better than cooldowns as I'm also a pvp player. 1 thing I could hope for would be them to innovate and create great pvp. I'll give D4 one thing, it was the first time I enjoyed pvp in an arpg. Would love to see arena even if it introduced cds and restricted skills/gear for just the pvp modes I'd love it to somehow exist in POE2.

[@ayoCC]

In arpg I always imagine some day seeing super flashy fighting game gameplay. Blinking around, dodging out of enemy attacks, dashing back in, unleashing your combo, utilizing stagger frames and expressing your skill by keeping up the maximum damage uptime. I think there could be an opportunity for these top 0.01%

[@ChristopherPisz]

I love how intelligently these fellas speak. It must feel good to be a developer on that team.

[@Tymon0000]

It would be nice to add different currency as quest rewards to introduce the currency to player in controlled way

[@Official-OpenAI]

Thank you Chris and the wonderful developers of GGG, you saved arpgs and just gaming in general. Stay blessed and keep dominating :)

[@neogramps]

Great interview; future of both games looking very bright :D

[@СтасБойченко-ы8ц]

I think that the game should not be divided into two different ones. In the end, there should be only POE 2 left. Then the development team will spend all their energy on supporting one game, and not dissipating their forces.

[@MemeMan42069]

16:38 an easy bandaid fix they could do right now is to make melee not do a "blaaaaank pit pit" pacing with using the double strike animation as the base of most melee. If it was equal spacing for each swing melee overall would feel FAR better than it does currently.

[@lucasrosu6581]

Amazing Bro!

[@stefanosisti3960]

Your were great! Congratulations by the interview and how you handle it.

[@laranjo5999]

90% of Melee's problems in PoE1 could easily be fixed with numerical changes. Melee does not need to be better or even as good as spells and ranged skills. Just make it better than what it is and fun to use. Sweep? Less attack speed penalty, more area and more damage. Cleave? More area and damage Reave? A bit more damage and maybe more AoE stacks (without being 100% forced to use vaal cleave). The list goes on. It's so extremely simple to fix this :/

[@paragonnight437]

I actually disagree. This would fix its viability but it will still be boring and most skills unusable for current speed. That's just my opinion and I do still want numerical buffs

[@lowkey_Ioki]

The problem I think is that melee is in this strange spot where the playstyle is basically "stand still and attack the boss" which is a super difficult thing to balance. This means that melee is either terrible because the builds can't tank the boss, or it's overpowered because the playstyle works. It's much harder to balance than more interactive skills, because melee basically has zero room for skill expression (except something like boneshatter, where you have to manage your stacks or die, which is good design.)

[@ayoCC]

​@@lowkey_Iokiyoooo What about a support gem, attack while moving support. Nerfing the damage so it can be mostly used as a clearing skill instead. Or a channel skill that you can move while charging a buff that makes you stronger. Stackable with war cries that also slow the enemies, and then you charge while moving and after that unleash another skill while getting 600% more damage after charging for 3 seconds

[@ПавелКакабаев]

I can already see a simple solution: just give buffs from ancestral totems to melee by default, and remove those buffs from these totems. I know quite a few players, who are just sick of always being forced to play totems with melee archetype character. It just does not feel right that you loose half of boss dps if you do not place two logs near it.

[@mikelezhnin8601]

26:10 "spacebar doesn't do anything" I think they are forgetting that you can rebind the keys, and that they actually remove one very big and important button (even though I love the idea of the dodge-roll) - right now in poe 1 I got ctrl+t skill rebound to spacebar so I can have something like molten shell in there (or any other panic-mode skill)

[@EvilWeiRamirez]

Between no life on the passive tree, and no damage on supports ... This is going to be really interesting

[@waynewalkerorg]

All really clever ways to give the player more choice.

[@Dhol91]

And a great way to control how much power players have. Avoiding power creep beforehand.

[@prominent21]

You did a great job with this interview!

[@Fidtz]

Best Exilecon video.

[@L1St3n3R]

Very interesting !!!

[@basicplaya]

thank you, nice questions

[@CuddleUTube]

cant wait to watch this video ^^

[@Devildoginvu]

Have they mentioned if POE1 is going to implement the new engine and skill gem mechanics?

[@jontheskillful]

Thanks so much for this discussion. When Reddit gets overwhelmingly negative in their reaction to things like nerfs I'm always wondering what the creators are thinking; conversations like this are so cool for that reason alone!

[@DrSamGalactic]

I wonder if wearing heavier armour or carrying a heavier weapon increases your pushy value?

[@damorpl]

I am actually already using spacebar for movement skills ☺️

[@stikkerzlaxgimly107]

Really really nice interview.

[@babyitsnatural]

This interview is so ghetto and so nerdy and I love it!!

[@Joao.caires]

You deserve it all!!

[@КириллЛаленков]

No more life on tree is SUPER interesting!

[@eeXTee]

I use spacebar for my movement skill in PoE1.

[@PPL_call_me_H]

Fun interview to hear.. And as someone below in the comments said "they are just humans", lovely humans on top of that.. And by saying this I feel it is in my place to apologise to them for being so harsh on them when we criticised their changes / leagues that weren't "fun". I never said personal things but some of my criticism could've been put in a way more decent way than I did. Some ppl that said stuff to Chris/GGG was way out of line though. You can clearly see these ppl are way and way more invested into the game, providing for us FOR FREE (in a way ofcourse) than any other company. So thank you Chris, Mark, Bex and the rest of the crew at GGG for providing us fun after work for the past years. Hopefully for alot more to go with both games!

[@RichHeart89]

Chris is the guy I've learned to trust over the years, but Neon is the guy I believe in 🤌

[@Bikespokes]

This was a blessing in disguise in my humble opinion. Excellent interview

[@oxygene9082]

@@aivarioha Wow, looks like you're the clown in here. A shame I wasn't there to show you true hate speech. God damn.

[@5isafourletterword]

Totally agree!

[@SaDa31337]

How does Chriss troll so hard with a straight face :) 'Players loved archnemesis so much' perfection.

[@WizardosBoz]

Kiwi humour 😂

[@shalakabooyaka1480]

@@WizardosBoz The Brit influence in sarcasm remains lol

[@S_Nicky]

krillson master troll

[@Lazris59]

Seriously. I think he farms the KEKWs. At some point whenever he is on the ZiggyD interview after new leagues are announced or whenever he is on community podcasts, he always says a joke he knows will get KEKWs and instantly looks at chat. I love that he's a gamer. He even watches Asmon lol

[@ABWABWABWABWABWABWABWABWABWA]

I liked it, top5 leagues of all time for sure not even trolling, Reddit was just being overdramatic

[@TalkativeTri]

Excellent interview. Love seeing Chris and Mark like this, and they elaborated fully on quite a few important questions you brought to the table. Thank you! As many people as possible need to see this.

[@silentsnake08]

Love your youtube channel! Hope you keep growing.. Stay sane EXILE!

[@TalkativeTri]

@@silentsnake08 Thank you! I'm going to try ;) STAY SANE!

[@honordevs]

It's amazing to see how wonderful Chris and Mark are, just as humans. I remember messaging Chris on discord and he actually responded and added me to his friend's list. Respectfully, I didn't bug him, I just thanked him for making a great game and moved on. I like to think, maybe it made his day, but the fact that someone who is so high-up in one of my favorite gaming companies actually responded to a random person on discord speaks volumes about his love and dedication to everyone and his game.

[@fang_xianfu]

I emailed Chris once just to say thank you for something he'd said, nothing important, and he sent me a personal reply, it was awesome.

[@Deminese2]

I've talked to him a couple times in the game some years back when he still sat in global chat. he's always been that way.

[@hickfarm]

Reminds me of Gaben. Need more people like this in the gaming industry.

[@DaJodad]

I could literally listen to Mark and Chris talk about game design for hours and never stop being entertained. You can feel the passion these two have for their game, it's incredible!

[@NonnyStrikes]

Yes! Go figure. Gamers making games.

[@TheDrov]

I love listening to interviews with these guys. Listening to them explain the decisions and challenges just shows how much work and thought they put into POE.

[@ThorvaldtM]

Thank you for everyone involved. This was a great interview. Mark giving very good insight on their game design.

[@knaz7468]

Wow. You really got a lot of good info about PoE in this interview! Going to half to listen to it a few times to let it soak in.

[@Kamelosk]

wow amazing interview. you ended up having the best segment of all exilecon 😂

[@Wayleran]

So happy they gave you this opportunity. Well deserved because you handled the mobile panel you did well despite the hiccups. Also this shows that the GGG team really aren't out of touch like a lot of other studios. They genuinely care about the game and players and the content creators. I'm happy to be a 10 year PoE vet and keep supporting a great team at GGG and a really great PoE content creator like you Sub! :D

[@LuisSilva-nn2ex]

"I have seen fire"... So server melting builds are actually melting the servers? O.O It wasn't a meme??

[@GaeFootballClub]

i realized today that i dont really know much about mark and jonathan when it comes to PoE/argps in general compared to chris so i really hope in the coming year we get more interviews with them as we ramp towards PoE2 beta so i can get a better handle on their mindset.

[@KingHafify]

In 20 years, will the timeline of POE1 catch up with POE 2? or will they be separate timelines?

[@rubikmonat6589]

I think of it like Simpsons time.

[@UserTNumbers]

I just want to say watching the PoEcon and listening to this interview really makes me want to start playing this game. When you listen to these guys you can tell they PLAY the game they make and enjoy it. D4 BAD

[@LukCPL]

They gave some great answers, why have mechanics and cool monsters if you cannot see anything while moving flash speed 😎

[@cyclonustv]

That mobile showcase might have been a disaster, but it lead to probably the best POE content that isn't in the game. This was an incredible interview. Thank you!

[@dzaijn]

This was one of the best things I've ever listened to. Thank you so much, and I'm really happy for you.

[@dangkolache]

My absolute dream would be to just sit at a bar with Chris, Mark, Jonathan, Erik and just shoot the shit with them all night. What a great turn of events for you, super happy for you dude. Great content as well, and frankly pretty funny that even in the redemption of a technical issue there were technical issues with the video, haha

[@DanRocal39]

Keeping POE1 and POE2 is a huge opportunity to fix the duality of the core gameplay. Would be amazing if they pushed POE1 towards what some people want, crazy speed, funky interactions, huge packs to explode , powerful crafting, simpler gameplay but an even crazier dept of character build more like a Vampire Survivor like experience. And instead push POE2 towards the "Vision": slow, interactive combat, hardcorelike experience, scarcity of resources, more towards a Soulslike mixed with D2 and lost ark combat.

[@Dollarhax]

I’m 10 minutes in and while I’ll say I don’t always see eye-to-eye on your approach to the game, I absolutely -love- how you approached this. I was a journalist for a while and an interview as candid as this, and in this form, is perfect. The production isn’t 10/10 but the quality absolutely is and with what you have had to work with, I think you have killed it even despite the “nerves” of the beginning. Keep banging out videos man. Sincerely appreciate your contributions in the space and it’s nice to see another content creator with a fresh approach.

[@grandg3578]

Thanks a lot for this. Your questions were so good, we got some really encouraging answers. Just simply seeing the passion when they are talking about PoE1/2 makes me confident in the future of the franchise.

[@КонстантиновКонстантин-е5ю]

Awesome interview. Thank you and devs for this.

[@chadowsrikatemo4494]

Took me a minute, but i LOVE not having live on the tree, a lot of the tree was getting life on weird spots just cause you NEEDED it cause the game was balanced around one shoting people with 100k effective hp.

[@jarenb2331]

Hey subtract, pass this idea on to the boys. Have a mobile version of Poe 2 that is actually corrected to your main PC acct instead of just a prequel. I've always imagined a simple mobile aspect of the game where players on the go, at work lol, or just simply away from the computer could still access their account in one form or another. For example, logging in and being able to access your stash to craft new items with the currency system. Then when you come back to it at home, everything is there. That or the arena type you have, but using your main.

[@leroyjenkins4017]

Here's hoping you get to do more interviews with Chris and Co. in the future. Just letting them go on and on was so refreshing to hear. Cheers and bravo to you for this treat sir.

[@dragoneye9595]

Even build guides aren´t easy to understand nowadays. I would love to see an option where we can import build guides of other people in the game. Then a few things could happen: 1. the nodes you are supposed to skill will be highlighted in the tree. 2. items with the right colors of the skills you need will be highlighted. 3. skill gem reward screens will highlight the gems you need. 4. Maybe you even get some spreadsheets inside of the game, which are put together with some infromation by the build creator. In the end of the day most people use a build guide anyway to play PoE until they feel comfortable enough to create their own builds. The only thing that changes is that people don`t need to tab out all the time. I think most new players who actually like complex games are ok with researching things, but tabbing all the time off to get the information you need for your build is super offputting. Even me as a PoE player for a long term gets really annoyed by this. This is one of the few things which stops me to declare PoE to my fav game of all time.

[@Xeratas]

14:51 "this is why headhunter still exists and iam wearing this shirt" 14:59 checks if he realy wears the shirt" ;D