Along with Diablo IV's upcoming Vessel of Hatred expansion, Path of Exile 2 is another of the year's most hotly anticipated loot-driven action RPGs – and this sequel aims to one-up the original's sprawling and multifaceted approach to character building in more exciting ways. Releasing into early access on November 15, Path of Exile 2 has a lot to live up to when it comes to matching the original's finely tuned and deep systems that allow players to reshape any class as they see fit.
At PAX West 2024, we went hands-on with the game's current build and its array of classes and spoke with Christopher Laferriere, Grinding Gear Games' designer for skills and character builds, about the game's current state and how the original game's foundations elevated the sequel. Simply put, he believes Path of Exile 2 and its approach to building a sequel could very well end up being "one of the best ARPGs ever made."
It's been some time since the pivot to make Path of Exile 2 a stand-alone game instead of replacing the original. How do you feel about the current state of the sequel as a stand-alone game while also still working on updates for the original?
When it comes to the original game, there are a lot of fundamental changes that we've been wanting to make to the game for a while now, but it's tough to do with the rapidity of our release schedule every 3 to 4 months. It's something akin to trying to fix the hull of a boat while you're sailing it. Bit with PoE 2, it's more like a boat in the harbor, so we can build out however we want before we have to send it out and literally ship it. That's a part of the advantage of splitting it into two games.
The original plan, as you mentioned, was to have two separate stories that led to the same shared end game, but there have been so many changes, not only on the design side but also on the technical side, between these two games. So, in respect, PoE 2 really didn't make sense as an experience that leads into the same as PoE 1—and it's now its own separate thing that's better on its own.
What were some big lessons from what worked with Path of Exile, especially regarding its release plans for content updates and adapting to the community's requests?
The single best thing developed over the years in PoE 1 was the league system. Every new update for PoE 1, we call them leagues, introduces a big mechanic, like the Delve update's mining gameplay. We do that by not fully resetting, but rather, the new league creates its own little bubble with its own new economy that brings a lot of players back because it's a fresh experience that gets people excited.
It also allows us to demo a mechanic we like during development. If players or we don't like something about it, we can tweak it and adjust it before putting it into the core game. We run a little beta every three months on some new idea, and that's been very beneficial for us for both games.
When I spoke with Jonathan, he said he wants players to feel like they're breaking the game with the builds they come up with. How have you been trying to keep the game balanced but still cater to that power fantasy of letting players tear through enemies with their custom characters?
I can only speak personally, but balancing a game is always a fine line to tread. The way that I view it is that instead of designing and building a series of bespoke gameplay systems within a game like this, you're making different interacting mechanics that play with each other in such a way that you, as the designer, can't predict everything players will do. You want to design these interesting and exciting mechanics, whether on the scale design or the monster design side of things. And then there will be some weird niche edge case broken thing that players will find, that's inevitable, And you know, maybe then it's a little too strong, and you have to nerf it a little down the way, but that is better than there not being enough interesting and exciting options. We prefer things to go a little too crazy, maybe sometimes, rather than have things be boring for sure.
Customization is vital to PoE's experience, and no two characters will ever be alike within the community. Is there a particular area of focus that you found that gives players a strong sense of their characters coming into their own?
We always found that the gem system created such an interesting dynamic to character and loadout customization. It is a push and pull, and a lot of that comes from how we design tools that do a particular thing, but we also don't like to make sure that you can only use that tool in one way. So support gems are a great example of that, where multiple projectile support gems, for instance, will continually add X number or different variations of projectiles, which we'll always look to expand upon. However, you then design a bunch of skills where projectiles behave differently depending on which skill you're using. Now, suddenly, multiple projectiles, even though we haven't changed the design, have many more use cases and thus do a lot more stuff. Even though functionally, it still adds two projectiles.
But adding two projectiles to a skill that fires a couple of shotgun blasts is very different from adding two projectiles to a skill that is a rain of arrows or, you know, is exploding molten projectiles out of the ground or whatever. So, if you change how a support gem functions and what it can do, adjust what it even means in other contexts.
What are your current thoughts on the state of the loot-driven action-RPG these days?
I think the genre is in a pretty darn good place right now. PoE 1's Settlers of Kalguur update is one of the most popular leagues we've ever released. So PoE 1 is still definitely going strong, and, you know, I myself was just recently playing quite a bit of Last Epoch, which is in a really good place. I love the crafting system in that game, and there are all sorts of other excellent titles out there right now, from solo developers to full teams like ours. I'm optimistic, more than optimistic, actually. But for me, and I know I'm biased here, but I'm working on what I think is going to be one of the best ARPGs ever made.
What about Path of Exile 2, in particular, sticks out for you after working on it?
Well, my favorite thing about PoE 2 has to be the boss design, and I say that as someone who works on the skill design team. I'm not a monster designer, but it is kind of incredible how consistently there'll be a new boss that the monster designers come up with. I'll catch a glimpse of their screen at the office, and they'll be working on a new boss, and it does some crazy, weird, wacky thing that I never would have expected.
I can't sadly talk specifics because a lot of them are bosses that we haven't teased yet. I can say at least about the very first boss of the game, and if you compare it with both games, the first PoE 1 boss is a big zombie that hits you with a sword, and that's all he does. In PoE 2, the Swollen Miller is a good tutorial boss in that he'll teach you that you need to dodge roll or you'll be in trouble. He's also got eight or nine different moves that he'll use depending on how far away you are. You know what moves he's used recently. The AI file for the first boss is five times longer because a lot more logic goes into it. So yeah, that's one thing that has me really excited about this game.
