Dantonn

If you don't mind my asking, why the single big file in the first place? I read somewhere that it streamlines the loading process, but it sounds like the console version's method doesn't do that and is faster.

Unpacked, Path of Exile is hundreds of thousands of tiny files. Many of them are tiny hand edited or tool generated text files that might just be 1KB or so. Packing them together is important for performance so you don't have to do so many disk seeks while loading files.

But so long as your files are still fairly large (32 MB or so per file for example) then the performance of seperate files is totally fine.

For conveniance of the original patcher, it was simple to have one big file. And it was a fairly common thing to do at the time ~13 years ago. Our patcher was modeled on the Guild Wars 1 patcher, and it's quite similar, but blizzard had it's MPQ files and so on. The big single file is structured such that it's very easy for us to work out the minimum set of files that need to be patched. We just check a single hash if nothing has changed, and only explore the file tree to the parts that have changed if not.

We didn't add steam support until the game was already out.

langes01x

but it will also come with a pretty significant improvement to loading speed of non-SSD drives

If it offers a big improvement to performance of some users and no hit for others why is this not going to just be the default for all users whether steam or standalone? Shouldn't standalone users also get the better performance that this gives on an HDD?

It will be for all users.

We need to get the existing non-steam patching system to be able to patch content for the new system first though.

Fenume

Why you deliver full ggpk with steam? Some other MMOs deliver only launcher, which then download and update content files. This way you can fix such problem as long patching when small patches comes out and use one ggpk in steam and standalone client.

I don't really like that approach because most people just have steam running in the background and auto patching all the time, and if you don't use steam's patching then you don't get that. The game wouldn't patch until you run it.

The new way will be both friendly for steam, and have higher performance anyway.

cauchy37

Sooo, in PoE2 or hopefully before?

It will be before PoE2.

The reason we don't do that is that it would mean redownloading almost the entire game again every patch.

The steam patcher breaks down big files into blocks and then only gives you the blocks that change. If you try rearrnaging the internals of a single file then basically every block of the file will be changed.

All of the "garbage" in the file is old file versions. By not removing them it makes the patch sizes smaller for existing users at the expense of making new full downloads by new users larger.

Of course, the big single file approach isn't good for steams patcher generally. The main reason is because steam makes a full copy of the entire file when it patches it, patches the copy, then moves it back over the original again. This is to prevent corruption in the case where, for example, you lost power while steam was in the middle of patching a game. This means that patching a 1KB file makes you computer rewrite the entire many-gigabyte file which is why it's slow.

So for th...

sporicle

Furthermore:

Now requires that you hit an enemy in order to produce projectiles, and splits the number of projectiles it produces evenly among all targets (if it can). Projectiles now deal 50% less damage at all levels (from 40% less at gem level 1, to 30% less at gem level 20 previously).

So this effectively removes 2/3 of the damage of molten strike right? Ancestral call splits the balls between every target so you only produce 1/3 of the balls. Molten strike projectile scaling actually gutted LOL.

EDIT: This is wrong

I can clarify that this doesn’t nerf ancestral call. It splits the balls between the targets you hit with a single strike, but each ancestor still has their own balls.

Inertia0811

If so, the area indicator either needs to be on the non-MTX version, or it should be removed from the MTX version.

I was going to say the same thing. In the non-MTX version, there actually IS an area indicator, but it's so faint that you'd never notice it during the chaos of a mapping session.

Go into a dark hideout/map and charge up. You'll see what basically looks like shocked ground around your character without the MTX. I'd like to see this be given a noticeable lightning border of some kind, because without it, there's no way you'd ever see it while surrounded by mobs.

We will look into improving the AoE indicator on the non-MTX version.

We are working on making the website independent of the PoE realm, but the website was originally built with the assumption that the game is up and they are deployed together.

We hope to have this done by 3.6.0 deploy, but I can't promise it will be then.

After we are done, when the game is down you wont be able to do things like view your character or link items in the forums, but you will still be able to use the website generally.

ItsSnuffsis

Like this.

https://youtu.be/rEoaiot7OZ8

It's much more like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKK4KmDlj8U

Nyle7

Something has been bothering me for a long time now from watching podcasts, listening to interviews, reading posts, etc.

GGG seems very obsessed with player retention. It is obviously a very important metric for them since they constantly bring it up when comparing leagues. It's also setting a trend in league challenges. They are getting longer and longer, with the most extreme example of Betrayal's "Atlas Objectives" challenge. This challenge in particular requires players to either run A LOT of maps, or log in daily for the majority of the league to get it done.

The reason I have a problem with this is because I do not want to play Path of Exile full time. ARPGs are a bit of an anomaly when it comes to player behaviour. Generally players will play for "short" stints and then quit to go play other games but consistently come back for the next league/season/ladder reset. With GGGs constant focus on player retention it worries me that they will get players to play longer but eventually burn out and then NOT return for the next league because they just played 13 weeks of Path of Exile and restarting the grind might not be the most appealing thing at that moment.

I only have my own experiences to draw from but I would consider myself an "average" player. When looking at my own behaviour, all of my purchases for PoE have been near the beginning of a league when the supporter packs are new and shiny and I'm playing the most amount of time daily. Thus I am surprised when GGG focuses on "Player Retention" as opposed to "Player Return Rate". Now obviously I don't have data but I would suspect that the majority of their sales are made in the first couple weeks of a new league which explains why they are very strict with their 13 week schedule.

I am concerned for the long term future of the game when player retention is the message I keep hearing over and over. Make great leagues and players will come in bigger and bigger droves. Don't cause them to burn out and quit forever.

When we refer to Player Retention here we are actually referring to what you are calling the Player Return Rate.

In fact, the central thesis of the talk is that it's better to get players to want to return next cycle than it is to try and keep a player playing forever.

So a lot of what you said actually summarises the talk we are giving.

If there is a trend for challenges being harder each league, I can assure you that it's not intentional.

Let me ask you this question: If I told you to create some challenges that are intended to take players a 1 month to complete, how accurately do you think you would be able to hit that target without having a a month to test it? Yes, you can do some modelling in excel but quite honestly it's not easy to make predictions accurately over that kind of time scale. Players tend to always find ways of doing things faster than we expect, so the designers of challenges tend to err on the side of making them harder.

So what I'm saying is Hanlon's Razo...

Bex_GGG

We are currently looking into this.

To provide an update on this:

The maps are not deleted, they are just in a sub-stash tab that is not being loaded. It's going to require running a tool over the entire stash tab database to fix this, and that will take a few hours to run.

A developer has written some code to do this, but we want to test it fully before using it on the production database. Because all our server admins are quite busy at the moment, it may take us a bit of time to get to it.

I hope to get it sorted today, but it may be tomorrow.

I'm very sorry about this one. Unfortunately our automated migration tests didn't catch it because the items still exist, they are just not retrieved correctly when loading the stash.

In the mean time, it is safe to use your map stash tabs. The old items will either show up right where they were, or if you put items over top of where the items would come back, the sub-stash will be detached from the map stash and given back to you as a Remove Only regular stash tab.