Hi I'm Jonathan Rogers, Game Director on Path of Exile 2.
 
Well we're back from our break.
 
We've been playing the game a whole lot, and we've been reading a whole lot of feedback as well so it's time to assess and work out what we're going to do next.
 
Now, later this week we'll be releasing Path of Exile 2 0.1.1.
 
This is a patch designed to address the concerns that we can address relatively quickly without needing to create a new league or a new economy just yet.
 
In this video we'll be going over some of the issues we've identified and what we're planning on doing about them.
 
it's worth stressing that just because a specific issue isn't on this list doesn't mean that we're not aware of it or that it isn't going to get addressed.
 
It just means that we either can't fix the problem quickly, or we can't do so without the need for a new economy.
 
One of the major areas that needs a lot of attention is the base experience of mapping.
 
We've made a lot of changes here.
 
First, endgame maps have received a balance pass to the number of monsters, number of chests, number of magic and rare monsters, number of Essences, Strongboxes and Precursor Artifacts.
 
You should generally find maps more rewarding than before.
 
Maps generally specialize in one or more of these elements that they will be particularly rewarding in.
 
Now, towers are a thing that's very important for players to run often but we only had one of them.
 
We wanted to add more variety here as soon as possible so have added four more tower maps: Alpine Ridge, Sinking Spire, Bluff and Mesa.
 
We've also redone the existing Lost Towers map to make playing there less boring.
 
We're now also spawning more maps with bosses.
 
The rate was intended to be one in four maps, but in reality the rate was much lower due to some maps being unable to spawn bosses.
 
We've increased the rate to compensate for this issue so that we can get the actually intended rate.
 
We're also adding a new type of Tablet that allows you to add bosses to your maps with its own mod pool.
 
Strongboxes also needed some love.
 
They now spawn monsters faster, have a less annoying fog effect, and have also received changes to the timings and effects of the mods on them.
 
Now, let's talk about visibility of effects.
 
Many maps had too much clutter, preventing effects on the ground from rendering, causing you to be unable to see and dodge them.
 
We've both changed the level of clutter on some maps and changed some effects to make sure that they're always visible.
 
In addition, elemental explosion effects have had visibility improved, stick around for longer before they explode and disappear without exploding if a rare monster dies.
 
Volatile Plants are also way easier to see before they explode.
 
Now we've also increased the zoom level on the Atlas, done a pass on various terrain collision issues in many maps.
 
We've also improved the load times of opening the World Map and Atlas panel and we also now show the biome of a map on the hover for it.
 
For other in-game content system systems we're focusing on getting all the rewards in line with what they should be.
 
For Delirium we recently fixed a bug which caused Delirium monsters to just not spawn after the starting part and we've also buffed the rate of Simulacrums dropping by 20% to make it more in line with the rate of finding the Expedition and Ritual bosses.
 
For Ritual we've made Omens now appear in the Ritual tribute window 60% more often.
 
For Expedition we've improved the Rarity from the shops, but we'll be wanting to make some more substantial changes to the rewards for this league later on.
 
Now one of the major concerns that we're often seeing is that getting to play Pinnacle content just takes too long and that when you do finally get there you only get one attempt and don't get a chance to learn the boss.
 
in order to address these concerns we're making the following changes: First, we're making the Citadel spawn closer to the center of the Atlas and we've also added an effect so you can see them in the fog of war from further away.
 
This makes them much easier to find.
 
To address the problem of only having one attempt, on the Arbiter of Ash you will now get up to six respawn attempts.
 
Respawns can only be triggered by the person who put in the keys and everyone in your party will be respawned at the same time.
 
Leaving the map still forfeits your attempt so you'll still need to fight the boss with the build you walked into the map with.
 
Higher difficulties of the boss will lower the number of respawn attempts you get, but you should know the mechanics of the fight by then, right? Now, we'll also be adding respawns to other Pinnacle content as well over time.
 
Another thing that players have noticed is that there are less keys from Faradun Citadels on the market and thought that it was because the Citadel spawns less often.
 
it turns out though that this is just because the boss kills players more often than the others.
 
We made a few changes to that boss to bring it in line with the other bosses.
 
A lot of people have reported that many of our unique items are feeling underwhelming.
 
Uniques are often designed to be build enabling at high levels even if they're low level uniques.
 
But we realise that we do need to make sure that more uniques feel powerful when you first get them at low levels too.
 
In this patch we are buffing a lot of uniques.
 
These changes should make finding uniques at lower levels a lot more fun, and make subsequent character playthroughs more fun too when you have some great uniques to use.
 
We're also changing a few other things to make finding rares better at higher levels too.
 
First we're changing mod weightings a bit to make sure that there are less bad mods.
 
Another fix is making high tier items no longer cull the highest tier modifier of a given mod type.
 
This bug caused bows and crossbows to not spawn with attack speed at tier five rarity and rings to not spawn with life at tier five rarity.
 
Another change we're making is to make it so that socketables such as Runes can now be overwritten with another socketable.
 
Now as we continue to play, we still find many balance anomalies with specific monsters or bosses that can be nasty if you encounter them.
 
This patch contains a pass adjusting a large number of those monsters and bosses.
 
We'll save the full list for the patch notes but there a significant number of changes here that should address many cases where monsters or bosses felt too hard in certain circumstances.
 
Here are a few examples to get a taste of what kind of changes you can expect.
 
The Silverfist Commander roll now does a lot less damage.
 
Plaguebearers' Detonate Dead can no longer be used from off screen and has better telegraphing.
 
Forsaken Miners throw less grenades, have improved visuals and deal less damage.
 
and Lost Men Zealots can no longer meteor you from off screen either, as well as many other changes just like those.
 
One of the big issues for players on Consoles is that the web based item filter system is currently not working.
 
This means that they can't use item filters like the PC users can.
 
For 0.1.1 we'll be enabling the same system that Path of Exile 1 has which allows you to subscribe to item filters on the website.
 
For now this will be done on the Path of Exile 1 website to allow us to get this feature out as fast as possible.
 
later on we'll improve the user experience of this and put it on the Path of Exile 2 website.
 
This patch also contains a bunch of other smaller changes and bug fixes that I'm sure you guys will appreciate.
 
Like buffing Armor and Scavenged Plating.
 
Showing the number of uses left in your charms as well as an effect when they trigger.
 
Fixing the music that Una was supposed to play in town.
 
and plenty of other little fixes and improvements throughout the game.
 
Now, we have a huge amount of much more meta shifting changes that we know we want to make, and one of the best things about having the game in Early Access with the endgame is that we now have a much better idea of where we want character power to be and what the balance of bosses and monsters should be relative to that.
 
But those types of changes are going to have to wait until we are ready to make a new league with a new economy for people to play in.
 
That's still a little while away yet, but in the meantime we'll be continuing to identify things that are causing frustration and try and address them.
 
I want to thank you guys for playing and hope to be doing more of these in the future.
 
Later!  
 

Another change we're making is to make it so that socketables such as Runes can now be overwritten with another socketable.