New Path of Exile 2 Interview With Jonathan Rogers w/ ALL TIMESTAMPS

Great interview. Hats off to Jonathan for sharing his thoughtful motivations behind each idea, and for his overall candor throughout.

Really good interview. Im assuming they are working on an out of combat move speed for 0.3 based on what we've heard so far. Whatever it is, I hope its enough to not have it be a question in every QnA

Good interview, I like that he outlined the exact reason people do not like the tower system.

This was a fantastic interview. Tri was a great host and Jonathan's insights plot a good course for the game's future.

Anyone have a TLDR? Many of us will appreciate you!

Great interview! Very interesting to hear how unique drop pools are currently different compared to PoE1(which is sounds like they are changing) and that they worked out 1 Astramantis is currently dropping once every 45,000 divine orbs LOL. Hopefully the changes in 0.2.1 mean casual players like myself have a more realistic change of eventually seeing some of these chase uniques.

I enjoyed this one. Some of my biggest issues are feelsbad moments with towers, weapon restrictions, attributes, movement speed, and skill balance. You talked about them all!

Thank you for the work you put in.

Horrific interview, I could not stand hearing the interviewers umms and ahhs and constant interjections into silence

Let Your Interview Subject Speak.

Please post a text summary of the event so i dont need to listen to this further then i allready did.

Looking forward to all the 0.3.0 nerfs 👍

This was a good one, I enjoyed his answers, especially when he noticed that going into a map knowing it was bad with no league mechanics and no tablets just felt like a waste of time until he could get to the good maps nearby. This happens to me all the time and it feels like half of the maps I do are a slog where I know nothing fun will happen.

I really wish somebody would press him about boots without movement speed and the loss of crafting a "good enough" move speed roll in poe1 while poe2's replacement in runes has nothing. A 20 ms rune that only works if your boots have no ms mod would be great.

In regards to harvest resistance swapping I think a good compromise could be something like old WoW's reforging system where you mark an item to convert a stat into 50% of another stat and then you can undo it later. Would even be fine if it was a lossy conversion because if I have 180% cold res and 50% lightning res I'd be happy to change a 40% cold res mod into a 20% lightning res mod. Would prefer for this to not be a rune but we do have soul cores that do this for attributes.

Excellent interview, it gave me a lot of confidence that this game will be in a good spot by 1.0

Edit: why an I being downvoted? This was a legitimetly good interview. Tri did an awesome job with the questions, and Jonathan provided a lot of insightful information

Mark our hero again with the stacks of splinters !

good job on this interview Tri, asked good questions and engaged just the right amount while letting him talk

What if maps and towers have chance to spawn content instead of certainty, so you have a reason to run all maps, not just the ones with content for sure?

The timestamp using stats to make decisions literally blew my mind. HOW have they not been doing this the entire time?!!

Can't watch yet but did he address the no mid league nerfs, that's the biggest issue imo

Good interview, although the movement speed debate fell pretty flat due to not mentioning quicksilver flask. Jonathan said base movement speed in PoE1 and PoE 2 was the same, but in PoE 1 players would have more "tools" to move faster.

Quicksilver flask is not just a "tool". It is an essentially always active, bascially mandatory character buff after 10 minutes into the game, that almost every single build uses.

Also, early dev videos show, that quicksilver flask existed in the early development of PoE 2. So a good number of areas and map layouts have certainly be designed with quicksilver flask in mind.

Please give us back those missing 30%. I miss them heavily.

I appreciate this interviews are a thing and the general open-ness. But it bothers me that Jonathan basically dismisses/ignores some questions/valid concerns multiple times, by just saying “its actually the same/similar to PoE1 - when he is asked a question- or told a about a concern about PoE2.

It doesn’t matter how things are in PoE 1 - when the concern/question is about PoE 2. So why does he not just answer instead of comparing to PoE 1.

Oh man I'm giddy with excitement. The whole interview was great but I was not expecting that rapid fire question right at the end to turn into a huge discussion on the aiming issues in the game, which is my personal biggest gripe with poe2. I wrote up a whole post in the official forums and contributed to several discussions on Reddit about this topic in recent weeks and Jonathan specifically mentioned he saw it was constantly being brought up recently in a way it wasn't for PoE1. Anyway it's really heartening to see it addressed!

ALL three of the major pain points with the targeting issues in the game were discussed:

1. cursor parallax - projectiles not lining up with the cursor. The solution of allowing chest-aiming being offered as an option is absolute music to my ears. It being an option means everybody wins and nobody loses. Realising that it was the introduction of WASD that made it a much more prominent problem compared to PoE1 was great intuition from Jonathan. I've not played a non-WASD ARPG in forever so it didn't even occur to me that was probably why it didn't bother too many mouse-users much.

2. Auto-targeting being forced on was also directly acknowledged for being bad due to jank caused by the cursor-parallax issue above. Again, an option to disable it was mentioned so another win win.

3. Name-locking was given a passing mention with the implication being an option to disable that would also be coming.

Thanks Jonathan for putting in the work to really dig into the feedback, research other games without ego and provide options to satisfy as many players. And thanks Tri for the great questions and interview!

everyone's been saying it, but the real blessed poe2 players are the ones starting on 1.0 when all us EA guinea pigs have been beaten our heads against the wall for hundreds of hours

Hey man, i dunno you, but great job!

I feel there is too many soft question. Some of them felt like it a question leading up to admitting a problem but didn't in fear of retribution.

Jon was kind enough to admitting it but it should have been brought up beforehand.

I'm not the kind of person who usually bothers with interviews but I love how candid and open Jonathan and Mark are when it comes to the game. It's interesting just listening to them rambling on about things. It's a shame more game studios don't take this approach.

Good interview, even better on 1.5x speed. Looking forward to next PoE2 patch.

I really wish I understood the part about the targeting that made 0 sense

Great interview!

Watch all and that’s great. Just sadly delirium as an end game machanic and visual of delirium causes performance issue not being touch.

2 types of moods from Tri:

1. Im curious
2. Im excited

Lame questions from this interview honestly

Movement speed question was funny. "As far as I know, it's the same in PoE 1 and 2!".... Jonathan... we have a quicksilver flask in poe 1....

The mapping just sucks…. I don’t want to randomly move through an endless map. So many of the maps I hate playing.

They need to redo it. I’ve stopped playing for the first time this week I just don’t like it anymore. Even starting a new character is a choir now

I am so tired of the community discussing with GGG to help GGG come to good /fun Game Design solutions. We already discussed every mistake in poe1 for so many years. Year after year. League after League.

Setting Progress so far Back with PoE2 is so tiring to me.

He really had to ask if there is tri-attribute spear….

These guys don’t even play their own game.

If the problem with tower is it feels like a chore to get to the map that you want with the mechanic u want, then what if a buff to precursor tablet is to also give % chance to that mechanic if it wasnt chosen to have the mechanic?

When asked about movement speed, Jonathan thinks that PoE2 movement speed is baseline the same as PoE1. Even if that's true, he's implying that there is nothing wrong with the speed, casually forgetting that:

PoE1 has movement speed flasks, PoE1 has movement skills that are used frequently, PoE1 has abilities that scale movement speed (tailwind, onslaught, action speed to name a few), PoE2's maps are at least 2-3 times the size of PoE1's maps.

OBVIOUSLY we need more baseline movement speed in PoE2 to compensate.

The targeting thing, to me seems to steam from an overlap with controller support and wasd, where the game prioritizes targets...like in PoE1 where if you have loot on the ground next to a monster you can't pick it up if you use the controller while that monster is there or you have to manually switch.

In PoE2 if had it several times where i am trying to attack something and the skill not activating because there are breakables in front and the game things i am targeting them and the skill for whatever reason dose not work on breakables (in PoE1 most skills do)

In PoE2 i had problems with essence drain and contagion, Contagion always felt like it didn't hit what i was moused over which made the follow up essence drain pointless since it wasn't going to hit the target that had contagion because the game decided that your mouse seemed to be over a target that was behind your intended target, the fix for this is simple though, change contagion to be an AoE like PoE1

Tower shouldn't juice a certain number of maps around it, but juice the next maps you enter. Make it so you can have just 1 tower buff and so your goal is to run towers to towers on juice maps. (Boost juice map maybe since you will have only 1 tower effective)

Happy cake day

I'm a big fan of how Jonathan talked about the 'targetting issue. It shows depth, intelligence and passion.

I don't think he's the best at vocalizing his thoughts, but this one example is great at demonstrating that he operates on a very impressive level as a game director.

Anybody got a TLDR of this interview in bulletform?

Somebody get CHATGPT on this :p

aint watching all of that

Amazing interview man good job!

Very positive interview but I really can't understand jonathan point about nerfs. The solution for 0.1 backlash could've been adding an easier or istant respec and literally not going from most broken build of the game to non functional, that was the point, the builds that got nerfed didn't become in line with everything else but totally subpar, of course people were angry. You could say they would've been angry anw even if the skill were still decent, but they probably wouldn't have rage quit the game but continued playing and maybe trying new stuff (especially with an easy respec): They just got burned one time and didn't even try any alternative to balancing the game

Did i hear Jonathan lowkey hinting as some kind of sprinting system?

##0.3.0

• Major updates/expansions for both PoE 1 and PoE 2 will be released every 4 months now, so PoE 2's 0.3.0 should be in August with 0.4.0 in December.

• A "major objective" for 0.3 will be to work on build variety by making more skills scale into the endgame and be viable. Another one will be to address player's complaints with movement speed, not directly buffing player speed (as that could break combat and animations).

• The Druid still should be the class scheduled for 0.3, but it could be delayed again as the development focus is now on making sure the existing class experiences are good.

• Improvements for weapon swapping may be in 0.3, it will likely involve attack speed. They can't remove the penalty entirely as it would enable degenerate mobility skills.

• The weapon set lock feature still isn't finished and should be in 0.3.

• 0.3 will make some improvements to endgame League mechanics (Breach, Expedition, etc.).

##Future Updates

• 0.2.2 and 0.2.3 will contain balance changes. Mid-league nerfs are very unlikely to happen again as they just aren't fun. Mid-league buffs are contingent on the small group of devs who can handle balance changes, devs who are currently working on PoE 1's expansion.

• Some archetypes may not have the proper tools for the endgame whether it be scaling or a good AoE for mapping, this is something they need to fix with new skills or by overhauling existing skills.

• Jonathan is open to the idea of adding additional intuitive tags to skills on a case-by-case basis if it makes sense or to help the skill scale. While it sounds simple, doing so would be a lot of work in part because every stat that existed in PoE 1 is still in the PoE 2 codebase and it is all still being maintained in case they want to use them so they don't want to mess those up.

• Endgame League mechanics need to be expanded on as they are lacking content, there needs to something in the middle of progression to help give you points, and the onboarding is poor. 0.3 and subsequent major content updates will keep adding things to expand these.

• They had intended to have a system were Rares had extra abilities that Normal/Magic did not and if a monster was excluded from being Rare due to weakness in their skill set this system would add abilities to make them eligible. This was too time intensive and only a few monsters have the feature currently, they need to add more later.

• They still plan for every area in the game to have a boss in it, but this may not be done by full release due to the work load.

• If they added another Blink-type skill it would be on the other DEX-INT class as that would be in theme with it. Shadow is "a little way out still."

• The intent is for your gear progression to start reducing your reliance on resistance Runes because you're getting stronger rolls and may not need them. This then gives you another feeling of progression as you can start using the rare socketables. Mark and Jonathan recently were in a related discussion and the idea of player paralysis over the rarer socketables was brought up, it sounds like if they cause issues they may add unsocketing.

• They want attributes to matter more than they did in PoE 1, particularly for gear, but Jonathan would like to take another look at skill gem requirements as those might need to come down a bit.

• Problems with Towers and the Atlas are now evident, and they need to work out what they need to do about these issues. Jonathan hopes this infinite Atlas system can stay for 1.0 and they have more to try before giving up on it, but if it doesn't work out "nothing is sacred."

• They have quest(s) in development which will show players how to use crafting currency.

• Jonathan and Mark have been going over uniques, and some are unintentionally Mirror-esque. Jonathan found that an Astramentis drops 1 for every 45,000 Divines. They will be changing back to the PoE 1 unique pool, instead of base types influencing rarity. The drop rate buffs are "very substantial," and unique amulets and rings will be more common.

• The difference between damage types isn't something they've explored enough yet with uniques and mechanics. Damage conversion doesn't matter that much because there isn't enough going on that allows it to matter yet.

• Acolyte of Chayula suffers from "PoE 1 brain" where you value something because it was valuable in PoE 1. Acolyte needs improvement, and they don't know if they should be adding tools to make the chaos conversion matter more, a build-around unique, or adjusting how the class works.

• Jonathan and Mark recently discussed the Harvest resistance swap, with worry that it makes things "a little bit too easy" as far as the item game goes. Mark feels it is too powerful, but making it rare would defeat the purpose, and they don't know how to improve on it without compromising the item system.

• Diviniation Cards "won't be too far away," they will be designing them so that they feel like each has an exclusive reward from that card instead of multiple cards feeling similar like in PoE 1.

• Once the console developers have finished working on dynamic swap between controller and M&K, they will likely be working on the ability for each player in couch co-op to use their own account.

• Nothing new on Armour, it will require a long, multi-day discussion with Mark and that likely won't occur until after PoE 1's expansion is out.

• The passive tree import/export overlay UI is still coming, don't know when yet.

• People have been complaining about targeting issues and Jonathan was confused at first. He started playing Diablo IV, Torchlight Infinite, Last Epoch, and one other ARPG to see how their systems worked, and long story short they are looking at adding D4-style targeting as an option.

• Jonathan says it is unacceptable that the Hideout Music Player doesn't work on console and they'll be looking into it.

• Before release they plan to do a chat revamp.

##Misc.

• Jonathan feels like they have finally reached a point where they are smoothly developing PoE 1 and 2 simultaneously, after struggling with it for quite some time, and that they are in the early stages of it feeling sustainable.

• The four-month expansion plan will be "much healthier" for PoE 1 and way better overall. "If something doesn't get done we just won't put it in, we'll put in the next one."

• Standalone client numbers are less than Steam but not by too much. Console players are anywhere from 15,000 to 20,000 plus, there's a story as to why they don't know exactly but he didn't go into it. Concurrent players were 890,000 for 0.1 and 485,000 for 0.2, which he was happy with.

• The official release of PoE 2 Early Access for China is "not too far away" but no date yet. Jonathan will be doing an event in China in a few weeks to talk to players there. The Chinese release will require EA purchase, Tencent wanted them to release it as F2P for China in the belief that the Chinese gamers don't like pay to play games, but he was against that as it would have been unfair to the rest of the world.

• Traditionally, GGG has not been a data-driven company, but they did recently get a data person who plays PoE so they are really helpful. Jonathan's current data investigation is into lag and disconnection issues, and they now have a data dashboard to help track issues with ISPs and data centers.

• Skills provide identity to weapons so they are unlikely to allow Maces to use Quarterstaff abilities etc. He feels weapon swap being improved should be the solution to this, and that there can also be build-enabling uniques which allow cross-weapon skill use.

• The 0.2 Lightning Spear balance situation was "really bad" as it screwed with the meta and players just hemorrhaged onto other games, but they know they would not be "gaining any friends" if they had acted on it and the same players would have likely instantly left if it had been nerfed.

• You can post feedback for the game here, their forums, etc. They have a community team who collates it all for them. They enjoy Bingo cards because it forces the creator to focus on the most important complaints rather than ranting about every little issue.

Older info from pre-0.1 to 0.2: https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExile2/comments/1jm98y5/dawn_of_the_hunt_interview_roundup_march_2025/

Something concerning is what they said about balance changes. How are they going to maintain two games when they by their own admission dont have enough developers that can balance classes to work on both at the same time?

POE1and 2 need their own separate teams. This whole sharing resources thing is going to be a problem.

The volatile plants/data driven thing really bothers me. If you couldn't tell that volatile plants were (still are) overpowered, you simply weren't paying attention. It's great that someone is finally looking at the data, but it doesn't give me a lot of hope for game balance or design. Using data to find balance issues with your game is obvious. The issue with volatile plants is obvious. With map repetitiveness is obvious. They weren't listening to the players, they weren't looking at the data, so how can they possibly do a good job without using any of the tools needed to do so?

Again, I'm glad they are doing it now, but the fact that they weren't at all is shocking. It's the cheapest, most effective way to find problems with your game. It makes me seriously question their intent to create something fun and balanced. Is poe2 going to have most players using the same 4 or 5 ascendancies, like in poe1? Is an ascendancy being used for less than 1% of characters a problem? What about skills? Will they even notice?

Thanks for asking about bear and wolf forms!

Any tldrs?

Got to admit: This was a REALLY good interview, from both sides.

Tri was definetly nervous as hell but thats alright!

Seems like there's a chance for all 3 missing acts coming at once, but the part where Johnathan said they don't make it a necessity for a new class (SINGULAR) in 0.3 is veeeeeery scary. Gotta say, I'm not hopeful for 0.3

Anything new about increasing density? Like, tripling it the least? Was it mentioned or a question?

The endless walking without blink ot flicker kills me.