Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Hack and slash/Beat 'em up, Adventure, Indie
Path of Exile
Jewel Changes FAQ
Yesterday, we shared our plans regarding upcoming changes to Jewels which prompted some questions. In today's post, we've collected some of these questions and their answers.
Can you give us some examples of the numbers on the ailment mitigation modifiers on Jewels?
Regular Jewels can roll up to 35% Reduced Duration or Reduced Effect. Abyss Jewels can roll up to 50% Ailment Avoidance.
Will the new Jewel modifiers or existing Jewel modifiers have modifier tiers?
No, regular Jewel modifiers do not have tiers. Abyss Jewel modifiers already had tiers, we've just buffed the modifier values on them that benefit ailment mitigation.
Are you removing any corrupted implicit modifiers on Jewels?
No
Is the corrupted mod pool getting a weighting change?
No
Which unique jewels are being removed?
We aren't ready to share the full list of unique Jewels being removed as we are still discussing some of them. A few examples of unique Jewels that are definitely being removed are Malicious Intent, Brittle Barrier and Unstable Payload. Two examples of jewels that aren't being removed are Lioneye's Fall and Inspired Learning. We'll share the full list of removed Jewels in the patch notes.
Isn't diluting the mod pool a nerf?
If you're looking for a very specific outcome on your Jewel and have no use for ailment mitigation modifiers, it may be marginally more difficult to roll your Jewels. However, the average outcome for Jewels should be better.
Which of the removed unique Jewels from quest rewards are going into the global drop pool?
Some specific stats from some of these Jewels are being added to the regular Jewel mod pool, such as mana reservation efficiency.
Are the Divination Cards that grant unique Jewels changing?
The drop rates for Divination Cards that grant unique Jewels that are now rarer will be adjusted to align with the unique Jewel's rarity.
Are unique Jewels that are already rare, like Unnatural Instinct, going to be even rarer?
We haven't changed the rarity of Jewels like this.
Will Jewels that are being removed still have Replica versions from Heist?
No, if the base Jewel has been removed, its Replica version will also be removed.
What's happening to these Jewels?
Conqueror's Efficiency: its mana reservation stat has been moved to the regular Jewel mod pool.
Survival Secrets: its stats may show up in a different form like a unique item but we can't confirm this yet.
Poacher's Aim: this has been removed entirely.
Golem Jewels: These are more deterministically available and aren't relying on random drops anymore. The intention is that they should be relatively accessible.
To Dust: this will be available as a corruption-only Jewel.
Are Primordial Jewels changing?
We have no plans to change Primordial Jewels.
Are other forms of ailment mitigation being nerfed to offset the buff to Jewels?
No
It's worth noting that things may change before launch after further testing and feedback.
3.20 Balance Manifesto: Jewels and Ailment Mitigation
In our upcoming 3.20 expansion, we're making a number of balance changes that we'll present over several balance manifestos that each cover an individual topic. In today's manifesto, we're discussing changes to Jewels, most notably increasing their potential for ailment mitigation.
Problem: Jewels have modifiers that provide various forms of ailment avoidance or protection. However, because their current values are moderately low, you often need to stack several Jewels in order to have adequate levels of protection. We feel that this is an excessive amount of investment for how necessary ailment mitigation is to a character's build. This issue has been exacerbated by some of these mods being gated behind corruption, making them more expensive and difficult to acquire.
Solution: We're expanding the pool of mods available on magic and rare Jewels and are making their modifier values more generous so that players have better access to sources of ailment mitigation, with less investment.
Regular Jewels (i.e. Jewels that are not Abyss or Cluster Jewels) now have mods that provide Reduced Duration or Reduced Effect for a wider variety of ailments than before. Abyss Jewels now have mods that provide avoidance of various ailments.
Summary: This means that Jewels should be a more reliable and less expensive source of ailment mitigation through their higher mod values and better variety of mods.
Problem: Many unique Jewels are not exciting to find. There are a few reasons for this. In most cases they are simply underpowered, or apply to a too-narrow window of usage, or both. There are also many corruption-only Jewels that don't fulfill a good purpose.
Previously, we were hesitant to revisit unique Jewels and improve them beyond their initial designs because many of their themes are somewhat rigid in nature, meaning there is little room to improve them without completely remaking them.
An example of this is the Fireborn Crimson Jewel. It has no values that we could increase to make it more useful; it simply changes the damage type within a radius which has very limited opportunities for use. Any improvements we could make to this Jewel would have to fundamentally change its identity and would therefore essentially remove the Jewel in its current form from Path of Exile.
Solution: We're making it so that every unique jewel that drops is very rare and highly desirable. This means that many existing unique Jewels have been removed from the drop pool. The intention is that now when you find a unique Jewel, it should almost always be a very positive experience.
To help make jewel drops special, we've designed a new set of unique Jewels that are powerful chase items. These can drop from the core pool. You can learn more about these Jewels in our upcoming announcement livestream for the 3.20 expansion.
With that said, there were some unique Jewels that were still useful for a subset of players because they had build-enabling modifiers or other very niche uses (like the Brute Force Solution or other attribute-transformation Jewels). Instead of getting rid of these, we've made them corruption-only unique Jewels. We feel this has benefits for both players who want them and players who don't, as generally players who don't want them won't come across them as core drops and players who do want them can still actively pursue them.
Some build-enabling unique Jewels can now be found from more deterministic sources throughout Path of Exile. One example is Combat Focus which can now be obtained through a vendor recipe.
Some other build-enabling Jewels that affect Golems can no longer drop but can be found from another more deterministic source. While we want you to discover this new source on your own during gameplay, we will say for clarity that these Jewels do not come from vendor recipes.
Summary: Our goal is that finding a unique Jewel is an exciting experience. The unique Jewels that drop naturally should be those that are very valuable with broad appeal to the average player, either to use in your own build or trade to someone else. We've worked towards this goal by removing uninteresting unique Jewels, adding more chase unique Jewels, and moving Jewels that do appeal to a smaller subset of players to other places so that they can be pursued by choice.
Problem: Many of the unique Jewels that are currently granted through quest rewards are not very desirable. Additionally, because they're offered to all players who make their way through the campaign, they're extremely common, which inhibits them from having value or being meaningful items to find. We have also come to feel that it's thematically incorrect to offer unique items as quest rewards, as it undermines their feeling of uniqueness and prestige.
Solution: Unique Jewels will no longer be offered as quest rewards. Most of the Jewels that were previously offered have been removed entirely, though some important ones have had their effects preserved in the form of new unique items or by being added to the pool of rollable Jewel modifiers.
These quest rewards now offer a random Rare Jewel. Because the rewards are not static like the unique Jewels were, they may have a better chance of being useful to the receiver or something that may be valuable to trade to others. At the very least, they should be less predictable.
Summary: Players should no longer be burdened with predictable unique Jewel quest rewards but will not entirely miss out on some of the valuable aspects they did have.
Conclusion: Jewels should be more exciting than before and provide a better source of ailment mitigation than they were in 3.19. Jewels with effects that are useful only to a subset of players should still be attainable while moving them out of the way of players who aren't interested in them. You can find out more information in the patch notes for the 3.20 expansion and in our announcement livestream.
As we mentioned, we have several other balance manifestos coming out. These will cover topics such as Curses, Archnemesis and Eldritch Altars, among other things.
Ruthless FAQ
Yesterday we announced Ruthless, a new way for players to make their journey through Wraeclast even more challenging. The community has had a lot of questions about Ruthless, so today we've gathered the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions.
Some gameplay situations become very difficult without the ability to use movement skills, such as Grasping Vines. Is this something that is being taken into consideration or is this part of the challenge? It's something we'll take in consideration. The way we're looking at it is if a mechanic is impossible without being able to teleport away, it should be changed for both Ruthless and the core game.
Have items that grant movement skills been removed as well? Items that grant movement skills are currently still obtainable, but the skills they grant will have longer cooldowns. We'll be keeping an eye on this in the lead up to the 3.20 expansion and may modify them if needed.
Do stash tabs function normally in Ruthless? Yes.
Are you able to join a party with other players in Ruthless? Yes, unless you've also selected Solo Self-found.
Why will challenges not be available in Ruthless during the 3.20 expansion? Challenges will be disabled for 3.20 because some may not be completable in Ruthless (for example, some content might be disabled while we continue to work on it, but ideally we will have everything in that we intend to be part of Ruthless). We'll try to sort out some solution for challenges in Ruthless from 3.21 onwards.
Is Ruthless taking the place of the 3.20 expansion? No. Ruthless is additional content coming out alongside the 3.20 expansion.
Is there a default item filter for Ruthless? No. Due to the scarcity of item drops in Ruthless, a default item filter is unlikely to be necessary.
Is Ruthless being used to test balance changes that are intended for the main game? No. Balance changes made to Ruthless have no bearing on the main game. If we feel a change is good for the main game, we'll just make it there as well.
Will we be able to make Ruthless private leagues? We currently plan to have the option to make Ruthless private leagues for the 3.20 expansion.
Will all past league content be available in Ruthless? The intention is that all past leagues will be available, but some appear in different forms. Content from past leagues is encountered less often than in regular Path of Exile.
Is Ruthless available on consoles? Yes.
Will Ruthless have its own achievements? We don't currently have any new achievements planned specifically for Ruthless.
Announcing Ruthless
Ruthless (previously codenamed "Hard Mode") is an additional character creation flag alongside Hardcore and Solo Self-Found that allows you to opt-in to extreme item scarcity and various other changes. This article explains some of the major changes, the release timeline, and how you can sign up for Alpha testing if you're interested.
This article is not a set of patch notes. Only significant changes are described, but without numerical detail. There are a lot of other small changes that aren't covered here, but this article should give you a decent overall impression of Ruthless.
What Ruthless is not
Ruthless is not for everyone. If you don't like the sound of it, then it's probably best you continue playing the regular Path of Exile modes. It's like Hardcore or Solo Self-found. Some players really enjoy the additional constraints as a way of enhancing their game experience. Many players do not, and that's okay.
Ruthless is not a replacement for regular Path of Exile. It's a challenging mode for a specific type of player. A change being made in Ruthless is not an indication that we will make that change in the regular game. In fact, if we felt a particular change was good for the regular game, we'd just make it there to benefit everyone.
Ruthless is not monetised any differently. You can play it for free and your existing microtransactions will work in it.
Ruthless is not consuming significant development resources. It's a pet project that some senior designers have been working on in their spare time over the last 18 months.
What Ruthless is
Ruthless is a mode about friction, tension and anticipation. It's brutally difficult, but overcoming that difficulty feels highly rewarding. In a world where your items are far below par, every item drop has the potential to be the breakthrough one you need.
Ruthless is a mode that re-imagines traditional understanding of where Path of Exile's endgame is. It redefines the entire game as the endgame. Even reaching higher campaign acts, let alone maps, is an achievement. Traditionally weak items are suddenly very valuable. High level characters and good rare items infer immense bragging rights.
Ruthless is a mode where you barely find any items. You might get to act four without equipping a pair of rings. But each ring you find represents a huge power boost.
Ruthless is a mode where most items are normal rarity. You don't see a lot of magic items, and even fewer rare items. But finding a rare item of a base type you're looking for feels amazing.
Ruthless is a mode where you find very little crafting currency. You might only find one Orb of Alchemy throughout the whole campaign. But that orb lets you convert any base type of your choice to a rare item.
Ruthless is nostalgic. We picked the name partly because it was what the third of four difficulty levels was called back in closed beta. Aspects like item scarcity and support gems being valuable really feel like the early days of Path of Exile, just without desync.
Item Scarcity
The core Ruthless experience is that you don't have strong enough items to handle the content. Every item that drops has the potential to be an upgrade to your current gear.
In Ruthless, the quantity of items dropped has been massively reduced throughout all game content.
The rate of finding magic, rare and unique items has been massively reduced throughout all game content.
Rings, Amulets and Belts are much rarer than in regular Path of Exile. They cannot be purchased from Vendors.
Most league reward systems have been changed to only grant item rewards that are specific to that league (for example, Cluster Jewels only come from Delirium), plus items from the core drop pool. In Ruthless, getting items from the core drop pool is a valuable reward, especially when there is an item rarity bonus.
Many deterministic items like Divination Cards or Oni-Goroshi cannot be obtained. Many bosses like Atziri that guarantee unique drops still do, but are often harder to access.
Limited Crafting
In Ruthless, most of your items come from killing monsters. It's hard to find magic, rare and unique items, and it's even harder to craft them. Crafting is a powerful luxury that you'll have to use sparingly for the right items.
The drop rate of crafting currency items has been massively decreased.
The rate at which you receive shards of crafting currency when vendoring items has been decreased.
Master crafting is not available. The crafting bench cannot be accessed and recipe plinths cannot be found.
Veiled Chaos Orbs, Orbs of Binding, Orbs of Dominance, Influenced Exalted Orbs and Awakener's Orbs cannot be obtained.
When an Influenced Item is reforged or the Influenced Mod is removed, its influence is lost.
Most vendor recipes are not available. A few new Ruthless-specific vendor recipes have been introduced.
Skill and Support Gem Changes
In Ruthless, Skill Gem drops matter. Support Gem drops matter a whole lot.
Gems cannot be purchased from vendors.
The Fixture of Fate and Death and Rebirth quests each award you a token that can be traded to Siosa for any Skill Gem of level 31 or lower.
Support Gems can only be found as random drops. You cannot obtain them deterministically. Ruthless is a league of item scarcity. When items are scarce, they are exciting to find, exciting to look for and exciting to trade. We are defining Support Gems as items. This means some builds are harder to assemble, and careful planning is needed by SSF Ruthless players.
Gems gain far less experience than they do in regular Path of Exile. It's a lot harder to level your skills up, which is another axis of reduced character power in Ruthless. A melee character's damage comes from their weapon. Spellcasters get a lot of their damage from their gems as they level up. This change helps reduce the power gap between these two playstyles that is otherwise exacerbated by item scarcity in Ruthless. It also means that when you're farming an area for item drops, you can grind for gem experience at the same time.
Almost all movement skills are not available in Ruthless. In this mode, movement skills trivialise game systems that matter a lot more, such as terrain layout, monster body blocking, and actual level traversal.
Here is a full list of movement skills that are not available in Ruthless: Dash, Frostblink, Flame Dash, Lightning Warp, Leap Slam, Shield Charge, Whirling Blades, Blink Arrow, Smoke Mine, Bodyswap and Charged Dash. Venom Gyre relies on Whirling Blades and is hence also not available.
Additional Changes
Ruthless is challenging and punitive. It contains a number of changes that make Path of Exile harder and allow skilled players to differentiate themselves from everyone else.
A compounding character experience penalty applies from level 68 onwards. It takes a lot of investment to achieve a high-level Ruthless character.
Item drops are not allocated to specific party members. Looting is entirely free-for-all. Items really matter. Better pick them up before someone else does.
Flasks and Life/Mana are not restored upon entering town or your hideout. Vendors that sell Flasks (and Helena in your hideout) can refill them for you. This disincentivises the strategy of using Portal Scrolls as an instant full heal.
Onslaught does not grant movement speed in Ruthless. This relates to the absence of movement skills.
If you die near a quest boss in the campaign, a chunk of its life is recovered.
Hardcore Ruthless characters are not migrated to Standard Ruthless upon death. They are just permanently dead.
Utility Flasks can not gain charges while active and have lower duration than they do in regular Path of Exile.
Scarabs only enable mechanics in a map. They do not scale in power with their tiers. Instead, higher tiers of Scarabs are needed for higher tiers of map. Winged Scarabs do not exist.
There's a Ruthless-specific Atlas Passive Skill Tree.
Content from past leagues is encountered less often than in regular Path of Exile.
You do not accumulate free daily Atlas Missions.
Vaal Side Areas, Enkindling Orbs and Instilling Orbs do not exist in Ruthless.
Ruthless uses separate item filter files which must be created specifically for it. If players used regular Path of Exile ones then they would filter out items that are actually very useful in Ruthless.
Alpha Testing
We're running a small-scale Alpha test for Ruthless and are looking to recruit some players from the community. We're very interested in getting gameplay feedback from players who love the sound of everything Ruthless embodies, so if this is you, please fill out this form. We'll pick some waves of players to be added over the next few weeks. This Alpha is based on 3.19 and we do not allow streaming or distribution of footage from the initial version of this Alpha. We will likely allow streaming at some stage before release, but will let you know. Please limit discussion of Ruthless Alpha testing to the relevant discord server until the NDA is lifted.
Release Timeline
We expect to publicly release Ruthless alongside the 3.20 expansion in December. The first league with Ruthless active will still be deemed a bit of a Beta Test, and hence we will not be afraid of making mid-league adjustments to Ruthless, which is something we try to avoid doing in the regular game. Challenges will not be enabled in Ruthless in 3.20.
Ruthless will launch as an additional character creation flag. We will support all permutations of Hardcore/SSF/Ruthless, as each combination targets a different type of player. Some people will play Hardcore Ruthless for the ultimate adrenaline rush. Some people will play SSF Ruthless because they want to demonstrate mastery of Path of Exile's item progression. Some people will play with all three modes turned on because they can.
Ruthless is a mode where you aren't expected to get to maps. Even if you do get to maps, you're probably not going to reach red maps. If you somehow get there, how will you sustain them with such little access to currency? Will anyone manage to kill pinnacle bosses? Will anyone even see an Uber pinnacle boss? We're very excited to see how this experiment plays out.
New Forum Avatars
Today we've added some new avatars featuring various NPCs and Bosses you would have encountered while traveling through Wraeclast. Check them out below!
To change your forum avatar, you'll need to be logged into the Path of Exile website, then go to your User Profile located in the top left corner by clicking your username, then click "Change avatar" in the panel on the right.
Twitch Community Highlights
There are always many exciting gameplay moments captured by the community on Twitch, and in today's post we'd like to share some of them with you. Check them out on our forum post, which you can find here!
Audio Team Q&A - Answers Part 2
Last week, our Audio Team answered some of your questions about what they do! Since there were so many questions, we've split their answers into two parts. Today's post covers Part 2 of the Audio Team Q&A!
6 string or 7 string? Kane, Audio Lead: Depends if we’re djenting or AC/DCing. Kamil, Music Director & Composer: Can be even 25 for some ethnic guitars.
Do you mostly work with headphones or speakers? Why? Kane: Kamil and I have our own mixing rooms, the rest of the sound team are on headphones but some also have speakers setup at their desks for reference/checking. There’s a couple of answers here. Firstly, mixing rooms take up a good deal of space, and space is limited in our premises. Second, collaboration is important and being able to turn to your colleague and discuss an idea is something that is somewhat lost if everyone is in their own isolated booth. I ask the sound team to visit my room to go over their work as often as they can, keeping the conversation going and hearing things in a different light. It’s important that there’s a balance.
Do you still use a digital mixing desk (Pro Tools) to design audio? Or do you go to a studio for some recording and mixing? Kane: Yes we still use Pro Tools. We have an inhouse recording facility now though, so we are able to get much more expressive performances from actors while they watch animation playback. It’s great!
What's the foley-to-synth ratio for the Skills SFX? Kane: This is so case dependent that it is difficult to answer. I would just say, the more obscure/magical a skill is, the more there are inorganic elements. Such as, fireball sounds like fire. But what does a chaos projectile sound like? In all cases, we try to minimize the amount of over ‘synthetic’ sounding things and opt to process more organic material in a way to make it work contextually.
Which software is used to edit/eq/filter/record the audio files? Kane: We are all using Pro Tools currently.
How does the Game handle massive amounts of sounds playing together? Do you have priorities for boss abilities and such? Kane: There’s various things in play here. First we have a limit set on how many sounds can play at one time (which you can change in your settings - please if your computer allows, set it to high xD). From here we have a priority and a stealing system in FMOD. Depending on how the events are tagged, they will steal a spot from another sound if their priority is high enough and there’s too many sounds playing. Late game, this can become extremely difficult in some situations to handle, and it’s troubling when sounds begin cutting out. We now also use cooldowns on most events, this stops things triggering within a specific amount of time (in milliseconds) and goes a long way to stopping unwanted behavior of sounds.
Why can disabling audio have such a drastic effect on game performance for some players? Kane: Let me just say, it’s sad for us to see people doing this on an artistic level. However, people playing and enjoying the game is more important, it is their choice how they do so and we are just happy that they are playing our game! This question is likely better answered by our engine department, but I will do my best based on the discussions we’ve had about this. Essentially, disabling any major element of the game would in theory increase your performance. Imagine if you had 0 effects on screen, that would surely increase performance. Audio, like anything in the game, has a performance cost. And just like everything else, by late-game this is exacerbated. Having said all that, we are doing our best to mitigate what issues we can.
How many sound channels can play simultaneously, and how do you prioritize which sounds to cull when the limit is reached? Kane: 32, 64 and 128 for each respective sound count setting. Once the limit is reached, there is a priority system in FMOD with all events tagged, higher priority events will ‘steal’ a space from a lower one.
What exactly were the technical constraints that caused the fiasco around the shattering/Herald of Ice sound changes back in 2019? Kane: The intention there was to make the shatter mechanic more dynamic and expressive, with different sized monsters having different shattering sounds. However, upon reflection after the fact, we fell short on the actual sounds themselves and it just didn’t feel as satisfying. The technical constraints from my recollection were that we changed it to a more complex system and the original sound event did not have enough variations, which led to the sound itself cutting or sounding repetitive. However, though technically not ‘right’, the nostalgia and feeling of the original was so ingrained that reverting all these changes proved the right thing to do.
Do all the audio team members use the same daw? If not, how do you manage integration and review between units. If yes, is it reaper? If yes, would you care to shed a little light on you scripts and workflow. Kane: We all use Pro Tools. We have, on several occasions now, considered moving to Reaper as many devs have and swear they’ll never return to Pro Tools. For us, it is difficult as we are constantly busy and making the change would inevitably slow us down for a little bit. It could still happen though! Regarding reviewing etc, it’s not very often that we are opening each other's sessions unless it is dialogue. The best place to review things is in-game, and that’s typically how I’ll review things with the team.
How do you make reverb so accurate? In Lake of Kalandra, I did not notice any reverb (which makes sense) and in places such as Palace Map (where there are indoors-outdoors), the reverb feedback is really on point. How do you conserve the room width:reverb ratio? Kane: This really is a matter of tinkering with knobs until it feels good! Each area in the game has an environment setting override where we can assign a mixer snapshot in FMOD. There, we can make changes to the reverb settings.
How do you create spaces for frequencies, and how do you make all sounds audible especially where there are many different sounds overlapping? Kane: This is one of our biggest challenges. It is very difficult to make things work in a variety of situations. We’ve been mindful of this while developing Path of Exile 2, and have a much more complex mixing system in FMOD. In Path of Exile 1, this was mostly in the sound design itself and levels in-game.
Are the voice recordings in the game now the full recorded quality, or do you have to scale back for game use due to engine limitations? Would you re-record or remix in future from a master if tech changes? Kane: We record high quality WAV files, using a fantastic microphone through great preamps and convertors into Pro Tools. However, we do need to compress these files for use in the game. Currently, we convert to OGG files. It’s a significant change in file size, of course. It’s very important that the recording and processing chain is super clean and of high quality, so that once compressed, as much fidelity as possible is maintained.
Are there any plans to replace or update FMOD, if you're still using that? It seemed to cause some issues a few leagues back, none for me this league. Are there any constraints to FMOD that impact sound design, as I imagine tech is advancing, for example I conjecture live control of things like sustain or multi-stage blended effects? Kane: Here and now, we are sticking with FMOD. If we were to change to Wwise, it would be a massive undertaking. Not only implementing the middleware but also getting all the sounds out of FMOD and into Wwise. Also, FMOD is great. We are in touch with the team over there and they have accommodated us on a variety of improvements specific to us. Yes, we’ve had issues. But only because we were updating our FMOD version to a new major version, to access new features and this caused some problems. Those are behind us now though!
If the composer Kamil is part of the Q&A, what went into the thought process that got us the sharp sting in Twisted Illusions? Kamil: When I read about the Strange Voice for the first time, twisted, illusion, mirror and so on became key words which had direct reflection in the palette of instruments. Almost atonal tremolo on string instruments, scraping metal or detuned sound of high pitched electric guitar are some of them and I guess one of them is the one you had in mind. Those types of sounds are a regular part of my template for Path of Exile.
What was the inspiration behind the Templar Court music? How did you come up with the lyrics the choir sings in the Templar Court? Kamil: Choir in “Templar Court” is based on a virtual instrument and uses vowels and meaningless micro phrases, although the final result of combination might make an impression of actual lyrics, which is quite a common technique which I and other composers use for writing for virtual choir. Speaking of general inspiration, the choir felt like a natural choice for Templar’s order, but also electric cello and some more industrial drones together with the sound of anvil complimented the choir.
Which are the classical music instrument libraries at Kamil disposal at this moment? Kamil: I would say pretty much everything considering the type of instruments. Speaking of libraries, there are so many, but the majority comes from Spitfire Audio.
Do you plan to implement dynamic mixing of separate but harmonically homogeneous instruments, according to the events happening at the game? Kamil: Technique which you referred to, called Vertical Remixing, currently is not part of the plan for the majority of content (this might change), while instead there will be more Horizontal slicing for smaller segments, to add more control.
How long does it take to make the league trailer music? How many people are dedicated to that area of sound and music? Kamil: Depends on video/script revisions and type of trailer. For instance, the music for “Legion” took me around 4 days, while a couple of trailers needed more than two weeks. For music, I had been responsible exclusively until “Lake of Kalandra” where MichaelC worked on that one
How do you make sure ambient music and sound don't sound repetitive? Kamil: There is no certainty, as players spend countless hours in the same levels, therefore music will get repetitive eventually. There is always a balance between trying to make music blend well to avoid too much attention (which usually leads to that feeling of repetitiveness) and writing catchy music. Certain dose of randomness and reduction of rhythmic elements are also useful. That’s actually something which I aim to improve in Path of Exile 2 music.
Where do you find such talented voice actors? For Sound Designer or music producer, people apply for a job or get contacted via business mail after being acquaintanced with their work. When looking for a voice actor, you are looking for someone very specific to fill a certain role. Where do you find these people? Kane: Jeremy, our Voice Director, helps us with all casting and actor coordination. He will approach voicing agencies who will then get back to us with auditions from various actors, then it’s a matter of picking an actor that’s right for the role.
How many voice actors would you guess have actually been involved in Path of Exile? Is there one guy or gal responsible for like 50% of all monster screams and shrieks in the game, and then with a varied but less frequently used cast of people for the voiced npcs and bosses and such? Kane: I do a lot of monsters and bosses myself (especially on Path of Exile 2) and the rest of the team also get involved from time to time. For actual casted voices, we try to keep this varied to avoid anything feeling too samey.
Can we have more sound options in game, such as the ability to turn off the sound of charges (particularly losing them)? Kane: I know this is an issue, and one that bugs me too when playing. On the one hand, it communicates important info and needs to be heard, but it’s also quite oppressive. We’ve experimented and not yet found the right solution, but it is something I want to address.
Can we have a Zana voicemail message? Kane: “Hello, you’ve reached Zana. If you’re still sane, leave a message after the beep.” That good?
Final T-shirt Competition Highlights
Our Design a T-Shirt Competition has now ended! While we go through all your entries, here's the last batch of cool designs that we wanted to highlight to the community! Check them out!
We'll be announcing the winners of the Design a T-Shirt competition at the end of this week. Thanks to everyone who participated!
Build of the Week S10 E5 - Akshay's Ward Loop Scion
We hope you're ready as this episode of Build of the Week dials it up to 11! Akshay's Ward Loop Scion stacks tons of Ward and takes advantage of Olroth's Resolve to infinitely cascade spells onto the battlefield! Check out the showcase below!
For more information about Akshay's build, you can find their forum post here.
If you're keen to get featured in next week's video, make sure you post your build in our Classes/Builds sub-forum, which you can find on our forum homepage!
Audio Team Q&A - Answers Part 1
Last week, we asked if the community had any questions for our Audio Team! Since there were so many great questions, we've split their answers into two parts. Today's questions are all answered by Kane, our Audio Lead. Check out part one in today's news post!
How big is the sound team? We have 5 sound designers and 2 composers.
Any stories of memorable unused SFX that you have hanging around because the original content it was going toward got shelved? This happens occasionally. Something might change quite late in the process, perhaps a skill is redesigned for a monster or a monster is moved to a different place. In any case, we always keep things, as you just never know where it can be used.
Do you keep a 'back catalog' for in house sounds / music that hasn't been used? What's that like? When we have a bit of downtime between leagues or projects (which hasn’t happened for quite some time!) then we like to dig into making some sound palettes or building blocks. This usually involves theorizing a theme or sound and then collecting source and manipulating it to achieve various types of audio. For example, how does Vaal blood magic sound? This then gives us unique resources for the future and expands our sound library.
How does the workflow go from creation to release and how much creative freedom is given proportionally to visual design? Audio is inevitably last in the pipeline, other than quality assurance testing. Typically art in the game (depending on what it is) goes from game design to concept art through modeling, rigging, animation, visual effects and then finally… Audio! But we do our best to get ahead of the curve and create audio where we can in advance, as the final push when things all come to us can be overwhelming otherwise.
Who is the Hans Zimmer of Game Sound Design, who are your professional heroes? It is hard not to think of Ben Burtt when it comes to sound design in general, as he was such an innovator of how to approach sound design. Also, Matt Uelmen’s sound design on Diablo II is still inspiring to this day.
Do you have a favourite sounding build(s)? How much effort goes into making all the sounds fit together? I've noticed that sometimes builds can sound almost rhythmical which I think is really neat! When thinking of builds, this usually gets me thinking about problems that we need to solve. In our game, builds can get very intense with what is translated on screen. It’s a tricky thing for us to ensure skills sound satisfying both early-game and late-game.
What is the most interesting part of this job for you? Continually trying to improve on our work, to make things more satisfying and to try and find a balance of control and chaos, are all things I find really interesting to work on and keep things fresh on a daily basis.
What sort of innovations do you have planned for Path of Exile 2 that you can talk about? Ambiences will be much more dynamic. In Path of Exile 1, these are mostly stereo loops with occasional extra elements of control, like being near the shoreline. In Path of Exile 2, we have expanded on this greatly and have a lot of ways now to dynamically change how the environment sounds. This will help make areas feel more immersive and alive. We’re also more careful how we mix ambiences now, as I think they tended to be a bit too loud and dense in Path of Exile 1. We want Kamil’s music to shine, and we work closely with him to ensure any tonal elements in the ambience work with the key of the music. Music and ambience occupy a lot of the same space and we need them to work together without clogging up the soundscape.
Other things we are doing involve completely rebuilding all on-hit audio from scratch, custom sounds for currency drops and other items, unique sounds for equipping, moving and unequipping items and a much more complex custom real-time mixing system for the entire game. There’s a lot of other things going on, but we’ll reveal more about it all later!
Are there any online courses or specific schooling you would recommend for someone wanting to learn more about a job like yours? There is such a huge amount of freely available knowledge out there now that I think it’s a great time to get into sound design. Start on YouTube, start recording and manipulating sounds, start redesigning trailers or clips from games and you are already heading in the right direction. There are of course schools and courses available too, but nothing sells your skills better than the work itself and having a great showreel is key. Having a good body of actual sound design work goes a long way. There’s also great tools that won’t cost you anything where you can get started. Such as Reaper, which you can trial for free until you are ready to purchase it: https://www.reaper.fm/
Do you have any work tips for other sound designers? Invest in yourself. Upgrade your skills. Don’t be complacent or lament not getting ‘that’ job. Continue to record, make awesome sounds and you’ll get there eventually!
How did you manage to achieve such a pleasant sound of Malachai's head explosion? Plenty of bone crunching… Aka vegetable torture.
How did you make that tasty sound when artifacts are collected from Expedition chests? MichaelC was responsible for this, so I’ve asked him to fill in here! MichaelC, Supporting Composer: Scraping leather, crunching gravel, and dropping bottle caps. Processing was then some light frequency shifting and saturation. Quite simple, but satisfying.
More broadly than "what makes sound so satisfying?", is there any kind of science or psychology behind making a sound satisfying, or what sounds humans find satisfying to hear repeatedly? If so, how do you leverage that when designing sounds for skills, item drops, etc? This is a great question! We have interesting discussions about this when working on skills. A sound designer may work on a new skill, create some great sounds and we get it into the game but then discover something doesn’t feel right. It might be that it actually is just too intense, and when it’s used repeatedly, it becomes fatiguing. Unfortunately there is no ‘secret sauce’ answer to how or why something works or feels satisfying, and it really is a gut feeling when something starts working. I maintain a cautious ear for making sure things do not feel ‘outside’ of the game or the mix, which I think is important for making everything feel inside the world. Just know that we take a great amount of care when making skill audio and we are always looking for that unique flavor or character to make something feel satisfying, and that can come from a variety of sources.
Why is directional audio in the game and why is it so good? Directional audio helps make the game feel immersive and gives a sense of distance.
The shattering sound in itself is a feature that people go out of their way to build for, so I wonder why did shock never receive something similar? Or alternative ailments since those came out later. It is difficult to determine exactly why a sound becomes notorious. There are some sounds that have a legacy and memories tied to them, and we shouldn’t mess with that. Some things we are reluctant to change in Path of Exile 1, just in case it has a negative effect on the player experience, as our goal is only to enhance that, not hinder it.
How do you make the voice effects on bosses like Searing Exarch, Eater of World, Sirus etc? Usually it’s a combination of pitch shifting, where we lower the pitch of the actors' recordings so that they sound ‘bigger’ and thus more scary or ominous. Then depending on the aesthetic or what we are aiming for, it’s a combination of various other effects such as reverb, distortion and modulation. The hard part is making sure we keep things intelligible with all the various effects going on.
Would you give us a breakdown behind the transformation of voice-acted lines for bosses and NPCs? How do you decide what sorts of audio transformation effects to apply to match a character's personality or physical description? There’s a bunch on this in the above answer, but I’ll expand a bit here on how we make decisions. Really, a lot is informed by what we see in the concept art, model and the animations. It can be very subtle changes that make a lot of difference in the end and most of what dictates the sound of these characters are the actors' performance. So it’s important that we give them the best direction possible during the recording phase, then the processing is the fun part!
I want to know what kind of sound library is used in the process of making SFX. Do you use a self-made sound library that recorded it at GGG, or do you use a commercial SFX library? We have a mixture. We record a bunch of stuff but we also have a substantial library of commercial sound packs.
I’m just curious what the general process for coming up with a sound is. Is a lot of experimentation needed when a particular idea of a sound is needed? Or the audio guys will already have some sense what might create that sound from experience? Over time, you gravitate towards particular things once you’ve established what works and where. But we are also mindful of trying to keep things unique and to challenge ourselves. We are all experienced enough to find what works eventually for the task at hand, but the cool part for me is that we all get there in our own way. That’s why having such a talented team of different people is so exciting and rewarding, everyone has their own artistic watermark.
Can all kinds of sound be created synthetically from scratch? I would say a great deal can. But for our purposes, we try to lean towards more organic sounds (albeit processed) as our game is quite dark and gritty.
Are any of the team into modular synth hardware, and is it used at all in the game? Michael and Dominic both have modular synth units. I sometimes make light of how they never seem to be turned on though… But when they are, they look pretty.
