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Synthesis Mechanics Not Going Core in Path of Exile

Path of Exile 3.6 Synthesis League

A certain of angry Path of Exile fans can rejoice, as their negative response to Synthesis mechanics has been heard. This is because, as of a lengthy new Reddit post from Chris Wilson, it has been announced that the controversial memory and fractured item mechanics will not be transferring into the “Core” version of the game that is Standard League. This does mean there will be one less thing to do for Standard players, but given the widespread rejection of Synthesis thanks to heavy reliance on complicated crafting and RNG, it seems like the best choice for the developer. Of course this wasn’t the only thing that Chris Wilson announced with this post, and there’s some good news too.

The post spends a lot of time peeking behind-the-scenes and letting POE players know how decisions are made and how GGG approaches different issues with the game. One very important bit is the emphasis on mitigating crunch periods, a major problem with the treatment of labor and workers in the games industry right now. Chris reiterated his commitment to not letting the company work their team to the brink of failure just to ship a new patch for the game, which is an incredibly necessary mindset in the modern industry, given how often AAA companies rely on devastating periods of pressure and crunch to ship games.

Chris does admit that the team behind this excellent ARPG is only human, meaning that there is only so much work they can do given the deadlines they have, and that the company is feeling a bit stretched with so much on their plate. The upcoming ExileCon convention and the new launch in Korea are cited as areas where the team is having to push hard to make sure these activities are to a sufficient standard of quality in the eyes of both fans and the developers. One area where Wilson admits to faltering in terms of quality is the Xbox One version of the game. “After the Xbox launch, all of our console resources went into preparing the PS4 release which meant we didn’t spend enough time supporting the feature requests from the Xbox community,” he said during the post.

All in all, it’s good of the team to admit their mistakes, as it shows a level of trust and transparency with the community that I happen to have a huge amount of respect for, as it’s a sad thing that some companies don’t possess this level of candor in their public statements. Good luck to Chris and the rest of the GGG team, let’s make 3.7 the best it can be.

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