Preach Gaming Interviews Jonathan Rogers From Path Of Exile 2 And They Cover A LOT Of Ground

Preach Gaming sat down with Jonathan Rogers, Path of Exile 2's Game Director and one of the founders of Grinding Gear Games, live on Preach's Twitch channel. They talked Path of Exile 2 and where the game is headed.

Jonathan says that Path of Exile 2 has had a lot of things happen in the development time since Exile Con, and he's excited to have more players in the game to try it out.

It seems the dev team has found themselves using WASD movement over click-to-move in internal testing. Jonathan says that click-to-move is also getting improvements, but most of the devs are sticking to WASD movement. They are testing different groups of folks, including those who have never played Path of Exile, and in the future will be testing with folks who have never played an ARPG.

Path of Exile 2 isn't talking about consoles at the moment, so they are concentrating on PC, but they do have console-dedicated devs now.

The team also is looking to reduce initial complexity for new players in Path of Exile 2, part of which will, of course, come from the fact that it will not launch with 10 years of content like the first game currently has available. The first-time user experience is a focus of the team heading into PoE2.

Jonathan talks about the risk of adding PoE2 features to PoE1, and while they can't add everything due to the scope and engine of PoE2, he does see some features making their way to PoE1 at some point simply because they are better. Preach and Jonathan discuss the risk of making both games too similar, and Jonathan says that's not going to happen, especially due to the combat changes that will be in PoE2.

The Path of Exile 2 team aims to make a bigger difference in feel between two-handed and one-handed weapons over PoE1. The overall speed of the game may be slower, but with the move and attack system in PoE2, you will still feel like you are attacking as many times per second as you were stutter-stepping in PoE1. The slightly slower pace isn't necessarily an intentional change, but is a result of making better combat per Jonathan.

Jonathan feels they are doing much better when it comes to visual clarity in Path of Exile 2, especially when boss fights are involved. There are also certain UI improvements such as your health orb turning green when you are poisoned. There are plenty of UI and world changes for clarity. The emphasis is knowing how you died. Jonathan is interested in a death log, but that is something that will likely be added later on.

The GGG team seems most proud of boss designs. They say they are cool and unique, and a great implementation of concepts. Rogers feels all of the cool boss design in PoE1 is in the endgame, so PoE2 players will have more chances to interact with awesome bosses early on. The endgame of PoE2 will be more clear, but will not be linear.

When it comes to campaign skipping when rolling a different character, Jonathan is not a fan. He feels that playing the campaign helps you learn and develop your character. Jonathan never wants to rule anything out, but says it will be "a pretty cold day in hell" before they allow campaign skipping.

The biggest lesson that Jonathan is taking from PoE1 into PoE2 is the combat and the changes and improvements they are making. He also says that it is all the little things adding up to improve the experience that will be Path of Exile 2.

Once the VoD of the interview is available we'll add it to this article for you!