“I had a good conversation recently with David Brevik about how large items that require manipulation in the inventory help simulate the ‘weight’ that items have in other RPG systems,” Grinding Gear Games’ Chris Wilson says. “It may be inconvenient to have to organise items, but it makes them feel real. Simplifying this down to auto-sorting or single-slot-items is a road we don’t want to take our game down.”
The team does, however, have a plan to someday add an alternate skillbar and new skills, but not shapeshifting, extra zoom tools, virtual reality, or an offline version of the game. Why no offline? Not only would it be a waste of resources, but “the game will never be in a state where the servers have to be shut down for financial reasons.”
Last week, Grinding Gear had reason to celebrate: It announced that update 2.6.0 had propelled POE to a peak online concurrent player count of 112,800, making it #3 on Steam over that launch weekend. Not too shabby for a game from 2013.
