Path of Exile - The Story of The Undying

In early 2007, Jonathan, Erik and I started planning the five-act structure of Path of Exile. By late 2008, specific details had been decided regarding the contents of these acts. Plans like the non-linear layout of Act 2 and the surprise-PvP component to the bandit quests were already laid down. While almost everything we planned was eventually implemented and lives on in modern Path of Exile, there is one aspect that didn't go at all according to plan, and was toned down massively to just become a relatively unremarkable monster type. This news post is the untold story of The Undying.

While planning the monster composition of Act Three, we wanted to introduce an interesting mechanic that would play with the ruined nature of the City of Sarn. As the first Act that had buildings, Act Three contained transitions from indoors to outdoors within the same map. We wanted to take advantage of this by designing a monster type that strongly played into this mechanic.

The plan was this: City Stalkers (later renamed to The Undying) were undead beings who roamed the shaded areas of Sarn, wrapped in bandages. They couldn't tolerate the light and would never leave the shade. In return for their restricted movement areas, they were incredibly powerful and would destroy players in combat until an appropriate countermeasure was earned.

We love surprise monsters and the suspense that they can create. This is why we have Sand Spitters emerging from underground, Statues coming alive and Rock Golems (internally called Moss Monsters) that form out of piles of rocks when you approach. In order to keep the suspense up, there are of course statues that don't come alive and inanimate piles of rocks that are just there to distract you.

Our intention with the player's first experience of Act Three was that the first area would be very quiet, with no monsters to fight outdoors. Upon venturing into the shade, though, players would be charged by deadly City Stalkers and would have to retreat to the safety of the sun. Their experience with the rest of the Act would involve a game of caring very much which areas were shaded, while occasionally being forced to step out of the light to travel between buildings. Because of their early encounters with the City Stalkers, they would fear every moment spent out of sunlight, as it is one step away from being swarmed by the deadliest monsters in Path of Exile. We intended for City Stalkers to have immense life regeneration, preventing players from making reasonable progress past them.

Later in the Act Three storyline, players would earn the ability to harm City Stalkers, allowing them access to areas that were previously off-limits (similar to what you'd encounter in a game like Metroid). Suddenly the one-sided fights would become more fair, and revenge could be exacted. Our intention was that this ability would come in the form of a white Support Gem which, while supporting your primary damage skill, would let you harm City Stalkers and would turn off their life regeneration.

We found this idea really compelling because we liked to experiment with extreme ideas. We wanted Path of Exile to be brutal, and took every opportunity to achieve that. Unfortunately, there were many problems with the above plan, which look obvious with hindsight and experience:

• Directing players into a lethal encounter to make sure they understand it is dangerous was probably too aggressive, especially with a hardcore permadeath mode in the game. Some players would not understand that this was a sign that they needed to go elsewhere and find a way to become powerful, and would have instead become concerned that the game is too difficult and it's literally impossible to progress. We saw these exact concerns later from encounters that were far more winnable than how we intended this one to be.
• If the City Stalkers can't go in the sunlight, then what stops you kiting them around and hitting them while you're out of the shade? While they regen too fast to die, they certainly look like noobs standing in the shadow and not doing anything. There would have been a lot of work to make this realistic and feel good.
• If you recall the early versions of Act Three (prior to the 2.0.0 and 3.0.0 simplifications of it), you'll remember it was already a rabbit warren of fetch quests and obscure instructions. Adding to this the inability to travel in some areas and the requirement to later go back to places you've already been was not a step in the right direction.
• While it was cool to use a Support Gem to be able to kill the City Stalkers, this would disrupt people's builds substantially. Having to spend an Act playing without one of your existing Support Gems was too much for many builds. It's also really hard to communicate. We initially intended the Baleful Gem and Maligaro's Spike to have a similar arrangement, where you kill Lorrata with the Spike socketed with the Gem, but we never got around to this for similar reasons. Maybe one day!
• Another practical concern was how difficulty levels were handled (this was eight years before we removed them - at the time, Path of Exile had Hard, Cruel, Ruthless and Merciless as its difficulty levels). If you had the white Support Gem from the first difficulty level, what prevented you from taking it to the second one and immediately being able to kill the City Stalkers? Our plans for the act were complex enough that being able to immediately fight them wasn't really an option. We also wanted to avoid having four copies of the gem, as that'd be confusing. We couldn't take the gem away when you finished the act, because you might need it to go back there to farm some experience, help a friend, or finish a side-quest.

And so, the idea of City Stalkers fearing sunlight was scrapped. They were named The Undying and do make up part of the monster composition of modern Act Three, but without the crazy mechanic that almost made it in.

"Stay out of the shadows. They bite." -- Hargan

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They Live said:

problem is not the story, POE is not an arpg anymore it turned in some mindless grinding thing.

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NewDArt said:

I think you just defined the genre right there

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They Live said:

a proper arpg indeed has some grinding (or a lot of grinding) but big part of the fun comes from theorycrafting and trying everything that comes into your mind to eventually make it work. POE is just a flat , unbalanced grindfest where endgame is hunting gear with +hp on big numbers.

About balance, being POE a free to play game it has to costantly attract new player (so they will likely buy inventory slots or cosmetic stuff or whatever) and every single season there is 1 or 2 builds that are plain OP so mr.newguy can jump in and be cool.

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NewDArt said:

Sounds like you had a bad experience with the game

I never played it that much, because I found the story and atmosphere dreadfully dull.

It does seem extremely varied when it comes to builds - and I would be very cautious talking about overall balance in a game with that many possibilities.

That said, I don't believe I've ever played a game rich in diversity that was balanced.

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They Live said:

on the contrary i had an easy time with it, i used to play in its early days (and it was quite alright) and came back after year and noticed it just went worse : all i did was searching on the forum about the OP build of that season and it was poison arrow ranger, i rolled it and just trivialized content, downloaded all those silly 3rd party programs to trade and made lot of orbs of you name it.

I don't play anymore but people who still tell me since they removed difficulty is even worse.

Want a arpg with some real balance and you love rolling lot of characters and trying different builds? Try Grim Dawn.

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NewDArt said:

I find the story presentation rather weak in PoE. I guess I should pay more attention to it, though.

But it's the sort of thing Diablo does much better.

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They Live said:

on the contrary i had an easy time with it, i used to play in its early days (and it was quite alright) and came back after year and noticed it just went worse : all i did was searching on the forum about the OP build of that season and it was poison arrow ranger, i rolled it and just trivialized content, downloaded all those silly 3rd party programs to trade and made lot of orbs of you name it.

I don't play anymore but people who still tell me since they removed difficulties is even worse.

Want a arpg with some real balance and you love rolling lot of characters and trying different builds? Try Grim Dawn.

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They Live said:

It'd becoming sa thing between me and you and maybe other people on the forum isn't interested in this dispute so i'll drop the ball.

On GD i got 2600+hrs on it and i play since EA and i have to say it is a gem. You are right the fun comes from crafting your own thing and GD actively encourage you to do so (and offers real alternatives).

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They Live said:

It'd becoming sa thing between me and you and maybe other people on the forum isn't interested in this dispute so i'll drop the ball.

On GD i got 2600+hrs on it and i play since EA and i have to say it is a gem. You are right the fun comes from crafting your own thing and GD actively encourage you to do so (and offers real alternatives).

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Archangel said:

I would say you put a lot of time into GD and you were able to master it and you didn't put enough time into PoE to master that. That is why you think as you think.

I have been playing both GD and PoE since they were both in beta. For a while when PoE had serious desync problems I was praising GD over it.

But now in my opinion PoE is overall a better game that offers more options. It is also a harder game to master and many of the mechanics are hidden from players. I have been crafting my own builds for years and it has allowed me to learn all the little details about how the game works.

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They Live said:

I wouldn't define POE as an hard to master game, once you grasp the basics (as it happens with every other arpg) things are pretty easy to handle. Other the above gripes one thing i disliked was the overephasis on trade to the point that you need 3rd party programs to handle it. But that's me.

Another personal opinion : i think the very concept of "endgame" is something that screw (to my taste) an arpg, GD is singleplayer centric and there is no endgame : you try builds, drop loot and use that loot for other builds.
Online games usually need some form of "endgame" to give people a timesink, games like poe and d3 (i wouldn't even start to talk about d3) have this "infinite farming environments" -aka fake content- they call endgame where you can just farm forever with 1 character.

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They Live said:

I wouldn't define POE as an hard to master game, once you grasp the basics (as it happens with every other arpg) things are pretty easy to handle. Other the above gripes one thing i disliked was the overemphasis on trade to the point that you need 3rd party programs to handle it. But that's me.

Another personal opinion : i think the very concept of "endgame" is something that screw (to my taste) an arpg, GD is singleplayer centric and there is no endgame : you try builds, drop loot and use that loot for other builds.
Online games usually need some form of "endgame" to give people a timesink, games like poe and d3 (i wouldn't even start to talk about d3) have this "infinite farming environments" -aka fake content- they call endgame where you can just farm forever with 1 character.

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Archangel said:

That just means you didn't really go beyond understanding the basics. You said you found a build guide and played that one build.
Do you know how point blank works?
Do you know how damage conversion works?
Do you know how leech works with Damage over time effects?
Do you know the difference between regeneration and recovery?
How does Intimidate work? Does it work on everyone?
Are curses of same effect on everyone? How many curses can affect enemies? How many can affect you?
How does skill duration passive work in combination with Lightning warp? How with Firestorm? How with Endurance Charges?
What is the bonus Power Charges gives? Does it also give any other bonus in combination with some ascendancy?
Is there a benefit for being a fast Lab runner?
Do you know how to run only shaped maps of your choice?
Did you ever acquire really rare unique items like Kaom's armor? Without wiking it, do you know what it does? What about Headhunter?
Do you know how many poison stacks can be on one target? And how many Ignites?
I got 1001 more questions like these. PoE is a super complicated game that asks its players to master it before they can truly understand how to make 1001 different good builds.

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