Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

Hi,

I hope all is well.

I understand the reasonings that you have brought up in this post, but I would appreciate it if your team would reconsider this change.

For the first time in a long time, I've been enjoying playing the game and it's mainly because of harvest.

Making these changes aren't going to stop powerful items from being crafted, it's just going to stop the newer /players with less crafting experience or knowledge form crafting better items.

Even with this change, the best items are still going to be crafted, but only a small % of players are going to be able to make those items.

I can see how nerfing the spawn rates of some crafts is desired, and I like the balance idea concept of only a partial percent of seeds are successful as a slight nerf (within reason), but I don't like the idea of losing the add and remove of a specific type. The crafts that you are removing are the crafts that are the most desirable.

I like the idea of making harvest more common, but I do agree with some type of healthy balance. I know the numbers for the spawn rates have been messed with over the past week (or so), because some days I would average one harvest out of three, and other days I would average one out of eight (including Zana maps and main map).

When you push changes like this and keep the player base in the dark, it really hurts players who invest into strategies that work around the things that you change. When I played for about a hour and didn't get a single harvest, I almost stopped playing because I invested into items to do this strategy. More transparency would be greatly appreciated.

I really like the idea of making the boss spawn into a map fragment. It was unfortunate getting a boss when you only got a few harvests an hour. Great idea!


To summarize, the community is really enjoying harvest craft. I understand the need to make adjustments, but please do not heavily nerf or remove the best mechanics of it. Those mechanics are what make it great and desirable to play.

No way you will listen to literally 0.1% of those who says its good change, and ignore 99.9%.

I mean any other studio, like Trashtivision, etc. but GGG....

One of reasons to play your game, is history of your studio, its not just Big Company that shits on clients/users interests, but trying to really improve the game, that what i've been telling all my friends who ever asked me about poe. And that fact made people at least try the game.
Neither im going to be playing, neither telling about that, if this goes through.

Yet again, you're gonna ruin one of the best addition in the game. Good job guys

I'll leave a post with my experience in this League.

I've played the whole days from the start and about a month and a half.

I've been always trying to find Harvest to craft a bow for myself and I've never considered an opportunity to buy crafts through discord's tftrove.

I hate how it is implemented right now - you spend too much time finding Harvest and furthermore it is too random. Also, when you find it, you completely ruin your "flow" of fast-running maps when you were trying to find it - you can't save the rare craft and continue running.

So, in a month-time, Harvest didn't provide me an opportunity to finish the bow, but I ended up with a stockpile of currency (about 150 Ex) that I can't even use to get a Tier 1 Attack Speed.

I was humble to accept that you want other crafting tools to be more used, and I did. It felt much more expensive but this is a good change to make crafting harder...

but you miss the point that it does not make crafting more rewarding! There are not much people who craft and, for unpopular builds, you can't even sell the perfect item.

I don't feel like my tens, or even hundreds, of hours when I was learning and practicing Crafting pays off. I'd rather flip items now and buy the item I need. Why would you craft it yourself? Using 2 Ex crafts to block prefixes, clear the suffixes and then Exalt it? It's 3 Exalted orbs for one absolutely random roll. Even with my playtime in this League, I am not considering even touching this type of crafting anytime in the future - it's too much.

Alterations are bullshit priced now, you rarely get deterministic crafts from Harvest, Exalted orbs are too expensive to use for random mods and it makes mods with low weight to be simply impossible to obtain.

To summarize - it feels that buying is the only way to acquire a good item now. I love crafting with all my heart but I won't spend my whole life farming exalted orbs for absolutely random mods.

As a second point, I've never even thought that you might nerf Harvest from the current state (that is terrible). I was expecting more slots in the table and re-implementation of seeds, so you would know when you are going to spend a solid amount of time simply distributing your crafts.

For the craft trades, just make the system to block it. I hate this "unsafe transactions" that go from Temple to Harvests. When you are crafting yourself, you don't have TOO OP Harvest - it procs like shit but still better than traditional crafting.

It's sad that you dont balance the game around players who want to play for some time and then take a break for a month or two. But, it seems, this is the way. It's a game - it does not give money for a player.

I completely disagree on your evolution as a game. Also, in 3.13, it felt like you accidently made changes to Harvest, that were supposed for Heists, and vice versa for Heists to Harvest.

NB: My heartiest appreciation to every single player (like me) who took their time off their busy lives/schedule and (rightly) condemned this obviously predatory decision by "oh, I'm so godly, look at my godliness and rejoice!" chris!

"

Using currency items like Exalted Orbs or Chaos Orbs on your gear is a powerful, risky and exciting way to improve it.

[Removed by Support]

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Rene_2706 wrote:

Do you guys don't exalt slam?

is this the new version of "you guys not have phones?"

...

EDIT: ^^ Just quoted a reply to this thread from page 150+ in response to the infamous "slam exalt with closed eyes" quip from original manifesto. My comment above that was removed by mods simply equated it to the (in)famous marie antoniette's "let them eat cake" out-of-touch-with-reality moment. One of these is okay, and one is not, apparently. Go figure!

I see zero excitement in spamming an item with any orb (whether alteration or chaos) and "hoping for a passable outcome" while doing so. The frequency of exalt drops being realistically what they are to any average player, even using one of them, let alone many for buying items in a league involves the same searching questions and trade-offs that come up while buying an appliance for the house. The streamers who do it, do it "for entertainment". And viewers who instigate and egg on such behaviour should feel bad for doing so. [Removed by Support]



Speaking of trading, that has hit the nadir this league, with people gaming the system far worse than in any other league.

* Deliberate underpricing to manipulate search results and appear as first item, then asking the player to "make your best offer" is not something anyone needs in their life. (Smart alecs in replies, I am aware of "ignore player" option and I am loathe to apply it, because that would be throwing the baby out with the bath water and ignore other items the person may have priced legitimately. It's easier to algorithmically remove a pricing anomaly from search results, assuming the devs are willing to plug in a cookie cutter implementation into their backend rather than asking all of us to gyrate comically to some unheard tune, all the time!)

* Scalpers under pricing items to lull you into pricing them the same, and then falling over each other to palm it off you, making the scheme triply obvious! All your support team has to do is to pretend to be listers in the game and you will find the usual suspects in no time. Then it's a case of false positive identification between desperate buyers, and obvious scalpers. Scalpers are a scourge on this game, and to society in general!

Are you or your team, doing anything about somehow placing a mechanism to dissuade just these two underhanded tactics? [Removed by Support]

Back on topic of harvesting:

Having played a private league in recent past, the harvest crafting options were the most democratic and meritocratic inclusions into game mechanics by far, in a very long time. It actually made people play the game with a real sense of progression and self improvement. I levelled my character to highest ever this league, because of having just enough assistance through harvest crafting mods to actually get what I want, with prices I could afford, and with sane hours of play. BTW, it didn't help by much, because it's still a gamble finding the aug you need in the time spent playing, but when you do, it helps very practically than your idiotic "UsINg cUrRenCy ITeMS LiKE ExALtEd oRbs OR cHAOS oRbs oN YoUR GeaR IS a POWERFUl, RIsKY And exciTIng wAy TO IMpROvE it." proclamation.

[Removed by Support]

PS: So my two prescient observations were too close to truth in order to be removed so quickly by support. Thanks GGG. In "censoring" me, you have validated me.

F

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killakil4 wrote:

This changes nothing just use essences and fossil i look forward to the next league

How you gonna play, if you never played, how do you know about fossils, if you dont have single character?

Looking forward to next league

This is some april 1 joke right? Are you going to take from us the must fun stuff right????