Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

You singlehandedly killed the reason why people kept playing so long this league. Now I won't stick around anymore trying to craft my endgame gear.

Normal craft is shit, never used an exalt to craft, never will. Harvest craft is still a gamble, but it's a controlled and manageable gamble. There's no point in crafting an item if I can brick it anytime without making any mistake on my part and just as (very) likely outcome of the proper crafting process.

I'm fine without the Exalted orb reward/ruin feeling.
This game drew me in during it's pre-launch days not because of the rng, but because of the character build customization, synergies, and potential.

Maybe I'm in the minority, I still love playing this game, I just don't have as much time to put into it as I did before. And gating more content behind rng only rewards the players who can spend the most time in-game.
I fear that focusing too much on the higher tier players' accomplishments and designing in reaction will only further alienate new or more casual players from enjoying this game.

I think this was one of the best leagues you guys have put out, thanks in large part to the deterministic nature of Harvest crafting. And the deterministic nature of the end-game content with Atlas passives. I haven't made anything godly, but it's made crafting more accessible to me. I think there's a middle ground to be explored here, and I don't agree with the direction of nerfs in this manifesto.
If anything, I believe this game needs more deterministic rewards, in small doses.

My two cents, thanks for reading, and thanks for all the hard work GGG.

What a poor decision.

I agree that harvest is too strong and needed a nerf. Game became a path of havest at this point. That said a more incremental changes would be much easier to balance and adjust too. A buff to some of the weights would be a nice compromised between deterministic and supper rare RNG.

Spreading out the power for harvest to other leagues would go long way to solve a lot of the issues listed.

We all got by the leagues except ritual and harvest league without harvest, im sure that it make us players reluctant to remove something that feels good, but im looking foward to whats next :)

One more time, you try to nerf the "1%" and you end up simply annoying us, the 99% who are left with "exalt slamming to improve your gear" (A.K.A. best way to brick your gear if you're a casual, ending with +14 mana or 8 dext and therefore unable to get rid of it. Or should we use annul of godlike luck maybe ?) while the casual crafting system mostly is about poorly designed gambling system for normal players.

You know what ? Harvest was a formidable thing for casual players, at last we were able to build ourselves decent/good gear, and it was making a lot of people staying for longer than usual in the league.

But NO. The famous 1% grabs even more money than before, time TO NERF. And it all falls down on casual's head at the end of the day, while the rich people do not even care.

And this isn't the first time you do so. How's that aura stacker nerf going btw ?

Nerf Of Exile is starting to make me yawn a lot. Give us a break, or we'll be the ones doing so with you.

I mean this was written in stone from the start. This is what GGG does:

1. Add a new fun mechanic or ability to the game
2. Realize players found a way to abuse sed mechanic or ability
3. Instead of slowly nerfing to bring in line with other mechanics/abilities and bring about some balance, nerf it to oblivion and add to the cluster of useless mechanics/abilities in the game that no one will ever interact with again.
4. Add a 4% buff to the mechanic or ability 5 leagues later to try and make it slightly less useless and make the players think you tried to buff something when in reality it was a 4% buff when a 50%+ buff was needed to keep up with the current meta and massive monster buff they added to the game.

On the bright side I will be saving a lot of money on next legue.

Next league you will see that player retention will be far lower than this league.
The idea of crafting your own gear in a more deterministic way made "projects" actually something you would want to do.
Seriusly rng is fun, too much is awful and it just excuses poor design execution

"

"We don't want to take away the feeling of closing your eyes and Exalting an item, scared to see whether you ruined it or not."

That's not a good feeling. That's actually a shitty feeling. And do you know who feels it the most? Average players who aren't rolling in currency so they can casually exalt and item and if it's ruined oh well they can easily buy a powerful replacement.

I usually put at least 100 hours into any league I play (between my two characters I'm just shy of 300 hours this league), and I've NEVER been anywhere near that rich. Ever. Even when I've found a few "big" items that sell for 20ex.

I can count the number of times I've exalted an item over the years of playing on one hand. Why? Because exalts are still insanely valuable to me and far more valuable as currency than they are to pull the slot machine.

I'm with it, let's go!!