Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

"

"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!!

Mods, you're still reading this, we know you are. We watch you handle your jobs, so here's a request from us players. Make Chris sit down and read this. Every page of it. Make him do it. Don't ask him, don't plead with him. TELL him to sit down and read. Let him see what the base really wants.

I want well for this game. I have since it began. However, casino gambling is not crafting by any definition. Yes, you are making items, but by rerolling them randomly, augmenting them randomly, etc. It's literally all one big casino gamble.

Harvest fixed that for me. Harvest removed the one detail from the game that plagued me most. So I'll chill around here and see how this plays out, my only hope being that somebody actually does tell Chris to sit down and read this feedback.

Thank you GGG for letting me go.
I was a new player who joined in 3.12, and I've been playing 8-10 hrs non-stop every day for 2 leagues. Since I invested a large amount of time, crafting was not a big deal to me. But I have to study also, was planning to play much less(2-4hrs) to focus on my work. Thanks for the nerfs, now I know there's 0 chance I can get the crazy gear in future leagues anymore, I can stop playing.
Thanks!!!

Gonna level with you.. crafting always felt out of reach and impossible for me until harvest.

I finally felt like I was allowed to play the game. Think bigger. Learn and research. Test and iterate. Think, plan and be bold. This was a massive upgrade to my relationship with the game and how it's played, considered and discussed.

Before harvest I had to recognise that crafting was essentially out of my reach and I would have to console myself with ignoring it and treat the game as a shop window, not a laboratory. Which feels awful to me, as I actually want to craft my own items, but it always felt too daunting and unknowable beyond chaos spamming bases, and anulling mods with no way to fix it when something goes wrong, which I feel like is a pretty awful option to have - a view re-enforced by a number of such horrendous experiences.

After harvest, during heist, I was once again presented with an impossible crafting situation, and had to sadge my way through the league only being limited to buying other people's trash to get through... I was in the void of post-harvest sadness, and ultimately never reached an above mid-tier power level throughout the entire league, I literally didn't succeed in crafting anything usable.

When harvest returned, it was like my incinerated workstation sprung out of the ashes. We were back, with our passion re-ignited.

The ability to take some level of agency over my own game plan has always been hugely appealing to me. While I understand that many other people get a ton of enjoyment out of the trade economy and group play and guilds and all of this stuff, for me, it's very much a personal journey, and I feel very let down and cheated whenever I am forced to diverge from solo play to progress or achieve my goals... or literally buy the items like some kind of pay to win Path of Ebay mechanic. It feels like harvest offers that middle ground where you can still achieve greatness through solo play.. and while it's a lot more difficult than the alternative, it's still hugely improved by the presence of harvest, and you can achieve comparable things with enough time investment.

I mean it's not as though items are easy to craft still by any means (it still takes a lot of time and currency investment and risk to craft truly great items) but it made it possible in a way that it isn't without harvest. I feel that the changes to things like remove, add/remove and aug will mess it up pretty bad to the point of only the most clued on full time gamers being able to make items again.

Feelsbadforme.

This is pretty disappointing news.

Not sure why many says the changes are only good for the ultra wealthy. The top 1% will not be using Harvest if there is no targeted annul or target add mod into influenced items. It is this ultra wealthy that is abusing TFT to get their mirror tier items. With this new changes, they will have to play the same RNG as everyone else. They cannot be doing multiples Rem/Add using TFT anymore.

In addition, those beginners or mid level players will continue to use Harvest ( which will appear more regularly now ) since their items will not be influenced yet. Chances are also they will only add mod and not Rem/Add ( until the specific ones they looking for ).

So basically GGG wants Harvest to be used very early in the progression stage ie white and yellow maps. It is a nerf definitely but I don't think it benefit the top 1% at all. They will have to continue their crafting non-Harvest way while newer players can still use Harvest on their non influenced items.

Those who are very unhappy of are those who wants very good items with minimal grinding for currencies so that they can finish all content. POE is not a game for everyone to finish all content. GGG has repeatedly say this. POE is meant to be finished by only top 5% of the player base.

Not much a fan of how overwhelming these changes are. Harvest in its current state rendered endgame gear attainable.

Part of the reason Harvest is so powerful is because of its deterministic nature. It gives you a high level of control. And I'm saddened that in the face of this, the answer settled on was not "Let's diversify endgame crafting options to enable more accessible crafting" and instead was "Let's kneecap the thing that made endgame crafting the most accessible it's ever been."

I've been playing since Metamorph. This league was the one where I actually felt in-control. Like my challenging endgame content wasn't just possible, but also reasonable. This has happened in part due to Harvest.

Suffice to say, I'll be experimenting with how Harvest is next league. I imagine I'll be disappointed.

+1

"

iyauchun wrote:

Thank you GGG for letting me go.
I was a new player who joined in 3.12, and I've been playing 8-10 hrs non-stop every day for 2 leagues. Since I invested a large amount of time, crafting was not a big deal to me. But I have to study also, was planning to play much less(2-4hrs) to focus on my work. Thanks for the nerfs, now I know there's 0 chance I can get the crazy gear in future leagues anymore, I can stop playing.
Thanks!!!

The terrible thing here is not the nerfs itself but the fact that the game is being balanced around people that exploit harvest through discord.
Just like how tormented spirits used to be pretty good until people started ghostbusting and GGG nerfed them to the point that a normal player will never see anything good drop from them.
That's not the majority of your players.
There's always going to be people that are going to break the game, but you shouldn't take away the fun for the casual or ssf players that are affected by this.

"

Kairuto2020 wrote:

Not sure why many says the changes are only good for the ultra wealthy. The top 1% will not be using Harvest if there is no targeted annul or target add mod into influenced items. It is this ultra wealthy that is abusing TFT to get their mirror tier items. With this new changes, they will have to play the same RNG as everyone else. They cannot be doing multiples Rem/Add using TFT anymore.

In addition, those beginners or mid level players will continue to use Harvest ( which will appear more regularly now ) since their items will not be influenced yet. Chances are also they will only add mod and not Rem/Add ( until the specific ones they looking for ).

So basically GGG wants Harvest to be used very early in the progression stage ie white and yellow maps. It is a nerf definitely but I don't think it benefit the top 1% at all. They will have to continue their crafting non-Harvest way while newer players can still use Harvest on their non influenced items.

Those who are very unhappy of are those who wants very good items with minimal grinding for currencies so that they can finish all content. POE is not a game for everyone to finish all content. GGG has repeatedly say this. POE is meant to be finished by only top 5% of the player base.

Nice strawman.