Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

GGG: Let's make mechanic that makes casual players to craft more instead trading! Also GGG: Lets kill craft

I have skipped harvest, but the current expansion and the harvest returning together made me return to the game.
Harvest alone made me able to actually stay away from trading more than i usually do and ignore the fact that i havent had a single big ticket item drop, and yet i was progressing, slowly upgrading my gear piece by piece and actually enjoying the game rather than wasting hours upon hours in my hideout.

Nerfing it will make players go back to the trade system that doesnt work along with a loot system everyone filters out 90% of.

Fossils nerfs made them allmost useless now, nobody really cares about delve anymore, except for a few deep delvers. And i feel like same thing will happen to harvest once these changes will take place.

These are just my toughts.

I'm amazed that you still don't understand the main problem with RNG: 99.99% of dropped gear is trash. The solution is very easy and it actually was implemented in Heist: let endgame drops (from bosses etc., maybe even from red maps) to have higher chance for better mods and tiers.

I have never replied to a development manifesto but I feel compelled to.

The game as it is in the current league feels so damn complete. For folks like myself who have to budget time for gaming, this league gave me the perfect recipe to target my time and make it not feel so...random.

Your point on RNG being part of the core philosophy of the game is understandable but it also feels misguided.

Let's dispense with the pretense and just acknowledge that not only has RNG not been a guiding factor in the games design it has also been purposely reduced. In the most recent expansion changes, being able to target specific mechanics in specific regions of the map is making mapping more deterministic. Allowing specific chase items and item affixes to dominate the end game is deterministic. Running X number of maps to engage with endgame content is deterministic (nerfed from being more RNG in the first iterations).

A lot of these deterministic systems were added because player feedback told you that RNG feels bad when you can't reliably access game content on a consistent basis.

So in spirit, you acknowledge that deterministic outcomes drive engagement and player retention.

So for a league which, by the numbers, show you how engaged and happy the general player base is, the right path is perhaps not to resort to what you consider to be the "right" direction based on what you consider the philosophies of your ideal game. Rather, maybe focus on the KYC aspect of what is keeping your player base engaged and playing your game and focus on enhancing the elements that keep your players playing, which at the moment appears to be leaning in favor of deterministic outcomes.

1st they nerfed Delve, now Harvest. And if to remember all the fun that was nerfed to the ground by GGG instead of adjusting it then I remember Satan's words about God's behavior in The Devil's Advocate

Stupid decision. Good bye, GGG. You will lose a lot of donates with ur [Removed by Support] move (not only from me). I'll looking for balanced games, [Removed by Support]

With this harvest crafting system, I was curious if we could turn the seeds into something similar to the meta morph parts, and possibly unlock common unique seeds from story line Quests for leveling progression purposes.

Late/End game, just Random Tiers of seeds, unique seeds would be as rare as exalts ect. ( maybe Bound to account or even everyone in party gets it )

Was thinking this would be a great combination to be applied to Talismans
as you know from the previous leagues, Talismans always seemed kind of useless to a point when it comes to leveling, similar to essences.
( because of the fact there is too much reading involved when you first go to play the game, Quests,Items,Skill-Gems,Crafting ect)

But if you made a good quest story line, players would find these seeds/modifications/crafts more eye appealing and read more early game.

Which would result in the seeds from story line quests being used.
Would be even better if they could be used on talismans with Reduced bonuses.

Example Craft can be 10-20 fire resist...
Normally would have lets say 15 fire resist, but on talisman, it would give 7 or 8 fire resist.
so 50% reduced effect of added craft to talismans or something.

I honestly think this would be a great addition for new players just starting out, to make the game play more smooth.

So there not stuck trying to watch youtube videos and learning how to craft, and end up quitting because they can't figure things out.

If they had simple options as rewards from quests, it would certainly make things a little easier/quicker/better-experiance, and fun !



( If anyone has any thoughts or questions ) Message me :)
May not responde right away, but I will eventually !

''Overall, this is undoubtedly a heavy nerf to high-end Harvest Crafting, but we strongly believe that it is in Path of Exile's best interests going forward, and that there are still a lot of compelling Harvest crafts that make the grove worth running at any point in map progression.''

Yea, i've been playing this game for years as a casual. What this will do is simple. It will still allow high end traders and crafters to get mirror tier while nerfing everything into the ground for everyone else but especially the casuals. GGG being the [Removed by Support], increasing the gap between rich and poor so people keep trying to become rich while suffering in the meantime.

Harvest crafting was a mistake. But bringing a nerfed version back and then nerfing that version again was an even bigger mistake. [Removed by Support]

Guess GGG hates closing the gap between the poor and the rich :pepelaugh:

My question is what is the point of this?

You have created a wonderful system that is Semi Deterministic in its ability to select from a list of prefixes or suffixes and alter items based on what you need. However this is still very pricey. in market today to buy a harvest craft, you are looking at 3 to 7 ex, per augment, or .5 to 1.5 per annul. this means that to make one item that is usable, you are looking at spending upwards of 50, 60, 70 exalts for an "end game" item. as of right now end game items are easier to buy. the fact that GGG is removing Harvest crafting from the game is eliminating a high tier of items that will appear in the game. this will affect everyone, as every item in the game will spike in price. Any half decent item will now be priced 20+ ex.


A better solution IMO would be to reduce the drop rate for these mods through harvest. it enables the high end of items to stay high end, but for mid tier items (20 to 40 ex sell) it now put a higher barrier for entry (which I dont even know why you would want to bar the average player from making use of a good system)


TL;DR : harvest crafting should stay in the game as it is now, with reduced drop rates, I think GGG is making a huge mistake by destroying their own mechanics