Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

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Jagu wrote:

Extremely disappointing changes from a team that clearly don't test or play the game. Harvest is now the only reason I still play the game after reaching 40 challenges. Removing those crafts will make the game dull and boring. Old times... play for 3 weeks and skip PoE. Here we go again. Please reconsider this.

I 100% agree. First league I kept playing after 40and lvl100 and probably the last too...

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This sentiment was summed up by a member of our design team who recently said "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."

Makes perfect sense... If you're some sort of lunatic.

The reason I play this game is to develop and test my skill, such as it is. Closing my eyes and being scared I’m going to break something important/valuable on a roll of the dice is not a matter of skill, and it is not fun.

As I play more and realize that gambling is core to your philosophy, the less respect I have for the game and its development. Right from Lyoneye’s Watch, it’s seemed wrong, but I didn’t realize it was so intentional.

I thought the randomness was intended to facilitate trading, but you also make trading intentionally broken. If all players could make/acquire equally powerful items, but ones that are not useful for their builds, then they could trade to people who need their items, for items that they need.

Allowing only some “players” to make ultra-uber-powerful items only encourages botting and RMT. When I meet a level 98 player when I’m struggling to get past 88 (primarily with found/self-crafted gear), I don’t know if it’s because of (my lack of) skill, or because they bought ultra-items. That’s extremely de-motivating.

On the other hand, the game is apparently doing well. It’s a sad comment on the nature of humanity that manipulating people with gambling is a great way to make money, and it’s a sadder comment on GGG that you would so willfully exploit that.
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As for things left to “accomplish”: Why don’t you have the race leagues anymore? 2 hour to 3 day or so things that let people show off what they can do, their understanding of the game mechanics, and to win cosmetic rewards? Now that the game is bigger, you don’t even need to start at the beginning. Use the mod system to adjust difficulty, start with either well-defined builds at certain levels in certain places, or make a measure of power that people can build up to, then enter a race with similarly powered players. Yes, there would be balance problems, but putting your effort into that would give players long-term goals and a constant source of things to accomplish.

And if you put your creative brains to it, I’m sure there are many other possibilities, beyond preying on gambling addictions and allowing a few players (and botters) to dominate the game and remove the fun for everyone else.

Today is a sad day.

So in the future it will be Gamble again insteed of crafting -.-.

Yeah sooo hyped for the next League.... Totally Not!

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

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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.

So much bullsh*t.
I feel amused and slightly offended same time.
I am glad I didn't buy supporter pack for last league, also won't buy for upcoming.

Time to quit the game I guess :(

200 pages of negative replies? How fucking clueless do you really need to be to understand that this is bad for the game?

I still think the main problem is the power gap between an item that drops and a crafted item. There should be a way to influence what items drop, make them more powerful (like smart rng items from heists) or make them untradable in some form. So there is less need of taking away power from crafting.

Good news nerf harvest.

My few cents: (but short answer - harvest nerfs OK - but something in exchange for it)

1. harvest is reintroduced in Echoes of the atlas is HUGE PROBLEM
2. If harvest was 5% chance to spawn and slim chance in Zana map pool, it wont be as abused as it is
3. If GGG wants to up the dificulty, give us a chance to craft that good gear for it
4. if there should be content available for 0.1% TOP players - I think with "Trade" this is impossible

in detail

2. I think Harvest should be found in this way - 5 % in map and some slim chance in Zana. Lets say its like 6% altogether to get harvest
You will have 2 - 4 plants to choose from. So 1 in 16 maps you get harvest with slim chances to get some great outcomes (easy explode chest with just spawing phys rerolls, just need to luck out on other mods)

1. HUGE PROBLEM for harvest - ECHOES of ATLAS - Zones that give harvest chance and some extra options and also 9th Zone that gives superboosted Zana? Like hell this wont be abused
I think this was a mistake - and as this manifesto was written it was, but on GGG defense, its hard to foresee how things will be abused (like HARBINGERS...)

3. some options:
Give us more deterministic exalts (at least basic ones - attack, spell, res , attributes, mana... )
give us more conqueror's exalt and option to multiple slam the items for guaranteed influenced rolls
Give us more bench craft options - like multimod etc, I am sure you can come up with interesting ideas

4. I am casual player but still I would like to access all fights in this game, even if I do that at the end of the league