Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

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Sarciss wrote:

Actually i had a look at a few characters from people that were seemingly overreacting in this thread (aka threating "bye GGG" "thanks for making me quit") - many of them/you werent even utilizing harvest (at least not for their gear - maybe sold crafts idk).
Like why the outrage if literally nothing will change for you lmao?

How about not your bloody business mate?! Mind your own play ffs

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Ygidua wrote:

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Sarciss wrote:

Actually i had a look at a few characters from people that were seemingly overreacting in this thread (aka threating "bye GGG" "thanks for making me quit") - many of them/you werent even utilizing harvest (at least not for their gear - maybe sold crafts idk).
Like why the outrage if literally nothing will change for you lmao?

Maybe the reason they dont have god tier items is that harvest crafting is nothing like what Chris claims it would be.

I was working on an influenced amulet for weeks, trying to get +1 int, life and resistances and nothing! Over 100 attempts for sure and nothing is the result!

Im with you that crafting is actually almost underwhelming if it wasnt for TFT. Thats what i think shouldve been the best fix for everyone.
But im talking about people running literally 10c/piece gear (even in non-harvest leagues) on the whole character, the rest uniques.
Really how does harvest affect these people in any relevant matter?

First League in a long time where a "normal" player make at least some decent progression. Even Harvest League itself was a mess. This garden system needed way to much attention for the "i play a few hours a week" users. In Ritual we have a simple league mechanic, what it very nice. And the litte bit of harvest crafting enabled people like me to do at least a bit of crafting at all. Otherwise i would not have enough currency to do any crafting. I have to buy my gear or make a new char, that's my usually decision. Even the crafting bases cost multiple exalts today. Thinking that the players will "slam an exalt" on items is so far away from your player-base, it's just awful and a shaming to read.

ELI5:

we completely figured out that crafting anything while you are playing the game is 'non-optimal', so we fixed it, and you liked that we fixed it.

then we unfixed it.

Then we decided solving the original problem we just described was 'unnecessary' because we always temporarily dangle some other thing in front of you anyways.

So when we put the fix back, we made sure you couldn't use it where it was harmlessly solving that problem we acknowledged, and we only put the fix back where it had been causing the most problems, with some annoying extra limitations that did absolutely nothing to prevent those downsides, while also completely neutering any possible good the fix could do for anyone who wasnt doing exactly the thing we didn't want.

That didn't go so well. So now we are completely unfixing everything, eliminating any benefits for nearly everybody, while making all those problems we accidentally caused already probably about three times worse or so.

Please understand. The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for ignoring all drops never crafting anything and just buying everything on trade [Removed by Support]. We don't want to take away that feeling of closing your eyes and paying somebody a hundred dollars to try to kick you square in the nuts and hoping that they will miss.

Well

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Ghostseer wrote:

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Filinomen wrote:

You have owned my soul for a long time Chris and today you have finally released it.Thank you.

See you next league.

Ah yes, the classic "See you next league", such a smart and original comment. Thing is, I already skipped Heist because it didn't have Harvest and I skipped Ritual because I find the current implementation of Harvest bad enough as it is with its stupid 10 craft limit and Discord trading.
So no, you won't see me next league along with many others I'm afraid, but that's okay, games change and so do their playerbases.

When they introduced Harvest I thought that maybe they were starting to relax their hardcore approach just a little, but it's clear now that they won't budge no matter what. GGG will only ever cater to a very specific niche of players: knowledgeable no-lifers and the scrubs farming and funneling currency to them (and the bots I guess).

Still, I respect the commitment and I'll root for them because screw Blizzard, but D4 is coming and I really hope they don't underestimate the threat and hurt themselves with other decisions like this.

GG, you could just remove Harvest altogether instead of making these changes.

I barely even used harvest this league and reached end game content, surprised to see so many people wailing about it's nerf as if harvest crafting is a mandatory requirement.

It'd be better if they buffed some of the older crafting systems, I wonder how many people used Einhar this league?

Anyway, the world will carry on, stop being dramatic!

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Wissle wrote:

Seriously bad decision.

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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

Yeah it's in the interest of YOU because you increase player retention, but it is NOT in the interest of the players who hate the absurd amounts of RNG in this game that harvest craft was finally working against to an extent.

I'll say it again: just give shitty standard players the good harvest crafting, and nerf it in whatever way you want for the good players in temp leagues.

Good thing Diablo 2 Resurrected is coming later this year. There you don't rely on items for ALL your power, your skill selections carry you through almost the entirety of the game and that is 0% rng reliant.

Increasing player retention means "people are having more fun therefore not quitting the game".

That should be the primary goal. If retention is bad, changes need to be made to make the game more fun. And if Google Trends are anything to go off, retention was terrible in Harvest, and not up to 3.9 level in 3.13.

But Delirium - with a brutally challenging mechanic and no Discord powered item editor - was the unquestioned most popular league of 2020 by Google Trends staying power.

If GGG wants to make their game more appealing for the top 0.1% and less appealing to me I dont appreciate it, but I can deal with it. If the game is less appealing to me, my support will be equally less.