Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

Terrible decision, I doubt I will come back next league.

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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?

What ? Do you understand that you still need hundreds of harvest to get the good crafts and it takes hundreds more to said craft rolling a good modifier ?

I mainly use harvest on projects that are for my build, never i will craft with harvest on an item that i wear because of the 80% chance of still breaking your item with harvest...

How can you say nothing changes for players when in reality everything changes and the casino craft will once again be the only way to gamble on items !!

Based on what statistics you made these changes?

I believe you literaly made at least few % players to quit because of that.

I kinda don't understand on what basis your game balance person does these changes.

Like back in the day in 2016 i LOVED Righteous Ride on Chieftain as Pure HP build, which you literally killed 2 leagues later(because of chieftain ascendancy change to force physical to fire because 10% STR was hidden behind it and then nerf to RF to deal 20% of HP)

I kinda do not like changes to builds that I create/think of, as I was using cyclone to curse on hit flammability on it, I decided to stick with cyclone for my 'next' build..

..which you nerfed hard 2 leagues after with your awesome 'boosting 2handed weapons' patch where Ngahamu Axe got nerfed really hard (molten burst is also procing a lot less compared to before) with lowering its physical damage by 30% or so.

I am casual player, I like to stick with one build that I like (feel free to check my characters)

Harvest was one of 'in game events' that gave me option to craft stuff (in which i was unlucky and wasnt albe to btw and not that I am very good at crafting) with less RNG that makes me want to quit playing this game.

Well here goes GGG with nerfing harvest where i can't even 'roll physical' on items..

Well I guess i'll just skip Harvest as there's nothing to do in there, back to old alternation spam with regal + multicraft

Whats gonna be next?

Sadly this is just a bad approach :-(

We got harvest back as a way of endgame grind motivation with 3.13, after it paused one league. I personally enjoyed harvest league until the very last day of the league, because PoE is in a nutshell a loot hack and slay game. this is why most of us love it, because of the complexity and superior crafting and endgame over any other hack n slay game out there.

I personally play about 800+ hrs every league since 3.00.
Never was I so motivated to play a league mechanic as in harvest league. I ofc understood that is was very powerful, but it kept me so damn motivated, to optimise my characters.

Rather than kill harvest crafting (you know you are going to, with what you stated in your manifesto) here are some thoughts (exclude some rolls obtainable through harvest crafting):

1) Make Tier 1 resists with remove / add or augment impossible to roll
2) Make Tier 1 ES and Life with remove / add or augment impossible to roll
3) Make Tier 1 critical multiplier, attack speed, cast speed, movement speed impossible to roll
4) and just maybe: ignore bench crafted modifiers with harvest crafting (like to block certain things)

Result: Now you will always have god tier items beyond harvest crafting in the game, but be sure that only the .00001% of your playerbase will obtain these items and will offer them for mirror-service and the gap of the very few players gathering all mirrors in the game will even get bigger.

You will most likely see a huge cut back in build diversity, because harvest is just such a good way to make a use-case for many skills / builds.

You know you will kill all crafting with maven orbs. If you will totally ruin an item with 1 attempt without harvest crafting, it feels super bad. At least it is possible to fix the item in some way with harvest and get a new attempt for the maven orb. Without augment crafts in harvest, it is just dead. So, maven orbs without harvest crafting is pointless in my opinion. The majority of players (I guess your target group) will never be able to obtain really good elevated items themselfs anymore. You introduced a crafting method, which only the .0001% will use, I guess this is a bad design. They will most likely be forced to trade for all their gear. You really want this?. And again, the surplus of good crafted items will again go into the pockets of the .0001% of players.

Please identify what keeps players motivated throughout a league...
For me, it is to pollish my characters. I need to grind for currency to buy it on trade, or I need to grind other mechanics to be able to craft it myself. And the main thing is, that I´m doing this in an efficient way. This is PoE for me and the way I enjoy it the most... to figure out a strategy to reach my goals, which is: great geared characters.

Target farming harvest (with zana f.e.) is just another good strategy besides running fractured maps, deep delving, simulacrum, invitations for endgame grind content. With the new Atlas you made even more great strategies possible (farming beasts, harbigners, legion is great, sadly revealed blueprints farming is not recommanded. Elder / Uber-Elder farming isn´t worth it anymore, Sirus farming too)
Compare this variaty of endgame with f.e. D2 - baal runs over and over again... PoE is doing so many things right.

And harvest is just a good approach to create your own good gear. It combines so well with all other crafting methods. You totally can get things done and push your character to a new level. Otherwise you just will be forced to go to mirror-services again. This feels just bad.
Is it bad game design to have one or two great geared characters after spending a few hundret hours in your game?

You limited the amount of crafts stored to 10, maybe you didn´t think about the great poe community and their way to figurte out, that crafts will be traded on tft again. TFT comminuty is just great and helps a lot to get things done! TY for all involved!

You did a very good job so far. In a nutshell: The PoE rewards you by juicing up the content, layer by layer. You added new layers with the new watchstones and atlas skill tree. I personally think it is a very great approach. The risk / reward payout is fantastic.

The powercreep isn´t that bad, compared to other games. If I invest hundrets of hours into a league, I feels good to have several characters with good (and in parts, harvest crafted) gear.

I really don´t see the problem at all.

#dontkillharvestplease

Cheers


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Crafting example:
I´m crafting right now a double influenced helmet with horror essences.
I spend over 45 exa in horror essences so far to see lvl 20 conc effect + ele dmg essence mod THREE times. Two times the item included mods (like block recovery, mana), that couldn´t be removed with harvest. two times I killed the item (removed essence mod or removed conc). The third time I was lucky and the base item was ready after augment influence mod for a maven orb to have a 50/50 chance to elevate conc to lvl 25. I failed...

So far I spend 25 exa for the base with enchant, 45 exa in horror essences, 11 exa on maven orb, and I got nothing so far. But I keep going. When I finally will elevate conc on the second or third try, I´m able to finish the item with harvest crafting, with many many rolls remove / adds...

I estimate the crafting costs for the finished helmet to 200-250 exa maybe. These projects keep me motivated. And then I have a helmet with 1 elevated mod, a good enchant on a good base that took me a week of farming. So, in what universe is this "too obtainable, too accessable to get"? I don´t see the problem at all...

step forward two steps back, why are you killing good things??????????? WTF GGG???????
You are great, again listening to 2-5% of the players, but don't care about the rest? For those for whom it makes sense to play this game with the harvest, play again for 1-3 weeks and wait for a new league?

I never thought ggg can be the second blizzard like"daddy will tell you how to play this game"
Players love harvest,what you should do is improving not deleting.

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sirgog wrote:

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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.

Couldn't disagree more. Retention was poor in harvest because the garden was atrocious. Retention was good in delerium because it was a fun mechanic that spit out loot, and more importantly, cluster jewels, that kept people interested for far longer.

The retention for 3.13 is amazing, why do you think that is? Read the room of this post and reddit. It's not because of the ritual mechanic, people have already farmed the hell out of each atlas ascendancy. It's harvest, allowing people to create better builds and utilise underpowered skills.

You are so wrong, which isn't normally the case.

Just limit the number of "harvest changes" an item can safely endure.

Every harvest craft, the item loses 5-8% of its "durability" and after a while (lets say 5 changes) the risk of it breaking are not sustainable anymore.

Its still fun, still a gamble and it wouldn't ruin the game for casual players.

Good riddance. Of me playing this game, I mean :)

I play in PoE because I like to make my character perfect❗
The mechanics of the Harvest, made my goals and my meaning of the game a reality!☝🏻
There are thousands of stats in the game, and it's just Unrealistic to get the right property with one Exalted Orb, which caused me and other players to have Cognitive Dissonance, before the advent of the harvest mechanics!
There are thousands of stats in the game, trying to get the desired property with 1 Exalted orb - is violence against players❗❗❗

Harvest - the reason why I play in this league 10 times more than I played before! I got a sense of being able to make my character perfect, which is not so easy, by the way👌🏻🙄

Without Harvest, I won't be able to play this game anymore.
Since I will feel the pain of the fact that no matter how much time I spend, but I will not have any opportunity to bring my character to perfection😢

This news killed not only Harvest, this news killed the meaning of the game❗😭
And I won't play it as much as I do in this league anymore.