Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

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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.

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Lunasicc187 wrote:

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 item 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 iten 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...