Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

For over a year, starting with metamorph league, with each update and development manifesto, I'm starting to dislike path of exile more and more. If the next league isn't entertaining or at least playable from the beginning (seriosly, first 2-3 weeks of every league starting with delirium this game crashed even harder than economy in 2020) i'm gonna quit and probably won't came back for poe 2 or whatever other big update happens before/after that. For over a year it feels like this game makes 1 step forward, 10 steps back. Why play? What's the point?

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anhkhoiit wrote:

DON'T TOUCH ON HARVEST OR I WILL UNISTALL THE GAME AFTER 3.14 REALEASE

Don't let the door hit you on your way out. I know it's a dickish response but I mostly agree with GGG on this nerf. I don't understand the buff to harvest rates I would gut it or make items soulbound. If you think overpowered tool taken away from you is reason enough for you to quit the game then save us and yourself frustration.

@Chris Wilson / Bex
I don't really understand why you stick to your anti-soulbind stance.
We already have soulbound quest items in the game. I understand you want to keep items tradable in the long run and let people gain profit on crafting but we have already seen timed soul binding in some MMO's. If you would be able to craft item as much as you want with your own hard to find crafts but it would soulbind the item to you for 12-24 hours then it could potentially allow you to experiment even more with crafting in general. It could potentially solve problem with Alva temples, harvest crafting and master-crafting services being too available when people go extra mile to use unsafe trading resources. People would still be able to craft within guild but it would be more time consuming. It would slow down progression toward mirror tier items for big guilds.

Harvest's return has reinvigorated the long-desiccated standard economy, and produced, in my opinion, the healthiest temporary league meta (as in diversity) and economy (as in longevity) that we've seen in a very long while. When's the last time trade was this active this deep into a league?

Please reconsider this decision, whether it is right now, or when you see what next league's player retention and build diversity numbers look like.

Despite the fact, that I will definitely miss the Harvest in current shape, I thing it is a good and required 'optimization'

Thanks, this was very needed - Finally we get back to the point where mirror items are actually rare and something MOSTLY the 0.1% will achieve...
The casual player does not need a mirror item to play the game, they were just fine before harvest - they will be just fine now.

Perfect gear should be near impossible to obtain.
Harvest makes causal players have 1-3 "mirror" items, can't even call them mirror item anymore.

Rework essence, so harvest crafts drop like essence

In my humble opinion one of two things needs to happen:

Either
a) Harvests become tradeable
or
b) Harvest is removed from the game

I have a opinion on harvest just as everyone else does, but my utmost concern with the system as it that they're somehow in the game, but not really.

Harvest crafts aren't 'tradeable', well they are - only you trade your item away and someone else crafts it for you but this has a lot of problems:
1) This system revolves entirely on trust. Essentially you pay someone else to use currency on your item, which also removes the feeling of "you" made that item.

2) It opens the doors WIDE for scammers, as everyone HAS to be confident trading their items around to others.

3) It's ultimately trying to balance with an inconvenience aspect, which I believe we had a discussion about concerning spectres becoming permanent, where the sentiment was "We will give them the QoL and then figure out what the appropriate power level should be"

Otherwise you get the problem where some players will go through the hurdles (whether that be summoning powerful minions every time they login, or joining a harvest discord to trade) and others who will not at all participate - essentially making everyone suffer.

This by essentially haltering the casual player's experience, because harvest can't be strong enough to feel rewarding for an individual - and on the flip side the hardcore harvest traders will sit there with their still perfect items and thinking: Why does it have to be this inconvenient?
- both cases are at a loss with the current system.

I propose making all harvest crafts tradeable (ala. beasts or currency) and then iteratively honing in on the power level, EVERYTHING else in the game is tradeable, as it should be - that's essentially why anything has value in PoE it's either a powerful item or a tradeable commodity to create powerful items.

So, no 3.14 until harvest fix & no supporter pack

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Karcaroth wrote:

Please reconsider this decision, whether it is right now, or when you see what next league's player retention and build diversity numbers look like.

They don't care about league retention only the income spike at league launch.

Where is a button for a community vote: "Design's Team and Chris'es view for fun crafting is delusional and not actually fun?"

How in the hell 300 hours in a league to craft 3-5 good yet not perfect items is "easy enough" (those that could be mirror tier earlier and worth 20-120ex now)

I'm usually do not whine a lot, but that manifesto left me sad. Making me wish to refund supporters I bought this league even, if that was not covered by user's terms.

This league I for the first time composed a build on my own, and made it work. I stumbled on The Hidden, The Feared, played a 100 more hours, crafted even better gear and overcame those too. Now i'm stumbled at full juiced deli maps (hello, LAAAAAGS and terrible spikes, sometimes crashes - need ability to survive more in those, CAUSE CANT RELIABLY DODGE BY MOVEMENT THX) and need to come up with something even stronger

So you decide - "Screw you, Dmitrij!" Minmaxing something is not for avg 4h / day player. U gotta have thousand of exalts worth of currencies, gamble is fun! (erh, no thx?)

Frustrated till the bottom of my consiousness. Don't even want to finish my attempt on crafting a decent +2 arrows shaper bow for elehit. Not like I will ever be able to do it once more

And why harvest is not planned to become tradable in-game via orbs if its going to be gutted anyway? Is a Discord for 10k online players a good thing to you?

BTW THE SPLIT BEAST IS STUPID AND AFFECTS TRADING ONLY NEGATIVELY
Now I wonder to see if the next league will have anything to stay fun for at least 50 hours or so.
Time to swear to not buy any MTX untill crafting will feel achievable once again

Damn. I thought harvest need some kind of nerfs simulteneosuly with QoL. But this seems too extreme to me. Still gonna check how it turn's out to be