Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

It is the first time I am commenting such an announcement, but this time, I have a strong urge to give my opinion. I'll try to make it short:

Before harvest I have never actively crafted items. Mainly because it was impossible to properly assess the cost of making an item and due to the heavy RNG involved, it was much cheaper to just buy the item in 99% of cases. Which is imho a sad state for this game with such deep itemization and diverse crafting options.

Harvest really made me enthusiastic about crafting. I could really plan out a craft beforehand, calculate the average cost and go for it. The odds were good enough to invest the time and effort, because you knew for sure, that the invested currency won't be wasted and it made it fun and engaging to then farm the currency and the harvest crafts.
Also it usually involves all types of crafting to get the proper base and so on (Bestiary, Fossils, Betrayal, Essences). It wasn't "just" harvest but a clever combination of all available tools. The item I am currently crafting has a 1:50 chance of hitting the T1 mod with r/a crafts, so even with harvest, it is a huge effort to craft perfect items.

After having cleared all of the new endgame content (which was very enjoyable), harvest crafting currently is the sole source of motivation for me to keep playing the game.

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breqker wrote:

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JJaxxo wrote:

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Ganfire wrote:

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.

Casual player does not have 1-3 mirror tier items xD Go watch Path of Maths video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdpA_xHXhEA

I mean in what world do these people live? no casuals will ever have mirror items, harvest or not.

Would love to see his 1-3 perfect mirror tier items he have craftet xD

noob change

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Ruffleberg wrote:

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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.

That's why I didn't buy supporter pack on Ritual start. Because last two leagues left me with feeling that game is deteriorationg with every new patch. Harvest in its pure form was garbage and so time consuming, but Ritual with new harvest - is the best league so far(should I say core game, ritual is ok, but I don't need it for core, except for base types, maybe.)

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jewelkoh wrote:

"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."

If that's all this game is now, then I don't think it is my game anymore.

such a bad choice, yikes.

Well, if that wasn't one of the worse reads ever for a manifesto. I don't know what is.

I'm going to keep this short.

Harvest isn't bad for the game. It just highlights how poor your other systems of crafting are. Chaos and Exalts are in theory powerful. But you run the odds of getting bad or useless mods much more likely than you do of hitting the best mods. And it isn't like you get CC or Exalts every map.

If you want to gut something, gut your horrible crafting system in general. Harvest crafting makes the game much more enjoyable. Which is the whole reason to play video games in the first place.

Game is too bloated and buggy anyways. Focus on fixing that.

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Ruffleberg wrote:

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Olliedk wrote:

Too many streamers whined about they didn't have exclusive right to craft 50+ ex items?

Most trade league streamers don't need to craft items because they just sell crafts to their viewers.

Many streamers have commented that they lose interest in the game when there is less exclusive content and get upset when a new player can beat endgame bosses in their first league.

When the power creep allows noobs to do what the 10k hour elites do that is when they complain.

Guess they'll have to actually put in some effort to be entertaining then... I don't like Quin's streams but he makes an effort to be entertaining without needing to be top 1%.

Just a random feedback noone cares about:

I'd consider myself a casual player (only reached endgame in harvest and ritual and with that I mean red maps, AL8+ Sirus, Uber Elder, Maven, etc.)
I could have done it this league without harvest, since only 2 items are harvest crafted (and let's be real, my belt is still really bad) and could be replaced with the old items, but:

I'd personally like harvest to stay (and those nerfs seem to kill it).
I don't have the time to play poe 15+h per day and thus can't farm 3 mirrors a day to buy perfect gear. I also can't be bothered to spend 1.000 hours to learn how to craft and even if I could, I wouldn't have the currency to craft in the casino anyway. (Everything payed in exalts is expensive for me).
It seems like a clear nerf to everyone who is not amongst the best 0,01% to me, because let's be real: They could always and still can craft mirror-tier items without harvest, it only makes it harder for them but impossible for the rest.

How are people like me supposed to get items?
It's not gonna drop (Chaos orbing boots with at t3+ on es/life, ms and 3 ressis is like 1:140.000 and I didn't drop 140.000 boots I'd say).
I can't craft it (see above)
So I can only buy it. And I'm also not allowed to play a non-meta build, which needs really good items to be viable/able to do endgame content.

So no, I personally don't know the feeling of exalt slaming an item and hoping it doesn't get bricked and I assumed most player don't.


If mirror tier items are the problem, why not just nerf harvest in that regard and for the 0,01% instead of killing it for everyone?
My suggestion would be:


1.: Let us store more harvest crafts, at least 100 or unlimited. You could even make the station in the hideout have all crafts (with a search function) and you just get additional uses by completing the harvestst (like when you do harvest themself, when you used them up you have 0 uses left but it is still shown).
2.: Make them more easily tradeable like storing it as done with beastcrafting f.e.
3.: Make the rare crafting options like aug [mod] or rem [mod] / add [mod] more common (yes, more common!)
4.: On modifier like ES, Life, etc. with more then 2 tiers, you can only roll tier 3 at best.
Since the good crafts are more common casual player can create for example hunter's boots with:

T3 Maximum Life
T3 Movement Speed
T1 Unaffected by desecrated ground (since it only got 1 Tier and wouldn't be effected by above rule)
T3 Cold Resi
T3 Fire Resi
T3 Lightning Resi
But that would be the best boots you could get via harvest!

This way casual Players could craft themself gear that is usable (and archievable!) but you could not craft mirror-tierd items.
The 0,01% playerbase can still make mirror-tier items and sell/buy them, just not via harvest.
Without the 10 slot limit you are not forced to waste crafts/sell them since you can just save everything for later, so people can play the game and take their time to craft on a seperate ocassion.
With the easy of tradeability you don't need to trust others with your expensive items (and get scammed) or search discord all day.

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FlamingVoodoo wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdpA_xHXhEA

Totally agree, nothing more to say.

Account-bound harvest because bulk trade was the fundamental problem or wall of text manifesto suggesting that the 99% player base loves closing their eyes with currency they don't have?

In 3.14 we can all close our eyes again.