Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

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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.

GGG, you're worried about harvest being too OP but... the whole reason you have top 0.1% people hoarding top tier items is not harvest. It's bestiary.

REMOVE THE SPLIT BEAST! It's really not a difficult thing to do...

Here's how to make a harvest that you want, people want some sort of deterministic way of crafting but not powerful because it ends up bricking the rest of crafting options, how about creating a system where you can craft an orb to have that harvest type of craft of augments similar to how those special orbs that drop from bosses.

For example in this case we would have an exalted orb but we would have some sort of essence that can be crafted onto the exalted orb which gives it a modifier like phys/crit/defense etc. this system would require you to have both the exalt and "let's just call it essence orb" to enable said crafting option.

This system would allow you to have a crafting option but you also have to sacrifice currency as well.

This system could be used with all currency, so annul orbs would remove a specific modifier, chaos orbs would have a single modifier similiar to essences, so people would farm exalts like crazy. Even scours could be modified to remove half the mods instead of all.

I guess this could work? who knows.

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This sentiment was summed up by a member of our design team who recently said "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."

So one member of the design team made an analysis, and you fundamentally change the game because of that?

I believe this is a massive mistake and I can tell you why.

Why I understand your arguments, leagues are only 3 months. It is totally fine to obtain perfect items close to the end of a league. Only because some no-life nerds play 12h/day and get bored, [Removed by Support], you punish the normal/casual players?

[Removed by Support] Also, I know a lot of people who have tried poe and stopped because of its brutal crafting system. So we go back all the way to collecting exalts which we never spend? Just to trade them to some nolife trader for good items. [Removed by Support]

Congrats, I am disappointed.

I Exalted my Harvest Crafted Items 3 times with Leo in Resarch and the result was 3 times garbadge where i thought oh man i need to remove defence/life again.
So you think i will ever Exalt my items again ? even without harvest sure not. This time is just over.

This is a mistake that will have a negative impact on the game.

I don't know who exactly you are refering to when you say players have mirrors, but it certainly isn't me or, I'm willing to bet, the vast majority of players.

And, for someone like me, that trades the least possible and was certainly not engaged in craft trading, Harvest determinism was still a gamble. The crafts that I found were used but, as all tags have weights and all rolls have weights, more often than not, I got midtier stuff. Hardly the deterministic OP craft you are making it to be.

Checking the Steam charts a week or so ago I saw, with joy, how the game was maintaining high levels of concurrent players and I assumed it was, in big part, thanks to the crafting engagement that was letting people make items for more characters to level. That will be gone.

An out of touch move, if there ever was one. Stop watching what streamers do to balance your game.

And I will leave it at that because I'm already too disappointed.

This is really sux, the actualy craft system is terrible and the Harvest craft system is beatufull, if you GGG put the harvest system inside the craftbench Ex :
Aug Phys = 1ex and 1anul

That will be perfect, but you guys want to make the craft system the most worst system ever -.-

This is the first league that's captured my attention since 2017, and having a blast, and big reason is the way Harvest is implemented... BUT not sure if anyone else is doing this, but I'm self-limiting my progress to make it fun for me!

I love trading, but I've deliberately avoided the discord (sort of a self-imposed 'harvest SSF'), because they feel like MY items that I'm making more powerful over time. This feels awesome, maybe it's just me.

This got me thinking, if I find this super fun (to the extent that I'm missing out on 'efficiency/better items'), is there merit to some form of balancing of the power of some of these still random but more deterministic crafts not through rarity, but through some form of 'soul-bound' limitation. You can choose to keep your item tradeable, or make it YOUR item, which you can deterministically (eventually) make awesome over time for YOUR build. The trade-off being you can't trade it, like you can for everything else.

I get that runs counter to some core design philosophies around trading, but surely fun and player engagement/retention across leagues matters above all, so my 2c as a returning player. Plus the concept already exists for certain items.

I'm finding I'm neither running T16 Atolls non-stop for efficiency, nor am I buying and spamming 1500 alts then rolling T8 mana (better described as numbing & soul-crushing rather than fun!). But instead I'm having fun, doing all the content! And buying supporter packs and MTX as a result. It lets me mix it up and engage with every face of the game - which is something they've made massive inroads into, and would love to see them make decisions that don't balance power creep by taking away fun.

Basically, you've got me back, I want to stay, I want to buy more MTX, I want you guys to succeed, but this left me a bit flat / felt like you didn't understand why I play (I get why you're doing it though). So please think about why different players play and build on your strengths so I keep playing (I've seen your keynote Chris so I know you think about these things)!