Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

"Don't you guys have exalts?"

+1

I don't doubt that some devs actually play the game instead of just deving it, but there is a VERY CLEAR gap between what is said that the devs think occur in the game, and what actually does occur in the game

"

nimbukie wrote:

I missed harvest league due to real life, but I was really enjoying the mechanics in this league.

In a primarily single player environment I don't see the issue with harvest as it currently is. I have crafted items other ways in the past and have gotten decent gear, this was slightly easier, but still required a massive amount of time investment.

I find more diversity in builds due to this system and more people willing to try different builds because of it.

As far as TFT goes, this is the first league where I have looked at it. My suggestion with all things that can get you scammed is never partake in something you cannot afford. Another words if you can't afford to lose an item, don't use a service like TFT. If you can afford to lose the item then make an adult decision to either risk it or don't, but do not whine and complain to the rest of us that own up to our decisions and risks.

TLDR:
1. Harvest is ok without changes it adds spice to life.
2. Measure risk vs reward before making decisions and own the result.

Really you enjoyed it? I fucking hate it.

Spending 20 minutes in grove in middle of mapping so you dont waste any crafts. Total buzz kill. The whole forcing all-Hamlet-all-the-time because Havest is miles above every other SSF system in game. Fossils and Jun mods are damn good but nothing compared to Harvest. I can probably farm Atoll and Excavation blindfolded now.

This implementation has been totally unfun for me.

GGG I love the game that you made. I enjoy playing the game and love the new atlas passives. But nerfing harvest, is a step in the wrong direction for sure since the 1% will only be hindered by such changes. The remaining middle players will essentially fall out on the next league after they reach yellow maps without the crafts.


Now everyone can be that person who just goes the META builds every league and farms currency. I'm not one of them, I love to play the builds that I like in which require high category of investment to get to red maps since the skills themselves cant farm maps or have some downside of using compare to meta skills with huge aoe or single target dps. This will ultimately disappoint most of these kind of people since their favourite builds are now much harder to get going.

The most important thing is time consumption required to reach the all content deleting state. Most of us people have jobs and cant play for double digit hours everyday. So yeah, removing deterministic crafting is bad since it negatively affects the majority of your player base.

I'd personally don't want to end up on a 3 hour fossil gambling session without results. Since it feels like it was a waste to even do the grind.

This leaves me to ask myself do i just be a META Cuck and forgo my taste in builds or just be an aurastacker and play my favourite skill.

Lastly i would like to say that

"

all the 'streamers' opinions are literally invalid since they play the game for double digit hours anyway

. They are in the 1% which wont be impacted much by the changes.


Changes need to happen GGG.

I don't need to say this myself as the statistics themselves will speak loud and clear next league in regards to player retention and initial players.

I will still play poe though, even if you are making it harder for me to feel satisfied and have fun with my builds. But there is only so much people can take before they tilt.

"

adriano447 wrote:

time to quit leagues for a while... let me know when this shit is gone... first leave ive ever played more then 1-2 builds in a league

im too
all agree

"

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."

This is exactly what players DO NOT WANT ANYMORE. What Harvest did was to bring some fresh content to the crafting (upon RNG layers) system. Many (and I mean MANY, included some streamers here like Zizaran for example) players had realized that the old crafting system was so God damned awful that they do not want to sit with 10K alterations hitting the mouse button over and over again trying to get something good.

Harvest is one of the reasons people are attached to the current league even if the league (Ritual) is plain and becomes boring after some time because, to be honest, the Ritual mechanic is pretty simple and plain that after 3 or 4 days, I guess, I skipped all the Rituals from that point onwards and focused on other things because it's time-consuming and the rewards are not as amazing as I expected they would be.

Overall this is a bad move. You say that Harvest allows players to get ridiculous items, and while this is true, those players who can get their hands on those items are spending several hours or even days on a discord server to get their right crafts or grinding through sacred groves to get them. With these changes, the gap between no-lifers and casual players is even bigger. This doesn't solve any issue, people will keep relying on third-party tools to get their crafts because, again, we're behind RNG layers once again. And casual players won't be encouraged to face the content for the same reason and for not having enough time to play the game properly.

Another point on influenced items. What's the point of using the Harvest crafts if you can't use them on influenced items? This is the primary goal for any crafter to spend their stored crafts, to craft good gear. And influenced items have way too good mods to pass on. So in the end or you only use rare crafted gear or rely on RNG while crafting influenced items with Alt + Regals trying to get at least something "useful".

Are pretty boring these "give and take" cycles where players finally find something enjoyable, and then GGG takes it away from them the next league.

I would LOVE to see a video or live stream of a GGG admin or Chris himself SHOW us how EASY it really is to craft the perfect item. I consider myself an average player, just enough currency from profit, but not the top .1% who literally control the market.

Please, GGG, show us how it’s supposed to be done.... oh and do it without your admin privileges. Play the game like the rest of the 99% do.

Here are my thoughts.

I've been playing since closed beta across several accounts over the years. I've put more into this game in terms of time and money than nearly any other game I've ever played. (2000+ hours at least) I think I have nearly as many hours in the original Dungeon Defenders and probably 1/2 as much in Oxygen Not Included. Nothing else comes close. My first pack was a Gold supporter pack minutes after it went on sale.

PoE has been one of my favorite games for many years now even if I'm probably in the mid tier of players at best. I've barely cracked into endgame, before Ritual league I've had trouble getting past low tier red maps reliably. The game has changed drastically from the concept that caught my attention years ago and I'm still conflicted about if that has been for the better. Originally I remember magic packs and rare monsters being terrifying for poorly geared characters. And even for well geared characters in the highest level zones. And every drop was exciting because it could be something a little more powerful to help me stay alive that much longer in an extremely unforgiving world.

I'd actually suggest the dev team sets up an internal server of an old build and spends a little time playing. Say something like Beta .0.9.7 and see how the game feels compared to now. How the original crafting system fit in with that game (Where you were never meant to feel truly powerful, hence the bland item/skins where upgrades are in MTX only) And how that game fits in with the original development manifestos. Then compare that to the game in it's current state.

Drastic power creep HAS happened over the years. The fact that the top players can reliably get through the 10 acts in 3-4 hours and have early version of end game builds within 2-3 days of a league start show that fact quite clearly. And the fact that most of our loot filters have to filter out nearly every single thing that drops because it's worse than useless, it's actually detrimental to performance, that's another sign that the game now isn't the same as the game that drew many of us in. It's gotten so bad that I actually find SSF more enjoyable than trade league now even if it both limits what I can do and how far I can progress quite drastically.

In all that time, I think I've used an exalted orb once, and I think it was for a challenge or achievement. Anything else and I'm feeling like I've wasted it because it is far more reliable as a large currency item than as a crafting component. And the further the pool of mods expand the worse you can expect it to be going forward. Yeah, I've seen streamers 'slam' items with successful results, but those are the sort of clips that get views. The fifty times they got garbage out, nobody highlights that unless the reaction is extreme.

Until we have a reason to pick up rare items again the only real ways of obtaining useful gear is trade and crafting, both of which have their downsides. Trade is toxic and crafting can make a lottery look like a charity giveaway sometimes.

Low levels crafting isn't too bad but when you start getting into end game content, crafting goes from a couple of transmutes/alterations, augmentations to thousands of currency items. To get something really usable it quickly prices most players out of the market, you'd have to spend a lot of time collecting low tier currency. (Much of which feels like it is gathered by bots these days anyway...)

Trade in this game is not usually a pleasant experience. It wasn't too bad in the early days but with all the scammers, bots, delayed API snafus...and people simply not finding it worth their time to do small value trades (As the opportunity cost of using a portal on a high end juiced map is way more than the profit they make on that 1-20C item you are trying to purchase)...Even with all that, spending half a day whispering 50+ people to purchase even one small upgrade is still far easier than trying to craft it yourself using the current currency system without Harvest.

I agree that Harvest needs some tweaks but it has also been one of the most equalizing factors for many of us that are not top tier players. It's let us access content we otherwise struggle to reach without buying our way into it. I still struggle to clear some T16 maps safely on my strongest character. But I can mostly do so. I've even had the luxury of trying to learn some boss fights I've not yet gotten to experience.


My suggestions are:

Instead of just removing the slightly targeted options, I'd much rather prefer we keep the options we have for harvest now and just make it so that they cannot roll a T1 or T2 prefix for the stronger mod with more than 5 or 6 tiers. These items would be equivalent to the low end gear people buy in trade as it is.

Or...

Make Harvest crafted affixes a separate class the way bench crafted affixes are, and make those non-tradable. At the same time, give us a way to wipe just those affixes (Say a vendor recipe with a Scour and a Chaos, something with a cost but not extreme) so that the item could be tradable again. This would prevent the trading of Harvest crafts without locking items out of being traded entirely. I know the development team has stated it's distaste for bound items in the past, I honestly feel this would be a good compromise. You want a specific harvest craft, you find it and you can have it. Upgrade and want to sell the item? Remove the harvest crafts and you are free to do so.

...

I was really excited for whatever the next league is, even knowing there was likely to be some nerfs to harvest, but this has killed much of that enthusiasm. I was expecting the passives to go away and minor tweaks to rarity of certain options, not a tactical nuke.

I'd like this Chris back. This Chris was more in touch with the community that enjoys the game for it being a game and not a job.

"

To add some awesome fun content that appeals to our core community and also people who only want to log in for a little while each day.

-Chris of GGG on Forsaken Masters (7/31/2014)

"

Schtauffen wrote:

All I want from Harvest as a small Private league player is an easy way to fix resists and make middle-tier gear. I do not care about creating god-tier gear with it. Please make this the focus of Harvest.

I don't get this way of thinking. You want to use 3/10 of what harvest can do (which you already can do) and you want the remaining 7/10 to be removed so noone else could use it. What do you personaly earn from this?

"

Aim_Deep wrote:

"

nimbukie wrote:

I missed harvest league due to real life, but I was really enjoying the mechanics in this league.

In a primarily single player environment I don't see the issue with harvest as it currently is. I have crafted items other ways in the past and have gotten decent gear, this was slightly easier, but still required a massive amount of time investment.

I find more diversity in builds due to this system and more people willing to try different builds because of it.

As far as TFT goes, this is the first league where I have looked at it. My suggestion with all things that can get you scammed is never partake in something you cannot afford. Another words if you can't afford to lose an item, don't use a service like TFT. If you can afford to lose the item then make an adult decision to either risk it or don't, but do not whine and complain to the rest of us that own up to our decisions and risks.

TLDR:
1. Harvest is ok without changes it adds spice to life.
2. Measure risk vs reward before making decisions and own the result.

Really you enjoyed it? I fucking hate it.

Spending 20 minutes in grove in middle of mapping so you dont waste any crafts. The whole forcing all-Hamlet-all-the-time because Havest is miles above every other SSF system in game. Fossils are damn good but nothing compared to Harvest.

This implementation has been totally unfun for me.

This may be a difference in play style. I have a list of harvest crafts that I'm willing to give the time of day and if the ones available are not on that list I just pass on by. I'm not trying to squeeze every last drop out of it. Similar to how I don't kill every mob on a map, but I guess it depends on what your priorities are.