Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

Eh oh well.

earlier we skip any leagues, but now time for skipping poe. sad.

Dear Chris and GGG team.

I believe it is time for our relationship to come to an end. I have had "fun" over the last four years with our on and off relationship. But as you continue to point out your philosophy on trading and on items is in direct conflict with what I am looking for in a game and rather than expect you to change for the better I need to realize that I am the one who needs to change or leave and I am choosing to leave.

When I find ways to have fun or builds that I find fun it seems that you stamp it out and I understand the need for "balancing" but I dont find the changes to be balanced. I find them to be devastating and removes the parts I was having fun with. If every change you make "balances" the game and I find that the "balance" isnt fun anymore than the "perfect balance" of the game for you means it is not fun for me. Im saddened that it has taken me over four years to realize that I only have fun in your game when it goes against your idea of balanced mechanics.

Thank you for the fun you did provide even though it was never your intent, but I am tired of changing every league to try to find the fun rather than just having fun from the time I start every new league.

I wish you luck as I know many enjoy this game for what it is, I just realized I am not one of those people.

Best of luck, breakups are hard and I will miss the good times I did have but its not worth the pain and time to continue to try to squeeze out any fun I can find while watching you actively try to prevent me from having what I find fun.

Those who are against harvest are clearly rotting the community.

Gambling is not fun.

Back to playing Bingo. Everything is mostly out of my control anyway, and it is up in sky in terms if I win or not. Unless I buy a lot of tickets. So now I just need to be rich to get good items. But that was also true before harvest. Now my feeling of progression is going to be taken from me. it is "okayish" items, and then to "good" items, that is magnitudes differences in prices, nothing in between. Optimal is expensive and barely farmable, and "okay" are sometimes not good enough for weird non-meta builds.

Back to playing Meta if I want to "complete" the game. Back to playing Bingo, hoping and waiting for my numbers to be drawn.

Harvest did hold my attention as a player for the longest time, and I have played more than 5000 hours. Now I am afraid that I will go back to playing the first couple of weeks, see the end of my progress, and then drop the game. Just like before.

Just drop harvest all together, the progress is all gone. It is just going to give me a sour taste in my mouth every time I would find it.

Long story short... you want us to Gamble instead of crafting, huh?

I mean... the only thing that I really want to say is something that stuck with me about this specific point you made.

"

Some mods that had overly-deterministic behaviour have been removed. These include all annulment mods (other than the ones that remove a mod that isn't of a specific type before adding one of that type), and all type-specific divine mods.

Don't remove them, MAKE THEM RARE.
These mods are Valuable and more than helpful when it comes to the actual crafting process. These, are the one thing about harvest that usually helps me the most when attempting to fix an item that was close to actually being useful. I guess now an item like that would be trash.
I would usually not have the ressources to fix it without the use of Harvest crafting.
Players who do not have currency to fix things will not use it to risk wasting it.

"

Our problem with all of this can be summarised with the following thought: "Why would I use a regular Exalted/Divine/Annul Orb when I can get one through Harvest that has a deterministic result?"

There is one reason that would summarize it all.
The currency is not only being used to gamble stats on gear but even more to BUY FROM OTHER PLAYERS!
People won't throw money at a wall to hope for a better problem if they have to save it to buy something specific from someone else.

"

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."

People who do not have the currency to spend, will not do that.
I didn't find a single Exalt during the entire league and even a few members of my guild who invested WAY MORE time into the game during this league, complained about exaclty the same.
You know that it is impossible to spend currency that you do not even own in the first place... right?

You are effectively stunting the Build diversity by nerfing the middle ground of the pool of avaiable items. Prices will be raised since competition will be crippled. The harder it is to create a good product the less of it will be made which allows the rich players to up the prices.
Good thing I have never tasted true endgame gear... otherwise I would really miss it from now on.
Crafting is absolutely not an option for players like me.

So the game its gonna be a Path of Casino again. Well, dont be surprise if next patch have "overwhelming" less players.

yikes a bit disappointed as a ssf player this last league was the most fun and the most time I played before the burn out kicked in. Harvest crafting was a big part of that opening a lot of builds for ssf that wouldn't of been viable with out it.

Id of preferred if you just made items untradeable or tweaked it in some other way. Huge bummer

Why not do an open survey for EVERYONE and see what the community really wants? or are they just guided by what some youtubers / streamers say?