Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

this is a terrible fucking idea GGG (and this is coming from someone who is generally in favor of the changes you make to fuck over the average player)

Not saying these changes are good or should go live, but if you do not change harvest crafting, exalted, annulment orbs and mirrors are useless items and will be worthless soon. Have you seen that annulment orbs have been @ lower then 1 chaos price before the announcement? And what I do need a mirror for if I can produce the perfect item I want to copy with half of the mirrors costs? So there have changes to come, but I really don’t know what could be the right way to do it.

So wait, several months ago, before Harvest even existed, PoE was a bad game? Because this thread makes it sound like it will be a bad game now after Harvest is nerfed. I don't get this logic. I'd assume tons of people had fun with it before Harvest.

It's like: imagine you eat ice cream for the 1st time in your life. It's absolutely phenomenal. Now, several months later your parents come and say - no more ice cream for you son, it's actually not good for your teeth and overall health. So yeah, most kids would throw a tantrum here. But does it mean life berfore ice cream was terrible?

This has to be one of the worst decision you could possibly make.
The change is only to get 1% of the playerbase a tougher time getting the perfect items. But what about the other 99% of the players.

Think again and listen to the community.

"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." That's bad. That's not a correct mentality to have.

What if they were keep harvest the way it is but it doesnt give you crafts, instead it allows you to infuses your own currency with crafts that you can then trade via poe trade.

No reason to play any further after hitting 24 achievements without current Harvest mechanics. No more fun for average players, R.I.P PoE.

"

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 right here is what drives me away, not what makes me want to keep playing.

Hi GGG!

I understand where this is coming from, but I'd still like to give my 2 cents.

Like so many others in this thread, harvest gave me a reason to keep playing the whole league. I am in SSF HC, so the trading aspect doesn't really affect me, but I'd still like to give my take on it.

You stated that it's a problem with people using discord to trade sell and buy crafts - I understand this issue, but instead of focusing on the issue at it's core, you decide to go on a different route - that being: nerf the whole thing. To me the simple answer would be to make items tradeable. That would solve the whole issue.

That leads me to believe that the issue stated has nothing to do with the change itself, but the philosophy that you just described. And that's fine. But I'm starting to feel like you're losing touch with your playerbase a little bit here.

Harvest has, for me at least, given me a reason to keep playing the league instead of getting burned out after 1-2 weeks and return the next one. The feeling of (especially for me as a HC player) spend time to craft some amazing gear and hopefully not lose it, is a thrill itself. And I can't be the only one to think this. I'd be really suprised if the numbers didn't show this league to be the most played league so far, for the longest period of time after being introduced to this type of crafting.

As an SSF HC player (ssf hc btw) I felt much more compelled to try out different gems, ascendancies, because let's face it; With the monster and boss buffs that's been going on for the last couple of leagues, harvest crafts gives you the option to take those wonky funky gems and ascendancies to the end game - the thing you've done with harvest crafting is to allow the playerbase to play skill they want, and make it work. For the more experienced players like myself, it's more ground to cover, more stuff to open doors to- and have fun with. Things that previously wasn't accessable, reasonable or viable. A clever unique usage that by itself didn't have the support of the rest of the gear that harvest crafting can actually fill. The top players will always find ways to zoom through a map with ease, and no matter what the meta is, or what skill they use for that specific league - the speed will certainly remain the same - with harvest crafting or not.

I'm not here to threaten to quit the game and stop buying supporter packs - I'm to old for that stuff. But I'd just like to say this:

The way I see it is that you made two big mistakes. The first being to introduce the harvest system at it's current state at all if it goes against your philosophy of the game, and 2: remove it right after you've introduced it.

I love the direction you've taking on the game, and I've played about 8000 hours. Personally I feel that this change isn't good for the game moving forward, and I hope that instead of thinking "this is the change we've done and we're going to stick with it", I hope you can have an open mind about this decision and listen to the community feedback regarding this thread. If the majority of the people want to see harvest change into this state, then I'm absolutely fine with it.

RymdLeffe out!

I - for one - am grateful for these changes. I absolutely agree with everything you said in your post. Insane items should be rare. I just shruged and thought to myself "Wow, that's absolutely not impressive" when i saw an insanely rolled item in 3.13. It's just too much.

I would have welcomed the following change which would make it acceptable: Make storage unlimited, keep the power level of Harvest, but make items "account-bound" as soon as you touch it with harvest (only affects rare items). This way people will craft their own gear step by step if they farm a lot - which i think is totally fine, still keeps you on your toes, doesnt break the economy and gets rid of the discord-channel necessity which was an absolutely terrible expierence.

This btw. would still satisfy SSF players as well as League players.

But well, if i'd have the choice between keeping Harvest as it is and removing it entirely, i'd remove it.