Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

First of, I'd like to express that I am a casual player. I do not have 8 hours a day to play or even 4, and I believe this to be the real problem balancing around for a game like PoE. I understand it is not an easy task to do and I'm certainly happy it's not my job to do so. I do how ever believe I'm capable of spotting a bad idea fairly easily, that isn't well thought through.

]The first problem

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The first part of this that concerned us was that Harvest was critical in making the best items (and hence made many other game systems obsolete)

Alternatives to Harvest is fossils and Essences, and while these are much less deterministic, they are not by themselves bad systems. The problem with fossil crafting as an alternative to Harvest crafting is, the debth you have to get to, to get a reliable source of fossils. I cannot say that it's an experience of mine, I base this knowledge on streams and videos of Delving.
As a casual player, I have no idea which mechanics is in place in the debths of the mines, but I do know to get a reliable source of fossils, I have to go to debths that I can't realisticly hope to reach. Thus Harvest crafting is by default the only viable crafting method for me, when it comes to deterministic outcome.
Essences crafting is a very good way to start a craft, but that's all it is. It has no bigger value in a craft, than throwing endless amounts of Chaos Orbs and Exalted Orbs on an item, hoping it'll show up with the right mods.

Conclusion to problem #1
Harvest crafting was made critical by the bad design of obtaining and functionality of other systems, thus those systems design is what made them obsolete.

The second problem

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The second part, where it was inconvenient to trade them, becomes far less of a problem if we can solve the first issue

Itemized crafts, with a limitation on how many you can store, just as it is now.
I unerstand not making the items tradeable is a response on Harvest League, but while items can still be traded between players, it seems to me a bit naive to think the community wouldn't find a way around this, in a matter of seconds.

Conclusion to problem #2
Allow for harvest crafts to be traded as itemized items with a storage limit.

The third problem

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It's also important that items are hard to perfect.

Yes, an item should be hard to perfect, this comment suggests it was even possible to perfect an item without harvest craft. While I know there is a chance it could be done, that chance is so small, that a realistic outcome of reaching perfection on any given item is an impossibility.
The strongest players in PoE will always be strong, but not because they have easy access to gear, but because they know the games mechanics.
As a proof of concept, looking at pob.ninja for the highest DPS on any character through 3.12 and 3.13 you will find in 3.12 heist the player with the most damage was capable of pushing well beyond 2 billion (yes, with a b) dps, while in 3.13 with the access to harvest crafts, the strongest player hasn't actually gotten stronger with another 2 billion dps. The difference is, in harvest there's only 1 player in the billions, while in heist there was 2.

Conclusion to problem #3
Harvest hasn't enabled damage that wasn't previously achievable.

The fourth problem

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Why would I use a regular Exalted/Divine/Annul Orb when I can get one through Harvest that has a deterministic result?

This way of thinking I simply have no empathy for, no casual player will ever throw an exalted orb on an item. Throwing an exalted orb on an item for a small chance at one stat, compared to the benefit it will give our characters to buy an entire item that enables far more in the builds, makes it a non-viable method of crafting for a casual player.

Conclusion to problem #4
There seems to be a disconnect on how the vast majority of the playerbase actually play the game and what GGG seems to think is going on in the game.

What has Harvest done then?
Harvest has enabled a greater build diversity, looking once again on pob.ninja, during Heist 2 ascendancies made up 50% of the total top tier playerbase, and in 3.13 we find that the same top 50% is occupied by 5 ascendancies. Going to the least played ascendancies the story is making the picture even more clear, only 1 ascendancy class is under 1% in 3.13, while in 3.12 3 classes was under 1%.
For the most powerful players, Harvest Crafting allows for a "flavour of the week/month" type of playstyle, where content creators get to showcase more builds in a single league, thus keeping their content interesting throughout the entirety of the league. And lets not forget, the investment into a single character for these high end players is still hundreds of ex across the entirety of the gear, so it's by no means cheap or easily obtained.

My humble opinion
Back to the drawing board with this "fix", the only people it's going to affect is the casual player base. Top tier players will still get the most powerful gear in the game and will still make builds you didn't anticipate possible. That's going to happen no matter what crafting systems you decide to alter, as more playtime + in debth game knowledge = strong and powerful builds.

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Jadran wrote:

So wait, several months ago, before Harvest even existed, PoE was a bad game?

Bad game? No. Good game with terrible itemization and a gambling system trying to disguise itself as crafting? Always has been.

Yikes

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Jadran wrote:

So wait, several months ago, before Harvest even existed, PoE was a bad game?

In this regard? Yes.
There's a reason a lot of people have only ever played two or three weeks into a league. There's a reason a lot of people never engaged in any kind of crafting before harvest. There is a reason some of my friends never recommended anyone this game before ritual league.

PoE has a lot going for it, but gambling your items with currency for miniscule chances of getting something good is definitely not one of those.
And all of the other good things? Don't really matter if people can't progress to that point in the first place.

A lot of people were able to tackle their first Sirus this league and actually see some of the endgame. What's the point of that endgame if it is not achievable by most people in any form?

Why the hell you cant just make augs and anuulments much more rare?! Why the hell you just delete em? You just remove reason to do harvest at all. Fossile craft - deleted. Harvest craft - deleted. Now its not even crafting, its gamble like it was back in 2017 when the only way to craft was chaos spam.
One more patch and one more manifesto made to please raddit and not actual players.
PoE every ligue become more PathOfReddit. More and More and More. Again changes for ppl who dont play the game. Can you stop befor its too late?

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Jadran wrote:

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?

Exactly. TBH I don't understand why they implemented harvest in the core game in such a powerful state if the plan was to nerf it to the ground after one league, but the fact is people are dealing with the gambling nature of the games crafting system for a long time now. People who don't like it just don't use it or quit long ago.

This the thing. I'm fine with the nerfs, but those who are not could send a message by quitting the game, but we know that's not gonna happen. Players will bitch and whine, they'll say they'll quit, but those saying they'll quit are the ones queueing as soon as the next league starts.

That's why GGG does stuff like that. They know their players. They know only a handful will quit, and most will quit for different reasons.

I really dislike this change since I enjoy Harvest quite a lot, but what can you do if the developers don't like it in its current state. I will probably play 3.14 but I'm going to miss my target annuls and augs or rem/add on influenced items. Anyways, excited for next league's announcement!

I think that the crafting options from harvest should be tradeable like beasts with the Bestiary Orb. Using a discord server for this gives some people a huge advantage since they are able to spam the valuable crafts while non-members are limited to what they and friends happen to find. I overall agree with the changes but we NEED an in-game way of trading these crafts.

I'm a new player started on harvest league, to be honest even a new player like me knows how strong harvest is. I've learnet a lot this league, harvest is absolutly a great system that make everyone could craft mirror tir gears. Core crafting method is so weak currently that players have to reply on harvest to craft gears they want, therefore when GGG says they gonna nerf harvest in a way which is not players expect, they start to attack GGG.

However we know it could be improved in a lot of ways, based on these main problems:

First, storage limit, this is easy to improve don't want to say too much. Secondly, trading function, now people are using unofficial function to trade this:DC or chatting channel. I recommand GGG could allow us to extract craft by using currency: for example +cold or -fire, players could use 1E or 1annu to extract craft and sell them by using stash tab. This could not only give us an offical way to trade harvest craft safe but also keep the value for currency(no one actually use currency this league especially annu). Also if player don't have currency to extract craft, they could still using the old method which we are using now, but this time players trade currency and seeds only, not trade with gears which won't be cheated as losing their gears.

Then, I think using these harvest craft could also using currency, this means that harvest only give player a method that could craft gears in a certain way, which will cost currency to get or use those strong and powerful crafts. And this could also keep the value of currency and make harvest stay more close to the game core. This sulotion not only limite harvest in some level but also keep the craft that player could still use those powerful crafts.

I really like S14, as a new player this league really tought me a lot. But I think harvest really have more better ways to nerf or improve. What players want is not just nerf the method, but nerf it on a way that could make this game looks more like an entirety.

Hope u guys could see this, love the game, hope u could deal with this thing better.

The most fun part of harvest was low level crafting. Really fun for ssf to be able to effectively craft decent items that feel powerful without investing tons of effort into them. What was wrong with having a godly low level items to get through early gameplay easily, and introduce people to crafting.

Huge mistake: You removed the actual fun part of harvest and destroyed the rest.

It's almost like you guys never played the game. Maybe stop looking at statistics and actually play the game a bit. It's not that bad, come play.