Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

Fun is not allowed.

Most people didn't attempt end game crafting prior to Harvest.

With H league, the crafts were amazing and a player had too many.

In Ritual league, as someone who did 40/40 challenges including the mind-numbing map grind. I only sold a decent amount. 15-20 remove, remove/add, Augment crafts. Could of sold more, but using TFT is not playing the game.

The real questions your stats team should be asking is:

Does Harvest help retain the playerbase and make the game more enjoyable across the board?

Does the Addition of Harvest break the endgame for the playerbase or does it give people a reason to try to make "dope ass" items, and thus play the game longer?

How can we improve the experience of Crafting?

This current path forward feels like a kick in the Nads.
Very Unpopular decision,
and might drive off some folks, after waiting damn near a decade to get a better crafting system.
If your goal is to drive off the casual player, you are gonna achieve it.

The best compromise is, dont change it and make it only more rare. Problem solved.

I heard first time about Last Epoch today because of this, and watched one video and you need to hear this! You can target craft items to decent level but, if you want to push higher tiers on the modifiers you have a chance to fracture the item and you cant craft further that item. So the point is you can make usable items and you can enjoy the game, but if you want the better gear you need to take a gambling( and currency sink). Why cant do similar system? Most people could try new builds and have fun and still have room for risk reward for high end crafting.

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Vandurman wrote:

alkXD

rip

There are a few philosophical things that are based on misinformation or statements that are blatantly false, at least in my opinion.

1. Chaos spamming is anything but fun and exciting. It just isn't. You're also much more likely to alteration spam and multi-mod instead. Due to rarity of exalted orbs, you're not just going to slam them on leveling items, especially taking into account multi mod craft for end-game gear.

2. Harvest provides an item level restriction(something that can easily be nerfed, by the way), therefor you're not worried about ''wasting'' a craft early on. By spamming Zana missions you can also force harvest(something that can easily be nerfed, by the way). Aside from extremely rare divination cards, you can't deterministically farm exalted orbs. Do you see where this is going?

3. Every other league you introduce something that makes previous content obsolete. You have been doing so for at least past 6 years. For example, you don't delve for fossils anymore. Why isn't that a problem? By the way, fossils also affect crafting in the exact same negative way as harvest crafting does, it just has more variance.

4. Item philosophy. Now, I understand wanting to make powerful items harder to acquire and I don't have a problem with that as a concept, what I do have a problem with is that you add things that go directly against that philosophy every on consistent basis. You're literally going in circles. Add power creep > nerf it > add new power creep that makes old one obsolete > nerf that > repeat from step 1.

Developing a game is hard. It's even harder when your game is a very popular one. Unfortunately, for past 3 years there really hasn't been an update that felt inspired or fresh. It looks pretty(if you turn contrast up to 100 to actually see anything) but it's plagued with bugs and other issues. We're at a point where QoL is bad for the game and must be nerfed. If I had a tinfoil hat I'd blame Tencent.

5. Meta crafting is a thing. It has been a thing for several years. Exalting items in a non-deterministic way hasn't been a thing for a very, very long time. You have to be completely delusional to believe that the average player is going to ''close their eyes and exalt an item''.

6. None of the changes are going to accomplish anything your philosophy dictates. It just makes harvest significantly worse and makes it more likely to be replaced by fossil crafting or whatever else you add to the game in future. If you just want fewer mirror worthy items in the game then say it. People won't have a problem with that. There's no need for half-assed manifesto that shows you don't actually play the game.

TL;DR: no need to BS the community. If you want less mirror worthy items in the game then just say it.

Maybe this could have been more conditional?

If SSF, keep it easy to craft, mark the item with a flag "untradeable", and if the player wants to move to trade league, the item will still be usable, while you avoid the spread of mirror tier items. Looks good for SSF.

If trade league, make sure the probabilities are not the same level as SSF. Tthe untradeable flag on some of those most powerful crafts can still be applied, and the problem is solved.

Next to this, it wasn't impossible to improve the other existing crafting systems. No casual player (I mean here no player without tons of exalts) will use exalts for something else than the bench or trade. Unless you change the exalt to always provide high tiers (again, more deterministic, and improving existing craft systems), I am not sure ppl will change their ways. Assuming you change the exalt to do exactly that, you will land with the same problem. Looks like you want deterministic craft and at the same time, you don't really want it, because some ppl are too powerful (because they are playing the game). Just give more use to the exalt, and you'll see it used more :)

Harvest crafts could be itemized, sold, with a limit per account.
That sounds fair, because the ToS limit the account per player, I suppose? (I never checked). If ppl group together, it's only fair, it's what they like to achieve together.

Tradecucks ruin everything for everyone, again.

You guys can't understand one thing GGG are smart - they know that harvest is fun and players are in love with it. But if a player can make gear faster close content faster it means he will drop the leaguer faster == less money spent on the game.

So I feel sorry for that perfect mechanic I dont have so much time to play craft and so one.