Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

Good thing Diablo 2R is coming right when GGG intend to lobotomise their game.

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SuperDrop wrote:

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astrartea wrote:

Hilarious to see people saying that it is too easy to make GG mirror tier items with harvest who don't have a single GG mirror tier item on their characters.
Like if it's so easy why tf are you running around with t6 ES on your gloves and 20% MS boots lmao.

bcs they have listed them for sale. they dont need those items. they want currency to gamble hh. think before you quack like a crow.

bruh... do you even know what you're talking about? I consider myself bad at poe and even I know that headhunter is now like 65ex. a month ago it was around 80-ish, not even near half a mirror. if they really have mirror tier, they wont be struggling to get hh, and they also wont use low tier gears.

and also, you can get infinite money by just mirroring them for other people. I might be wrong, but this is also the reason why those things are called "mirror tier". they are worthy to be mirrored.

The two leagues that I played the most were Ritual and Harvest. Do I need the power, of the items I have crafted to beat the game? Not at all. But do I enjoy the slow, deterministic process of crafting? Yes! Do I enjoy my off-meta build I theory-crafted having Ritual in mind? Yes! Can I focus on playing the game instead of trading and flipping to get any meaningful progress? Yes, yes, yes!!!

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sprawdzampoczte wrote:

The two leagues that I played the most were Ritual and Harvest. Do I need the power, of the items I have crafted to beat the game? Not at all. But do I enjoy the slow, deterministic process of crafting? Yes! Do I enjoy my off-meta build I theory-crafted having Ritual in mind? Yes! Can I focus on playing the game instead of trading and flipping to get any meaningful progress? Yes, yes, yes!!!

true!

Deterministic crafting is good. You guys are taking a major L on this one and I hope the player base sends you a message to start the next league if you refuse to bend.

The real problem is you can trivialize Harvest mods by abusing a discord server. Find a way to solve that problem instead of breaking the only thing that makes crafting decent in this RNG infested game.

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CodeRedLin wrote:

This was the first expansion in a long time that I really enjoyed and this makes me never want to play the game again. What purpose does a game serve when the devs remove the fun from it?

100% agree I stopped playing today already over this went on amazon and found a book to read. Not sure if I'm logging into the game again this league and if the changes to harvest go forward I will uninstall the game as they would have killed the 1 thing that I find fun.....Crafting

If it does go through I suspect it will cost GGG millions in lost revenue from MTX sales when they lose 20% of the player base.

I have not played many leagues, first was Delirium and I enjoyed it without having any idea what I was doing. The enjoyment came from learning various aspects of the game at a basic level and from going through the story line for the first time.

I played a lot more in Harvest and thought it was pretty fun but didn't really do much with the crafting. My build/gear wasn't good which made some of the fights in the grove unwinnable. As I learned more about the game the crafting options in Harvest became more worthwhile. During the league I learned about the Head Hunter and my goal was to get one. I accomplished that about a week before league ended and used it a bit but found it undesirable having a huge character that moved so fast and the build wasn't optimized for it so it was a bit of a letdown. I wasn't sure what I would do in the next league and wasn't super excited for it but did want to play it to further explore the game.

I enjoyed Heist league and played a lot, albeit not a ton in the actual heists. I came to understand the game better and while I didn't do much of any crafting I did farm currency to buy good items for my build. By the end of the league I was having a blast.

I have been enjoying Ritual league and the Atlas expansion but don't care much for the actual rituals themselves. I have been working on my gear through Harvests and have been learning more about the game while doing so. Chasing Harvest crafts has kept me interested in the game and this is the first league I have actually used higher cost orbs such as the Awakener Orb and influenced exalts for crafting rather than just selling them for exalts to buy gear.

I can't say now how excited I will, or won't, be for the next league but prior to this change I was really looking forward to a fresh start regardless of the league specific content and had some ideas on how I could better use Harvest crafts. I like the ability to have continual character progression and think I prefer that it can be accomplished through a combination of trading and Harvest crafting rather than just farming currency for trading.

I don't have a recommendation for what the perfect solution is but hope that I will still be able to progress a character and learn more about the game while doing so. If either aspect changes I think it is likely that I will spend less time playing the next league(s).

I know it's gonna be hard to filter good suggestions/ideas out of this storm. But here's my solution, from a game designer perspective to another:


==== SUGGESTION ====

Harvest encounters stay the same, perhaps keep the +60% chances to spawn in maps, that's fine.

Kill the monsters to reveal your crafts.

Crafts can only be applied to currencies:

Get a "FIRE" mod: Put a currency (Exalt) into the craft box and voilà! "Fiery Exalted Orb" (Add 1 Random Fire affix to a Rare Item)

Get a "DEFENSE" mod: Put a currency (Chaos) into the craft box and voilà! "Defensive Chaos Orb" (Reroll a Rare item with a Random Defense Mod)

Get a "LIFE" mod: Put a currency (Annul) into the craft box and voilà! "Orb of Life Annulment" (Remove a Random Life Affix from an item)

etc...
+Currencies can be sold on your own Trade website. No need for TFT Discord anymore.

+Harvest is saved. TFT is negated.

WIN WIN, WIN.

NOT ALL PEOPLE LIKE RANDOMITY, I DON'T WANT TO PLAY IN CASINO ... Do not touch the cool harvest craft, otherwise there will be a riot to return the haraest

I feel like its a shame to see this go away. To me harvest was a way for currency to circulate a lot more throughout the amount of players. From what I have seen, those "mirror tier" items that are so easy to get apparently arent that common anyway. The people that do have them have just spent like 100ex to get one mod correct on their item. The only difference is that now richers players will burn the exalts and annuls on their items instead of paying less wealthy players to use their crafts. The only real difference is that the poorer player wont get any currency and the richer player will have to spend more exalts.

Trust me from experience, there are no poor players "Closing their eyes and slamming an exalt on their item" regardless of harvest existing or not.
Considering the amount of options you have when nerfing harvest eg.
- Making T1 rolls less likely
- Making aug/rem-aug/rem crafts less common
- Allowing items to only be harvest crafted so many times
- Making harvest crafted mods specific and only allowing a certain amount (eg. any mod added to your item by harvest is a harvest mod and items can only have 2 harvest mods)
- Or if you really wanted "players with less exalts to be able to try the
crafting mechanism without spending actual currency" you could make something like the vorici bench where once you start the crafting you can only access your stash and can use any of the random crafts that appear. Once you leave the harvest closes.

I must admit lots of these options may not be ideal but how would I know. All I do know is that harvest was a good way to make currency that encouraged a lot of community engament and kick started a dedicated server that managed pretty well all the aspects of trading the crafts.
And to anyone saying "Oh I cant stand having to use an external program to buy crafts" we know this is bullshit. Considering the amount of currency value sites, trading sites, crafting help sites, trading/pricing macros, filter creation sites and who knows what else that people not only use when they play long enough but are pretty much a "You have to use this" to any new player we know that alt+tabbing or using more monitors to check these things is basically a core mechanic and just because its a discord server that is properly moderated and not a trade site where price fixers and trade scammers run free is hardly a good excuse to remove harvest.