Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

I can't wait for Diablo II, i'm tired of GGG, i regret spending money this league, it will not happen anymore, i'll check POE2 if thing are better.

I'm honestly sad with GGG. First they nerf Ritual to the point where doing it is just a waste of time in 99.9% of cases and now they are removing a big portion of their playerbase with their newest Manifesto.
I've been playing PoE on and off since Closed Beta, not playing a lot in Leagues I didn't enjoy and generally just feeling burnt out of the game. I pretty much didn't play for 3 or 4 Leagues now and came back because this League was fun in the beginning. Doing Rituals, getting some cool items along the way. Now doing them just feels like a joke, spending so much time just to get like what, 4 more chaos per map when I could have done another map in the time I did all the rituals?
And now they gut the next league mechanic just because "It's too OP and Discord". How is this going to fix anything? It'll make the issue with Discord even more prevelent and ruin the fun for a majority of the playerbase. It's fun for new and casual players since they can actually work towards the items they want themselves instead of having to run through maps gathering as much currency as they can just so they can afford a small upgrade for themselves. And more experiences players can have their fun creating god tier items, trying to top eachother with every craft they do, giving more incentive to keep playing the league.
I have to be honest, I never cared for crafting, never crafted and never will because it is just not my cup of tea, but I enjoyed the availability of decent build-enabling items on the market that allowed you to throw together some builds you could have never pulled off before as a casual player that doesn't rush through maps. "Grind to grind faster" is a philosophy I do not enjoy as it just takes away the fun of a game and makes you burn out incredibly quick as you can't see your character progress and get stronger in a meaningful time.
I don't want to sit there and grind and grind just to complete a single build per league, always having to keep in mind that I am maximizing my profits or I won't be able to do endgame on a build I enjoy playing that is not meta or abusing somekind of other mechanic.
Make drops meaningful or leave us with deterministic item progression, nobody like RNG hell, nobody closes their eyes to use an exalt on something other than Streamers that play this game full time or the top 0.1% of players that found a way to abuse your broken League mechanics like the Mirror Splinters this League that you patched after a minority manage to abuse it and then used money to print more money.
We see Exalts and Chaos as currency not as crafting material in 99% of cases, nobody is going to just "Exalt slam" an item when they don't have a meaningful outcome or doing it for the comedic purpose of using it when they have 50 more in their stash and the item is already perfectly fine for their build.

LOL.....

So only the super mega players will ever get a chance to play the high game.... All you did was drive up pricing on offline sources....

Oh well, your game... you can be dumb all you want.

I pray every day for competition....

If you are so worried about the TFT discord you could very easily make the crafts tradable like you did with Bestiary beasts.

If you are worried that people aren't spending their currency on crafts you could make it so every craft costs the specific type of currency + the craft. Aug would cost an ex to use, randomize a divine and annul would cost an annulment, there is your currency usage.

If you are worried about people wanting to get perfect gear maybe you should stop throwing at us ridiculous encounters like "The Feared" only achiavable by the 0.1%.

Or even better, you could do all of the above, but instead of doing what your community very obviously expect you just remove one of the very few mechanics that are worth a damn in the entire game.

Dissapointment.

[Removed by Support]

Not going to lie, this is a bad direction and take. I understand GGG's PoV, but I have to say I disagree completely. Deterministic crafting is desperately needed in this game.

I think this is a horrid change that just shows how out of touch and disconnected dev team is to the player base and what is good for the health of the game.

I am at best an average POE player, I can make it to most of the end game content well enough. I dont really have enough time in the day to play more than a few hours and this manifesto is a kick in the stomach for the average player. Its bad for the health of the game for the average player, as well as for player retention.

This league has been the most fun I have had playing POE. I can say that I do really love this game even if I will never be the top 25% of players or higher. I still find enjoyment out of it as it is. The thing that made this league greater than the others is the atlas changes AND HARVEST! Its strong, not over powered. But it allows for the average player to actually obtain with a reasonable amount of time investment to craft better than average gear with out having to deal with the toxic af gambling system that really plagues this game. Fossil crafting was, and is still great, probably the second best improvement to this game to date.

Even as strong as harvest is, making "the best" gear is well out of reach for the average player. And I guess it should be, that way the tryhards have something to work for. And with the RNG factor still being involved it makes it so that it is still very, very hard to actually craft the perfect piece of gear. As far as what the top 1% do, well it doesn't really mater, they will always get the best gear because thats what they do. They are important as well, but so is the other 99% of players that killing harvest will effect more.

I think that getting rid of any of the current crafting options is NOT a good idea, I think that making influenced gear not craftable by harvest is NOT GOOD. If there is something that is "too obtainable" like the explode mod on the crusader chest, then remove the tag from it so that you cant just roll it with harvest. You dont have to kill the best improvement the game has ever seen to do so. At this point why even have harvest at all? Or you could just improve on harvest and turn it into something really, really good. If some of the crafts are too OP, make them harder to get. Not impossible, just harder. I like the reduction of what actually comes out of harvest, to a point, because it should still offer good crafting options most of the time. Also I think that the 10 craft limit is dumb, and should be removed, because really there is workaround for that though trading and such. So this stupid arbitrary number just needs to go away or be set to like 50-100 crafts. Also, the crafts need to be tradeable, like the prophecy system. I shouldnt have to go to discord, find a player that has the craft I want to use, trade my gear and currency to them(and hope they dont steal it, with out consequence) to make my gear (hopefully, because you know, RNG and all, better). Plus they could institute a currency system that allows the craft to be pulled out, like silver coins but rarer. That way it makes the system more accessible, but more costly. Just make the system better for everyone, and more enjoyable and improve the system.

The other good point of this league is that despite what GGG has said about it being "bad" for the game. There is more players than ever before, more build diversity, and in my own personal experience a better than ever league experience. Why kill build diversity, player fun, content. DONT KILL HARVEST, MAKE IT BETTER!!!!!!!

At this point though if GGG is resolute in killing this part of the game I am willing to boycott POE. Not out of anger, rage, or anything but love for the game. Harvest needs to be not be nerfed in the type of crafts offered, or restricted to non influenced items, and buffed by making the crafts tradable. If they wont listen to reason and the majority of the player base that is for keeping and improving harvest crafting. Maybe they will listen to players leaving.

Such a disheartening change. I think I'll skip everything until POE 2 comes out now.

Random crafting with exalts and annuls is a shite way to do it, and something Id never waste my time with again given how expensive and dissapointing it always has been in the past. The deterministic crafting in the actual harvest league was awesome, and I made a full set of near perfect items tailored specifically to my build after a ton of time and effort. The actual harvest was tedious though and stopping to use up the lower crafts and manage seeds was a annoying distraction. The answer should be to split deterministic currencies across all the different game modes imo. That way regular ppl can actually craft cool shit without the rest of it and can just trade for the currecies like anything else.

Being able to get a double influences item with perfect mods should not be reserved for the one person in the leauge with enough luck and currency while the everyone else makes futile attempts at making a good items.

I do not play every league hardcore but when I do Id like to have the a reasonable chance of getting to an endgame build with bespoke endgame gear if I am willing to take the time to progress to that point.

For the record I was not too impressed with harvest 2.0, I stopped playing before I got too far but I could see actually progressing harvest would have been annoying the way it was. Stopping for 10 minutes to try to use up the crafts was an immediate distraction to actually playing.

Deterministic crafting was the most enjoyable thing Ive done in POE ever. Harvest itself and the mechanic was ok at the time but I would not want to do it every league.

"

SA_Lumis wrote:

If the community reaction to nerfing Harvest is negative because people liked it and chose to repeatedly farm it for gear IN A GAME ABOUT GETTING GOOD GEAR over all the other content in the game, maybe Harvest isn't the problem.

Maybe the problem is that the other content in the game isn't nearly rewarding enough.

99.9% of the stuff hitting the ground is garbage that people just won't pick up. That's just not good design.

Deterministic outcomes is something the game needs, whether it be in Harvest or some other form that significantly mitigates the RNG aspect of the game. The outcry should really illustrate that.

Give this person a medal!!

Problem with this is, you people have no backbone anymore. I played in harvest and when I heard they removed it I quit. Then they added it back and I came back. If we boycott the game they WILL get the message. In fact, we shouldn't play even if they decide to revert back the changes. Just skip a league, let them take a financial hit, then they will listen to their community [Removed by Support]