Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

"

Fenoch wrote:

Now give everyone a solid chance to get perfect items for their respective builds.

What happens to the market? It dies. Literally only mirror items would be for sale as nobody would need anything else but.

Everyone smashes every boss in the game in seconds. Powercreep, moneycreep.
End of PoE. Just like D3 and just like many others before. Perfect items should be a thing of beauty, not a thing of a socialist commune.

WTF are you talking about? HOW MANY builds "smashes every boss in the game in seconds" like 3-4?? WHICH happens to be what majority of people play? Are you aware of the meta right now, because seems like not. If they turn the crafting AGAIN to shitty levels means EVERYONE will be playing even less builds, which means less variety of items needed, which means GREATER inflation and RMT returning to the game. To talk about economy seems like you have little clue on how It works in this game...

"

HkDrOn3 wrote:

"

Darkxellmc wrote:

"

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."

That's... not something 99.9% of players has or will ever do. Does the game have to be balanced for the absolute top of the top of the top of the top of players?

I am a wealthy player. I have maybe done this once in 4000 hours of playtime. This experience described here simply does NOT exist. Yes, it feels good to gamble items. No, it does not feel good when the only way to make comptetitive powerful stuff is gambling. If the tradoff for "crafting to be slightly more fun and engaging" completely breaks" crafting endgame gear "for 99,9% of the player base, it's NOT a good tradeoff. Vaaling is currently filling this niche. Original fossils, awakener's orbs and maven orbs are going in the right direction. This is running backwards.

Do you see players vaaling mirror worthy items on a regular basis? No. Gating crafting behind rng simply means only the most wealthy will engage in it because they can invest enough to average things out. Balancing this experience isn't something that should be done at the cost of the experience of the overwhelming majority of the rest of players.

Harvest crafting needs to drasticly change, and some of the nerfs here are completely adequate. But the reasoning behind these decisions seems random and based on very out of touch information.
Crafting has become the only way to make powerful gear since the conqueror's expantion. If this isn't completely removed (it won't), there NEEDS to be a way to obtain powerful gear that isn't gated behind something only the absolute top of players can do. Before nerfing harvest, remove the freaking split beast from the game that's been breaking the endgame economy every single league since it came out.
This post HAS to be accompanied with "How we are going to implement other crafting paths to make endgame items".

+1

++1

"

FuzzbombTom wrote:

Love the changes! =)

The changes are great for high rollers.

You obviously know how to obtain wealth.

For the first time in three years I've felt like I didn't have to complete specific untenable content for the items I wanted. I could just contact someone with the crafts I needed and circumvent all the stupid RNG limiting my character's progression.

The latest rendition of Harvest enabled players to build what they wanted, instead of being limited to the builds you want them to play. Specifically, a limit you artificially enforce through the unendingly dissatisfying miasma of RNG.

I recognize that your data collection is justifiable. Ritual league has essentially been the 'input items that we find valuable' league. You don't care how it feels to play, you just care about data collection. I get it. It's a responsible and adequate means of informing design decisions. However, once again removing a player's ability to make deterministic choices about their character is detrimental to gameplay. You have no way, with the exception of our text-plights, to collect information about the experiences players have over their time in each league. You are otherwise guessing.

Why have you not concluded the importance of deterministic crafting to your player-base? Is that data not being collected? Perhaps it should be.

I strongly suggest you and the team consider a way of implementing deterministic crafting in a way that is more approachable and accessible than harvest ever was. If that means re-conceptualizing the quality and value of randomly generated items so they are more capable of replacing harvest-quality items, than that is what you should consider. I suggest this because I know this is already an option on the table after observing the changes to talismans. It may be as simple as drastically improving the quality of veiled drops and inhibiting their use on harvest benches.

I have only enjoyed harvest-based leagues in the last 2 years, and I've played every league. I'm one of your die-hard supporters. I've been grinding since nemesis.

Permanently depriving your community of a means of specifically-determined crafting is a colossal mistake. It was the biggest step in the right direction your team has ever taken with the game, and it was sorely needed after watching the runescape textures and invisible bosses for months on end. I can't believe you guys are considering removing one of the only good things you've done for the game.

But hey, I'm not a developer. It's certain you know something I don't.

But hey, you're clearly not playing the game anymore. And it's also entirely certain that I know something you don't about gameplay.

"

Lvzb3l wrote:

"

Fenoch wrote:

Now give everyone a solid chance to get perfect items for their respective builds.

What happens to the market? It dies. Literally only mirror items would be for sale as nobody would need anything else but.

Everyone smashes every boss in the game in seconds. Powercreep, moneycreep.
End of PoE. Just like D3 and just like many others before. Perfect items should be a thing of beauty, not a thing of a socialist commune.

WTF are you talking about? HOW MANY builds "smashes every boss in the game in seconds" like 3-4?? WHICH happens to be what majority of people play? Are you aware of the meta right now, because seems like not. If they turn the crafting AGAIN to shitty levels means EVERYONE will be playing even less builds, which means less variety of items needed, which means GREATER inflation and RMT returning to the game. To talk about economy seems like you have little clue on how It works in this game...

Exactly, how diverse this meta has been this league. It has not been for some time (except also for Harvest obv)

Who uses an exalt slam while closing their eyes? This is ridiculous. I don't want to go back to gambling for an item due to this game's myriad of loot problems

It is mind-boggling that you even addressed the discord issue but did nothing to solve it. The crafts being rarer will incentivize discord's usage more.

"Too many people obtaining powerful gear" Define powerful? Building enabling? mirror tier? Since the introduction of harvest, we have seen more build enabling gear that would have otherwise been much rarer and at an exuberant price. Path of Mathh does a great video discussing this issue. And the people who own "Perfect" gear are still in the very minority, the top 1%. This change won't do anything to these people (who devoted all their time and effort, rightfully deserves to have these gears) while the rest are stuck with limited gear available which also limits build diversity.

Even with Harvest, we are sinking in 10s of exalts trying to craft an item, slowly optimizing the gear without being afraid of bricking an item and wasting countless hours of progression. And that's the thing, you don't want people to feel like their efforts are going to waste, they have reachable goals now which leads to more playtime and player retention.

Harvest is too powerful I get it, but it is powerful due to how elevated the issues loot has in this game. (why am I finding shitty gear at t16 maps that I can find in act 1 twilight strand?). If this is how you think nerfing/balancing should be then I'd rather you just remove Harvest from the game altogether.

I love this game deeply, it is one of the best games I have played in my life.
The community has been very vocal about it. I hope you listen to them and maybe have a civil discussion with them. Maybe even a vote, something that lets us communicate. This is but one of PoE's many great issues: optimization, constant crashing, rng gate for ascendencies, etc.

Thats a ridicilous decision to take. Rather than fuck up with current Harvest its much better if you guys make harvest crafted items non tradeable for 6 hours. Or even... not useable.. waiting for harvest mod infuse or something like that. AGANE thats just stupid.

"

Nicksiren wrote:

This has been such a great league for SSF. Now what type of goals will I have for future SSF leagues? This change reduces my build diversity to playing the same cookie-cutter builds in order to even consider doing most endgame content in SSF.

This is one of the arguments that made me change my mind about this horrible nerf. They are basically killing a mechanic that is fun for casuals, non-casuals, ssf players, trade players, pretty much everybody.

BTW in his video about it, AsmodeusClips pointed out they censored a comment in this thread about fun being removed from the game because it was "toxic".

Worst changes ever, cmon guys dont be passive, we need all of you, leave a comment about this changes, so together i hope we can reject this update

"

Suslikwishmaker wrote:

in this thread, an entire lot of people that don't know what a looter game is about.

you mean a looter game where you need filters to hide 99.99% of the loot because it is useless?

I see =)

11/10 game design
Would uber strict filter again