Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

Does a change need to happen to Harvest? Yes.
Does Harvest need a nerf? Yes
IS this the method of doing it? Absolutely not. You're hitting it to hard to fast and killing an entire leagues worth of development to target crafters and the .01% who know how to and enjoy the function of crafting.

The game mechanic introduced has basically given the common player the means to create an item for a build that either does not exist on the market yet. If it be non meta build or just build for fooling around. That in itself lends to longer play times and a larger player base.

If Harvest is the modern cell phone. Then exalt spamming an Item (Which NO ONE SANE DOES) Is the smoke signal.

The only thing anyone uses an exalt for is buying and selling.

What has harvest done for the community?

It has effectively created a "middle class" of items where as before there was the insanely rich and the destitute poor. Hitting harvest this hard will only rid the servers of this and force a "mirror service" on anyone who wants to get items to even attempt an A8 Sirus, much less try to delve past 10,000.

IT MAKES THE GAME PLAYABLE FOR PEOPLE WITH IN-GAME-GOALS AND NOT NO-LIFE HOURS OF PLAY TIME.

This is also indirectly killing the brand new Maven orb.
WHY WOULD ANYONE try to maven orb an item with the chance of loosing a mod that took over 2,000 alterations to hit? It virtually kills a brand new mechanic/ end game boss/ reason to achieve the drops. I mean let's be honest, Maven drops are only there to muddy the pool so you don't get an orb every time.


TL;DR: Ya'll are killing the only thing keeping casual players in a league for longer. Ya'll are forcing us back into the stone age with the changes. Ya'll are making Maven orbs pointless.

Chris wants us to feel again the excitment of exalting an item, cause that's the way crafting should be... Before Harvest, I had never crafted anything. Ever. In a lot of playtime, cause it felt faaaaar too random and an exalt is not something that comes easy, so it should be used for something useful (mainly buying the items I can't craft). And I certainly won't craft again, thanks to this decision. This very poor decision. POE is back to "no crafting system", yeah.

After this league I won't have time for leagues in a long while. Thought I'd try standard to improve my toons more slowly. I guess I won't then. So much for excitment.


+ too deterministic ? Seriously have you even tried your harvest system ? If you remove a unique unwanted mod that is the only one with a targettable tag (already two conditions for that to work), sure it is deterministic (and that is good). But if you aug something like life, you generally have one chance in 3 to get desired mod and then one chance in 8 to get the desired tier (let's say 1 in 4 if you're ready to accept tier 2 as many players will but not mirror tier seekers). So you have to try 24 times (12 for casuals) to get there on average. If you're using TFT, it's what 1 ex each time ? For more sought after mods : 2 ex, 5 ex ? A loooot of players, those that CAN craft thanks to harvest and could not before, will have to grind a looong time to get the currency needed. If some mods are too easy to target (cause no tier and cause no other mod sharing their tag), then untag those or add similar tags to other mods !

You're basing your reasoning on the top players. Those ones will always be rich, will always craft insane gear (cause they have the currency to do so, even with a more random crafting system, they will soak the losses).

"

Don't worry mate, the more you play the game, the better you become both in understanding the building process and the fight mechanics.
...
The way Harvest was in 3.13 made the game trivial. It was never supposed to be trivial.

Harvest does not make the game trivial. The endgame in POE is certainly not trivial today. What makes it trivial to you and some very good players is your experience ! Exactly what you said above. You find the game trivial not because of harvest but because you're a much better player than before.

...Then we find that this bomb was timed to manipulate players into coming back and playing the new league until April.

"Better come and make the most of it!"

They did the same thing in Harvest league, when players started to dwindle.

I'm totally sick of having this carrot dangled in my face. If pseudo-deterministic crafting is "against your manifesto" then you never should have implemented it, and then ruined this game by removing it - all to improve your new game which I will never play.

I play for 3-5 weeks per league, usually earn ~30-50ex in the process and this nerf just kills the only real chance to craft some decent item for myself.
It will be all down to buying items.
I'm not a gambler and I will not touch item with a hope to hit something with a 2% chance. Harvest was by far my favourite mechanic. Fosils are great too, but I hate delving, so it's one of the mechanics I just skip.

It's going back to pure RNG.
Add more stats with rare tags to avoid guaranteed hits, but don't ruin this mechanic this way.

Hey GGG,
these streamers speak for me aginst your Harvers balance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7dczHG4M44
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCnhymJQlio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdpA_xHXhEA

I use Ex to buy stuff, never used one for crafting in 1500hrs of play and I still have crappy gear.

"

FuRi0s wrote:

Ufff.. i really liked the more or less "save" progression of the gear with harvest. It made me come back to the league even after weeks... stil playing it currently for some hours a week.

With harvest its not like you play 40 hours and if you are unlucky you still have the same gear after the 40 hours playtime.


I think its a step in the wrong direction.

Agreed.
Harvest has actually given me a reason to hold onto gear for modding and attempting to make better gear. thus lengthening my play time in game.

They remove this bad news from the main page news and push a bunch of microtransaction posts. WTF Seriously

"

"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."

I hate this feeling. I use exalts to buy items. The fact that you can ruin an item is not fun. Not everybody has the time to start crafting from zero with each item every time the rng goes bad.
As humans, we generally are more inclined to determinism rather than randomness and gambling. Harvest needed changes, but not like this. It is sad that you are ignoring the majority of the players with these changes.

The purpose of a game should be FUN!

"

Using currency items like Exalted Orbs or Chaos Orbs on your gear is a powerful, risky and exciting way to improve it. But because these items work equally well on both low- and high-level equipment, it's generally considered best to save them until you're crafting your end-game gear. Many players would even argue that it's best to save them to trade for already-crafted items. In either case, using valuable currency items on your levelling gear is generally perceived to be non-optimal.

I would argue that 99% of players go an entire league, every league without having an item where the expected value of exalt slamming is worth more than an exalt.

This goes doubly when that exalt can irreversibly ruin your item.

What is the goal here GGG?

You seem hellbent on forcing people to trace for gear, yet will do everything in your power to keep trading as the inconvenient, irritating experience we all know and hate.

Listen to the mid tier players more. Your streamer pandering is ruining your game.