Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

I'm so sorry Chris and GGG staff, this is what happens in a world where your audience is varied and with different levels of information, experience and expectations.

I think the changes were necessary and absolutely will be good for the long-term health of the game. Targeted annuls went against what poe has always been, and I'm glad to see them go. Annul orbs alone are enough. Some remove/add is great, which I'm glad you left in.

Aside from that all we lost is the explode chest crafting, which is an enormous blessing - this was killing the game. All people want is that item and are only using harvest for it. Forgetting crusader exalts and fossils are a thing.

Adding to the above, it's sad to see people not see the big picture. It has never been easier to farm currency. There are a plethora of ways and options, all of which the player can control. This league and expansion has offered so much in this regard. And yet most of the comments here are 'RIP, you're out of touch, you need competition'. It's quite tragic, but also predictable.

What can we learn from this? Be careful in giving the players too much power in one mechanic. The game has many ways to get to power items/combos. Harvest is a blackhole that dominated attention, as it is easy to understand (a simple menu) and it negates most of the other methods (re: crafting). This was a mistake, and you knew it yourselves back when you were launching harvest. It should have never returned in this state, but I hope it highlights the lesson to be learnt here - taking things away (even if for the greater good) is going to cause massive backlash. The community is the baby and harvest is the candy. Even though we were in danger of over nutrition and having rotting teeth - the community cries (not all, but seemingly quite a few).

Another lesson is communication. That line in your manifesto about closing your eyes and slamming an item with an ex is now being used as propaganda against you. Yes, it is more of a metaphor for the risk aspect of crafting this game has always had, but the community will use it literally against you if they don't understand the change. My suggestion is to be careful with such language in the future, try to do what you're doing (explaining the changes) but without invoking feelings and what poe is meant to feel like. People will always react badly if they don't agree with you. This comes at the expense of generating further empathy and understanding from those players that do get the change. I have never wanted to fly down to NZ more and have a beer with you all than I did yesterday - you guys are awesome, I'm 100% behind your game, your vision and this change, but don't cater to us - tread carefully in communication to avoid the accusations of being out of touch. You're not, this is your game and your success shows how in-touch you are, but you know what happens with a varied audience, the lower common denominator of empathy with your decisions will always, sadly, scream the loudest.

I'll end how I started, I'm sorry Chris and GGG team, don't be discouraged from your efforts to keep poe going for another 14 years!

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Redd_Barr wrote:

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Fenoch wrote:

Yup. It is all a ploy to drive people away from playing a free to play video game so they make less money, less revenue and their contract with tencent is being voided resulting in 100+ employess losing their jobs.

Sounds more reasonable. You are right.

It simply decreases the amount of mirror tier items in the game, which is good.

"Slamming an exalt" is also a metaphor for crafting being supposed to be hard and having "dminishing returns".

Yet the majority of the whining children with plenty not even having spend a single dime on a game they have enjoyed for multiple years fails to understand the concept of a metaphor.

Blizzard listened to an army of whining, whinging idiotic children begging fopr items to rain from the sky and so the items did.

6 months later Diablo 3 was a dead wasteland and trade was non existent.

If you and your whining friends dont like this at all, feel free to play something else. This is JUST a game. This is not a meaningful, life altering choice yet you and the moronic army freak out like a bunch of braindead headless chicken.

I am glad that GGG thus far hasnt succumbed to listen to the cries of a minority.

This whole whining can be elevated with a maven orb to real life issues where society is being twisted and turned with a PC culture and minorities getting 100s of freebies.

Harvest nerf doesnt destroy harvest crafting, it doesnt destroy the game. The game was fun and awesome and manageable, playable and affordable (in game currency) for everyone and anyone, casuals and mirrorfarmers alike, prior to harvest and it will continue to be just that.

Morons freaking out over literally nothing is super fun to watch.

This seems less a discussion about casual vs 0.1%s (stupid terminology) and more between

Child/uneducated vs intelligent/mature.

Bring on the hate. Dont care.

You do a lot of talking for someone who doesn't care.

Yup. See the issue there my friend? "Don't care" was a statement directed towards potential hate for a non-popular opinion and not towards the moronic tendencies of a small portion of players blowing shit completely out of proportion acting sif the game rises/falls based around harvest crafting.

Same reason they do not comprehend a simple metaphor.

It seems this Manifesto with all comments is removed from the home page and when I clicked into recent posts it does not show up.

That is a bit paltroon from GGG. Cant use the exact word so used synonym as I would presume the post would be deleted.

at least GGG made sure to slap out a bunch of "news posts" fast to make this manifesto disappear from the front page..

people complaining about other people voicing their opinions, are also whinging whiners.. so complaining that other people are voicing their opinion is a pretty funny stance

that being said.. all harvest really did was yet again reveal problems that are several years old but that GGG refuses to deal with..

I would have preferred if they left harvest alone.. or perhaps even buffed it.. but made items scour when you traded them.. or just disable trading for them.. or put a limit on how many times an item can be traded... or maybe forced a waiting period of a week or two before an item could be traded..

this could also if not fix, at least make it harder for people who hoard certain items to manipulate prices

I know that GGG would _prefer_ it if everyone who played the game would continue to play the game the entire 3 months instead of the game essentially dying after 2-3 weeks.. every league.. making trading tedious and obnoxious because people don't want to waste time on an inconvenient process for a few chaos..

but let's get real.. while there is a lot of content in the game.. unless you're new to the game.. most of it is very old .. and the obsession GGG has with making people spend more and more time on unlocking the same crap every league, is not helping at all.. .. there's been too much of that.. along with timers.. and other crap.. for many years already.

by nerfing harvest this way.. well, might as well just remove it completely then and have the new "fragments" just randomly drop from unrelated bosses

I didn't think that this news would hurt me so much, tonight I imagined how I would craft in the next league combining gloves after gloves and throwing them in the trash, and I cried, for the third time in my life I cry because of the game I don't want to play Garbage Gear Games again

RNG isnt crafting.

CONVERT THE REGULAR CURRENCY INTO THE HARVEST CURRENCY

MAKE A WEBSITE INSIDE THE GAME

All good points on this topic have already been made. For those of you who still think the changes are good: You will reap what you sow. This doesn't change the game in a large way for your favorite SSFHC streamers. All of those people play the same boring builds over and over because they're good without requiring any gear. The result will be the VAST MAJORITY (99.9%) of players playing the same builds; those that are strong~ish without gear. For those that think they can still play other builds and make it to white maps - that's great but you are irrelevant and people want to actually see this game succeed.

I'm really unsure why anybody thinks that after this change GGG will balance other skills to the point of playable in red maps+. They are historically terrible at this and the empirical evidence is there for everyone to see. League after league there are only a handful of skills that are actually strong enough to be viable without harvest crafting. Viable in the way that they can clear ALL game content, not just meander through the story and complete a map or two.

The point keeps being brought up: Well the harvest changes don't effect 80% of players. Yes, because 80% of players don't play the damn game. The opinions of those who haven't cleared red maps or finished collecting all watchstones really don't matter to me and they shouldn't to you either. Generally speaking, it's good to hear from people that have actually experienced a topic, rather than someone who's just studying it and regurgitating what they heard from someone else. Make no mistake, many of these developers are a part of that 80%.

I love this game and have supported it for years and I hope many years to come. This change, however, is out of touch with its actual players. I really am curious if their bottom line is made up mainly of the 80% or 20% of players. I'm hoping it's the 20% because I know that most people that play this game as much as I do understand what's going on and will do what's necessary to ensure these devs get the message. Vote with your wallets, folks.

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KicsiSVK wrote:

It seems this Manifesto with all comments is removed from the home page and when I clicked into recent posts it does not show up.

That is a bit paltroon from GGG. Cant use the exact word so used synonym as I would presume the post would be deleted.

Seriously? More tinfoil?

Click Forum -> Click Development Manifesto -> Literally 2nd post from the top.

Not sure where you see little green Men but I sure as hell see only clear skies.

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Am3nti wrote:

"

I am glad that GGG thus far hasnt succumbed to listen to the cries of a minority.

Wow... Just wow. So the Harvest manifesto has the all time, record breaking replies and posts, both on the official forum (currently at 339 pages of replies and growing, compared to 50-75 pages for the other manifestos) and on reddit (8.3 k comments, with an upvote of 33% - they literally had to pin the original post so that reddit doesn't hide it due to the downvotes). So, overwhelmingly negative replies to the manifesto... and LOADS of them!

And you still say this is a minority... You might be just as out of touch with the game community as Chris was with his Exalt slam remark...

The majority of the playerbase don't even read news posts this far into the league, don't go to reddit to make posts on it and don't comment here. This hate shitstorm that we see here is from a minority group. Statistically irrelevant. The numbers next league start will tell the true story. i bet it will be the usual crowd.

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Xiipher wrote:

All good points on this topic have already been made. For those of you who still think the changes are good: You will reap what you sow. This doesn't change the game in a large way for your favorite SSFHC streamers. All of those people play the same boring builds over and over because they're good without requiring any gear. The result will be the VAST MAJORITY (99.9%) of players playing the same builds; those that are strong~ish without gear. For those that think they can still play other builds and make it to white maps - that's great but you are irrelevant and people want to actually see this game succeed.

I'm really unsure why anybody thinks that after this change GGG will balance other skills to the point of playable in red maps+. They are historically terrible at this and the empirical evidence is there for everyone to see. League after league there are only a handful of skills that are actually strong enough to be viable without harvest crafting. Viable in the way that they can clear ALL game content, not just meander through the story and complete a map or two.

The point keeps being brought up: Well the harvest changes don't effect 80% of players. Yes, because 80% of players don't play the damn game. The opinions of those who haven't cleared red maps or finished collecting all watchstones really don't matter to me and they shouldn't to you either. Generally speaking, it's good to hear from people that have actually experienced a topic, rather than someone who's just studying it and regurgitating what they heard from someone else. Make no mistake, many of these developers are a part of that 80%.

I love this game and have supported it for years and I hope many years to come. This change, however, is out of touch with its actual players. I really am curious if their bottom line is made up mainly of the 80% or 20% of players. I'm hoping it's the 20% because I know that most people that play this game as much as I do understand what's going on and will do what's necessary to ensure these devs get the message. Vote with your wallets, folks.

Have you considered working a business insider or fortuneteller?

Seems you have the gift. You know what will happen and how it will come to pass.

You can make a lot of Exalts in real life that way. Maybe even a few mirrors.

Nice seems like you even don't play your proper game.
Crafting is easy?? yes for 0.09% of players.
what you get with your dumb nerf? return to stone age. and loose 60% of actual players??

ok I understand.

GGG means GAMBLER GAMBLING GAME ? or Gear Grind??
DON't DO this fucking mistake and please play your game tu realize the truth..

Give us trade plateform like on china.
this is a shame: chineses can confortably trade but europeans need to trade like dumb sheeps via whispers???

YOU ARE CRAZY maybe too much money is the cause

even great ideas like Harvest are killed for what??? more gamble??? FUCK OFF