Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

Harvest let averge players to have decent gear, allowing to clear end content. This was first league where I was able to kill all content.


In addition I wanted to play next league in ssf for the first time ever because i felt like it make sense now.

Anyway... if this comes to live, no ssf for me.



And I am shocked, how developers have no idea how to play their own game- aka feeling of slamming exalt blindly :D

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Kairuto2020 wrote:

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Black_Baobab wrote:

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Kairuto2020 wrote:

Let's let them implement what is intended first and we will see if it really hurt the whole game play. What if few weeks into next league, you see many top tier gear easily and everyone will be forgeting this whole episode. If it turn out really bad, GGG can always re-tweak again the following league. It is a free game after all and we already know GGG is using all of this year to fine tune the mechanic for POE2. Lets give them a chance for it to prove their tweak. One can always skip the league if it is that bad. Don't murder them on just 1 adjustment when they have already provided 8 years of countless new league mechanic and gaming enjoyment.

A lot of people are reacting because, if you look at a lot of unhappy players here, the manifesto feels bad for multiple reason. I'll only note two :
- It is surprisingly out of touch (slamming is fun and the way to craft ??)
- It wants to kill determinism and go back to gamble. I hate gamble, many people hate gamble. With harvest, we had a way to make progress while crafting that suits our liking and style of play. With the change, we'll revert back to the old gamble system that feels so bad for a lot of people (In my case, I'll just revert to buying things). But now, I'll have the bitter taste that it WAS fun. I would prefer it was just not implemented and stay in my blissful ignorance.

I still love the game, still love the gameplay, and I will still be around. But reminding me that the trade and the crafting system is bad AND mandatory is not fun at all, especially now that we know that it can be better...

Determinism is not the issue. The issue is the value of determinism. What they fail to admit is they made a mistake by under-valuing determinism. Example Jeweller to make 6 sockets. You can RNG it or you can use crafting bench at a cost of 300 Jeweller. Or Fusing - you can RNG it for 6 linked or you can spend 1500 Fusing to instant 6linked it. Everything has a cost attached for determinism. Harvest is under-valuing them.

If you go by slamming 1 ex to add a random mod, then Harvest Aug specific type mod should cost a lot more than 1 ex to do it. It should probably be 5ex or 10ex per craft. GGG knows this but if they take this route, the casual players will still complain and say GGG is catering to the super rich who only they can afford to use Harvest. This is where the dilemma lies.

Determinism is one problem (not talking for everyone though).
I will avoid harvest in its expected new form because it is back to gamble. Harvest defenitely needs a rework and most certainly a cost. But gamble is not for me. Chaos spam is just not fun. "Better chaos spam" from harvest will make it a better gamble, but still a gamble.
With very rare occurence, you progress very slowly, but it is still progress. With gamble, you may loose a lot and virtually loose progression... until you make it back (maybe)
It's just not my fun. I'm OK with the game punishing for being bad. I'm not OK to be punished for being unlucky for too long. But you play as you want.

Hope they read this:

GGG killed the goals of a player in the game:

There are only 2 paths to take:

1. Save up some currency and buy a mirror and afford mirror crafting service.
2. Be an idiot and mindlessly going in maps and play long hoping that gear will drop.

Two paths destroy casual players. There is a third for casual players: Be satisfied with your garbage gear and quit early in the league because there is no chance to get the high end gear.

If they didnt massively nerf harvest for casual players:

1. Players have goals to their gear, slowly progressing each item to somewhat mirror worthy tier which is attainable in three months league time through harvest.

If this is the case, then I'll just play standard.

And really Exalt slam? Do you guys even play the game long enough to understand where is the fun on exalt slam?

Put up a poll... or give the game back to the 0.9%...
ridiculous changes in my opinion..

I'm average player, only harvest allowed me to craft those good items, they are not triple-quadriple elevated, they are just good

Without harvest, i guess, i would use only multimod gear, because i cant afford spending mirror+ for a good item

without harvest i would never use maven's orb myself again

Without harvest i would again just hit 36/40, get multimod gear and wait for next league

Harvest showed, how terrible rng fiesta your crafting is, it gave average players chance to craft!


WE are the majority of your player base, WE are not 0.1%, WE dont have multiple mirrors, please hear our voice

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SumTinWong wrote:

the only legit way to craft this season was harvest
being all day every day on TFT to buy crafts (sometimes on bulk) was the most annoying and worst experience - yet it was also easy to make big money this way.

And current Harvest nerfs do not resolve problem with this

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Anngrat wrote:

I'm average player, only harvest allowed me to craft those good items, they are not triple-quadriple elevated, they are just good

Without harvest, i guess, i would use only multimod gear, because i cant afford spending mirror+ for a good item

without harvest i would never use maven's orb myself again

Without harvest i would again just hit 36/40, get multimod gear and wait for next league

Harvest showed, how terrible rng fiesta your crafting is, it gave average players chance to craft!


WE are the majority of your player base, WE are not 0.1%, WE dont have multiple mirrors, please hear our voice

Yes!!!

GGG: before league starts: "we have made the best league ever"

GGG: few weeks later: what? players have fun and playing our league after weeks and don't quit after 3-4 weeks? they have fun with crafting, maven, atlas etc.

GGG: hmmmm .... how can we fck up our playerbase .... ahhhhh hold my beer ... we nerf harvest to the ground and make it useless.

GGG: it's not our oppinion that player's have fun with our game.


The only way we can show how stupid these changes are, is if the wallet gets closed. put your mtx and supporter packs elsewhere!

Intro
I think I fit the definition of the (above) average casual player pretty well, and I wanted to share my perspective on the game right now, and the core issue that I see with it, and how even the current state is detrimental to one of the core principles that the manifesto builds his arguments upon.

I'm a family dad in his 40s, full time job, who dedicates some (sometimes a lot) of his spare time to PoE.
I got an beta invite back in the days, played for a week or so and have not touched it again till Legacy League.
I normally play 1 char each league and am done with the league when I reach 75-90 depending on how satisfying my progression feels. Before Ritual I had 2 chars that hit 90. Never anything above.

Usual League Experience
I usually start 1-2 days late into a new league, due to timezones and family obligations. At this point I have skimmed the patchnotes, got somewhat of an idea what the league mechanic is about and have watched 2-3 YouTubers and their recommended starting builds. I pick one of those and off I go. I usually reach maps after 8-10h, as I use the leagues new mechanics on my way.

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At its core, Path of Exile is a game about the acquisition of powerful items.
When we were designing Path of Exile, a critical aspect of item acquisition is that it is through random (rather than deterministic) means.

I agree on that statement. I love building my character with gear that I find. I don't want to do the whole build planning for that, but once I decided on a path (following a build guide), I want to be on my own.

And at this point my experience and the game falls flat on its face, when it comes to GGGs statement above.
There is already a way to get deterministic gear outside of crafting, and that is the trade site. Why would I ever want to craft my own gear by chaos spamming, if I can just buy e.g. boots with life, 90 res and 25% MS for 5c or less? This cheap stuff is better than 99% of the stuff that I spend my wisdom scrolls on.
And I really dislike the game for that. I want to be able to get this stuff by myself in the time that is available to me. And I would really like to experience endgame content at some point with the stuff that I found for myself. I get there is SSF if I don't like trading. But that is not the point.

Am I just playing wrong, or am I playing the wrong game?
The game itself and endgame content are balanced around top gear and builds. There is just no way for me as an average player to ever experience that during a regular league, and this is even when I take trading into account.

Up to today I have never seen Shaper, Elder, Uber Atziri, any Delve Boss or even all of the guardians. I never killed Sirus or Maven by myself. (Only two days ago I unlocked the uncharted realm because my friend killed maven for me, when I finally had assembled my orb).
I've gotten really far with my starter (91) at this point in this league and even made a second char that I levelled to 95. That is due to the fact, that I got a HH out of The Wretched from Navali. That made it possible for my struggling BleedBow Glad to progress into red maps and farm some currency with that I bought better gear that enabled me to farm currency, which in turn allowed me to buy the gear for a self curse build. That one is now 95 and I try to do all the content with it, besides maven fights.
(I know that is not efficient or optimal to do this with a self-curser, but it is the way I like to play!)

I asked my friend, who regularly gets to 100, what I should do. He told me to sell the HH and just buy gear for the gladiator, so I could do the endgame. It turned out, that he apparently plays a completely different game than me. In my dreams I would never ever have sold the HH, that I was chasing by turning in div cards since years, just to be able to buy stuff, and then completing the game.
His approach is to farm the trade site for the first 3 weeks of the league, then be swimming in exalts. Then buy all the dreamgear he needs for his chosen build and trivialize all the content. He sells all his harvests in the discord, crafts multimods on items (I still have no idea how to unlock the pale council - is this mentioned anywhere in-game, or is it just expected nowadays to consult the wiki for such things?). His way of "gaming" is surely more efficient, but it's not my idea of what I want from this game.

So even when I, the above average casual player found a HH I am still not able to clear everything. To do that, I would have to farm stuff, like valdo, delirious maps, carry people in 5 way emblems or whatever and then buy the equipment to rebuild my bleedbow into a boss killer.
I would have to buy deterministic gear from the trade side, to experience the endgame!

But getting to this point by yoloing exalts and chaos spamming? Just not reasonable.

PoE right now is a game whose designers think, that getting items through non-deterministic ways is the best experience for players. In contrast, its whole endgame content is balanced around GG items that are only available by trading e.g. using a deterministic way to get the items that are needed for the content.

I have nearly 11d play time this league on both characters and still haven't crafted my own explody chest, with harvest available. That is now 8 weeks into the league, with me playing 33(!)h a week as a self proclaimed casual player. And GGG thinks getting GG Tier gear is too easy for the average player!?!?!? Maybe I'm just playing the game wrong then, or what I come to think of lately playing the wrong game.

As for a possible solution:
Make crafting even more deterministic.
Implement an Auction House for everything but actual gear.

or:

Make it impossible to transfer SSF to normal
Make SSF the true self-found mode with its own rules for harvest and highly improved droprates for crafting currency.

I, as a casual, would love to get into a league, use every mechanic in the game that is available to me at the point it shows up and be able to actually upgrade my OWN gear that I have found by the methods that the game gives to me. And I'd love to then actually have a fair chance at even beating the game with that gear.

I don't want it to be easy. I want it to be fair and achievable in a reasonable timeframe.
I want to experience the game like GGG originally wanted it to be. Grinding my own gear, upgrading it and beating the game, without being forced to deterministically buy stuff to even get a chance at experiencing the whole content.

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High risk, high rewards

This is a very widely acceptable principle in many aspects of business, commerce, or even everyday life in general. Accept the fact that Harvest went against this principle. However, I would suggest another way to nerf it, and that is to keep Harvest identity synonymous with "deterministic" (i.e. "low risk"). You can imagine vaaling to be the other end of the spectrum in terms of risk. To be more specific, they should instead remove T1 rolls from Harvest and limit number of influenced mods to maximum of two. I mean not necessarily to be exactly the changes I suggested, but something similar along the lines of what I listed.

By doing this, people will still get good gear, or be able to fix missing resistances on near perfect gears. However, they won't be able to make mirror-worthy gear.

By the way, I'm a fence sitter. I don't abuse Harvest crafting and I did all the end-game with 10 ex budget off-meta top secret build with 80% unique gear and flasks. The only way I benefitted from Harvest is buying the cheaper leftovers from you crafters. Never understood the logic of people who must farm HH first and then perfect their gears with Harvest to only then tackle the end-game.