Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

Fun detected, fun deleted ...
So many people were saying this is their favourite league for a couple of years, and you guys just don't care about fun ... i totally agree. I missed harvest league, so, i didn't knew what to expect, and it was super fun ... now it ends with a sh%$ announcement ... well, at least i'll get my life back

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SumTinWong wrote:

harvest was the worst experience this league. I did craft multiple 40ex++ items - triple elvated and stuff. I did craft a nearly mirror tier bleed axe (roughly ~80ex worth at that time - still at start of the league)
So yes, i am a crafter

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.

It's kinda hilarious to see people having complete meltdowns and claiming they are poor casuals that got hurt by this. while those people sit on headhunters and a networth of gear/currency of multiple mirrors.

This league had more mirror worthy gear just a few weeks in than any non-harvest league at the end of the league. Stop pretending like harvest was anything close to being balanced.
Stop pretending that it hits the casuals. People hit most by this are the big time crafters that were bulk-buying and mass crafting via TFT.

Yes and that's why there gonna nuke it instead of doing the only thing appropriate : Kill the harvest craft trading / exploit

Those multiple mirror items won't be there next league or at least not at the same price and the market price will increase for end game entry level gear...

Im super glad GGG is making this change. It falls in line with what they`ve been doing for the past 3 years - mainly destroying their own game and antagonizing their player base with stupid stuborn decisions devout of any logic or relying on any feedback given by the real community and not the wortless no life e-beggar streamers who are a cancer to this game.
I trully hope by next year we will have a REAL alternative in the face of D2R/D4, Last Epoch, Lost Arc or whatever new title springs up and we can collectively move past this horrible geedy little company which is doing nothing more than leeching off the corpse of a once beutiful idea of game which was a true spiritual succsesor to the best damn arpg ever made.

P.S. Great handling of the backlash caused by this thread, its like it never even happened, keep the good work as always!

Well this comment will most likely be burried in the flow but since everyone on the internet is giving his opinion here, i have to add mine too.
Maybe nerfing harvest craft is good for the game, i have no clue about that honnestly.
But publishing a big manifesto without any answer about the biggest harvest issue in trade league (aka having to trade via discord) seems off to me. Also not mentionning any possible improvement about ingame performance/crashes that become more and more common.
In heist i decided to not buy any supporter pack due to the atrocious league mechanic early on.
In ritual i spent the first 1.5 weeks struggling between server lag (random 150/300/450 ms ping) , trade beeing disable and a lot of random crashes. Again i decided to not buy any supporter pack.
Next league i hope the dev team will focus their effort on something else than balancing an endgame, convoluted crafting mechanic that most player will only encounter 5 time or less in the league.

p.s. : I can't speak for other players, but on my side, i never liked "meta-crafting" (aka crafting by slammng ex randomly on an item), i really used this method twice and only when i had 100+ ex to spend which is very niche !
For me, the "excitment" of exalt slamming never existed. Only thing i was excited about was currency drops , unique drops, div cards drops and ... rare drops (2 years ago at least, now i don't pick up any rare)

Very bad decission.
You shouldn't create content of the game based on an opinion of very minor group of players like streamers/no-lifers.
99% of players are casual players and even with harvest crafting it is not easy to reach a level to be able to defeat endgame bosses.
You should have addressed problem with harvest crafting trades, instead you are going to make it even easier.
You should focus on nerfing ridiculously overpowered built like for example self cursing HH built, instead you are going to ruin a game for ordinary players.
Really good job, congratz

Harvest is the main reason why I played so long both this league and in harvest itself. Minmaxing and theory crafting builds in pob and then gradually crafting those items is where the fun is at. I don't see why I would bother with the new thing. Especially thinking you would chaos spam or ex slam to "upgrade" your gear is just delusional.

The issue is not even getting currency for gg gear. I could farm that and straight up buy it or mirror something from someone else. But thats not what I enjoy and straight up boring. If I can mirror some gg item or I can craft something at 80% of the power myself with harvest I would always go the harvest route any day. And harvest crafting was by no means "easy" or cheap if you actually wanted to make good items. I'm talking about 100ex+ items with multiple elevated/influenced mods and not random "I awakener orbed something and fixed it with harvest items".

Thinking I will go back to alt regal chaos spam and then maybe do a bit of harvesting to get some non influenced garbage in a post nerfs world is just delusional. And don't tell me reforge phys etc is more enjoyable than chaos spamming. It's just as unfun if you know you most likely won't get something fixable after. I prefer grinding currency and then buying what I want for a big chunk of ex any day of the week.

Players in ssf might be forced to interact with the old rngfest crafting but everyone that doesn't enjoy ssf won't do it. There is no point. If you get something good you sell it even if it was "crafted" with fossils etc and then you buy what you want from what you gained from that sale. That is by far the most enjoyable way to play post harvest nerfs.

I hated playing the discord game so badly I quit Ritual much earlier than any other league I've played. The FOMO was too strong for me when my horti station was full. Removing player agency from upgrading items sucks as a solution though. Chucking all my orbs (progress) at an item and getting NOTHING out of it is not fun for me (heh, 4.8k fusing 6L this league). Back to the trade site again for my gear progression.

Before I viewed 'mirror-tier' gear as a trophy for the rich, now it's becoming closer to a requirement. With this Harvest change the time to acquire that goes up astronomically. Before I thought: who cares if there is someone out there breaking the game with god level items - I have enough damage/survivability to do the content. A few leagues ago I would be comfortable at 2M dps, now with The Feared, 10-way bosses, etc. I feel about the same with 15M dps. Harvest crafting allows more build diversity in that respect.

If you are going to unilaterally nerf character gear for all but the top .01%, please also consider the same for boss health. There are just too many builds/skills nowadays unable to handle the endgame content without some serious (harvest quality) gear.

"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".

Really?

If you think that there are lots of players out there willing to put all their effort in one RNG trial, then you have the misconception that the players community are members of a Gambling Addiction Rehabilitation Center.

I hate how ppl over react to every nerf here. Remember necro would be killed off after metamorph, then after harvest, surely after heist ...uh nope, still OP and #1 played.


How about you guys go play with the emulator and just use mods Chris says allowed and in game currency. I can make tons of crazy 4 and 5 influenced rares.

This will be still OP just not as easy.

Calm down.

Reading the flood is super entertaining.

I am utterly amazed how many hidden geniuses exist and how they all happen to play Path of Exile.

So many inventors, business insiders, fortune tellers and flat out altruistic human beings who have only the best interest of the casual gamer in mind.

Nobody cares about raking in those profits with their min-maxed perfected characters. Nooooooo. Nobody. All for the greater good of the community.

I also enjoy reading all the warnings about suddenly only 2 people playing PoE because it will all be so bad and boring and dreadful.

I am amazed that any of you have any time whatsoever to spend on the forums complaining with your well paying jobs, 10 children and 59 wifes and all.

Besides such great minds of foreshadowing a great many things surely are too busy explaining the mysteries of the universe to the world right?

xD