Development Manifesto - Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting - Forum

I'm not sure if I have ever posted on the forums before, but I feel Reddit is not where to make my voice heard. If these changes go through it will drastically decrease the fun I have playing POE. I got back into POE this league so that I could try the Harvest system. I loved it. I am an experienced player with thousands of hours but as I have grown my career I no longer have time to play for more than a couple of hours a day at most. The only reason I am still playing this league is because with Harvest I can set myself item goals that are achievable with my amount of time investment, which is still a ton of time (15 hours a week or so.) Playing for 15 hours a week is A LOT. I won't be able to play the game outside of week 2 of league start after these changes, it just won't be fun, and that was exactly how it was before Harvest for me. I will never see a good item, my character will be capped after a few days because I don't have the time to grind hundreds of exalts for incremental gains. Harvest allowed me to grind those small gains in terms of gear in a meaningful way. I don't see how this is anything but a slap in the face to players like me who don't "no-life" this game. There are 10 types of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't.	Posted by Aviryn on Mar 12, 2021, 10:57:00 AM Quote this Post
" Zepepsico wrote: Forgot to add: given the number of very successful leagues WITHOUT Harvest, why is everyone complaining so much? Are they saying that all the million of players who played some really engaging leagues did it while hating the game? Really? Million of masochistic players when there are alternatives? People got a taste of power and can't let go. Grow up, you enjoyed the game without a crafting simulator, you'll enjoy it again. And if you enjoy crafting so much, there are lots of crafting games out there. people are going to adapt to the changes, poe is still going to be a great game. but i feel like harvest was a step in the right direction. Games as everything else evolves over time, I am sure at some point chaos and exalt slams were the way to improve you gear, and to this day they are still used in some cases, then came essences, then fossils and beasts. Personally I have a problem with how they addressed the issues and the fact that they acknowledged the discord trading but didn't offer a solution for it. I agree that Harvest is very powerful and takes away from other aspects of the game, playing softcore trade everything evolved around harvest, want better gear? run haewark, want more currency? run haewark and sell you crafts. That i didnt enjoy, but I enjoyed fixing my gear overtime.	Posted by ymost on Mar 12, 2021, 10:58:42 AM Quote this Post
" Zepepsico wrote: Thanks for GGG for making a stand to keep the game meaningful and not a 1 month league to get to full itemisation on 5 different characters. At least those players have fun with 5 different builds - that means they didnt quit the league after 2 weeks. (just check players retention in steam) And since i mentioned it before in page 325, i only play 1 build/char each league. Since i am working, i also have a RL like most other players. Honestly i played more than 1 month in this league with just 1 build. Normaly most of the time after 2 or 3 weeks i am already done with the league because either i reach my goal which is 36 Challenges or i am already bored. Harvest made it possible for me to have a goal i wanted to reach beside getting my challenges done. And yes in my case it is min-max. For others it may be trying non meta builds, trying something out that would have been never possible without Harvest crafts during a "3 months" league. So in my eyes Harvest somehow opened the eyes of the player base to try out builds which were only possible with those harvest crafting mods. This also shows that most "skills" in Path of Exile needs much more fine tuning than some other skills to be playable. So if some1 manage to play 5 different builds with "full itemisation" like u mentioned in your post - means this player currently have fun to play. Path of Exile IS Crafting your gear to survive, trying out a build u have in mind with the help of PoB, Friends or what ever and beating the endgame content. How u do it depends on you, since Path of Exile offers many options. You pick what is fun for you. Can be trading, selffound, crafting, trying out a build u have in mind or copy meta builds.	Posted by Zodrac on Mar 12, 2021, 11:00:08 AM Quote this Post
" Zepepsico wrote: " Ch4dwick wrote: Good day everyone, i am writing this from a PoE beginner standpoint playing my real 1st league in Ritual. Obeserving all the talking unfolding on different media about the upcoming harvest changes is quite numbing for me. 1st of all players seem to ignore the fact that harvest (besides its impact in PoE) was and still is a test for the upcoming PoE2 crafting system. As far as i understand end game crafting in PoE was and still is heavily RNG dependend except the determenistic crafts offered by fossils & harvest. PoE content creators tend to say that harvest is dead and the average player will not be able to taste endgame at all..... My personal experience of my first league comes down to this: I read some guides recommended by some friends ending up following Enki's arc witch guide for 3.13. I cleared the acts, did quests and reached maps. Due to some lucky drops (awakened Spell echo, some ex orbs etc) and good trades i got very good unique items to work my way up to read maps and nearly killing Sirus on A8. After hitting my first real wall (surviving in chiselled, alced and vaaled T14++ maps i was looking for a new build to switch to, ending up with Bergerbrush's Impale Cyclone - Slayer version. Back to leveling up getting basic gear, getting familiar with the play style, reaching maps doing labs for ascendency etc. After getting to red maps beeing able to clear T15 canyon i started to improve the build a bit for my own taste and needs: adding movement speed, changing flask setups adding 4 different nodes in the skill tree. In the end my cyclone was running 100% delirium maps slow but was able to clear the content, maxed out passive trees, encountered the uncharted realm including a bossfight wall and failed a few more Sirus attempts. What does that have to do with harvest? Was Harvest the reason why i reached red maps and nearly killed Sirus? No. Enki's arc witch build does not rely on any complex crafts you need harvest for to reach red maps and beeing capeable to kill Sirus. Did harvest make the tailwind boots I have on my cyclone cheaper to purchase? Probably but after talking to some experienced crafters the tailwind boots i am using are also easily craftable with the upcoming changes and i would have been able to afford them. Exactly. You can finish 90% of the game on budget builds. My own build is made of 90% uniques. No need to worry about a single damn craft. But no, everyone wants the 1 billion dps build they saw a streamer use (you know these guys who do it for a living, have a massive support network, knowledge of the game, skill, time, etc...) The reply to one of my earlier comments almost seems to imply they used to "bear" with the game before the introduction of Harvest. What can you reply to this apart that it may not be the best game for them????? You said it right, your own build. that is your build. you like it. many other builds are not your build.. i guess we can't have fun with our builds. and will have to move over to use your build.	Posted by Rene_2706 on Mar 12, 2021, 11:00:54 AM Quote this Post
Many forgot that the end game's difficulty ramped by a lot within the last 2-3 leagues and especially in the recent Echoes of The Atlas expansion. If harvest is nerfed (=basically removed as it is in the manifesto), players will have to go several years back to 5 builds meta and only party players will have enough power to farm super juiced maps with tons of layers of content from the new atlas.	Posted by aefoa on Mar 12, 2021, 11:01:19 AM Quote this Post
" Azarhiel wrote: " Zepepsico wrote: Forgot to add: given the number of very successful leagues WITHOUT Harvest, why is everyone complaining so much? Are they saying that all the million of players who played some really engaging leagues did it while hating the game? Really? Million of masochistic players when there are alternatives? People got a taste of power and can't let go. Grow up, you enjoyed the game without a crafting simulator, you'll enjoy it again. And if you enjoy crafting so much, there are lots of crafting games out there. The points is not how successfull leagues are for GGG. It is about how you can clear the content in the 3 month time / ever... And the sad aspect of it is that you can't clear all content in a 3 month gap if you don't have the time for it. I played the first week in ritual before going standard. I only play solo with no trade and it took me 2 months (playing 4-5 hours per day) to get from T9 to T16 maps with average gear crafted with Harvest and a no meta build. It is not about power, it is about being able to progress even at a slow pace without playing insane hours per day abd get decent gear to do so... Your point is very valid, but I think the root cause is not related to Harvest. First is your SSF approach which makes it exponentially harder. Second could be your build. If it is off-meta or not one of the budget ones, they may scale up too slowly or be too "perfect item" dependent. My son who is only allowed to play 3 hours per week, with no premium tabs, managed to clear T16 maps with rippy mods. Why? Because he played a skeleton build. He designed it himself, so it is horribly imbalanced and he can't do some of the late game encounters, but he enjoys tremendously the game, probably got 10+ pure exalt drops and bought a few things. And he doesn't need perfect items to do it.	Posted by Zepepsico on Mar 12, 2021, 11:02:21 AM Quote this Post
The best decision to changing harvest would be making it untradeable, AND greatly increasing the limit of the amount of saved crafts you can store. This would retain the agency (determinism) people love to have while crafting. For ALL players. SSF, people with less time/currency, and the high-endgame players. It would keep the goal Chris put forward, namely keeping the RNG factor in the game, because you still need to find the crafts you are looking for. Numbers can always be changed if some crafts are deemed too powerfull/common. It would motivate anyone who plays SSF, or doesnt want to go full tradeleague, to make the best use of what they find in a creative manner. Random harvestcraft X, used on a random item Y I just found will be a huge upgrade for my character. Which in my opinion is one of the best things that POE brings to the genre. It would retain amount of time invested vs the amount of rewards you get, something that should be core to any game philosophy and especially looter ARPGS. Excuse my french, but this feels a solution Blizzard would come up with. Last edited by Fluxje on Mar 12, 2021, 11:12:35 AM	Posted by Fluxje on Mar 12, 2021, 11:07:12 AM Quote this Post
Ooh, GGG in damage control mode, posts start to disappear. Persistence makes impossible possible, possible likely and likely definite. Yep, Mirror will drop eventually -_-	Posted by N4rk0tyk on Mar 12, 2021, 11:18:24 AM Quote this Post
" Zepepsico wrote: " Azarhiel wrote: " Zepepsico wrote: Forgot to add: given the number of very successful leagues WITHOUT Harvest, why is everyone complaining so much? Are they saying that all the million of players who played some really engaging leagues did it while hating the game? Really? Million of masochistic players when there are alternatives? People got a taste of power and can't let go. Grow up, you enjoyed the game without a crafting simulator, you'll enjoy it again. And if you enjoy crafting so much, there are lots of crafting games out there. The points is not how successfull leagues are for GGG. It is about how you can clear the content in the 3 month time / ever... And the sad aspect of it is that you can't clear all content in a 3 month gap if you don't have the time for it. I played the first week in ritual before going standard. I only play solo with no trade and it took me 2 months (playing 4-5 hours per day) to get from T9 to T16 maps with average gear crafted with Harvest and a no meta build. It is not about power, it is about being able to progress even at a slow pace without playing insane hours per day abd get decent gear to do so... Your point is very valid, but I think the root cause is not related to Harvest. First is your SSF approach which makes it exponentially harder. Second could be your build. If it is off-meta or not one of the budget ones, they may scale up too slowly or be too "perfect item" dependent. My son who is only allowed to play 3 hours per week, with no premium tabs, managed to clear T16 maps with rippy mods. Why? Because he played a skeleton build. He designed it himself, so it is horribly imbalanced and he can't do some of the late game encounters, but he enjoys tremendously the game, probably got 10+ pure exalt drops and bought a few things. And he doesn't need perfect items to do it. Maybe it is me, maybe it is the game.... I still won't play meta build and will never trade because trading is not the essence of an ARPG. Pet buimd have been nerfed recently but are still better than a melee build that is constantly exposed to one shots and need a ton of regen / life leech to be able to survive. I left Sirus at 20% life. I can't imagine how i'll be able to break the 590k DPS mark without trading and paying 40+ exalts for a less crappy piece of gear... Path of Exile is a Casino for gambling addicts. Gambling is not fun nor a game mechanic... Last edited by Azarhiel on Mar 12, 2021, 11:22:39 AM	Posted by Azarhiel on Mar 12, 2021, 11:20:51 AM Quote this Post
" N4rk0tyk wrote: Ooh, GGG in damage control mode, posts start to disappear. Is that true? What kinds of posts disappear? Remove Horticrafting station storage limit.	Posted by Char1983 on Mar 12, 2021, 11:23:20 AM Quote this Post