Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

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Fluxje wrote:

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.

I am not sure trading is the main issue.
If I try to reframe my argument without the irony and emotion:

I used to play MMORPGs. And in my view, most died the more self sufficient options were given to the playerbase. Because in the end, it just turned into a deterministic path to get the best outcome, on your own and then nothing left to do. Communities died and disappeared, and players got bored. It was constantly the same thing: Don't make it easier for the players and they churn, make it easier and they churn eventually.
It's a bit what happened to me with Diablo 1 (praise the ancestor!). The day I got my hand on an item/skill editor was the week or month I stopped playing the game. A game I really enjoyed.

This is why I really value companies that stick to a vision. It may be outdated, it may be mad, it may be unusual, but at least their business model is scaled to work with small communities. If anything, Tencent's acquisition is increasing the level of opex of GGG and forcing it to require higher subs, hence chipping at its core values as it needs to chase more subscribers. This is usually achieved by making things easier, which has its own set of issues.

Now, trading is a joke in PoE. The in-game community too ("ty" "gl hf").
But there is still some interdependency.
When I farm a map, I can get some unique (usually worth it due to non-craftable mods), a base or even rare items which are sufficiently well rolled. I can then sell them for currency and then upgrade my own items.
The more crafting option there are, the less non-crafable mods there are, the easier the crafting, the less I, an ARPG player, can sell and therefore upgrade my items, forcing me to engage in crafting, a non-ARPG aspect of the game that I loath.
And when everyone can play 100% SSF, with builds perfectly tuned, then many players will simply stop playing out of boredom. We may deny it, but the death of MMORPGs is the evidence needed. The easier something is, the less interdependency there is, the likelier it is to wither and die.

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ymost wrote:

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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.

The solution would have been to buff the other things. Essense/Fossils (never touched beastcrafting, so can't speak to that) being buffed would have been better buff, if you wanted to really nerf harvest. Harvest was the correct direction, and if the issue was harvest was too much better that Hamlet maps were the true best thing to do, the solution should be to make the other areas offer better things, not making hamlet worse.

Inb4 Valdo Harbingers no longer drop exalted shards.

I've never posted on these forums before but came here just to make my voice heard.

This is the first league I've played where I could play the build and skill gem I wanted and plan and craft items for my build on SSF. Harvest has been absolutely pivotal in enabling my character to actually have enough DPS to kill endgame bosses. This was the first time I fought Sirus, killed shaper and elder, finished a cortex--and so much more. I've had an absolute blast. But without Harvest I wouldn't have done any of that. I'm exhausted thinking about trying to craft two on-hit curse rings, tailwind boots, and a temple life chest with elder crit chance with these changes to Harvest. The day I got enough oil to have Whispers of Doom on my amulet so I could switch to dual curse rings, with tailwind boots, so I could respec my deadeye from the Tailwind tree to the Mark tree was so rewarding and made my build so much stronger.

I don't understand why you're giving us less agency in our builds, and how we play the game, by limiting how we can realistically gear them. Especially for SSF.

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Fluxje wrote:

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.

I kind of disagree. Saying no trades just push people out who don't no life it already. I don't have the knowledge, or patience to perfect craft, but what harvest did was allow me to generate 50 exalt this league, more than I have ever made. And yes, there was some down time trying to trade, but it still felt better than flipping.

i am a casual poe player and having extraordenary fun this league.
and this is thanks to harvest crafting.

Please consider less drastical changes to make the endgame more accessible to the casual community.

Hey GGG, we are trying to have a discussion here. We are at 358 pages of discussion already, however the length of the thread isn't growing any longer. Just out of curiosity - how long would this thread be if you hadn't removed postings?

It already holds the record for the longest thread in the Development Manifesto section, doesn't it?

Be honest here Chris & GGG dev team, how many times have you actually played long enough to be able to close your eyes and slam exalts on your gear? You think your gambling crafting system is actually fun/rewarding enough to warrant 30 hours of mapping per exalt slam?

I'm not even going to mention harvest crafting here because enough people have already made the same point. I'm going to bring up the fundamentals; your approach to game design.

You have HC and SC. What I don't understand is, why don't you make your HC really stand apart from your SC mode? If you're so hell-bent on creating a 'difficult' game, focus your vision and channel that into developing hardcore. You're clearly not in the right mindset to make changes for softcore - seeing as the majority of your player-base is there.

Your lack of awareness and inflexibility holds you and the rest of GGG back. Does GGG as a business really benefit from the decisions you make? Does the majority of your player-base really enjoy the constant back-tracking after you realise something doesn't suit your vision?

Your crafting system is outdated and is not fit for purpose with the current state of the game. Currency scarcity makes it so. If I've farmed 20ex, you think I'm going to slam an exalt in hopes of T1 phys damage/T1 life? No, I don't enjoy reducing the value of my item by rolling T9 mana. I'll sell that incomplete item and buy a better version from a trader. Is that truly how you envisioned the game to be - buying an item with crafting currency? Ah wait, you probably play until T3 maps in SSF, if that. Let's face it, you're not a player, you're just in charge, tired and lost.

If you want to cater to the 1% that play SSFHC, how about you remove softcore completely? - you'll definitely face less backlash as your casual players will disappear and you won't have to backtrack on your decisions.

If you want to cater to the 1% of elite players in SC, why don't you stop going to work? Fair play if that's your vision, but don't bring your 'hardcore' game design ideologies to standard/league softcore for the majority.

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Aviryn wrote:

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.

Just a quick FYI that GGG read reddit more than the forum. The forum is more heavily censored by the moderators due to laws in New Zealand and many negative things can be pointed at as harassment and they are removing tons of posts.

As well as they hid this thread from the main feed.

not pog

So uh, did you guys forget about the discord issue amidst all the soapboxing or..

I also wanted to ask, how is that Reddit post have about 30% upvotes, from 75% within 24 hours? Doesn’t this ring any bells? Perhaps your approach on harvest nerf isn’t the best? Please, I love this game and I hate to see what will happen within next 6 months with it, if you fellas will remain deaf. Remember, your game is not only the streamers, Varga with mirror service and no lifers. Your game is shaped by mostly casual and average crowd, and if you will chase them away, there will be no 1%rs.