Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

Sad... It was so funn... Back to farming 20h per day -,-

Was about to pay 240$ for harvest supporter pack because i enjoyed this league so much. Not really Ritual i went over to standard pretty fast but enjoyed the new expansion and harvest was a nice way to keep me invested to keep chasing the next goal.

I will slam a exalt for you Chris and save the 240$ for something else <3

"

The first part of this that concerned us was that Harvest was critical in making the best items (and hence made many other game systems obsolete)

ahah thats another point out that ggg doesnt know its game or players well.

good helms are being crafted with essences
what else.. belts. with essences. lot more with fossils

and then top it of with white sockets. syndicate then on top of it syndicate quality

ggg you went pretty low on thinking what is obsolete how people craft theyr items.

very very stupid statment. oh and it gets more stupid how obsolete you made multimod crafting.. only thing people use on normal craft bench is cannot roll attack or caster. but you still fked up cannot roll caster.. how many people have lost theyr items.

obsolete fracturing power charge rings or frenzy.. with obsolete fossil crafting ?
you just amaze me with your way of thinking :D

"

Azarhiel wrote:

"

Turtledove wrote:

How about a thought experiment.

Let's say that for one league GGG increased the godly good drops by 300% and the chaos, alchemy, exalt, mirror, divine, and blessed orbs drops by 300%. This would be SUPER simple for GGG to make such a change. I think that folks would be thrilled and very happy. If that was a long term change though PoE would become less challenging and fun.

What would that change when a Ilvl 86 item can roll a t10 affixe ?

Sorry my point was unclear. I was just thinking that if GGG buffed the currency drops and the drops of GG items by a very large amount and then took it away then the thread would look just like this one.

Personally I think this is a very poor decision.

Until this league the league I enjoyed most was the Harvest league. I am fully of the belief that deterministic crafting is not only a good thing for PoE but in fact a great thing.

My usual league performance is to follow a league starter build guide, and then hit a wall a red tier maps where progression literally stops as the death penalty stops all xp gain and poor gearing ensures you die often enough to keep xp for the level hovering in the single figures.

In harvest I was able to make decent enough gear that this wasn't a problem. Gear I could never afford to buy. Although I do play daily, I don't treat gaming as a job, I potter around maps for 20 mins not 2 mins, so consequently I never make more than a few ex every league.

I actually saw harvest integration as a failure. I was so looking forward to it. I've played more in this league than ever before. I've reached levels I've never reached and that's after rerolling as my league starter died like a fly in white maps. However as yet, despite many hours of looking, I am yet to find any of those useful crafts we had in harvest. I haven't seen any add/remove, any remove, literally only finding the chaos spam crafts.

This league I have progressed as far as finally seeing Sirus. I died like a fly not knowing much about the fight, but in several leagues it's the first time I have got that far.

I'm a casual player like most people. We need access to decent gear. Perhaps not mirror tier maven orb awakened orb gears but gears with t1/2 life and res easily applied with some work. The mere fact that this is possible although in this league far too rare that it has become a source of income for the 1%ers through selling their crafts has kept me playing, looking for those finally useful harvests to progress my gear. I've even spent money twice for more stash space. I've never spent twice in one league before.

Casual players like me virtually never chaos spam, and we certainly never exalt slam. We mostly don't even use exalt costing crafts on our bench, we simply never see more than two or three exalts in a whole league typically.

To fix harvest crafting I would split it. The useful t1/2 crafts like add/remove, target annul, etc would be a great addition to the craft bench unlockable by finding a harvest of the right colour flowers. The flowers could drop red/yellow/blue craft energy, a currency useable at the bench for the deterministic crafts and you could keep the current crafting system in map for the exchange crafts, fracture, synthesis, div card, map, scarab, etc crafts.
The divine crafts should be removed altogether. If you want perfect stats then spam divine orbs. Those divine crafts were always a step too far.

This would allow casual players the chance to make gear with some work. We play for fun, we play to escape the pressures of family life and jobs, the last thing we want is a game we have to treat like a job. Being able to work towards an achievable goal like that though keeps players happy and playing.

Please reconsider this backwards step. Deterministic crafting as given to us in Harvest league is a good thing if you simply remove the divine orb crafts. It allows players to play a wider range of builds, which is a good thing, and brings achievable gear goals to casual players who probably make up 99% of the playerbase. These crafts should be more accessible though. In Harvest league it was every map or two, in this league I haven't seen a single one except those being offered 'for sale' which gates out those not able to just farm currency endlessly which really gets boring quickly. This is why I like the idea of an energy drop for the craft bench.

I am an average player and im affected, GGG what did you do!!1111

I can't invest as much time into this game as the top .1%, but I'm not a complete noob. I work a full time job and can play 2-3 hours a night, max. Even I know this manifesto is stupid.

No one, and I mean no one, uses exalted orbs or chaos orbs to craft gear.
Considering that people like me have such limited time to play, which I assume are most of the player base, it is far easier to accrue that currency, and then use it to buy gear upgrades via trade. Crafting in this game is so stupidly complex and expensive that there's ZERO reason for the vast majority of players to get involved in it. The bare minimum for currency to start crafting even moderately good gear is so stupidly high that most players can't and wouldn't even attempt it. Harvest made crafting accessible. It didn't fix everything with crafting, and it didn't even allow people like me to craft the best gear, but it at least made it accessible, and now the idiots at GGG want to take it away. Why? Because the top .1% are making really good gear. The same top .1% of players that trivialize any game they get involved in, because they have so much time to play. What moron game developer designs their game around the top .1% of their player base?

The totality of this problem is due to low drop rates for required crafting materials, low drop rates for good gear in general, the extremely high number of item mods and mod ranges, the extreme complexity of crafting, crafted rares being the best end game gear, the hugely expensive minimum to start crafting decent gear (which most players never get close to), the increasing difficulty of the game to push the top .1% of players, and trade (even though it sucks) still being easier than crafting. That last part should say a lot, that as bad as trading is, it's still better, easier, and less expensive than crafting. That is how bad crafting is in this game.

With harvest being nerfed, it will make better gear even more rare, making it more expensive and harder to find, thus making it harder for the majority of the players to trade for and get upgrades, stifling their character advancement, making it harder to progress in the game, reducing fun, reducing player retention, reducing MTX sales, reducing game popularity and word of mouth spread, thus reducing GGG's income. This is, in every conceivable way, fucking stupid.

If this Harvest nerf was paired with improvements to rare drops (where moderately good items could drop, like, at all), or improvements to crafting, or improvements to drop rates for crafting currencies, or improvements to item mods, etc., then this would be fine. If done well enough, harvest could be completely removed.

However, with the ideas behind this manifesto, and the idiotic and tone deaf stuff that was said within, it shows definitively (especially to average Joes like me) that the people who have the most control over this game have no fucking clue how to design it, how it's played by most of their players, why they play the way they do, or how to improve the game or the player experience. The shitty thing is how much potential this game has, and how good the core of it is, but it's being bogged down and held back by idiots at the top.

This sucks.

There must be another way... Nerfing it to the ground and go back to the 100% slotmachine gambling? Please no. This cant be it - there must be another or new league mechanic, fossil, essence or other system rework/change to compensate for the harvest nerfs am I right? Please tell me yes GGG :(

"

Rakushi wrote:

"

HowToGusta wrote:

Yeah man, you're addressing your concerns about the way people have approached GGG with their 'threats' to the wrong person. I literally just defended the idea that support can be withdrawn if you don't enjoy what you're spending your money on. I even mentioned in a previous post that any nerf/removal of harvest won't stop me from playing. But, I have expectations, yes. Do I feel entitled because I spend money on the game? Hell no. I just feel passionate enough to try to make a difference where it matters to so many. Read some of my previous posts, maybe you'll change your tune. Stop twisting my words.

Ah, I didn't try to make it like I've twisted your words! I was just trying to understand you toroughly, and am glad that I was wrong :D My apologies!

Edit: Incoherent Sentences. (Whew I am tired)

No need to apologise. My engagement in this thread I feel isn't as constructive as I'd like it to have been, but, I've contributed my opinion on the general direction of POE and its shortcomings whilst taking Chris' recent post into consideration. Overall I have a negative opinion of the changes because there are far too many variables in the game to find the original crafting system enjoyable. The idea that exalt slamming is exciting in some way is laughable. Harvest helped players move forward, reach their goals, try new builds and provided a means to enjoy blasting endgame maps. This, clearly isn't what GGG wants the majority of players to have access to. The game is supposed to be 'hardcore' by nature, many people have said this already. But, the main issue raised, I believe, was not actually deterministic crafting, it was the fact that once the community came together, they were able to target craft top-end gear at a faster rate than let's say a SSF player would. Changing harvest just because of that with the proposed changes doesn't seem logical. GGG can take that to hardcore mode if they like (IMO). Again, if GGG thinks that is for the best in the long-term, I'm fine with that.

Strongly disagree with this change.