Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

I know it's largely too late for a response to even be read, but hey, in case you do read this Chris...

I was one of those players who rarely if ever made it to yellow maps without quitting. Played at least half a dozen leagues if not more, but Ritual was the first league that I finally WANTED to play more when I got to the atlas. Harvest made it interesting to look at items tiers and stats and plan out how I might be able to get a really good item without spending 1000 hrs farming the same exact content over and over for Exalts. I even bought a supporter pack.

This was a terrible solution to a small problem. If you were worried about standard league, then simply make the harvest crafts untradeable. If you're worried about 3 month leagues, you shouldn't be. The problem isn't that harvest is too good, it's that most of the other crafting systems are bad. It's finally given a reason for people who have lives outside the game to keep playing through the end of the league and have realistic hopes that they can obtain really good gear.

At this point, I just feel glad I chose this league to finish up my atlas once and for all, because if the mindset of your development team going forward is currently set on "fun for me(the 1%), not for thee," then it was a good time to finish up the game for good.

You can't make bind-on-use or bind-to-account items in an ARPG designed for trading. That is insane WoW-ish garbage.

The harvests take long enough to find, and you can only save 10 of them.

Everything is fine.

Exalt orbs are valuable because they are rare, not because they are useful. That makes them a good item for a "gold standard."

I feel like Chris fundamentally misunderstands this fact.

Well, I made the mistake to buy a few stash tabs before this manifesto. No more money and support from me from now on.

So let's talk about the current state of this game. I started playing seriously in Harbinger (don't remember when that was), since then all I've seen is nerfs, nerfs, nerfs, an increase in mobs and boss damage, defenses nerfs, damage nerfs, this league a few changes but mostly nerfs and the return of harvest craft. With the return of harvest craft I thought, wow they finally balanced the game, I can elevate the build I'm playing every league and actually for the first time in years try some new off meta builds and then you go ahead and return us to the stone age where we "slam ex for fun"... wow... what a joke. Just one of the items needed to elevate my build is almost impossible to craft with the old "system" (if that's what you call that mess) and also didn't even see one on the trade site this league, because it's not meta.

This league was a mess, loading bug that you "fixed" by making the loading screen longer and still didn't fix anything, constant lag spikes from YOUR servers that I never experienced before (and I play for about 4 years I think), premium stash tabs, that I payed for, updating once every 3 hours and a lot more, not to mention the heist bugs that are still in the game and you didn't fix last league because you probably didn't have the time (in 6 months of Heist or w/e). The only thing that kept me in the game this league, despite all the growing bugs and issues, was harvest.

Let's also talk about the TFT discord. I will continue using it even if you remove harvest entirely from the game. Why? Because on TFT people have a reputation system, it is less likely to get scammed and you can buy and sell all kind of things with people that actually answer your messages and are trustworthy. I will never use the global or trade in game chats because of those reasons. I really don't understand your problem with that discord, if you add a similar system to the game and actually care about scammers than I will stop using discord in favor of the in game chats.

Don't you guys slam exalts for fun? No, because that's not viable for people that don't stream poe as a job. You are so out of touch with the community it isn't funny anymore.

Edit: So, I just checked and I actually started playing PoE in 2012. But hey you don't care about people like me because we don't stream and spend thousands of dollars every league.

Edit2: You also nerfed harvest once before, when you removed all TAGS from some modifiers.

Just piping in to add my take on the nerfs, adding on top of this pile.

I genuinely would've rather they just didn't give us Harvest back than give it back for one league in an already nerfed state and then just take a massive hammer to it afterwards.

It's a brutal and unnecessary series of nerfs.

We're still in a beta test you know... PoE is a eternal beta testing platform lol.

Truly terrible, I frequently buy supporter packs and must say this season has been my favorite due to the availability of strong items for all sorts of builds I usually would never be able to afford. Extremely disappointing, I do not play with a single person who cares about 'slamming exalts' on gear. It astounds me that is the conclusion the development team drew.

Does anyone know if this has been retracted or if they have made a statement since the release of this?

All of you need to understand that nerfing harvest is way better than buffing all the bosses and monsters again, because then your insane double influence items are the base for entering endgame. If gear is more difficult to get the game gets more difficult as a result and that is the whole point, they want to make the game more difficult. There is no accomplishment in beating a boss if most players can do it. A player always pushes as far as the developers let them.

And lastly people have these strange ideas that they need to overgear for endgame content, most of it you can do on a tabula with mechanical skill. I know that because that is often what i have to do in ssf until i get my actual 6-link.

If you can buy op gear, which can clear everything in the game for cheap in trade, then that is bad. If gear is not a limiting factor, then what is the point of getting said gear. The gear hunt becomes a chore if perfect stats are an achievable endgoal, especially if it is locked behind an annoying mechanic like harvest.

;(