Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

Maybe it will be a good take to give some options that could solve the one or another problem that harvest has actually and make a poll for those changes. Including the actual nerfs in the manifesto. Its not all black and white, make a change and harvest is dead, or leave it as it is and then its to powerful (by means of ggg). Even if the result of the poll doesnt affect the final implementation at all, it would be interesting to see the opinion of the playerbase in raw numbers instead of a post-count in a thread.

There are so much possibilities to tweak the system without ruining it.

- account bound gear
- harvest can only roll up to T2 stats (for all or some crafts)
- remove tags from "unwanted" too powerful stats
- ...

But as GGG said it was too easy to craft mirror tier items with harvest - thats only true for a small amount of players. The majority doesnt have hundreds of exalts to buy crafts via TFT to make gear perfect.

Or like me - i dont want to invest heavily in items for the last 5% power i could get - even if i have the exalts. Gear hasnt to be perfect at all to play all content in the game. I dont want to interact with TFT, i try to avoid trading if possible (somewhat SSF aproach, but in trade league).
I m trying to farm harvest to get my gear "right". Not because i need it, all stats are totally fine to play. But to have a goal to work towards, to get a better res roll or life roll for example.
I specced atlas to everything harvest related, use zana mission etc. etc. and guess what - i rarely find harvest or get a harvest mission, and then the crafts are almost useless. And if i find some usefull crafts i get mostly decent T8 rolls.

It would be helpful to have a deterministic way to get at least the stats you want. When its not possible to get T1 rolls through harvest, i would be totally fine with that, then those items will per-se not be mirror-worthy)

Conclusion:
- make harvest a tool for avarage players to get their gear going and to establish build diversity
- restrict the power of the crafts in harvest so there is little to no abuseable harvest involved in creating mirror-worthy items
- remove tags of too powerful stats (like physical tag on explody crusader mod and give it only a influence tag), then of course you will have to look out which are the most powerful and abused stats actually, or which are too easy to get
- make it less attractive for players to use third party platforms for trading, either through implementing it yourself (like tradeable beasts) or through limitation of the craft-power which will result in less players paying extra for those crafts.

PS: i know these posts wont be read by the staff, so time wasted... but yolo.

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Obright wrote:

Here's what we've learned from the "experiment" that was harvest league:

1) Most people would much rather play darts with the lights on.
2) People get really mad when you turn the lights back off again.

I'm really glad I had such a wonderful time during harvest league, but I could have told them all that and saved everyone the bother.

Oh well, next we get to watch the third and final lesson of harvest league play out:

3) You cannot intentionally undermine the greater part of your player base while you simultaneously depend on those same players to pay your bills.

It won't work.

...Especially after players realize they're just fodder for a vampiric elite class.

Games are supposed to be fun, and being forced to succumb to the whims of the elite in order to perpetuate an economy which is intentionally broken on their behalf is not fun.

That's WAY WAY WAY too close to most of our real lives. Why would we want to "escape" to that world in a game?

"Doing what they did" in order to "be one of them" and have a decent shot at crafting something even remotely usable is also not fun for most players, even when they DO have 16+ hours per day to play PoE. It's no more fun than working your way up a corporate ladder in real life. Not everyone is cut out for that, either.

Really, what this is all about is autonomy: they don't want us to have any. They want us to be totally at the mercy of no-lifers so that the economy can "stay fixed" for them.

Again, WHERE IS THE FUN IN THAT?

This guy has been consistently fair and constructive throughout this whole debacle, and I can't let this comment go by without applauding him!
I simply couldn't agree more with you Obright! Very, very, well said!

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fancyfootwork wrote:

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DoEFotGS wrote:

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macacodoido32 wrote:

check dude's account and you'll have your answers

I don't need to check something. This is not about gear they, or I, have. This all about mentality.

GGG don't play they own game a long time right now. Exalt slam was a thing maybe at Perandus-Prophecy leagues and even then required some knowledge to not being a stupid move. Because of how poor 'craft' is. It's never be a craft. It's stupid gambling that nobody likes.

Torchlight series, and Last Epoch right now, have NPC that sell random things. You can see only base type, rarity and stats will rolled after you purchase one of that things and not before. It's called 'gambling' at 2009. And this gambling is PoE 'craft' system.

I don't played Diablo 2, I just have no PC in that time. I'm not share all the feeling that GGG have in mind for all awfull stuff like trade 'system'. PoE have no trade system. And we now in 2021, not in 2000.

Diablo 2 also had Gambling, you went to an NPC and you would buy UNID items and have no idea what they were, after buying Last Epoch this week, they have the same !

Yes, D2 DID have a gambling mechanic.
The difference is that they never tried to dress up that mechanic as crafting! They called it 'gambling', because thats what it was!

Harvest nerf would only promote RMTers. I think we see why Harvest was nerfed. Nice going GGG. If you want to make a gambling game then throw dice game in so I can double my Exaults.

Don´t nerf Harvest!

what about accountbound harvest crafting?
enforced soloselffound harvestcrafts?
you can still trade crafted items, but harvest crafts can only be used from the account which which used the first harvest craft.
you could give them a personalized touch, like the anya quest in d2

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__FEL__ wrote:

what about accountbound harvest crafting?
enforced soloselffound harvestcrafts?
you can still trade crafted items, but harvest crafts can only be used from the account which which used the first harvest craft.
you could give them a personalized touch, like the anya quest in d2

That would be actually interesting. Basically removes craft trading, but you can still trade the items. Once you apply any craft to the item via harvest, item cannot be harvest crafted elsewhere.

A lot of people don’t understand what caused harvest nerf. It’s not that crafts are too op, is that we are trading them. GGG tried to bottleneck harvest crafting as much as possible without being completely inferior (random crafts, random spawn, random seeds, only 10 storage space), and that got bypassed via TFT trading. The only reason why harvest seems op is that people traded 1000’s of exalts on group crafting some op items, if those crafts would not be possible to share most people who actually have 4xt1 or done t0 items would not acquire them during the league. GGG is at this point caving for TFT discord, instead of actually fixing roots of the problem they try to eliminate the symptoms.

Here is why this will fail. We will still share crafts via TFT discord, and we will still craft op items. They will be just beyond reach for 75% of the players due to steep price. Organized groups will still group craft best items, period.

If you will look on characters of the players here who complain the most about harvest being too strong, you realize one thing. They are either an alt accounts of some RMT credit card warriors, or are simply trolling because one out of 25 items they have is actually somewhat decent. I really don’t care much about harvest nerf from my personal point of view. I have enough gear from OG harvest that I topped of with some crafts on legacy gear now, that all my standard builds can be done with zero or minimum investment. Reason why I don’t play this league even though that hideout looks dope was that I was pretty certain that harvest will get nerf because of TFT server (a lot of us in std said it loud and clear) and I wanted to get few legacy pieces of gear crafted. But this nerf hits the most not the 1%’ers, not the “upper middle class” like myself, it hits the 80%. That is why it’s sucks. Kill harvest craft trading, and it will be a fair game, you play more, you get more opportunities for good gear. Play less, you get what you get.

What an out of touch decision. Makes you wonder who GGG supports when they nerf something that brings temporary (duration of the league) happiness to the majority of the player base.

Harvest was the greatest thing in a while that's happened to SSF

The 'fun' part is that the big guilds with huge capital made all the current mirror-tier items before the Harvest change, leaving the rest with breadcrumbs.

If they remove Harvest, they should delete all items that have been Harvest-modified.

The current scenario is that the entire base of the pyramid grinds for orbs and trade these away for the tiny top who then can craft more op items to make even more profit. Like the Egyptian Pharaoh and nobility reaping the rewards from the efforts of his gazillion labour slaves.

GGG should focus on current crafting systems such as essences and make them more attractive again by making them more deterministic.

For GGG it is a very valid option to tune down Harvest as it creates too many powerful items BUT they should also tune down the difficulty AND balance encounters around gear that has been alt- or chaos-spammed as that is the only way that an average player can get 'decent' items.

And maybe they should quit calling orbs crafting orbs but instead start calling them modification orbs. That term is more appropriate.

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macacodoido32 wrote:

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DoEFotGS wrote:

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Incarcerated wrote:

yeah so fun to get perfect gear in 2 days and ruining league

Is THAT problem?

You have no other games or stuff IRL to do? It's just a game. Game must be fun. I know that 'fun' is very different for all of us, but why exactly a somebody 'fun' must be cutted?

Harvest is powerful... because other 'crafting' sourse are not or less powerful. So, maybe they should rethink all crafting procesess or phylosophy entirely?

About two days ago I had imprudence of pressing 'show all loot' button after harbinger encounter on well rolled t16 map with beyond mod. Game just freezed about a two second. For every time I pressed the button, because amount of loot that names was rendered is insane. More insane is how many worth drop I had in the end. Nothing. Besides currency shards I have nothing to pick up.

This is a problem, not actual craft in gambling world.

check dude's account and you'll have your answers

The person who I was quoting said what this guy quoted. Essentially, wasn't me. Find the original post, I'm FOR harvest crafting and the whole idea of getting perfect gear easily in 2 days or even 2 weeks is laughable. Even with harvest, it took me a long time to get my gear and it's still not perfect.