Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

I don't know why, but this change really took out a lot of the excitement for PoE out of me.

Maybe the reaction of players is less about the actual change but the mentality or philosophy behind itemization as a whole.

(Btw. I really disliked the first implementation of Harvest in Harvest league. Not because I was showered in mirror-tier gear, but because the seed/gardening mechanic felt incredibly convoluted and tedious. THAT's why I quit that league very very early. It definitely was not that I could faceroll content.
I never did more than a handful of T16 maps before losing interest.

To put it bluntly - the grind, the micromanagement drove me away. That and the attitude of some 3rd parties (Youtube, Reddit, etc) who really want the game to cater mainly for ppl playing literally 40h+ per week.)

I have no idea how many players watch youtube or read forums. I do. And I feel like an noob. I consider myself a decent player, but I would not even know of most mechanics without Youtube.

And then knowing about a game system and actually using it efficiently are two very different things.

Instead of damning TFT, maybe some ppl should ask themselves why players use it. It's to counteract the heavy RNG. I grinded out Zana maps in hope of finding the right craft - I never did. And after more than 100 maps I gave up and went on TFT and spent 2ex for "remove defense".

That was it. No spending 100+ ex for metacrafting, just avoiding mindless grind to modify my item in a minor way.

Ok, time to stop whispering my musings to the wind. They won't affect the direction of game design anyway.

The biggest issue for me is the fact that never harvest, beastiary or summoners were the problem, but trading.

If trading wouldnt exist, everything else could come back to the game. I so miss having red beasts with good rewards, I so miss having a true army of minions that actually didnt melt immediately, I so miss having a chance to craft my own items.

So many great things this game once had, including strongboxes, prophecies... were nerfed into the ground because of trading. GGG needs to acknoledge, that with trading enabled this game will never be able to progress.

It will just always be a repeating cycle of nerfs with no real foundation or stability.

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KicsiSVK wrote:

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Shafirion wrote:

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Rene_2706 wrote:

Last Epoch getting so much attention lately.

coincidence?

Certainly not. If you search the Manifesto Subforum for "Epoch" you get 6 pages full of hits. I bought the early access myself in reaction to the Harvest changes. The guys at Eleventh Hour Games must be very grateful for the Harvest changes, that's for sure.

To be fair, I have to note, that although I like the game, I am not really hooked yet. There is something special about the pace of PoE and the skill effect, especially with MTX, that I just miss. Then again, it is still in beta and shows a huge amount of promise.

Competition is always good. It remains to be seen how the potential rise of Last Epoch will reflect on PoE. If GGG is honestly about conserving RNG as THE major philosophy of the game, they shouldn't be concerned about Last Epoch, because that game follows a diametrically different approach.

What I really, really like about Last Epoch is the boss fights. Bosses generally have more HP and the game adapts elements from modern MMORPGS and overall it is much more about dodging and skill than raw dps. Boss fights in general are just much more fun.

At the end of the day, however, GGG is an enterprise and I personally hope, they reconsider - economically and/or philosophically - whether it is a good approach, to force that extreme RNG approach on a playerbase, whose vast majority is actually annoyed by it and craves for a little determinism.

100% agree on all the above. I said to myself that due to the lack of response from GGG I will not spend any more money on POE next league but will buy Last Epoch and I did and it is great.

It wont replace POE right now but maybe it will in the future if GGG continue on this journey of silence when regular people want an answer.

I wonder would this silence also exist if all the top 1% and Youtubers and Twitch streamers would be as unhappy as many of the normal folks.

We wont know as all the Twitch and Youtubers are afraid to get banned for arbitrary reasons like PathofMath did. You just have to fake some discord discussions and woala. A ban is here.

I do also fully agree.

I started playing LE right after the manifesto, and i love it, I kinda stopped playing it, but that is due to the fact that we are currently in a beta and I have already seen everything they implemented.

obviously i can't replace POE and especially not right now as it is still in beta with many more featured missing, but man this is going to hit POE so hard, the devs are quite the opposite when it comes to dealing with players.

Bascially I am going from most fun I ever had with PoE last league into skipping the next one at least. Playing Last Epoch and Valheim right now and will play Outriders soon.

Please just remove harvest when you don't understand it enough to make the necessary fixes read not breaking the part that worked and keeping the TFT trading in is a joke. I won't use another external bandaid to play a video game that is supposed to be fun.

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Spurnshadow wrote:

I've already posted my initial 2c on this, but I've been keeping this change in mind while playing over the last couple weeks.

Since then, As I'm sick of alt spamming my staff to get a T1 mod (maybe 2000 so far) I decided to start a new character that required a lot of expensive gear. I don't have a lot, maybe 15 exalt, and I earned about another 25 along the way. As such, this requires a lot of harvest crafting for add / remove. I've been running mostly Haewark Hamlet and maybe 1 in 10 maps gets a sacred grove. Out of that, I've gotten I think 2 add remove which were not even for the mods I needed. As such, I'm still trying to perfect the gear, not to mention trying to make my jewels have better mods.

This is super slow going and incredibly boring. As such, I just don't want to play. Progress in making my gear better is bad enough as it is. Taking this crafting away (and we all know with the proposed changes it'll be useless) is giving me no incentive to play beyond my usual skill cap. Right now, I'm only pulling about 12M dps and I've yet to kill Maven (I know, right?). I can't get past the final stage. I haven't been able to complete the Breach invitation and I die half the time on the elder / shaper guardian invitations. I NEED a build with like 30M+ dps if you guys put out content like this.

You are very very wrong if you think it'll be useless ...why is everyone so doom and gloom? Its just untrue.

In fact it will still be very OP and still override all other crafting systems in game. Shoulda been deleted but it wasnt only nerfed and here is an example of how OP it remains.

Crusader Elder chest with Explody and +1 gems prefix.

Lock prefix's

Reforge Crit and hope you get both Power charge on crit and crit to attacks.
If not try again.

Doesn't take much to have a very OP very deterministic 4 influenced modded chest, try it yourself at the emulator. Add influence and life/w jun if you didnt get it initially on meld - GG.

For weapons its even better since they are usually not influenced and still get add crits. Spam phys chaos or fossils until you get some good phys rolls then add crits..add IAS and GG.

Rare Jewels which are only 4 prop it's even more powerful.


You will brick some items sure but I bricked them with Full Harvest too trying to remove untagged mods trying for perfect... This was an explody frenzy chest..oh well RNG happens


But by in large I'm afraid harvest will still be the alpha and omega of PoE come next patch and that bores me even if you won't be making perfect stuff like some have.

It'll still be 100x better than anything else and still all-hamlet-all-the-time.

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Aim_Deep wrote:

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Spurnshadow wrote:

I've already posted my initial 2c on this, but I've been keeping this change in mind while playing over the last couple weeks.

Since then, As I'm sick of alt spamming my staff to get a T1 mod (maybe 2000 so far) I decided to start a new character that required a lot of expensive gear. I don't have a lot, maybe 15 exalt, and I earned about another 25 along the way. As such, this requires a lot of harvest crafting for add / remove. I've been running mostly Haewark Hamlet and maybe 1 in 10 maps gets a sacred grove. Out of that, I've gotten I think 2 add remove which were not even for the mods I needed. As such, I'm still trying to perfect the gear, not to mention trying to make my jewels have better mods.

This is super slow going and incredibly boring. As such, I just don't want to play. Progress in making my gear better is bad enough as it is. Taking this crafting away (and we all know with the proposed changes it'll be useless) is giving me no incentive to play beyond my usual skill cap. Right now, I'm only pulling about 12M dps and I've yet to kill Maven (I know, right?). I can't get past the final stage. I haven't been able to complete the Breach invitation and I die half the time on the elder / shaper guardian invitations. I NEED a build with like 30M+ dps if you guys put out content like this.

You are very very wrong if you think it'll be useless ...why is everyone so doom and gloom? Its just untrue.

In fact it will still be very OP and still override all other crafting systems in game. Shoulda been deleted but it wasnt only nerfed and here is an example of how OP it remains.

Crusader Elder chest with Explody and +1 gems prefix.

Lock prefix's

Reforge Crit and hope you get both Power charge on crit and crit to attacks.
If not try again.

Doesn't take much to have a very OP very deterministic 4 influenced modded chest, try it yourself at the emulator. Add influence and life/w jun if you didnt get it initially on meld - GG.

For weapons its even better since they are usually not influenced and still get add crits. Spam phys chaos or fossils until you get some good phys rolls then add crits..add IAS and GG.

Rare Jewels which are only 4 prop it's even more powerful.


You will brick some items sure but I bricked them with Full Harvest too trying to remove untagged mods trying for perfect... This was an explody frenzy chest..oh well RNG happens

But by in large I'm afraid harvest will still be the alpha and omega of PoE come next patch and that bores me even if you won't be making perfect stuff like some have.

It'll still be 100x better than anything else and still all-hamlet-all-the-time.

You are very right.
Also it does nothing to ppl will spend more time on TFT then in the game.

me: Harvest made game so much more fun... its seriously insane how much more time i spent in poe just because harvest and ritual had harvest crafting
GGG: NO FUN ALLOWED

Why not just make harvest crafts sellable so we don't have to use TFT discord?

What will be point of maven orbs if harvest gets removed :DDD Seriously i cant understand this decision... its like you have no idea what community wants.

Here are some tips how to greatly improve poe

1. Remove beast duping
2. Make beast/invites for leader only or so it cant be abused with AFK chars
3. Keep harvest how it is now (or just minor nerfs)
4. Make harvest crafts sellable (no need for discord)
5. Make Alva/Jun things sellable (no scammerinos)
6. Remove the shit loot so we can run 100% delirium with more than 10FPS

As a semi tryhard gamer i feel sorry for all dudes who don't spend 12h/day and have to play with trash items... the gap with rich and poor will be even huger :DDD

I cry men

Harvest crafting = OP

Beast duping infinite bases for 5ex each and printing mirrors = just fine

Chris dont ruin crafting please. Its the go-to-way for casual players to step up in the game.

I've stopped playing PoE after Harvest, which was the league I played and enjoyed the most, cause of harvest crafting and being able to gear up 2 builds i wanted to play, which would be otherwise impossible for me with playing 20-25h/week.

Then I heard that harvest crafting got reintroduced but I was playing some other game and thought to get back into PoE next league.

After this though, I don't know...