Harvest has ruined the game for me

Hey guys,

I started playing PoE back in Open Beta. Over the course of these years I had my ups and downs, my successes and frustrations with the game, like anybody else who has played for such a long time. About five years ago I was kind of fed up with the game and took a break - for longer than I expected. I missed Breach, Delve, Incursion, Betrayal, Bestiary, the Fall of Oriath expansion and several more leagues and expansions. But during the last month of Synthesis a real-life friend asked me if I had ever heard of this "awesome free-to-play title Path of Exile" and...

Well, I got hooked again. I familiarized myself with the new stuff and had lots of fun over the next few leagues. I had to skip Blight because of RL-issues, but I played Legion, Metamorph and Delirium to the fullest. I farmed juiced t16 maps, killed Shaper, Uber Elder, later AL8 Sirus in all the leagues. But around the second month of each league I was at the point where I stopped playing for real. I did a handfull of maps a week, nothing serious, because I felt like whatever I did I couldn´t progress anymore. Not because of a lack of content or goals, but because of them being simply unobtainable. In Delirium this got worse. After about a month into the league I was at the point of quitting PoE for good, again. The disparity between potential and actually achievable progress simply got too big. Still, I decided to give the upcoming league a chance. It was supposed to be a crafting league after all.

And then...

then came Harvest league. Oh boy, was that a treat. I literally played every single day of the league. I took half my annual holiday and called in sick for 2 weeks. Twice! I put so much time into that league because it was SO. MUCH. FUN. And I did all of that on a single character. I played dozens of buildvariations for the same skill: Explosive Trap. I was not a meta slave, not playing something blatantly overpowered or imbalanced or mechanically superior. And where in earlier leagues I felt my sense of progress dropping off, in Harvest that was where it started to take off. The minmaxing was insane and glorious and fun and I have never, NEVER, gotten so much fun and enjoyment and a sense of achievemnt out of PoE, or probably any game for that matter. Maybe winning a multiplayer game in something like Civilization or some other really challenging game is comparable. Maybe. It felt so rewarding, every single minute, every second of me being in PoE felt great.

Then GGG took it all away. They took it away and gave me "Chest Farming - The League". I couldn´t take more than a weekend of that. After having played a few Contracts I switched to standard league. I was back on my Harvest character, doing fractured legacy t16 Promenades, because that was more fun, because that was me actually playing the game. So since Harvest I have done basically nothing but running Promenades and Burial Chambers with about 7.000 monsters per map. And since Harvest I haven´t progressed that character in any significant way (I got myself a divergent support gem that got ripped from HC Heist, but you guys know what I mean). I still have a synthesized cluster jewel lying around that would be awesome for my char, but for two months I have thrown Shuddering Fossils at it to no avail.

All of that, these experiences and observations, got me thinking. That whole sense of progress, of fun, of achieving a goal I have set myself... it is all locked behind randomness. It´s not because my character isn´t good enough, not because I am not good enough, but because it´s unlikely. There is simply no skill, no player agency involved. Because the likelyhood of me crafting or finding any item that is better (if at all possible) than what I currently have, is lower than me being the single only winner of the national lottery in Germany. Twice. Successively. It feels like there is nothing in this game that is genuinely "hard", genuinely challenging. Everything that we players perceive of as "hard" is gated behind RNG bullshit. It´s hard because it´s unlikely.

And it FUCKING SUCKS! I feel punished for playing, punished for engaging with content, punished for liking a skill that is not meta or too clunky or underpowered to work on trash gear. I feel like my time is wasted because I don´t get anywhere because I am subjected to randomness over and over and over again. Because I am not. in. control.

That´s why the title says that Harvest ruined the game for me. Because it put me in the driver seat. It gave me control and let me roam free. It showed me what Path of Exile could be, if the developers were less timid, less afraid of giving the player agency and freedom in the game they wanna play. A modern ARPG, a progressive, fresh, interesting game with players being in control instead of being subjected to some idea that gets thrown their way. A game that belongs in 2020 and not the 1990s.

That´s all I have to say. PoE will never be the same for me, ever. But "a man can hope, dream even and sometimes his dreams come true."

Harvest will be reintroduced in 3.13.

+1. I feel your pain brother. I find it very cruel and tone-deaf for them to make a mechanic like this in the first place while not thinking about future repercussions of what this does to players who farmed for something that ended up as items (crafts stored as an item).

Very disregarding of the player's time and effort and overall showing a lack of remorse for people who are sad, upset, and betrayed by this. Imagine a new or even veteran player playing something like Harvest and the league becomes their favorite league ever, not just because of the crafting system, but because of the role-playing aspect of Harvest and making the garden itself and the devs just tell you in the end that they don't want to take the time to balance it so that it can go core. This is the most disappointed I have been with GGG since a very long time. It's almost as awful as them not bringing back Synthesis, I still have hope that we will see Synthesis with its original mechanics back in the game one day. Anyone who actually defends this type of behavior really has no standards and is fine with being treated as a lab rat beta tester. I mean seriously, how can you justify just being told the content you enjoyed being thrown away or you having no say in it? I will never understand it. Maybe GGG will fix this in the future, I still have hope, we can only try looking forward to the future and hope for the best.

Also, people might argue that the garden to them is something they don't like or don't want to do every league, but these were all complaints about previous league mechanics that people are just not used to yet.

The garden was literally so intuitive that if you actually took 2 seconds out of your day to read what each item does or understand the layout, you didn't even need a guide to make a good layout either. They could have made it even more intuitive than this but at that point, it would just be a gimmick and even then people would find something to complain about because it's not something that they enjoy so instead of giving constructive criticism they just scream for something to be removed from the game, while selfishly not caring about others who did enjoy this content and want it to stay.

If people are so against making the garden themselves, the best approach to fixing this that tons of others have proposed is being able to copy/paste other people's layouts for the garden, so that once you have enough lifeforce, you can just export/import someone's garden layout as you are able to do with hideouts. That way the people who actually don't like the garden for some reason are pleased and the people who do like the garden can still build it however they want.

All that being said, they did say they will bring it back in 3.13 though, so be patient. It only fears me to read on Reddit where the devs claim that Harvest will be different in terms of how it's interacted with in 3.13, most likely suggesting that they will strip whatever was original about the league as they did with Synthesis and make it into something boring as usual for the more simple-minded audience who can't handle critical thinking in a game.

I skipped Heist entirely and I don't even get on Standard anymore either because everyone on my friendslist just says offline for the most part. As of now, I'm just waiting to see if they will bring the garden back at least with 3.13 because obviously the crafts are in need of a balance and will be balanced somehow, but if they actually removed the role-playing aspect that came with the garden, then there's not much will for me to play the game anymore tbh and plenty of other games to go to that offer more than this. But yeah, hopefully, that's not the case and as said before, can only look forward to the future and hope for the best.

"

_Daybit_ wrote:

Harvest will be reintroduced in 3.13.

I know, thanks. But we both know how that will work out, don´t we?

The developers are afraid of the players being in control. Because they are afraid of players losing interest in the game. Of them not coming back.

Therefor we probably won´t see the garden coming back and if we do it will not be designable by the players themselves because "oh noes, we can´t have players significantly influence a gamemechanic. What if they become bored of it?!" And we won´t see the powerful crafts again and if we do they will be rarer than real-life diamonds because "oh noes, we can´t give players control over the gear because what if they lose interest in a game that is balanced around players having trash-gear instead of the potentially available gear?!"

It´s fear. Fear of player agency that drives all decision to pile randomness on top of each other. Listen to interviews or podcasts with or even presentations by the Lead Devs. Just listen and you will hear exactly what I mean.

"

Azdrubel wrote:

I know, thanks. But we both know how that will work out, don´t we?

The developers are afraid of the players being in control. Because they are afraid of players losing interest in the game. Of them not coming back.

Therefor we probably won´t see the garden coming back and if we do it will not be designable by the players themselves because "oh noes, we can´t have players significantly influence a gamemechanic. What if they become bored of it?!" And we won´t see the powerful crafts again and if we do they will be rarer than real-life diamonds because "oh noes, we can´t give players control over the gear because what if they lose interest in a game that is balanced around players having trash-gear instead of the potentially available gear?!"

It´s fear. Fear of player agency that drives all decision to pile randomness on top of each other. Listen to interviews or podcasts with or even presentations by the Lead Devs. Just listen and you will hear exactly what I mean.

I hope they'll find a way to do that in more interesting way.
I used to dislike the garden mechanic just like many players, but come to think it's fine if you will have shared garden across leagues, so you don't have to setup it in each league from scratch (like Hideout is shared).

Thanks for your TED talk. I didn't even try Harvest because I was afraid it would have the exact effect you describe on me - and be cause I only play std anyways, I hate starting from 0.

That said:

"

Azdrubel wrote:

All of that, these experiences and observations, got me thinking. That whole sense of progress, of fun, of achieving a goal I have set myself... it is all locked behind randomness. It´s not because my character isn´t good enough, not because I am not good enough, but because it´s unlikely. There is simply no skill, no player agency involved. Because the likelyhood of me crafting or finding any item that is better (if at all possible) than what I currently have, is lower than me being the single only winner of the national lottery in Germany. Twice. Successively. It feels like there is nothing in this game that is genuinely "hard", genuinely challenging. Everything that we players perceive of as "hard" is gated behind RNG bullshit. It´s hard because it´s unlikely.

And it FUCKING SUCKS! I feel punished for playing, punished for engaging with content, punished for liking a skill that is not meta or too clunky or underpowered to work on trash gear. I feel like my time is wasted because I don´t get anywhere because I am subjected to randomness over and over and over again. Because I am not. in. control.

This is so spot on. The amounts of RNG in this game are so annoying.

"

Azdrubel wrote:

...

OP, I had very similar feelsing when starting Heist. I have tremendously enjoyed Harvest's deterministic crafting even if league mechanics were not very enticing or pleasent to interact with (dreaded garden setup and need for lots of micro management).

Harvest was a league where I played most time ever in my history with PoE, and I have clocked close to 5k hours in this game.

The above statement is no longer true because Heist has now taken the lead. It took a while to get accustomed to new reality, of not having deterministic crafting at my disposal, and several characters at lvl90 to reach a moment when I was able to forget about Harvest.

All it took was to farm enough currency and find a powerful-enough build that would allow me to create character rivaling those I build in Harvest. Sure, lack of deterministic forced me to engage in trading more than I like to and it also forced me to use stronger, well-rounded skill instead of anything I desired to in Harvest.

The fact deterministic crafting is coming back in 3.13 in some form, most likely diluted a bit, makes me very happy. Lets hope 3.13 deterministic crafting would have at least 1/2 the potential of the original. Hell, I would even take just a few crafts such as resistance swap and specific-exalts while not introducing removal and replacement crafts to maintain some level of balance.

PS. My Pathfinder wears 2 items I found myself--Replica Alberon's and my resistance ring--everything else was either crafted or bought. I have one item in last 70 hours, my belt, which I decided to splurge some Exalts in trade. Gear progression was biggest draw of deterministic crafting for me and it definitely makes PoE without deterministic crafting less compelling for me.

Harvest was a sloppy bandaid on a bigger problem.

So after however many years of everyone having a difficult time crafting perfect items, one league changes that and people want it back? You mean people want gear that used to take years, in days? No way!

player please this entire OP is just one big moaning cry

Harvest was terrible. Gardening should never be a part of ARPGs. On top of that it was like loading up a cheat program for a single player game to get the top gear and stats. There is no challenge nor fun in that other than very very short term. The effect on such things are exactly what the OP is describing. A feeling of being OP for that league and the rest of the leagues will feel shit because you then have to work hard to get good items. It is unsustainable and unhealthy for the game.

Luckily I saw where it was heading and stopped playing Harvest before it could ruin my love for actually grinding for items. Sure I would be willing to discuss/accept easier ways to obtain medium to good items, but the top end should always be super hard to get or there is no joy remaining.