Crafting that doesn't start with Ground loot just short circuits the gameplay loop

Compare "printing items" in Harvest/Ritual+Harvest leagues, where you started with a "project" that came from ground loot you picked up (or previously crafted stuff you bought in shopping league but never mind that). This ENHANCED the gameplay loop it made items on the ground have more potential to be exciting in my opinion.

Versus "printing items" in the graveyard completely from scratch. where this "project" aspect exists in the graveyard to a smaller extent, but its totally missing out on the chance to make every rare drop have that prospect to be an item you might make better. its a missed chance to enhance the gameplay loop IMO

Both are immensely powerful crafting systems, and each has their particularly insane outcomes but ignoring those for a minute:

Harvest gave you project items that "told a story" so to speak, they had a journey to them, you could get honestly "attached" to an item. It encouraged normal players (non shopping focused) to make decent items better. It made looking at loot MORE EXCITING. This in turn made playing the game more fun moment to moment.

Giving an item you pick up from the ground a "story" or a progression arc like your character has is IMO one of the most impactful ways that items in a game like POE can be given MORE IMPORTANCE and feeling of "weight". And IMO its one of the few ways that GGG has kind of slept on and not become savvy to. Despite this being a core pillar of POE's design (item permanence or weight)

I really think future crafting leagues should learn this lesson. If the worry is about increased probability of making good items because you're starting with a couple of good player selected mods already then adjust this on the crafting RNG side.

Doesn't feel like an ARPG now that 99.9999999%+ of wearable drops (especially weapon drops) on the ground from mapping are laughable garbage that can't even be fixed using the crafting bench.

The game is so incredibly disconnected from D2 where it supposedly draws so much inspiration.

Surely the game already has plenty of ways to make the items you drop better? If items on the ground aren't "exciting" enough with the first fifteen variations on crafting I don't expect adding a sixteenth is going to change that for anyone (numbers pulled from rear; illustrative purposes only).

At this point crafting systems may as well do something different purely for novelty value rather than just adding to the list. Especially if they're not doing anything wildly new like Crucible skill trees.

not totally related to the OP, but somewhat related to Gus's comment: crafting league mechanics really need to be about ADDING something new to an item. Always. Otherwise it will forever be fossil copypaste, harvest copypaste, essence copypaste, etc.

Crucible did this well. Even scourge did this well. but the best was really Synthesis imo. Haunted mods......swing and a miss.

Sure sure....you get the "borrowed power" crowd up in arms, but the CRAFTING in a crafting league should almost all be exclusively higher power or brand new interactions, and basically NO "regular" crafting options.

Actually...I guess that is essentially what OP is talking about.

a good crafting addition does 1 of 2 things

gives you a special mod to start with, and then you continue to use other systems to finish the items

takes a near finished item, and adds a special mod to it.

the graveyard does neither. if you arent following a guide, it shits out garbage. if you min/max with a specific guide, it shits out 6x tier1 triple fractured nonsense.

the graveyard is a **bad** system. its awful for casuals because the items are terrible. its awful for the high end players because it makes every other source of rare items IRRELLEVANT.

I could see this crafting method replacing Delve.

Delve is binary but also far less expansive and very out of date.