[unpopular] Harvest league looks fixed and its actually cool.

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Exxxiled665 wrote:

nothing has changed for people who dont like crafting/micro managing

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Harvest, unlike pretty much every other crafting crafting method in POE is not pure gambling. The reason why high end crafting costs so much usually is mostly because every other step is gambling, and there's multiple steps where getting the wrong mod forces you to start back from step 0 if you fail a 20% annul chance or stuff like that. Oh, did your 20th exalt finally hit the last mod you needed but it's the lowest tier because for some reason we can roll lv1 gear mods in ilv 100 gear? Too bad, there's no way to fix this beyond a gamble that's more likely to just make you start all over.

Now, I don't mean to say there's 0 control over regular crafting, there is. But it's hard to deny that ultimately, crafting most stuff worth more than a couple exalts is a matter of how many pulls on the gambling machine you can afford to fail.

Harvest, on the other hand, fixes everything wrong with regular crafting while still keeping some of the gambling flavor. That low tier mod you rolled on the final step? Now you actually have a way to fix it that's much less likely to ruin your gear. You can actually improve your current gear instead of having to start all over. If your helmet is fine but now you need to go from T3 to T2 resist, you don't need to throw it away, you can farm elemental seeds and try. And yeah you will fail a couple times, but now your gear is temporarily broken instead of permanently unusable. However, they still put smart limitations. There are mods you can't add with harvest. There are mods that are much rarer with harvest. And yes, the highest end stuff remains a gamble. In short, Harvest is the first time I actually feel like I'm crafting and improving gear, not gambling. This is the first time every single non-unique gear I'm using is self crafted. This is the first league where I used an influence exalt instead of selling. Where I buy more fossils than sell. In other words, where I'm actually engaging with a major part of the gameplay.

Ultimately, I don't think harvest is, at it's core "too strong". The real problem is that regular crafting is "too weak" for the average person, and PoE itemization is built around gambling, not crafting. So when we get actual crafting, of course the system is orders of magnitude stronger than what we had and we can make broken gear.

I do not expect harvest to go core, nor do I expect PoE to change its itemization to make harvest "balanced". But honestly, I hope GGG manages to use this league and it's response, as far as crafting engagement goes, to find a system that's much closer to harvest than that mess we call "crafting" is. There has to be a better balance between 90% gambling and 90% deterministic Bis crafting

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You’re right, and if I were designing an arpg from scratch I would design it much closer to the Harvest crafting system than vanilla PoE.

Harvest plays exactly the way Chris has always said he wants the game played, in all of those trade manifestos. People aren’t instantly selling all of their drops as crafting materials to a tiny fraction of top-end crafters; they’re slowly improving their own gear as they build up currency and grind maps. I’ve never been more excited to see a high tier crafting base, or item with rare Incursion or Delve mods, or Conqueror or Annulment Orb drop, than I have this league.

Yes, there are some balance issues, where it’s too easy to hit certain very powerful modifiers deterministically. But this is due to the (let’s be honest here) shambolic mod tag system and the fact that the item mod pools have grown organically and without much scrutiny by GGG over many leagues.

With more careful design and balancing, something like the Harvest craft system, where it’s a bit harder to craft absolutely top-end gear, but there is still a path towards incrementally improving your own gear until it eventually becomes top-end, could work really well. I think Harvest is the best thing that’s happened to the game design-wise since the introduction of the hideout crafting bench.

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The reason I love this league - The more I play it, the more I like it, which is unlike any previous league - is that there are very clear upgrade paths.

In any other league, my belt would be done. I could never ever do anything about this belt, without risking destroying it. It has T1life, T1 inc%Life, FlaskChargeOnCrit, and 3x t2-t4 resistance suffixes, which is a very good belt for an average player like me. Definitely the best belt I've ever had.

However, in this league, I have very clear progression. I can farm until I get a 'Remove Crit mod' to get rid of the useless prefix, and I can 'Remove <Cold/Chaos/Lightning>, Add <Cold/Chaos/Lightning>' slowly, but surely, until I get 3xt1 suffixes.

And all of that is just my belt

The simple fact that I can see a very clear upgrade path keeps me from burning out of the game. Normally I would've burned out from playing this game already, but I've played (according to steam) 154 hours in the last 2 weeks

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In terms of player experience and progression i think it could possibly do more than every other league mechanic player retention-wise.(not the case now i know, but with some tweaks it will) The ability to progress a characters gear this way while playing the game is huge.

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Yeah absolutely. Its the first time I'm wearing a 6l chest I made myself and off coloured myself. I found a 6l base and got it pretty good with life and resists and inc armour.

Nothing amazing but its perfectly serviceable until I hit end of red maps and im super stoked with that.

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I play this game since breach league and this league is the first time that I can craft my own stuff instead of buying them.

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Exxxiled665 wrote:

drop rates are still terrible

also nothing has changed for people who dont like crafting/micro managing