I'm Tired of Content Being Cut From PoE, Taking a Break from PoE for 3.12 Heist League

Heist looks kind of cool, but it doesn't seem like my cup of tea. It reminds me of the Player-Owned Ports from Runescape, which I like in Runescape but the whole Heist idea seems kind of played out as expressed by Dan Harmon (creator of Rick and Morty), who in Season 4, Episode 3 of Rick and Morty (yes I know, crucify me for watching Rick and Morty), states Rick Sanchez's disdain for heist movies made by filmmakers, such as David Lynch, basically pointing out how most heist movies have confusing and pointless plots.

In the middle of explaining a plot a character on the show made for his screenplay for a heist movie, he states "My heist movie is kind of all built around a big crew, with like a cool double-cross and then this big awesome twist where there's like another double-cross, but then it's revealed all those things were a part of the hero's plan and then a different big crew comes in, and their plan is to sort of not have a plan, but that was part of the other guy's plan" in a way to jokingly exemplify how most heist movies play out in the film industry.

I am NOT saying this his how PoE's story will play out with Heist league as I think Heist will likely be decent, just saying that the whole notion of heists is kind of played out, but it can be done right I guess.

Anyway, that being said I think I will be skipping 3.12 and just come back when Harvest is rebalanced and core again. Harvest made me realize how the leagues before Harvest were all kind of the same, where it just involves you killing things without putting in much of any thought into anything. Killing is fun in PoE, don't get me wrong, but it does get rather boring after a while. That is why I and others spend time decorating hideouts instead as a nice side activity to do, and then making of the garden and planting seeds as well as the flower mechanic with the seeds and the awesome t4 boss fights and Oshabi that you would look forward to or have the feeling of looking forward to the future when knowing you get to kill Oshabi and T4 bosses in the future once your seeds grow, finally felt like a breath of fresh air in PoE.

I was understanding of the decision to not make Harvest go core because of the harm it would do to the game's economy and burnout with the changing of mods on armor and weapons, but I thought at the least GGG would see value in making the garden itself go core and keeping the nonharmful crafts like changing your gear's color, sockets, links, infused beachheads that came with upgradable harbinger uniques, infused labyrinths that came with fun new difficult and belt enchants, infused currency like infused engineers orbs, facetor len's (amazing for transferring exp from one gem to another), new bestiary lures that allowed you to specifically target certain beast, winged scarabs, etc.

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 not used to yet and then later once devs decided to get rid of them, people later on complained and it was brought back (bestiary for example, people at first said they did not like bestiary, but they brought it back, just without the nets, which was a good compromise at least).

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.

Even all of this aside, I don't get how the devs can put out something fun and creative like the garden in the game, get people used to its mechanics and not see the value in making it core with 3.12, but then other leagues like Delirium, Metamorph, etc. get put core easily into the game, because it doesn't take as much effort to balance into the game and also because it fits the genre of an ARPG more. I was fine with this cutting of content from the game happening the first couple of times, but I don't want to feel this same thing anymore again, where at the end of a league, I'm just told all of this fun content I played will be gone or "introduced again in the future", which means most likely a very long time before it is brought back and who knows how much altered into what it was originally, which people fell in love with.

Oftentimes the devs even hurt themselves when they make content that plenty of others find interesting, and then by trying to please everyone, they end up pleasing no one because a large part that liked the content end up quitting the game due to the content being selfishly removed and then you are left with the rest who just agree with everything that the devs say and think this cutting of content from the game is normal so they just go along with it because they don't know any better when in reality, this is very unstable behavior. At the least, this can be used as a learning experience for the devs, although if they just keep making the same mistakes without learning from them, then I don't see much sense or in any of this.

Anyway, apologies for the long read, but those are just my gripes currently. I'm sure 3.12 will be amazing, but I think I'll come back to the game at a later time. See you guys after Heist league.

The garden was not fun or creative. The sacred grove's implementation was terrible in almost every single aspect. Setting up the garden is a chore and managing the garden is a tedious and uninteresting process. Manually planting every T2+ seed is just moronic. Whilst I'm sure there are people that enjoyed the actual crafting aspect - I think you will find that there were very few players that found the sacred grove enjoyable.

This applies equally to horticraft stations, who came up with this garbage? Why not have a single horticraft station, or one for each colour seed with expandable slots, and a search function similar to the crafting bench? This again applies to trading. The crafts should have been tradeable (similar to beast crafts) OR made items account bound. If you weren't using a platform such as TFT, you were always running the risk of getting scammed, or potentially someone bricking your item by applying the wrong craft.

All of the above is applicable to the grove in general, and not to the actual crafting aspect.

My view in relation to the actual crafting was that it was busted beyond belief. It was straight up dumb. You could easily craft absolutely insane gear in a very short period of time without too much effort. The kind of gear that people were running in the guantlet within 2-3 days was just..absurd.

Perhaps they will eventually allow for some of the crafting options to make their way into the game, but I would rather have nothing than the broken item editor that harvest league brought.

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BrettLee wrote:

The garden was not fun or creative.

False, unfortunately. A lot of players actually enjoy and love Harvest and the garden activity that it came with and there were polls on Twitter and Reddit saying how Harvest is actually one of the best leagues in a while, but what can you do, some have strong opinions and try unfairly labeling "all of the community" as having the same opinion as yours.

People loved Harvest, not just for the crafting of weapons and armor, but the fun gathering of seeds and making your garden aspect as well, not to mention the other aspects that are not harmful to the game like changing colors, sockets, links, infused beachheads, infused labs, belt enchants, etc.

In addition, I saw several Reddit posts with users saying how they liked making the garden and the flowers with the seeds, it finally gave players a nice activity to do in the game besides decorating hideouts for when they are tired of making new builds. I don't think it deviated too much from PoE too much either because you got to fight cool t1-t4 seed bosses and Oshabi. I don't see what's not fun with this unless you are only used to doing the same content over and over and have no open mind to something new. I know others had mixed opinions about the garden, but I really enjoyed it personally. To each their own I guess.

And don't even get me started on the players who either did not even try Harvest or have little to no challenges, meaning they did not bother to even engage with the league mechanic and they are going to go on here and tell that "league is bad" when they did not even bother trying out the league or tried it for a very short amount of time without an open mind and decided "oh, too complicated/not simple enough for me" or "I don't like the deviance from regular killing where it doesn't take much thinking"

I think it's players like you who are pessimistic and can't see the good in a league like this that prevent any actual creative and fun progress to be made in the game and instead, we are limited to only leagues that involve killing things mindlessly without putting in much thought into anything, which is fun for a while don't get me wrong, but it does get rather bothering after a while. That is why a lot of people enjoy Hideout Decorating as well.

The more side activities that there are to do in the game, the better and even GGG knows this, because in their post: (https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2924277),
they literally tell you that they would like Harvest to go core, but they just can't CURRENTLY because either it would take too much time for them to balance or they can't divide their full attention to it at this time. Either way, Harvest will be core one day eventually, whether you claim to not enjoy it or not. They are not just going to throw away this much content that was made with it, same as with Synthesis, it was brought back in one way or another. Although, I would argue that Synthesis could have been brought back into the game in some larger-scale other than just getting to play Synthesis content from rare maps that you barely get as drops and rather introduce some way to partake in the tyle system from how it was originally with Synthesis and make it not forced, but rather something players have a choice to partake in.

And sure, you can call all of this hypocritical because I am rejecting to play Heist, which is also creative and unique, but this type of content from Heist does not appeal to me as I don't like these type of mechanics in other games that have it as well as having this feeling of stealing/robbing from other people while engaging in such activity, as opposed to the peaceful nature of gardening and as stated previously, I do not want to go through the same thing at the end of a league where all of the fun I had with the league and anything related to the league has a chance of being removed from the game because the devs don't see value in a league that was fun for us and can be balanced enough to make core and also end up changing their minds or have a fickle, non-reliable process of keeping only dull and boring league content but throwing away fun and creative content like Harvest, or rather introducing it in the future, which we have no idea of when that will be and how altered it will end up, given how attached we already are to something like Harvest, not just for the modification of armor and weapons, but for the activity of making the garden, gathering seeds, etc. itself.

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drklrd wrote:

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MLGonthorian wrote:

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BrettLee wrote:

The garden was not fun or creative.

False, unfortunately.

Unfortunately an opinion cannot be false.

Except that they never explicitly stated what they wrote was opinion and can be open to interpretation whether what they wrote was opinion or fact. Rather, they wrote something as a fact from the tonality of their sentence and then, later on, claim it's "an opinion" under false pretenses.

You ASSUMED what they wrote was an "opinion" when they facetiously stated it as a fact. They don't explicitly state it's an opinion, so that they can try to have it both ways, but then the same person will back peddle after they are called out on it. Read again what was written:

"the garden was not fun or creative."

Ok, according to who? Yourself? When I literally just outlined there were people on Reddit and Twitter saying the opposite and how they liked gardening. So going into the conversation with "is" "not" etc. without even stating it's your opinion is false from the start, because it's not accounting other people's opinions and stating his/her own opinion like it's fact when people clearly have different opinions about this.

You need to chill out.

The league had the steepest drop off in player base after 1 week, yet you are here arguing that the league was well received and loved by many.

I never said that nobody enjoyed it,so not entirely sure what your point is. I too, can search and find threads and posts that support or oppose literally anything. That doesn't make them objectively true or correct, nor does it give an argument any weight.

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MLGonthorian wrote:

And don't even get me started on the players who either did not even try Harvest or have little to no challenges, meaning they did not bother to even engage with the league mechanic and they are going to go on here and tell that "league is bad" when they did not even bother trying out the league or tried it for a very short amount of time without an open mind and decided "oh, too complicated/not simple enough for me" or "I don't like the deviance from regular killing where it doesn't take much thinking"

Why did they not try harvest? Why did they not bother to interact with harvest? I wonder?

I tried it. I did not like it. I have explained why I did not like it. I'm not entirely sure what makes you think that (a) my opinions are wrong or invalid and (b) people choosing not to engage or persist with the league mechanic and (c) having the steepest drop off in player base is not reflective or relevant in evaluating how well a league has been perceived.

Not exactly sure what makes you think I am pessimistic, perhaps you aren't sure what the word means. Given your inability to construct a simple argument, that would not come as a surprise. I am actually looking forward to the new league. The league mechanic itself looks pretty interesting and the replica items/gems could open the door for a number of new builds.

If harvest does eventually go core, I think it is more likely that it will be some degree of deterministic or additional crafts that are added to the game. Not the grove, at least not without some pretty significant changes / streamlining.

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MLGonthorian wrote:

It can be, when you state it as fact, rather than an opinion under false pretenses. Read again what was written:

"the garden was not fun or creative."

Ok, according to who? One person? When I literally just outlined there were people on Reddit and Twitter saying the opposite and how they liked gardening. So going into the conversation with "is" "not" etc. without even stating it's your opinion is false from the start, because it's not accounting other people's opinions and stating his/her own opinion like it's fact when people clearly have different opinions about this.

Would you prefer I start every single sentence with, "In my opinion..."? You have more than a few screws loose.

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BrettLee wrote:

You need to chill out.

Ah, interesting tactic, I "can't form simple arguments" but you would rather cling to using a fallacy and claim I "need to chill out" to try to invalidate my opinion. Also resorting to attack on character fallacy by saying "I have loose screws" to also try to invalidate my opinion.

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BrettLee wrote:

The league had the steepest drop off in player base after 1 week, yet you are here arguing that the league was well received and loved by many.

Also false, I love how people throw this around whenever they clearly have a hatred for a league given it's not the usual brainless activity of killing things without giving it much thought that they are used to, but then don't link any actual data to back up their claims or if they do, they link some flawed or biased statistics that has nearly the same numbers if any difference at all in the numbers

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BrettLee wrote:

I never said that nobody enjoyed it, so not entirely sure what your point is.

You did though, and now back-peddling after I pointed it out. "The garden was not fun or creative" So a blanket statement like this should be interpreted somehow as you enjoying the league??

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BrettLee wrote:

I am actually looking forward to the new league.

Good for you, I hope you have fun. See how that works? I did not go into your opinion with some passive-aggressive remark/slight like you did from the start.

Sure Heist looks different in a sense and I'm sure it will be amazing, but just not my cup of tea. On top of the fact that I sincerely enjoyed the making of the garden activity from PoE as it finally made me really enjoy the game again and I would rather come back to PoE when Harvest is balanced enough to be in the game again as mentioned by the devs who say Harvest needs balance before it goes core. Sorry if my opinion caused you any consternation.

I mainly liked Harvest for the deterministic crafting. The gardening mechanic is something I don't care either way on.

Then again, given how RNG laden this game is, I'm kind of a sucker for anything that gives players agency on what they get for reward, crafting included. It's why I love Betrayal league so much and why I enjoyed the crafting in Harvest.

I just don't like trading, especially if GGG and their more masochistic fans are hard set on forcing us to engage in the system that is polluted with services, scammers and price fixers. Any leagues that circumvent this and let me progress through the game at my speed, on my own terms, I greatly support it.

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Pizzarugi wrote:

I mainly liked Harvest for the deterministic crafting. The gardening mechanic is something I don't care either way on

People might say this, but like I've said previously, this is the same type of thing people complained about with labyrinth when it first came out because they were not yet used to it, etc. Where people just say they like the enchant and ascendancy point system but don't want it to be locked behind doing the labyrinth. Well, that seems rather boring if you ask me. How would you rather engage with the mechanic? Just killing monsters to get the crafts without the garden instead? Or do you just want the rewards from doing the labyrinth or something like the garden crafts be handed to you instead without doing the actual labyrinth or gardening mechanic? Because if so, you limit the game down to just killing things as usual, which is fun for a while, but it gets boring eventually.

Same thing goes for hideout decorating, it all comes down to just having more options or more side content to do in the game. I think people are just hesitant with change too much when it's something fun and creative that they are not used to. Then when it gets taken away, only then do people realize what they truly had.

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MLGonthorian wrote:

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Pizzarugi wrote:

I mainly liked Harvest for the deterministic crafting. The gardening mechanic is something I don't care either way on

People might say this, but like I've said previously, this is the same type of thing people complained about with labyrinth when it first came out because they were not yet used to it, etc. Where people just say they like the enchant and ascendancy point system but don't want it to be locked behind doing the labyrinth. Well, that seems rather boring if you ask me. How would you rather engage with the mechanic? Just killing monsters to get the crafts without the garden instead? Or do you just want the rewards from doing the labyrinth or something like the garden crafts be handed to you instead without doing the actual labyrinth or gardening mechanic? Because if so, you limit the game down to just killing things as usual, which is fun for a while, but it gets boring eventually.

Same thing goes for hideout decorating, it all comes down to just having more options or more side content to do in the game. I think people are just hesitant with change too much when it's something fun and creative that they are not used to. Then when it gets taken away, only then do people realize what they truly had.

In response to your labyrinth objective, my main objection to it which I'm sure a lot of people would agree on, is that the labyrinth bounces you back to the starting point if you die or disconnect. It doesn't help its case when the uber trial also requires a key to enter. Another issue with it is that it's the only content in the game that has you go through gauntlets of traps to fight a boss several times. The game doesn't demand you do this anywhere else (and I'm not counting trials). It's just there.

There's other ways to have done the Harvest mechanics without it being about building your farm one time and then planting seeds. I love complex leagues, something that takes more brain power than "push a button and just slaughter everything until they stop spawning". However, building a farm, planting seeds, and waiting to harvest them all isn't necessarily a complex league. Is it more complex than Delirium or Legion? Of course. Is it as complex as Delve or Betrayal or Synthesis? No.

I'm not arguing about getting rid of side content. I'm all for keeping whatever leagues we get, especially if they give rewards based on what you actually wanted. I'd love to keep Harvest, preferably the deterministic crafting.

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Pizzarugi wrote:

...I'd love to keep Harvest, preferably the deterministic crafting.

Kind of missed the whole point of what I wrote, but sure. And either way, they stated in their post as well as on Reddit that Harvest will be back with the garden, except with rebalanced crafts, so it's fine to think this way I guess, but the garden will be back eventually anyway, just with less powerful crafts you can obtain, which is good.