Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

"

Kioskara wrote:

"

This sentiment was summed up by a member of our design team who recently said "We don't want to take away the feeling of closing your eyes and Exalting an item, scared to see whether you ruined it or not."

This right here is what drives me away, not what makes me want to keep playing.

Truth.

Harvest has that feeling when you do an add speed or replace life, with excitement and fear, just without the soul-crushing defeat of having it completely scrapped if you fail. That feeling of ruining an item is why I never, since alpha when act 2 didn’t even have quests, literally NEVER crafted using exalts. It just isn’t worth the cost and disappointment to me. Now, to give us Harvest, which we love, then take it away because you want us to... ‘enjoy’ the feeling of ruining items we put a ton of work into... I just don’t know what to say. It makes me discouraged because my opinion doesn’t matter. It makes me discouraged because what I enjoy is being removed. It, most of all, makes me discouraged because what I want out of the game and its itemization and crafting are clearly something the design team do not want me to have or enjoy.

I really do not like this change. I made my first build from scratch this league and deterministic harvest crafting made it possible. Crafting is very difficult to get into even as an intermediate player. There are too many crafting mistakes to be made can ruin your experience. PLEASE CONSIDER IMPLEMENTING OTHER METHODS OF DETERMINISTIC CRAFTING. You guys do great work and this is a fun game but it is very difficult and I don't like how to 1% can break trade league and hold items hostage from the average player.

I actually do not know what to say.

I didn't use harvest crafting for my items at all this league.

I simply played and mapped and learned about the new atlas.

I quit harvest 2 weeks in because I hated the whole gardening aspect.
I quit Heist 2 weeks in because meh.

This league with the changes to the atlas? Holy shit! I learned the Sirius fight! Sirius Awaken 9? No worries man.

I don't expunge him either. I actually have to play the fight. Same for any other boss. I have beaten all the content on my "mediocre" level 96 Caustic Arrow trickster.

I have wasted around 40 ex trying to self craft a better bow and failed and hated it and still I have 40+ex which is fine for me.

Whatever happened to playing the game guys?

The state of the game, from my pov, is fantastic.

There is so many different ways of making currency. Ritual itself is great and very powerful, but you have to engage with the mechanic. Nobody seems to though. Everyone is just trying to make fast exalts from farming harvest crafts to sell.


F it? It has become so easy to make plenty of exalts and hit red tier maps. Even as a casual.

I am sorry that your super personalised, super individual vegan warrior molten shell lightning spire trap berserker is now not feasable anymmore.

SO many builds still available to enjoy. Like SO many. Even fantastic and cheap league starters that are easy to reproduce.

What I read here in plenty of your comments is greed.

Exalts, exalts, exalts, exalts. Currency currency currency. Super Rich vs Super poor.

Most not having even played the game for more than 2-3 leagues (incl ritual).

I have first played PoE when it looked clunky and shitty and barely had 3 acts. I quit then as it was meh.

I came back with Abyss and been here ever since.

Only within the last 2-3 leagues have I gotten to the point where I beat all the content in the game, know my way around fairly way, get better at crafting, resource management, map juicing etc.-

Sure I struggle too to reach the currency required to make the builds that will doubtlessly catapult my farming capabilities to the next level but I do not mind the journey.

And ARPG is always about the journey. or at least it should be.

If you play a game with the mindset of an endgame player, you will never be satisfied no matter what game you play.

And all these D2R/D4 referals. Well. Good Riddance. Dont let the door hit you on the way out.

D2R is the same game it was 20 years ago just with some fresh sneakers and a new jacket.

D4? MMORPG ovberlay overworld shit? Nah ty. But go for gold. I dont mind you ex WoW players leaving.

I am utterly amazed how easy it is for a company with really really shitty customer service and business practices to re-energise their good little sheeple to flock back to the herd. You know where your home is huh?

This game her, from my pov, is a true gem and has only become more polished with every league.

Just because your exalt printer is being demolished and you now have to play the game, as in the ARPG, with some actual Action again, you talk about quitting.

Well then dudes. Close the forum, close the game, uninstall the game and fo.

That is how I see it. Or stfu. Suck it up and get better and find your own reasons to play the game.

My mind is set on this and I am certain it will still bring tons of fun and entertainment.

You mustnt watch the YT videos thinking: "Yea this is gonna be me in 2 days!" Awesome!

Nope. And it shouldnt.

There are plenty of fluff games out there for you to play where you can casually become the overlord of doom power killer demondestroyer of awesome legends whilst feeding your 3 children and working 50 hrs a day.

Time to move on then.

Having a playerbase with everyone being equally geared ruins a game as it would ruin the economy as well. Socialism doesnt work in real life and it sure as fuck doesnt in an ARPG.

Basically (Wo-)man dafuq up or get out.

gg....................................

There's so many better ways you could have went about this GGG. You need to find a better balance than constantly leaning towards the High end Streamers while seemingly leaving the common folk in the dust in both Gameplay mechanics and Microtransactions.

Nobody in their right mind uses choas or exalts on their gear in a trade league. Nobody. You guys should know better.

I gotta be honest, this is the kind of stuff Blizzard pulls. And as a player,I personally fing that kind of development off putting to say the least.

You can't always cater to the players, but to constantly favor the hardcore lifers at the expense of the common player is just foolish and having your finger a mile away from the pulse.

Do the right thing. Keep Harvest as is until you find a much better solution to this. You need to toss your player base a bone on occassion. You gotta do better. You gotta pay better attention to how your player base actually plays your game.


Side note: For the love of all thats under the sun, would it hurt you guys to cycle your older Microtransactions down to lower prices after theyve been out awhile so that the common folk can actually purchase some without taking out a 2nd mortgage please? If you think about it- Doing it that way will almost certainly increase your revenue by a ton, the whales will always be whales, trust me.


My 2 cents. Do the right thing GGG. Diablo 2/4 are not far away, not to mention other ARPGs, It's been awhile, but theres some great alternatives right around the corner. J/s..


Namaste

First of, I'd like to express that I am a casual player. I do not have 8 hours a day to play or even 4, and I believe this to be the real problem balancing around for a game like PoE. I understand it is not an easy task to do and I'm certainly happy it's not my job to do so. I do how ever believe I'm capable of spotting a bad idea fairly easily, that isn't well thought through.

]The first problem

"

The first part of this that concerned us was that Harvest was critical in making the best items (and hence made many other game systems obsolete)

Alternatives to Harvest is fossils and Essences, and while these are much less deterministic, they are not by themselves bad systems. The problem with fossil crafting as an alternative to Harvest crafting is, the debth you have to get to, to get a reliable source of fossils. I cannot say that it's an experience of mine, I base this knowledge on streams and videos of Delving.
As a casual player, I have no idea which mechanics is in place in the debths of the mines, but I do know to get a reliable source of fossils, I have to go to debths that I can't realisticly hope to reach. Thus Harvest crafting is by default the only viable crafting method for me, when it comes to deterministic outcome.
Essences crafting is a very good way to start a craft, but that's all it is. It has no bigger value in a craft, than throwing endless amounts of Chaos Orbs and Exalted Orbs on an item, hoping it'll show up with the right mods.

Conclusion to problem #1
Harvest crafting was made critical by the bad design of obtaining and functionality of other systems, thus those systems design is what made them obsolete.

The second problem

"

The second part, where it was inconvenient to trade them, becomes far less of a problem if we can solve the first issue

Itemized crafts, with a limitation on how many you can store, just as it is now.
I unerstand not making the items tradeable is a response on Harvest League, but while items can still be traded between players, it seems to me a bit naive to think the community wouldn't find a way around this, in a matter of seconds.

Conclusion to problem #2
Allow for harvest crafts to be traded as itemized items with a storage limit.

The third problem

"

It's also important that items are hard to perfect.

Yes, an item should be hard to perfect, this comment suggests it was even possible to perfect an item without harvest craft. While I know there is a chance it could be done, that chance is so small, that a realistic outcome of reaching perfection on any given item is an impossibility.
The strongest players in PoE will always be strong, but not because they have easy access to gear, but because they know the games mechanics.
As a proof of concept, looking at pob.ninja for the highest DPS on any character through 3.12 and 3.13 you will find in 3.12 heist the player with the most damage was capable of pushing well beyond 2 billion (yes, with a b) dps, while in 3.13 with the access to harvest crafts, the strongest player hasn't actually gotten stronger with another 2 billion dps. The difference is, in harvest there's only 1 player in the billions, while in heist there was 2.

Conclusion to problem #3
Harvest hasn't enabled damage that wasn't previously achievable.

The fourth problem

"

Why would I use a regular Exalted/Divine/Annul Orb when I can get one through Harvest that has a deterministic result?

This way of thinking I simply have no empathy for, no casual player will ever throw an exalted orb on an item. Throwing an exalted orb on an item for a small chance at one stat, compared to the benefit it will give our characters to buy an entire item that enables far more in the builds, makes it a non-viable method of crafting for a casual player.

Conclusion to problem #4
There seems to be a disconnect on how the vast majority of the playerbase actually play the game and what GGG seems to think is going on in the game.

What has Harvest done then?
Harvest has enabled a greater build diversity, looking once again on pob.ninja, during Heist 2 ascendancies made up 50% of the total top tier playerbase, and in 3.13 we find that the same top 50% is occupied by 5 ascendancies. Going to the least played ascendancies the story is making the picture even more clear, only 1 ascendancy class is under 1% in 3.13, while in 3.12 3 classes was under 1%.
For the most powerful players, Harvest Crafting allows for a "flavour of the week/month" type of playstyle, where content creators get to showcase more builds in a single league, thus keeping their content interesting throughout the entirety of the league. And lets not forget, the investment into a single character for these high end players is still hundreds of ex across the entirety of the gear, so it's by no means cheap or easily obtained.

My humble opinion
Back to the drawing board with this "fix", the only people it's going to affect is the casual player base. Top tier players will still get the most powerful gear in the game and will still make builds you didn't anticipate possible. That's going to happen no matter what crafting systems you decide to alter, as more playtime + in debth game knowledge = strong and powerful builds.

"

Jadran wrote:

So wait, several months ago, before Harvest even existed, PoE was a bad game?

Bad game? No. Good game with terrible itemization and a gambling system trying to disguise itself as crafting? Always has been.

Yikes

"

Jadran wrote:

So wait, several months ago, before Harvest even existed, PoE was a bad game?

In this regard? Yes.
There's a reason a lot of people have only ever played two or three weeks into a league. There's a reason a lot of people never engaged in any kind of crafting before harvest. There is a reason some of my friends never recommended anyone this game before ritual league.

PoE has a lot going for it, but gambling your items with currency for miniscule chances of getting something good is definitely not one of those.
And all of the other good things? Don't really matter if people can't progress to that point in the first place.

A lot of people were able to tackle their first Sirus this league and actually see some of the endgame. What's the point of that endgame if it is not achievable by most people in any form?

Why the hell you cant just make augs and anuulments much more rare?! Why the hell you just delete em? You just remove reason to do harvest at all. Fossile craft - deleted. Harvest craft - deleted. Now its not even crafting, its gamble like it was back in 2017 when the only way to craft was chaos spam.
One more patch and one more manifesto made to please raddit and not actual players.
PoE every ligue become more PathOfReddit. More and More and More. Again changes for ppl who dont play the game. Can you stop befor its too late?