Something Worth Remembering About Synthesis. (Harvest Nerf Conversation)

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Pizzarugi wrote:

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innervation wrote:

They aren't even taking away Harvest, they're nerfing the top end of stupidity and buffing its base spawn rate. Synthesis wishes it would have gotten that treatment.

Buffing spawn chance by 3% isn't something to be happy for. I bet they're nerfing the spawn chance passives next league.

Also, the "top end of stupidity" is also what the players who don't trade or discord used to genuinely craft their own gear.

Look you and char1983 convinced me to consider the massive perspective gap between trade temp league and SSF environments - I really do sympathize and don't let anyone say no one ever changes their minds as a result of reading posts.

I'm aware this is a problem of GGG's making, the players weren't knocking their door down for this version of core Harvest. You also have to be aware that they balance around the temp trade league player who engages with the economy. There's no way around that other than more and more of the playerbase migrates to SSF SC/HC temp/std.

If I could burn the discord, remove the Harvest atlas ascendancies, and nerf the 'problem crafts' while buffing what remains I would. I'm stumped that GGG is only hitting 1 of 3. I guess nothing is final till we see patch notes though.

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Vesuvius079 wrote:

Some guy in another thread was calling tailwind elusive boots with T1 life and move speed and good resists “medium tier” gear. Lol.

This is another difference in perspective. To the crafter, these incredible items may still be 45 crafts away from 'mirror tier'. To players of the actual game items like that and their practical effect on our ability to kill mobs may as well be mirror tier.

So players of PoE toss around the term mirror tier, perhaps when we shouldn't. People playing the TFT discord game have a very different definition indeed.

Funny/sad anecdote I played in a private league to league start Harvest and watched as people pulled their hair out rerolling remove/add life and resist rolls on their stuff. I'd look at their piece and see T2 or T3 of the roll and be like 'what are you rolling for? That piece is already nuts it has 3 influence mods, life and double resist, why would you roll over T2 life? Move on to the next piece, yeah?'

They can't. They won't. Call that what you will.

Now before I start off my boring essay, keep in mind that I'm a diehard Synthesis enthusiast, so I'll very likely be very biased and go off topic for a moment.

I don't really think that Synthesis and Harvest share the same spirit. One thing that I see quite often that irks me when people talk about Synthesis is that everyone places emphasis on the crafting part while completely forgetting how much content in general Synthesis had aside from the Synthesiser. The memory fragments in maps, the nice Cavas & Zana voice overs, the memory nexus, all the different memory areas that allowed you to make paths to your liking, the boss fights which are still the best end game fights in PoE (nothing comes close to Cortex except for Atziri), and the unique atmosphere that came with all of that.

Harvest in comparison, while I liked the garden's ambience, it basically felt like PoB's item editor with extra steps. I actually liked the garden minigame because it was much different than the usual click x mobs spawn loot pinata and it gave you something to do and figure out (how to setup up a proper garden), but aside from that it had no depth like Synthesis did.

Synthesis allowed you to craft completely new items for which you paid a fair price because you had to give up influence modifiers, whereas Harvest just allows you to craft already craftable items easier, it brings nothing new to the table. Sure it has some cool boss fights such as Janaar (blue dragon) or the Wild t4 seed boss, but that's about it, even Oshabi as the main boss is a very lame fight.

What really annoys me with the whole Synthesis situation is ggg making questionable decisions and the community being textbook hypocrites.

GGG making questionable decisions: To this day I'm still confused about their decision for Synthesis not to go core. It was the richest league in terms of content, yet ggg scraped all of it like it was a Metamorph tier league. All the different zones, the VOs, the amounts of fractured mods and Synthesising combinations, the different memory fragment templates, the boss fights, all if it gone like it was some cheap content made in 6 hours by 2 interns at ggg's. What really pisses me off is that they completely scrapped Synthesis while they added poor & absolutely boring content leagues to the core game such as Metamorph & Blight. What exactly was so good about these 2 for them to go core? A bunch of organ & oil collecting? Really, that's how low the bar is for content?

Community being textbook hypocrites: Remember during Synthesis when one of those crazy crafts that took numerous attempts and an abundance of currency to make showed up on the forums/reddit? Everyone was making those corny "Synthesis was a mistake" remarks and considering that absurd powercreep and questioning ggg's game balance. Fastforward to this league, all those hilariously broken double influenced elevated modifiers with other t2/t1 affixes made by Harvest are suddenly good for the game and everyone is congratulating each other on their broken Harvest items. Why is no one calling Harvest a mistake now? Trying to tell me that Onslaught implicit on boots was a mistake and absurd powercreep, but 35%ms, t1 life, 2 ascendancy influence modifiers on two-toned boots is balanced and isn't a mistake? Yeah, let's take taliwind, a mechanic exclusive to deadeye and only deadeye, and put it as a regular hunter mod on boots, what could go wrong with that?

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TheSaltPrincess wrote:

They will never step back from a great idea and a great system. they will only refine it until in their eyes and not our it is perfected.

I hope you are right here, but I can't agree that that applies to Synthesis. Harvest in Ritual was reintroduced practically in it's full form, whereas we occasionally get teased with Synthesis i.e fractured/Synthesised items showing up in Harvest, then showing up in Heist, then showing up in Rituals. They did bring back the bossfights at least which made me quite happy since I consider them the best end game fights as previously mentioned, but that's still not it. Where's Cavas? The Synthesiser? The whole Memory Nexus?

The reason why I don't think Harvest & Synthesis share the same spirit, is because Harvest is as a whole oriented around crafting and crafting only, whereas Synthesis had crafting as 1 aspect while the rest of it's content (Memory Nexus) served as a much-needed end game alternative.

The only piece of content that shares the exact same spirit with Synthesis is Delve. Both feature a crafting aspect (Synthesiser & Fossils), but aside from that single aspect both are very rich and deep (get it? deep delving hehehehe) in content and serve as alternatives to mapping.

Additionaly what sucked about them removing Synthesis was the fact that it was a very solid alternative to mindlessly farming t16s all day. Same reason why Delve & Heist feel nice because they give me something I can do for hours that aren't maps. Synthesis with a few proper tweaks would easily be on par with Delve, I just feel like the constant whining from reddit pushed ggg away from even considering the idea of polishing Synthesis for the core game, as sad as that is, so I'm hoping that all this Harvest whining doesn't push ggg away from going through with their proposed changes.

I usually agree with your threads, even this one, and I support ggg's Harvest tweaks, it was just that 1 thing that you wrote that made me go off on this wall of text rant.