PoE peaked in 3.13 and I am afraid that it may never go back up again... version:2

The nerfs craft system -harvest to be specific- and characters has received made Poe a worse game in every way possible than its former self which can be simply named as 3.13. I am afraid that Poe may never go back to its old glory -3.13-.

League mechanic and the boss -Trialmaster- are so messed up that it makes me change my route whenever I see them on a map. I have been facetious about not being able to 40/40 in a league before but I am really serious this time.

The Trialmaster boss fight is possibly the worst of all PoE bosses ever been introduced to the game. I am not even mentioning how rare it is. It is so rare that I have encountered only 4 bosses so far and I made 3 characters leveled 98, 96, and 92 respectively.

Overall, the changes made hit the casual players hardest. Naturally, 90% of my friends are casual players and they all have failed to make their first characters successful in red maps. I think this tells us that Poe is not a casual friendly game anymore, it's more elitist than ever. I may be an experienced player but this doesn't mean that these changes in hardship made me happier.

Stay classy, GGG, but make smarter choices.

DO NOT FILL THIS THREAD WITH YOUR POINTLESS INSULTS.

Raiz on harvest nerf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQJtMpUaAS0

an edit after 3.15: this thread becomes more and more relevant now. Game is in the worst shape its ever been and it seems like GGG plans to make it only worse.

I too preferred 3.13, the atlas passives felt better, and I liked the fact that harvest allowed people to craft their own gear over time, and not be dependent on master crafters looking for profit.

I dislike the argument of a minority of players that make out like everyone was running around in cheap 6xt1 gear. The crafts were super expensive if you bought them, and still linked to rng. You had to find harvest, hope the seeds were the right ones, hope they gave you the right mods, then hope you had the right tier (many mods have 9 or so tiers).

If you didn't use tft, and you didn't nolife the game, you were not running around with game-breaking gear. Even with tft, for the vast majority of players they didn't have game-breaking gear, it was only the rich that did, those that lived on tft and had 100s of ex to burn. As they do every league, as they do this league by buying Aisling level 4 research slams... The rich and full-time players will always dominate the game and economy (as they should btw, they certainly put in the effort), all harvest did was raise the floor a little for the average player.

Harvest is a sensitive topic, so no flaming needed, just respect everyone's opinions. Based on community feedback alone, the harvest changes had a very negative reaction overall. However it is also accurate to say that without an ingame poll (which I have no idea why GGG refuses to do), it is hard to know for sure what the full playerbase thinks, you can only go on forum feedback without.

I feel less compelled to log in this league, ultimatum feels a lazy rehash of ritual. The reworked rewards that promised much, feel lacklustre. The atlas passives all feel a bit or a lot worse, depending on which ones you're looking at.

I cant see me playing for much longer this league, will probably go back to last epoch soon.

GGG: "Oh wow, players are having so much fun!"
Also GGG: "We need it to stop"

That's basically what the nerfs to Harvest are.

I will chime in a little. I really liked Harvest because for me (and the way I play), it really tied everything together. I like fossil crafting so using both together was really neat. Harvest really amped up my long-term PoE goals and I usually set some pretty long ones that will span 2-3 patches. I was really looking forward to 3.13 and beyond because of what my next two build projects would and could be.

They could still be something but perhaps it was just the way in which the infamous manifesto was written that left a sour taste in my mouth. End game is still fun but I'm on cruise control instead of build planning and gearing up for a new Inquisitor or Chieftain.

I digress. Harvest tied in PoE's crafting for me. Fix a res on pair of boots or grind hard for a couple of r/a's and hope it hits a decent tier 2 fire resist. Things like that. I never went on Discord because I wanted to use Harvest and existing currency/crafting for myself. So it feels real bad knowing that's part of why it was nerfed. I wanted to take the time and grind for myself. 3.13 allowed for that. I was hoping future patches would continue to allow that but it got yoinked.

To add: I was so excited about Harvest's reimplantation that I bought another supporter pack in January. Oh well

Mrs Death, as for the casuals just get 'em on Standard. I think they will be a bit happier over there.

Even Standard is not fun anymore. I stopped playing with half crafted items from harvest, needed to finish those with targeted R/A crafts that were removed to get decent items...

GGG has to learn how that if they want to have players that won't quit because they are frustrated, they'll have to create a middle ground with everything tradable and shit or decent / good and not tradable...

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Ydoum wrote:

GGG: "Oh wow, players are having so much fun!"
Also GGG: "We need it to stop"

That's basically what the nerfs to Harvest are.

Pretty much, yeah, but it is a more general scheme than just the Harvest nerfs. Except for Headhunter, that kinda is the holy grail that will never get touched, I guess.

I guess I have 2 major things in 3.14 compared to previous Ritual

- no interesting build stands out and everything needs serious investment to work
-- sure, counter argument can show me 20 viable builds on 100c budget, but I am just not interested in them - either played them already(summoners, ed, bbbf) or seems mechanically bothersome (all elementalist builds)


- all gear upgrades are now unachievable outside trade or serious RNG
-- yes, Harvest nerfs took away any meaningful path for gear upgrades. And I don't mean printing "mirror tier" shit, just removing defense on boots so I can craft life, remove/add to fix one specific stat. Augmenting Life and hoping for good roll ... (that does not cost half of my full budget because it has mirror level of spawn rate.


3.14 kinda would really like from me to make a project for 8-10 weeks and play daily to achieve my goals. I understand that. But my willingness to spend suddenly 3-4 times more time than any previous league, it does not seem like an enjoyable process. Especially when the new skills are kinda lackluster, everything else got mostly nerfed, nothing stands out and to get good I would have to play something I played already multiple times.

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jack_aubrey wrote:

Mrs Death, as for the casuals just get 'em on Standard. I think they will be a bit happier over there.

It saddens me that I hesitate now when recommending the new league and PoE to my friends... Seeing even the seasoned players fail this league was not a good experience.

I could not force myself to get my first and only character in Ultimatum to maps. I just could not be bothered after 3.13 to play worse game than previously. Launch was buggy mess, horrible disconnects and poor performance. Same old, same old just this time league mechanic was more annoying and could not keep me interested.

I'm probably still burnt out after hitting level 100 in Ritual and spending most of my time on a single character in 3.13 so it is very likely I will be back in 3.15.

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MrsDeath_ wrote:

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jack_aubrey wrote:

Mrs Death, as for the casuals just get 'em on Standard. I think they will be a bit happier over there.

It saddens me that I hesitate now when recommending the new league and PoE to my friends... Seeing even the seasoned players fail this league was not a good experience.

Especially for this patch. I can't imagine a casual player enjoying re-grinding everything right now.