Contrary to the Popular Belief, this League has actually been a lot better for Mid-High Crafting

"

TheFazzos wrote:

Let us be honest, the Harvest changes impact something like the 0.0001% of the players. I don't remember using a single reforge prefix or suffix ever and sold all augments I ever found. I don't think the average player has the time or resources to make mirror tier items anyway.

'Reforge more likely' were great for entry level mapping gear and especially cluster jewels. Socket recolors? (Now it costs 5 div just to make 1 white socket) Jewel implicits? Even changing resistance types went from something that would be easily self-farmable to costing you 20c+ of tradable currency.

Reforge keep were mid to high tier crafts, I never made mirror tier items, but I held onto items with 3x T1/T2 prefix or suffix in case I found the craft, and it made me a lot of exalts over the leagues.

Now you're lucky to make a couple chaos on them, if they aren't total vendor trash, even with cheaper exalts. (Most slams are junk rolls) And they're almost never worth meta-crafting, unless you're on a lucky heist/ritual/expedition base or somehow hit multiple influence mods as a natural drop. (Good luck)

Made dropped item drops that much less interesting to sort through.

"

TheFazzos wrote:

Let us be honest, the Harvest changes impact something like the 0.0001% of the players. I don't remember using a single reforge prefix or suffix ever and sold all augments I ever found. I don't think the average player has the time or resources to make mirror tier items anyway.

It's not about mirror tier items. I used every league reforge keep prefixes couple of times. Sometimes just to fix some other failed attempt do use self found Awk orb.
I can't say I used it well, or for the most beneficial result, but I used it non the less to get something better than I had at that time.

Ie. having 3 T1-2 suffix belt, and having +14 life, that was the usual outcome of essence spam to Stygian Belt, Reforge keep suffix -> no life on prefix , great I can at least have better roll from crafted one.

Sure, I could go and spend 50c to get better belt, or go to TFT and sell reforge keep suff for 20c, but why? Chris's solution is to buy everything.. ok, Chris built great economy simulator where great items pop out of the thin air. Ask some players how it is now to buy high end upgrade in the current state of crafting :)

"

Marxone wrote:

Sure, I could go and spend 50c to get better belt, or go to TFT and sell reforge keep suff for 20c, but why? Chris's solution is to buy everything.. ok, Chris built great economy simulator where great items pop out of the thin air. Ask some players how it is now to buy high end upgrade in the current state of crafting :)

This is by far the funniest post for how absolutly wrong it is in this whole thread.
How do you think some of those items, that are BIG items, end up being made and sold for huge money?

Because people go and go attempt using currency, which in its primary purpose is meant to be spent.

I want you to have a look at Rabrushy, Rablushy, HentaiHarvest and Rakushi [I sort of gave up on that character since I kind of finished the league for myself, but you can see which items are crafted and which are not], look at their items in particular, and then to let you know that I've crafted every, single piece on those, myself, including about 90% of the bases (sometimes had to use influence swap on harvest), with all existing tools avaiable right now, being harvest, meta crafting, eldritch crafting, influence crafting, menagerie, essences and a little bit of fossils, too.

The only thing I've bought, were Aisling T4 slams, due to simplly disliking Betrayal management personally, and a base of a claw that someone got with T1 fracture. Occassionally I also had to buy a lot of essences, which was the case of the bow on "Rabrushy" and Eldritch Chaos orbs, because I wasn't grinding Eater or Exarch and focused on Maven primarily.

You basically can't "buy" absolute high-end crafted items, because people make to use those, and this is the kind of mindset you should ALSO employ, when deciding to make an item that perfectly fits YOU.

Though I don't see hope here to change your mindset. Some people decide to make their items, other would rather skip this part of the game, as huge as it is, because they lack the endurance to do so, and to rather purchase things people picked up from the ground or crafted trough Rog, and that's okay, too. But if you're of the latter group, which based on your post you are, you shouldn't use arbitrary words like "Economy simulator", when you purposefully bask in ignorance

This league may be good for crafters. I wouldn't know since I don't craft, nor do I know anyone who crafts.

However, how many people actually bother gambling, or crafting, for stuff they need, much less to sell for profit? This is really only a benefit to players with large sums of currency they can risk on this while everyone else is left having to trade for what they need.

I miss 3.13 Harvest, when crafting was actually crafting and not gambling.

"

Pizzarugi wrote:

This league may be good for crafters. I wouldn't know since I don't craft, nor do I know anyone who crafts.

However, how many people actually bother gambling, or crafting, for stuff they need, much less to sell for profit? This is really only a benefit to players with large sums of currency they can risk on this while everyone else is left having to trade for what they need.

I miss 3.13 Harvest, when crafting was actually crafting and not gambling.

Speaking from the side of a crafter, I can say that from a crafter's standpoint, the tools are all still mostly here to do what you want, but it takes a decent sum of investment to get there, depending on what piece you want to make. Rabrushy (98 Champion that fell to leaping goats), armour plate was a wild, expensive ride. Essences upwards of 700-800chaos, base for 1,5 divines, and eldritch chaos orbs for another 3-4 divines, + Aisling (1 divine).

I do miss 3.13 for how easy it was to grasp for crafting as a whole. Everything was in one place, instead of scattered around everywhere at the moment, and this ease of use, I vehemently do miss a lot.

To answer your question as to how many bother, my guess would be an extreme minority. I only really managed to afford crafting these things, because I did content 98% of people maybe shy away of doing (Height of Hubris Shaper and Elder guardians grind, Maven Influence grind, Maven, Elder and Uber Elder grind for expensive items), and thus made a huge profit.

Though this league I felt like every league mechanic, except harbinger, that I specced fully into, was nice way of making money (Expedition, Blight, Essences, Abyss, Legion, Beastiary, Harvest, Memories, Lakes)

Personally I am of the opinion that crafting without gambling becomes boring very fast, even if it makes you powerful. Harvest 3.13 was exactly that. It was free, except your time investment, and insanely powerful. But I am a freak playing hardcore who loves a bit of punishment, so that makes me further a minority

"

Rakushi wrote:

Though I don't see hope here to change your mindset. Some people decide to make their items, other would rather skip this part of the game, as huge as it is, because they lack the endurance to do so, and to rather purchase things people picked up from the ground or crafted trough Rog, and that's okay, too. But if you're of the latter group, which based on your post you are, you shouldn't use arbitrary words like "Economy simulator", when you purposefully bask in ignorance

I am only paraphrasing guru Chris himself when he presented his points about why would people make bad items if they can just buy the better item.
I tend to craft for my characters, even that I consider the word "craft" a pretty lose in this sense. I use the currencies on items and in game methods to create better items. Where it is make sense. Slap some essences, get int stacking wand with flat dmg, ok great, I won.

What could be considered crafting is +X bow for TR or CA. Sure, that's a slam dunk with optimized deterministic path with no point of failure along the way other than initial step before using metacrafting with guaranteed outcome.
Not all builds have that reasonable path to victory.

Luckily, you often don't need those crafts to play the game up to the very high endgame (which are by now only Pinacle bosses, I consider everything else an extended campaign)


edit: buddy of mine used to play int stackers a lot, crafting amulets every league since Delirium. Flooding market with average amulets with retained value 10-20 exalts while aiming for perfection (estimated value 80-120ex at the time), usually multiple people did that. And it was possible to straight up buy it for the price tag, but it was safe route of investment through crafting to get there.
He's not playing anymore. Crafting changes in made him quit.

What´s this whole discussion even about? Main issue with the current crafting system is being forced into the new influences. How are you going to explain old influence types being semi bricked when you for whatever reason fill all affixes?
For example:
You want Attack Crit and effect of Aura on your Body Armour.
You Awakener Orb both chests and get 6 affixes.
Now what?

The actual issue is exactly this. So, for profit, yes. You can make cash with anything, really. Every league, without exception. And it´s not even hard to succeed.
The issue at hand is the shit crafting for old influence types.

So i agree with some items being the easiest to craft since Harvest, like fracturered Bases. And yes, if you have you live searches sorted you can make tons of money.
But i disagree with the statement of overall crafting being the best ever, since it´s just not.

"

Rakushi wrote:

Personally I am of the opinion that crafting without gambling becomes boring very fast, even if it makes you powerful. Harvest 3.13 was exactly that. It was free, except your time investment, and insanely powerful. But I am a freak playing hardcore who loves a bit of punishment, so that makes me further a minority

Time is money though?

It still had gambling, outside of a very small handful of cases, results weren't guaranteed. There were more ways to recover an item from totally bricking, but that still took currency/time investment. It was deterministic in the sense with infinite time and money you could do almost anything, but that's still the case, it's just many times over more expensive and has more dead ends.

The biggest difference was that it wasn't so dependent on spending divines on imprint beasts and meta crafts. And old influence items were decently craftable beyond just blind slamming and annulling. Harvest having a barrier to trade made cheaper crafts feel free since you were never going to sell them with how limited bench space was. But that didn't mean you had unlimited access to them. Imagine... being rewarded with power for your playtime.

Now they have a material cost that could be used on higher tier crafts or sold rather easily, in addition to getting less crafts per harvest, and those crafts being less powerful or gone entirely. Sure you can do most of the same things, it just takes a lot more currency to get started and you'll brick more items. But why? It just feels worse and less people have access to it. Some of us don't get off on wasting hundreds of hours on something and having nothing to show for it.

I played through nearly the entirety of 3.13 largely self-finding and crafting gear, even in the final month. I didn't buy crafts off TFT, did buy the astral plate bases. This is what that got me;







Some good gear no doubt, but not mirror worthy or broken in any sense. Considering the amount of time I put into that league, it felt fair. It was also one of the only leagues I rolled so many characters because I felt my time was being appropriately rewarded.

I had achievable goals every play session. And the game wasn't as restrictive as it is now with gearing requirements, paired with the availability of gear meant a lot more builds felt viable. I had things to get excited about.


Here's where I'm at this league


I have a few pieces I could easily upgrade but I feel no need to. The crappy/inconsistent returns on juicing make it feel like it's not worth my time trading for materials to push my character further. So I bounce between alch and go strategies, and using self-found scarabs/orbs.

In addition to not feeling like I need to upgrade, I wouldn't waste currency gambling on it because my only other goal this league was to aim for a Kalandra's touch (Which have been heavily price fixed). But I'm finding it harder and harder to motivate myself to login. The endgame feels extremely flat and I'm not at all interested in the loot. Too much is filtered through archnemesis conversions, everything feels the same, the market is flooded with similar items.

The cost increase of crafting makes it hard for me to justify attempting to craft as many items to sell. Where before I would be working on 10-20+ items at a time, usually from simple bases. I'm now only occasionally throwing things on random pieces I find that dropped mostly complete. I've sold a couple of multi-div items but I don't feel the same sense of accomplishment because they basically dropped as-is. It just feels like I'm playing a big slot machine that doesn't respect my time.

Woo exalts are cheap, it's still blind slamming a slot on a item that more often than not adds a useless stat. Or essences/fractured being more available, huzzah, I can randomly roll for 5 of the affixes instead of 6. How fun. :|

"

jerot wrote:

"

Rakushi wrote:

Personally I am of the opinion that crafting without gambling becomes boring very fast, even if it makes you powerful. Harvest 3.13 was exactly that. It was free, except your time investment, and insanely powerful. But I am a freak playing hardcore who loves a bit of punishment, so that makes me further a minority

Time is money though?

It still had gambling, outside of a very small handful of cases, results weren't guaranteed. There were more ways to recover an item from totally bricking, but that still took currency/time investment. It was deterministic in the sense with infinite time and money you could do almost anything, but that's still the case, it's just many times over more expensive and has more dead ends.

The biggest difference was that it wasn't so dependent on spending divines on imprint beasts and meta crafts. And old influence items were decently craftable beyond just blind slamming and annulling. Harvest having a barrier to trade made cheaper crafts feel free since you were never going to sell them with how limited bench space was. But that didn't mean you had unlimited access to them. Imagine... being rewarded with power for your playtime.

I mean, saying "Time is money" in a video game seems rather wrong to me, no matter how often I read it. You're not wrong with that statement, but essentially you're playing a game that you're not getting paid to do so. If you feel like you're wasting your time in it without enjoyment, then it would be best to stop.

Neither would I call it gambling, if you don't actually invest anything other THAN your time into it, which is what Harvest essentially was. YOu got soooo much stuff for free, too much even, and the power level discrepency thus was was enormous. Essentially the game, if it were to continue like that, would have been stalemated to "New league, everyone plays THE EXACT thing, every league" from that point on, regardless if they enjoy it or not.

Having your crafting dependent on multiple systems, believe it or not, I'd say is a good thing from a game design standpoint, because it makes you experience multiple different aspects of the game. It ties it all together, instead of being almost exclusively one system. I genuinely enjoyed that my crafting of gear invovled

- Using Essences to have useable base to start with
- Using Meta crafts for locking affix reforges
- Using Fossils to have blocked mod types to have a base to start with
- Picking up Fractures to have a good base to start with
- Using Beastiary Imprints, their "free exalt on influence types, and turning a suffix into a prefix
- Using Harvest for gambling on fractures, more likely reforges, jewels, or in combination of meta mods to guarantee an item with 3 powerful prefixes
- Using conqueror's exalted orbs for a chance of glory
- Using Aisling for a chance of glory [Particularly proud of it for the bow Rabrushy used]

So many different systems, that I didn't bother in 3.13, apart from sometimes essences (Or because they didn't exist in fractured items dropping), because harvest was giga OP and would get me there, too, for no investment but my time.

I also wouldn't say that you're not being rewarded for your time in the current state. Harvest didn't "reward" you for your time. It shoved it down your throat, and had you stop playing the game, to sit in harvest plots and look over what crafts you got to use.

"

Rakushi wrote:

I mean, saying "Time is money" in a video game seems rather wrong to me, no matter how often I read it. You're not wrong with that statement, but essentially you're playing a game that you're not getting paid to do so. If you feel like you're wasting your time in it without enjoyment, then it would be best to stop.

Neither would I call it gambling, if you don't actually invest anything other THAN your time into it, which is what Harvest essentially was. YOu got soooo much stuff for free, too much even, and the power level discrepency thus was was enormous. Essentially the game, if it were to continue like that, would have been stalemated to "New league, everyone plays THE EXACT thing, every league" from that point on, regardless if they enjoy it or not.

Having your crafting dependent on multiple systems, believe it or not, I'd say is a good thing from a game design standpoint, because it makes you experience multiple different aspects of the game. It ties it all together, instead of being almost exclusively one system. I genuinely enjoyed that my crafting of gear involved

- Using Essences to have useable base to start with
- Using Meta crafts for locking affix reforges
- Using Fossils to have blocked mod types to have a base to start with
- Picking up Fractures to have a good base to start with
- Using Beastiary Imprints, their "free exalt on influence types, and turning a suffix into a prefix
- Using Harvest for gambling on fractures, more likely reforges, jewels, or in combination of meta mods to guarantee an item with 3 powerful prefixes
- Using conqueror's exalted orbs for a chance of glory
- Using Aisling for a chance of glory [Particularly proud of it for the bow Rabrushy used]

So many different systems, that I didn't bother in 3.13, apart from sometimes essences (Or because they didn't exist in fractured items dropping), because harvest was giga OP and would get me there, too, for no investment but my time.

I also wouldn't say that you're not being rewarded for your time in the current state. Harvest didn't "reward" you for your time. It shoved it down your throat, and had you stop playing the game, to sit in harvest plots and look over what crafts you got to use.

Harvest was absolutely OP on the high end of things, but that was enabled by the ability for one person to use the farmed crafts of hundreds or even thousands of players selling on TFT, and focus them into a single perfect item. I think in an SSF-like environment, harvest closer to it's old balance values was largely healthy for the game. No one could SSF harvest craft perfect gear in 3 months, even if they spent the entire time focused working on one piece.

It removed a lot of the barriers to crafting in early league scenarios. If I'm fresh into maps, a good craft then would be something I could use to improve my gear, that was true at any stage of progression. Now the currency is more valuable as a trade resource because nothing you could use it on at that level of progression will give you the same value. Not when there are people further along who will pay a premium for that resource to make real endgame items with. Unless you're on the cutting edge, you're incentivized to not engage with the system.

Most crafts had an item level associated with them which limited this problem even if you sold crafts, but that's now gone. In the new system the price of the craft is determined by the maximum potential of the material being used, which limits their usability in any other scenario. The cost of a reforge is now directly tied to fracturing, augments, or any other craft that is in high demand by endgame crafters. A vivid lifeforce craft is arbitrarily 2x as expensive as a similar craft that costs primal because of the demand from other crafts.



It never replaced the other crafting systems, there was no analog for Essence mods, Fossil crafts, Bestiary crafts, or Aisling. It served a different purpose to Conqueror's exalts which were even more valuable then than they are in the current patch. All of these systems had their uses, and I used them in 3.13 too. That being said, harvest was a very powerful tool, and perhaps some of those functions should have been spread across a variety of sources/mechanics. But that isn't what happened, most were just gutted or outright removed.

The flexibility it gave us made dropped loot more interesting, you could do more to salvage it into something usable/sellable. It rewarded game knowledge. I still had non-jewelry rares/bases on my filter in the third month of ritual. I can't say the same in the first weeks of lake, there is too much junk that is beyond saving. It enabled more incremental improvements, which made each play session feel more rewarding.

Having to stop to craft items is a matter of personal preference. You didn't have to use them all, if the smaller crafts aren't even worth selling, leaving them behind has no consequence to you. They were easy enough to find again if you needed them. But all of this is largely solved by the reworks to the atlas tree that lets you skip league mechanics you don't enjoy. The other crafting systems are still there to use.


It's weird you're saying everyone would be stalemated into the exact same thing when build diversity was much better in ritual, as was endgame map strategies. Everyone is focusing on the same atlas mechanics now, 70% of players are using the same defensive layers now. Melee and summoners have never felt worse. (Not saying this is due to ritual changes of course)

People play what they want to play, even if there is a build doing 10x the DPS, if someone enjoys a particular playstyle and it works well enough to do the content smoothly, they'll play it. Restricting access to decent gear/crafting, nerfing player power across the board, and buffing monsters with ridiculous RNG multipliers encourages people to only pick the strongest builds.

I hadn't played RF before this league, but it wasn't my first choice based on what I wanted to play. I just want to get through content at a reasonable pace with something proven. The type of builds I enjoy just aren't fun to play in the current state of the game. (Like cast while channeling with anything that isn't cyclone, standing still = death)

Harvest changes alone are not why I feel the current game is unrewarding. It is part of the reason, removing a major source of incremental goals not directly tied to currency. But harvest doesn't have to be the sole source of that in the game, other systems can be reworked or introduced.

Franky, it was the shift of loot to archnemesis rares that filter everything into the same piles of fractured items/jewels/flasks/whetstones/maps and maybe divination cards or currency if you're very lucky. Normal and magic league monsters don't drop anywhere near as much loot. Meaning trying to scale things with pack size and quantity/rarity don't matter as much until you hit good archnemesis mod combinations.

There might be more loot 'on average', but more of your time is spent getting less, the big payouts don't feel proportionately more exciting (its physically impossible to feel 20x as excited finding 20 items vs 1). And juicing feels terrible, unless you're willing to invest into hundreds of maps/scarabs/orbs at once it's a gamble whether you actually make profit. And even when you do, that profit is many times lower than previous leagues. Difficulty and reward feel too disconnected from the content you're running and too dependent on the random mods you run into and have zero control over.

Aspirational item goals feel like a major slog to work towards between the nerfs to high end unique and divination card drops, and the shifting of high end loot away from items and into massive stacks of currency. (Giving those groups unprecedented power over the now extremely small supply of some of these high end items) and loot becoming this inconsistent spam of 20-30 items (of the same handful of flavors) from a single monster you then have to ID and drop.


I did stop playing when I wasn't having fun, back in Sentinel. But this is basically my main game, nothing else scratches the same itch. I want to be playing path of exile, but I'm finding it a lot less enjoyable than I know it could be. It's ridiculous these kinds of changes are being pushed through so haphazardly in a game that's almost 10 years old now. The answer shouldn't be to quit for several months. I don't know if its the development of PoE 2 that drew attention away from the game or what, but something has to change.

Besides, if we're not playing and giving our feedback now, why would the game get any better 3/6/9 months from now? Even in a bad state, PoE is still miles ahead of other games. Though I would love to see some competition for GGG at some point.