Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

A tiny decrease in a tiny handful of players' profit margins

VS

A huge increase in enjoyment and playability for by far the greater number of players, allowing them to play the game in a much more efficient, less maddening way.

To me it's insulting that we even have to argue about this, and it says everything.

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Ruffleberg wrote:

There are two old school beliefs that GGG is stubbornly clinging to:

That PoE is Standard and not the temporary leagues.

That it's important to protect the egos of the elite players that get upset when their trophy case of mirror items becomes obsolete due to a new crafting mechanic.

At some point this will be the downfall of PoE.

You're mistaken on both counts:

1. League is their primary focus, Standard is the afterthought. This change actually hurts Standard most of all — many people are only active on Standard again because of Harvest; it's the first time Standard has had any kind of compelling endgame outside of Delve in years.

2. Mirror items get dethroned all the time — Synthesis, Harvest, Conquerors, and Maven all raised the ceiling for items significantly. Nerfing Harvest does not lower this ceiling; obsolete items remain obsolete.

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Karcaroth wrote:

You're mistaken on both counts:

1. League is their primary focus

2. Mirror items get dethroned all the time

The temporary leagues are the business focus, not the game design focus.

Maybe it was wrong to define Elite players by mirror items. It is clear GGG wants to support and protect "Expert players" though.

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Karcaroth wrote:

2. Mirror items get dethroned all the time — Synthesis, Harvest, Conquerors, and Maven all raised the ceiling for items significantly. Nerfing Harvest does not lower this ceiling; obsolete items remain obsolete.

Without harvest, lot of the items crafted with it will stay the best for as long as they will not be other targeted crafting.

they will probably be some other things that were not possible, but item crafted with harvest will not becam obsolete, they will still be mirror tiers. (and lot of item easy to craft with harvest will becam near mirror tiers)

I'm sure much of what I'm about to say has already been said. I've read some posts and watched videos on the topic and here's my 2c.

This is a big mistake.

I'm an average player who's put a lot of time into this game. But I'm definitely not one of the 1%. Heck, I think this is the first league where I killed T8 Sirus, and it had nothing to do with harvest, but with the changes you made to ascendency. I've never crafted anything good from harvest. Part of this is due to my ignorance, part is my lack of patience. I've recently tried learning how to utilize harvest crafting, and man, what a pain in the ass. I have been trying to craft a specific staff, and still haven't been able to do it. Part of the reason is because I was starting all wrong. I needed a Warlord base to start. Didn't realize that. Tons of time wasted. So, now, 1000 alteration shards and hours later, I still don't have my T1 base.

That right there should show that the premise of other forms of currency are irrelevant is bogus and I think I know more about "crafting" in this game then whoever wrote that. I needed to utilize regals, annuls, augments just to get one stat to start with. Most of the other currency is still useful. I never got a 6 link from harvest. How many of you have? Fusing is still needed and so are jewelers. Still need jewelers and chromatics for bench crafting hard colored sockets. Still need vaals to adjust corrupt items which you can't do in harvest. Chaos orbs aren't used because, well we all know, and that's why it's a trade currency. Exalts are the only thing that's debatable.

Then there's actually doing it. There's still a lot of RNG and TIME involved in this. You have to run maps, hope you get a harvest, hope you get seeds with the crafts you want. Guess what? This takes a fucking long time. Isn't most of the player base doing it this way? What percentage is discord trading crafts? I bet it's super small.

Now, back to my staff. In order for me to properly craft it, I'd need about 7 exalts worth of currency to craft it with harvest. That's not cheap. and there's still the possibility of it being useless due to a couple non-deterministic rolls, and very possible it's not "mirror" worthy with sub T1 rolls. Yeah, I've seen some great things come out of harvest, but who is it really hurting?

If someone has made a perfect item, good for them. I'm sure it wasn't their fist attemt and spent a ton of exalts to get there. And, if they're selling it, they're probably selling it for a lot, which means it's catering to the 0.1% of the players who can farm the exalts to pay for it. So, the economy of these items is only shared to the elite few. This isn't trickling down to the lower player base. The above average player can only afford the non-mirrored items, and isn't that a good thing? So, who really cares about these perfect items?

Having good harvest crafts is only a good thing. Here's why: it keeps players in the game. You say that people have done everything and maxed out all their gear so they stop playing. Who? 0.1% of the player base? Who gives a shit about that? I bet the same 0.1% were already clearing the game, killing everything T8, getting their 40/40 after a month anyway. At least with harvest, they could strive for min maxing their gear.

Harvest crafting helps everyone else. This means maybe they'll get the better gear to do higher level content and not get frustrated. The average player will stay in the game longer. This means that even if they don't know how to craft good gear, they could have the chance at buying it because there's more high level players making the stuff cause they have a lot of exalts to spend on making it anyway.

Lets not even touch how much SSF people get screwed because of this.

I remember seeing a post that showed the retention fall off of players. This related to why GGG strove for 4 leagues a year. Isn't this going to only hurt retention? I'm only just now getting my head wrapped around this system of crafting and it's very frustrating that you want to get rid of it.

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Karcaroth wrote:

"

Ruffleberg wrote:

There are two old school beliefs that GGG is stubbornly clinging to:

That PoE is Standard and not the temporary leagues.

That it's important to protect the egos of the elite players that get upset when their trophy case of mirror items becomes obsolete due to a new crafting mechanic.

At some point this will be the downfall of PoE.

You're mistaken on both counts:

1. League is their primary focus, Standard is the afterthought. This change actually hurts Standard most of all — many people are only active on Standard again because of Harvest; it's the first time Standard has had any kind of compelling endgame outside of Delve in years.

2. Mirror items get dethroned all the time — Synthesis, Harvest, Conquerors, and Maven all raised the ceiling for items significantly. Nerfing Harvest does not lower this ceiling; obsolete items remain obsolete.

Good luck crafting elevated mods without harvest =)

Just out of curiousity, what type of mechanic does GGG needs to release next month such that you want to ignore Harvest ( Harvest being in current form unchanged ) and focus solely on the new mechanic ie you only spend 5-10% of your time on Harvest and that the new mechanic is much better for your time?

If there isn't any possibility anything can be better than Harvest ( save for an upgraded Harvest ), then we know Harvest is broken.

If there is some mechanic that will overshadow Harvest, high possibility is that it will give even better mods gear ( maybe teir 0 with god-like power ) or with even easier deterministic crafting. Now if this come to fruition, aren't we on the path of power creep? Meaning if GGG still intends to follow through with its idea that end game bosses are only for top 5% of players to complete, I guess that new end game boss will be 10x more difficult that Maven.

Now you repeat this whole process the following league in July.

Yes some of you will say why must a game be only for the top 5%. This is what GGG set out to do from the start. Its almost saying why Bugatti and Ferrari is only for the top few, why can't Ferrari be selling for few grand and every Moms and Pops can buy with loose change?

Some of you will use player data as example that this league has the highest number of players. Number of players is less important than longetivity of the players. 1 million players who only play 1 or 2 league is less important than 100k players who will stick with you next 40 leagues. If all the future mechanics cannot be better than Harvest, most likely we have the 1 million players scenario that they leave after a league or 2 since they have done this and that and all. Some of you will say why can't I come in and play short while and finish all content and move on...why must I stick for next 40 leagues? This is also what GGG sets out to do from the start. There are many other paid/one off purchase games out there that satisfy 'come and play short while, finish content and move on'.

GGG, with this manifesto, you've shown your true face. At least gacha games are upfront and "honest" about the fact that they only care about the gambling-addict whales. You do as well, but you hide behind convoluted and obscure game mechanics to pretend that your customers' fun and time is what you really care about, that you're still making a game and not a glorified slot machine.

This is why I shall not support you and your game anymore. I don't like being lied to and manipulated the way you're trying to do here. That line about "exalting an item" is as insulting as Electronic Arts calling "surprise mechanics" their loot boxes.

1 hour of my lifetime wasted reading this whinethread. Its like people dont even know that items are not the only thing making a character powerful.

There is the skilltree , the ascedancies , and cluster jewels. Cluster jewel crafting with harvest is not nerfed in any way ( except maybe less rerolls avaiable , but we have to see which ratio ggg is gonna use ).


Maybe GGG will throw some buffs to ascedancies again , or some skills.

There are currently a SHITTON of builds which work in the 5ex range , most of them just need a few cluster jewels / uniques to setup ( not even any of the so great rare influenced crafted items ) and they can do ALL content.

I crafted SEVERAL cluster jewels this league with harvest , some of them sold for over 20ex. All i needed was rerolls + keep prefix reroll suffix ( or keep suffix rerolls prefix depends on the jewel. ) Guess what? You can still do that! Craft some dope jewels sell em and buy your crafted rares even when they are 2x as expensive.

This Thread is basicly "GGG TOOK AWAY MY ABILITY TO DO SIRIUS A9 WITH MY SHITTY SPECTRAL SHIELD THROW BUILD IN UNDER A SECOND!" in a nutshell.

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Cosmonaut111 wrote:

1 hour of my lifetime wasted reading this whinethread. Its like people dont even know that items are not the only thing making a character powerful.

There is the skilltree , the ascedancies , and cluster jewels. Cluster jewel crafting with harvest is not nerfed in any way ( except maybe less rerolls avaiable , but we have to see which ratio ggg is gonna use ).

Maybe GGG will throw some buffs to ascedancies again , or some skills.

There are currently a SHITTON of builds which work in the 5ex range , most of them just need a few cluster jewels / uniques to setup ( not even any of the so great rare influenced crafted items ) and they can do ALL content.

This Thread is basicly "GGG TOOK AWAY MY ABILITY TO DO SIRIUS A9 WITH MY SHITTY SPECTRAL SHIELD THROW BUILD IN UNDER A SECOND!" in a nutshell.

i can bet there is no builds under 20 ex that can do sirius after harvest is deleted