Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

calling rng crafting xD

This reminds me of blizzard in wow. They would implement something not thinking about what will it cause to the game then nerf it or remove it several months later. You know better ggg I hope...

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* Some mods that had overly-deterministic behaviour have been removed. [...]

This don't modify the possible output, just make harder to acquire, we can still imprint/annul for 6/T1 useful mods, or divine until the end of days! It's a painful way to make it, but still possible.

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* Crafts that add mods of specific types to items can now only be applied to non-influenced items.

This change the level of power we can obtain, but still we need a specific list before a mass enrage. What specific mods cannot be craft on influenced base? All of them? Explody Chest is out of the window for sure, but the others? I will wait for a specific list of 'impossible to craft' mods before go in berserk.

Dear Chris, GGG, I hope you'll read this one ;)

I'm okay with this. Really. If Harvest never existed there will bo no drama at all but it's so easy to accommodate to convenience.

I really do not need a feature which incentivise me to minimize the game and go to Discord browsing offers which are posted with higher speed than most humans can read. No matter if I'm selling or buying.

Harvest itself was league I quitted erliest because it was The Discord League and before Ritual I was very sceptic about Harvest reappearance and it came less tedious (no seeds) but very same as original Harvest.

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While, as it was said in the main post, Harvest made older crafting methods obsolete, I think we need some QoL imrovements to make them more useful.

The best one would be some kind of automatisation of bulk trading. Auction house like thing only for certain stackable items.
Let's say I want to make an explo chest (let's pretend Remove Non-Phys / Add Phys don't exist) and I want to go with Jagged Fossils. On average I'll need about 120 Jagged Fossils.
Now I'm asking - How fun it's to be buying 120 Fossils? How many players I need to message and how few of them will actually respond?

Another quick idea - consider bringing up Multimod to previous version, where an item could have top level mod made with Alteration spam, Multimod and 4 other crafts (or at least buff Multimod from 3 to 4 mods). Multimod is already taking a suffix slot and crafted mods are usually weaker version of rolled ones. It is giving the feel of being able to progres towards powerful items reliably without producing 6x T1 Harvest Crafted stuff.

Introduce more intriguing Benchcrafted mods - While craftable % incresed Phys which is comparable to T4 mod is useful, Veiled mods, those with a twist are way more interesting. Crit with chance to gain Frenzy on quiver - awesome, +1 to Aoe Gems with some Area of Effect - also nice.

Consider revitalizing Essences. Rework underused ones or go for something like Fossils/Resonators way of crafting. Idea which came to my mind is combining Essences. Let's say there is an item we can use on or socket up to N Essences. However each tier of essence has it's weight and sum of used weights must not exceed this "Essence-Resonator" Capacity. Let's say it can take Corrupted Essence + one T4, Or one T1 and one T2, or Three T3 Essences (Balance department would have great fun, I promise!). Then such "Resonator" is being used on items, applying combination of Essence mods and rolling randolmy others.
Also - Bulk Essence trading, please!

Ritual league was awesome!

Harvest was a big part of why it was a great league.

I don't like this manifesto and disagree with the proposed changes.

Why not simply remove it like you did with Synthesis?

and this is just a spite to the face:

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The chance of encountering a portal to the Sacred Grove in a map has been increased by 60%.

Just why? So we can skip it in the map more frequently?
I don't think this drastic nerfs were necessary, there were better options to balance this out.

Well... I'm glad I got my first 100 this league and did some other stuff I wanted to in game, because if the changes in this manifesto go through I ain't playing this game anymore. Harvest was the reason I played this league as much as I did and will continue to play until 3.14. Probably first and last supporter pack. RIP

The amount of crying is insane.

I played PoE before harvest was even a thing or a thought-project of some dev and I will continue to do so.

Like really? Mirror-tier items during a league? for casuals? (and I am a casual)

Crafting every item slot to near perfection should be something you do in Standard after a year or so of time unless you are some RPG genius who gets it all.

I dont know what you guys cry about so much. You could cry about the stealth Valdo's Rest nerf that still hasnt seen a public acknowledgement of it having been nerfed and how stream bois like Path of Math and GrimHoe abused the shit out of those mechanics and then made videos about and OOPSIE DOOPSIE there comes the shadow nerf AFTER the pansies have made tons of profit.

I want 2 weeks of uninterrupted Valdos farming! NOW!

None of you would have to cry about harvest farming/crafting if you knew half the things these dudes do. You could just buy your mirrortier items.

This is just dumb! For me as Kinda new player who only start understanding crafts in game THIS IS RIP! I dont wont to even know how pain in a$$ was crafting couple leagues back without harvest! How Harvest become "EASY"??? My friend's was complaining about harvest craft machine that have only 10 craft slots and they wish to have more as i do... Removing annul mods is dumb AF bcs A LOT OF PLAYERS DONT WONT TO CRAFT bcs its a CASINO and also expensive, you have MUCH bigger chance (without harvest) to get nothing, loose your curensy that you farme'd for like a week for 2 hours a day bcs YOU JUST CANT PLAY MORE...
If you really think that its "EASY" now so just do it rarer or do add/rem mods rarrer like fracture fossils or some thing BUT NOT REMOVING THEM!
Or make that you can make your OWN garden like it was before BUT MUCH MUCH SMOLLER just 1 of each type and also bring Seed back bcs i dont know whats the point of THAT MOLDY CHEST IN MY HIDEOUT (from harvest league) if there is no seeds in it??? Make it rarer/Bring back seeds/ bring garden back but mush smaller/ and make a craft station with 10 slots for each garden type THATS IT!!!



GGG WE LOVE YOU AND PLS DONT DO THIS MISTAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm extremely disappointed in this direction.

I am the type that takes a couple days on league start, and then for the first 2 weeks do nothing but play as much PoE as I possibly can. After getting to the end game in 2-3 days in past leagues I gave up on trade league because it was too "easy". Choosing to play SSF HC to try and keep things fresh.

This league my friends were playing, and while they are the type that plays for 1-2 weeks and quit. This league they stuck around, playing 4-6 characters to mid 90s. I decided to give softcore trade another go since I had already lost a couple characters to server instability during the first couple of days of the launch.

I have never had more fun in PoE than in this league. The content was punishingly hard (The Feared), the loot was great as mediocre items became great targets for harvest crafts. The Atlas passive points created opportunity to target farm content that interested you. And the underlying glue that kept us playing was Harvest. Each of us planned out our perfect items and continued to craft towards those goals. We ran maps and did things and the adrenaline shot was finding a harvest in the map. I spent hours debating on what order I should craft my item. I bought multiple bases at various different stages to my end goal so I could craft using different techniques hoping to land my perfect item. At the peak of our enjoyment we discovered TFT, the group had been sharing harvests internally with each member getting to call dibs on certain crafts each contributing their extra crafts to the group. We agreed that only "extra" crafts would be sold on TFT but soon each of the crafts become a currency value where sharing with the group meant a personal loss to you. We began to engage with TFT both buying and selling our crafts, while still contributing priority crafts to the group. Items quickly became perfect, group members spent 50-70ex trying to finish off a single item, and each craft completed being a bit crazier than the craft before.

It seemed like the end was in sight, but we became more bold, now focusing on double elevated double influenced items for all slots. These were not out of reach they were something that could be reasonably accomplished. As we sank most of our currency into crazy attempts hoping for clean mods to continue harvest crafting. RNG began to strike. A few members failed repeatedly at landing maven orbs while others got theirs on the first tries. Members started going broke trying to accomplish these crazy crafts and few finishing even a single item. The level of difficulty to craft multiple elevated double influenced crafts was significantly higher but still within reach just through a lot of effort.

As a group we had been clearing all content since the end of the first week. By the end of week two we had individuals who could clear all content on a single character reliably. So why did we keep playing when we had cleared the content? Harvest, the next perfect item was just around the corner. These items weren't readily available on the market to buy, but we knew that completing the craft was plausible it just meant we needed to farm more harvests. Each T1 roll, each max roll on a targeted divine, each keep pref/suf that landed clean mods, all of it was exciting. Even when the crafts were bad (2 life on aug life) it was ok because the dream wasn't over it was just delayed.

Then the group started to lose interest through frustration. Members who couldn't hit RNG on their Maven orb and went broke with no desire to start farming cash again to start another base. They quit, then their friends quit. There was less excitement in Discord as there were fewer people crafting and sharing their emotions with the group. Each successful craft was a boost to moral and as those because fewer and far between the moral dropped and people stopped playing. As others were getting scammed out of items, it broke them as the effort to start over wasn't there when they had already invested so much. The group all quit except myself.

At this point no content was difficult as I had chosen to play only a single build the entire league focusing on min maxing every aspect and to try various different approaches on a single character. I decided to quit trade again.

Re-rolling in SSF HC with the little gear I had collected before dying to server instability. I was renewed thinking of all the crafts I would need to do on my new character, trying to figure out where to farm the bases I needed at the right ilvls to begin crafts. It was all new again. I was excited and addicted again many weeks into the league.

I took it slow, target farming essences, legion, beasts, etc. Building up to start my harvest crafting. But something was different. Harvest wasn't spawning like it was for my other character. I looked and others were posting on the forums that their rates didn't make sense. I counted my maps, and then wondered where my harvests were. I fully invested in Haewark for harvest and focused my atlas to feed me those maps. I ran them every chance I got. Ritual loot seemed worse, Harvest seemed more rare, and less likely to give me good crafts.

I made it to 95, still hopeful to finish items that I hadn't even started yet because a lack of harvest. Had GGG ninja nerfed harvest rates? I continued to play, trying to farm more efficiently to hopefully create more opportunities for harvest to spawn. But nothing, an entire Saturday went by and only 1 or 2 harvest in 12 hours of play. The league that had kept me up until 3am every night when I had work at 6am. The league that enticed me to stay home every weekend instead visit with my family. The league had lost its excitement. Without the harvest adrenaline hits I was just mapping. I was sacrificing life to play a game I love, but the game didn't love me. My enjoyment was hitting new lows and I was having a harder and harder time logging on each day. And then I died... I had a second character who I was excited about originally, but the lack of harvest had killed any hopes to progress that character further. So here I am, done with the league. I believe that if my harvest rates were as good as they were within the first week or two of the league. I would still be playing, still excited to see what I can accomplish.

Spamming Chaos hoping for a good item is as about as fun spamming alterations. I don't like engaging in that randomness. Its not fun, I don't have to plan anything. I get a base and I spam slot machine rolls until the game spits out mediocrity.

Exalts are too rare in SSF, especially since you need them for bench crafting. Its not exciting at all, because its mostly disappointment. And when you expect that its hard to get excited about using it to begin with.

Crafting pre-harvest feels like the slot machines. Harvest crafting feels more knowledge based, manipulating items in certain orders. A puzzle that needs solving. Using your exalts to block attacks/caster to give yourself the best deterministic way of completing your item. Its that deterministic approach that keeps you on the treadmill. You know your goal, you know you can accomplish it you just have to keep moving forward. Going back to random feels bad. Aug phys knowing that you can't replace it once its on, knowing you are going to land the useless roll. It just isn't fun. And spamming chaos on items until you get a good roll then selling usable results to continue crafting for your item just feels bad.

I'm not done with PoE. I have faith in the team to create new and interesting content. I'm just extremely disappointed knowing that I can't be as excited for the next league as I was for this league. And as my life gets busier its harder to engage at the level that is needed to create significant enjoyment with this game.

tl:dr I'm sad to see deterministic crafting go, this league has been the most fun I've had in PoE because of it.