Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

This is a massive mistake.

This fixes nothing for the top 1% of players, they will still get perfect items because they have the time and currency to do so regardless. This changes nothing for the bottom 1% of players either who doesn't make it far enough to even reach the point where you need to use this. What this does change is the funcap we as 98% of the players have to adhere by.

Let's face it, your crafting systems sucks tremendously. If you want a good item you have to suffer through weeks of wristpain due to altspamming. Nobody in the 98% is going to actually slam an exalt either once they finally got this item so using harvest as a 2nd roll on a bad mod, not gonna happen. This just turns crafting back into a stale diceroll rather than the actually quite enjoyable puzzle harvest made of it.

That isn't even accounting for the fact maybe, just maybe, your player retention this league wasn't because of your abysmal performance not being so abysmal at all, because it truly was. Now I can't speak for others but I can tell you that I only kept playing because I really enjoyed the harvest part of this game more than I got frustrated by the countless DC's and death by lagspikes and sirusbugs (yes there are still so many we have to discuss cmon GGG that guy's been in here for over 3 leagues now you got bigger fish to catch here than people having a bit too much fun).


I could agree that harvest right now is extremely powerful and it should probably be far more rare than it is at this time. The problem with harvest isn't in its power, that's the very thing that makes harvest so enjoyable. The problem with harvest is that it's easily farmable so we can spamm a million crafts in a matter of weeks and create perfect items through sheer will. Make harvest a rare delve node for example, much like a lich tomb. We get maybe 20 harvest crafts per league or we're forced to buy them off others for like 5-6 ex a pop? Definitely still a very enjoyable mechanic but now it's not overpowered. Nerfing harvest crafts into the ground makes it effectively useless to those that needed it the most ruining every strong point it had going for it. Just nerf the availability and you'll find people playing longer and harder just to get those crafts, striving for that juicy powerful deterministic slam so they can elevate their item, but not too often because it'll be expensive af now.

I don't understand why you'd want your game to be 100% about 1/12000 odds crafts letting us suffer through every single click of it. Last time I tried to craft an explody mod without harvest I had to ice down my wrist for 2 weeks, never again. I'll rather suffer through the shitshow that is trading in this game and buy it off the people that got their synthetic wrists already from playing this game too long.

Good thing GGG. Harvest should have never gone core in the first place.

While harvest crafting was very deterministic it wasnt like I could just load up on crafts and bang out a mirror item a day. My wand this season cost 30ex to craft even with being forced to buy crafts from a discord and I needed 2. This change takes crafting your final gear pieces from an expensive purposeful endgame journey to straight up impossible. Am sad :(

been playing since 2013, started going on ps4 at its launch, i NEVER slammed an exalt.

Why? Because I can't play 6H+ per day, I don't get to drop exalted every day, I can't reach endgame during the first week nor I don't drop headhunters. I'm what you could call a casual player

I usually stop 1/1,5 month after league start cause i'm bored or poor, but this league thx to harvest I hit endgame quicker than usual thanks to annul, remove/add and the few times I find them , specific mod exalt craft (GGG sound like you fnd good crafts every harvest lol)
Even chaos roll gave me a good T1 life, +1 level dex amulet ( i wanted chaos damage oTime lol)

Harvest is what casual players wants : ways of craft without risking your in game wallet. I'm getting an average of 50ex per league, but 75% of them are spent on jewels/fossils/frags and already crafted stuff.

I DONT HAVE TIME to farm 10 ex/day but I DO have time to run some proxima/haewark maps to have a small/average chance to find a grove :)


Twisted logic ?

By the way, this is a funny thing to light up the mood and laugh at GGG decision.

So this is basically the intended way to craft by Chris Willson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5MOiIVu9pY

Video by Nervyr, all credits goes to him.

Hi,

at the start I want to tell that the Ritual league is the best league which I played. I never spend so much time with POE. And the main reason is how the Harvest crafting is working now. Finally I get some exalt/chaos from it. Finally I crafted something because I start understand what I want and how can I do it.
I have never been so far in game because I was never capable to earn so much and craft so good items. Finally I'm enjoying the endgame and I'm happy.

With this changes everything what I learned I can throw into bin. I will not be able to earn much money in next league and I will not be able craft something good. And if yes it will cost me too much time/money which I don't have. I need to feel that I'm doing it the game some progress and with these changes I will not do any. So most probably I will quit after week or two and I will not buy supporter pack.

Sincerely
Ocean

First off I love this game don’t get me wrong. Long time player. Played pc then Xbox from 3.0.
I am against this harvest change. The small console player base already has limited crafters and good gear is very expensive. Rare mods like aug speed are so hard to come by already. Please listen to the community feedback and don’t implement these changes.
Thanks
Vape

This is how you lose alot of players... and makeing the only 1% top players to play ... so from GGG perspective is bether to have the 1% player have all the good items and sell them, then to have 99% players on decent items and enjoy playng POE. This is my last league.I'm shure i will not play on the next wher only Empirion, Zizaran and a few streamers will have rly good items and the rest of normal player's will try to kill sirius in Uniq items

Well all Standard Harvest crafted gear (and harvest gear from league eventually coming to it) is now going to sky rocket in price after patch drops.

More ways to break economy is always nice, good job GGG :)

All this does is put all the power and wealth back into the hands of the few who can speed to endgame in the first 4 hours of a league and abuse the new mechanics ... ahem ... newly implemented BROKEN mechanics, until the nerf 5-8 days in, because that's how leagues work in PoE, and then control the markets for the rest of the league.

Harvest was finally, SOMEWHAT, of a relief for a lot of players who don't speed rush a league, but by mid-league to near end of league, could actually have crafted some of these better items. AFTER suffering hours in a discord trying to trade for crafts THAT WOULD COST UPPWARD OF 100's of EXALTS in order to complete a few "Perfect" pieces. (btw, this is not about being a casual, personally I roughly would play 8-10 hours a day in game) Maybe try locking harvest crafting to accounts first. Just maybe see how that works. I know it was a tough thing to think up, took me like 2.4 seconds...


Ritual, in all honesty WAS NOT THAT GREAT OF A MECHANIC, (pretty sure it'll go core too, joy) I would wager 99% of the community would agree, what was great about this "League" was the atlas expansion, and Harvest. Counting the atlas expansion as part of your numbers in a league mechanic again show's "the brilliance" of this developer.


Skipping leagues, at least for me, has become more, and more often a thing.
As addicting as this game is, I really truly can't wait to be done with it, and invest my money in a team that can make SOMEWHAT reasonable design decisions ... If there will ever be one.



[Removed by Support] Harvest, and it's power should've never been implemented in the game, if in the end the fun of making great items would be ripped away. [Removed by Support] It's well known through out multiple examples, you don't give power then take it away. you gradually give until you find the balance.

GGG [Removed by Support], Who clearly only really rely on information from the top 1% ... I'm pointing at Streamers. Maybe actually look at the community as a whole, for your numbers.

+1 more reason to hope an pray a "wintery" development studio comes through on number 4.
+1 more reason to play a 20 year old remastered game over Path of Exile.
[Removed by Support]


One last thought for your team.

The amount of money in MTX GGG/Tencent receives from it's community I truly hope is not perceived as being the best or greatest ARPG. You really should consider if it might be because right now it's the best option in a pool of lacking options.

It won't be that way forever.. Might want to start making better decisions.



Hey Chris, Directly at you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5MOiIVu9pY

Thanks for the enjoyable, and fun crafting experience! ....