Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

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Some mods that had overly-deterministic behaviour have been removed. These include all annulment mods (other than the ones that remove a mod that isn't of a specific type before adding one of that type), and all type-specific divine mods.

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Our problem with all of this can be summarised with the following thought: "Why would I use a regular Exalted/Divine/Annul Orb when I can get one through Harvest that has a deterministic result?"

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This sentiment was summed up by a member of our design team who recently said "We don't want to take away the feeling of closing your eyes and Exalting an item, scared to see whether you ruined it or not."

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Mayaria wrote:

Here are my thoughts.

I've been playing since closed beta across several accounts over the years. I've put more into this game in terms of time and money than nearly any other game I've ever played. (2000+ hours at least) I think I have nearly as many hours in the original Dungeon Defenders and probably 1/2 as much in Oxygen Not Included. Nothing else comes close. My first pack was a Gold supporter pack minutes after it went on sale.

PoE has been one of my favorite games for many years now even if I'm probably in the mid tier of players at best. I've barely cracked into endgame, before Ritual league I've had trouble getting past low tier red maps reliably. The game has changed drastically from the concept that caught my attention years ago and I'm still conflicted about if that has been for the better. Originally I remember magic packs and rare monsters being terrifying for poorly geared characters. And even for well geared characters in the highest level zones. And every drop was exciting because it could be something a little more powerful to help me stay alive that much longer in an extremely unforgiving world.

I'd actually suggest the dev team sets up an internal server of an old build and spends a little time playing. Say something like Beta .0.9.7 and see how the game feels compared to now. How the original crafting system fit in with that game (Where you were never meant to feel truly powerful, hence the bland item/skins where upgrades are in MTX only) And how that game fits in with the original development manifestos. Then compare that to the game in it's current state.

Drastic power creep HAS happened over the years. The fact that the top players can reliably get through the 10 acts in 3-4 hours and have early version of end game builds within 2-3 days of a league start show that fact quite clearly. And the fact that most of our loot filters have to filter out nearly every single thing that drops because it's worse than useless, it's actually detrimental to performance, that's another sign that the game now isn't the same as the game that drew many of us in. It's gotten so bad that I actually find SSF more enjoyable than trade league now even if it both limits what I can do and how far I can progress quite drastically.

In all that time, I think I've used an exalted orb once, and I think it was for a challenge or achievement. Anything else and I'm feeling like I've wasted it because it is far more reliable as a large currency item than as a crafting component. And the further the pool of mods expand the worse you can expect it to be going forward. Yeah, I've seen streamers 'slam' items with successful results, but those are the sort of clips that get views. The fifty times they got garbage out, nobody highlights that unless the reaction is extreme.

Until we have a reason to pick up rare items again the only real ways of obtaining useful gear is trade and crafting, both of which have their downsides. Trade is toxic and crafting can make a lottery look like a charity giveaway sometimes.

Low levels crafting isn't too bad but when you start getting into end game content, crafting goes from a couple of transmutes/alterations, augmentations to thousands of currency items. To get something really usable it quickly prices most players out of the market, you'd have to spend a lot of time collecting low tier currency. (Much of which feels like it is gathered by bots these days anyway...)

Trade in this game is not usually a pleasant experience. It wasn't too bad in the early days but with all the scammers, bots, delayed API snafus...and people simply not finding it worth their time to do small value trades (As the opportunity cost of using a portal on a high end juiced map is way more than the profit they make on that 1-20C item you are trying to purchase)...Even with all that, spending half a day whispering 50+ people to purchase even one small upgrade is still far easier than trying to craft it yourself using the current currency system without Harvest.

I agree that Harvest needs some tweaks but it has also been one of the most equalizing factors for many of us that are not top tier players. It's let us access content we otherwise struggle to reach without buying our way into it. I still struggle to clear some T16 maps safely on my strongest character. But I can mostly do so. I've even had the luxury of trying to learn some boss fights I've not yet gotten to experience.


My suggestions are:

Instead of just removing the slightly targeted options, I'd much rather prefer we keep the options we have for harvest now and just make it so that they cannot roll a T1 or T2 prefix for the stronger mod with more than 5 or 6 tiers. These items would be equivalent to the low end gear people buy in trade as it is.

Or...

Make Harvest crafted affixes a separate class the way bench crafted affixes are, and make those non-tradable. At the same time, give us a way to wipe just those affixes (Say a vendor recipe with a Scour and a Chaos, something with a cost but not extreme) so that the item could be tradable again. This would prevent the trading of Harvest crafts without locking items out of being traded entirely. I know the development team has stated it's distaste for bound items in the past, I honestly feel this would be a good compromise. You want a specific harvest craft, you find it and you can have it. Upgrade and want to sell the item? Remove the harvest crafts and you are free to do so.

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I was really excited for whatever the next league is, even knowing there was likely to be some nerfs to harvest, but this has killed much of that enthusiasm. I was expecting the passives to go away and minor tweaks to rarity of certain options, not a tactical nuke.

I'd like this Chris back. This Chris was more in touch with the community that enjoys the game for it being a game and not a job.

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To add some awesome fun content that appeals to our core community and also people who only want to log in for a little while each day.

-Chris of GGG on Forsaken Masters (7/31/2014)