What Happened with Items

its not about nerfs anymore. its about straight up SPITTING in our faces.
some just dont seem to realize yet

This decimated my hopes for even POE 2 now. You release a manifesto not noting these drastic changes at all. Now only lucrative way to get currency/progression is in Heist/Expedition/finding a couple specific super rare modded monster that needs decent rarity/quantity to drop decent loot and the Devs don't plan on changing it. I'm done this league as both the mechanic/mapping soured me - all I was looking forward to either a Kalandra themed or late-game non-map mechanic that is better than Delve/Heist before POE 2. At least I don't need to worry about talking PTO for league launch.

I can appreciate the humility in this post, but the problem is we all loved the game when you were apparently ignoring your core philosophies. There was only a problem with it in your eyes, it was damn near a perfect game in our eyes, it was our favorite game, it was THE BEST ARPG...in our eyes. You are working on Hard Mode, which can be in your vision and exist alongside the version we have all loved for years. I know the people on your team must struggle with the fact that you let the game you created get away from your philosophies, but that's why it became popular. Very few people are interested in playing a game like the one you wish this was. You can't force people to like something they don't like, and you definitely can't take something that everyone loves, turn it into a hollow shell of what they are used to enjoying, and expect them to keep playing it. I can honestly say that since archnemesis became the new mod system, I have literally felt oppressed. I have a full-time job, yet I still cram over 40 hours a week into the game (when I'm enjoying it), sometimes so much that I have not spent enough time with my partner. We have lives, we have loved ones, we have obligatons. The point of this is to say that I have NEVER been able to accomplish everything there is to accomplish in a single league. After playing the first week of this league, I can see that I am not even on track to beat any pinnacle bosses other than the easy Eater and Exarch, maybe Sirus, and maybe Elder. I need to be able to make some currency with my league-starter, who will not be able to beat many of the bosses, so I can fund a second, more powerful character. I am decent at the game, understand my build, and play quite a bit, yet I have made about 130 chaos so far, 50 of them from one well-rolled quiver, and a few 5-10 chaos rings. This is out of identifying THOUSANDS of rares and price checking anything that looks like it is worth anything. I have not dropped a single Divine or Exalt yet, and have not found any unique worth more than 5 chaos. I believe a core philosophy should be that a player who plays the game 40 plus hours a week should be able to experience all of the end-game content in a 3 month league, aside from maybe uber bosses. I understand they were introduced as aspirational content for the people who are fortunate enough to simply have more time to play, and I'm okay with the fact that I probably won't achieve that goal. I understand what you are trying to do with archnemesis mods and fewer rares in theory, but in practice thus far it has simply reduced the enjoyment of the game significantly, and a vast majority of your playerbase will agree. My suggestion is to revert to the old mod system for now, work on archnemesis mods on the side, and have well-know, long-time players play test and give feedback before re-introducing them to the core game. As far as loot goes, you can say that everyone stating 90% reduction is an exaggeration, and you can say that you have calculated the actual percentages and posted them here, but when you play the game it FEELS very unrewarding, regardless of numbers. The only numbers I can cite are that I have made roughly 130 chaos so far this league, and at this point last league, with no really lucky drops, I had around 50 exalts, which at around 80c a piece at the time would have been roughly 4000 chaos. I understand rng is rng so there can be huge variances, but that's OVER 90% reduction and comes out to about a 90% less fun multiplier. Please please please just let hard mode be your baby, your vision, the thing you're most proud of, while letting us still enjoy what we've been proud of you for creating, what we've considered the greatest game ever for so many years.

So I'm not going to touch on this. What I'm going to do, instead, is touch on what Chris and GGG has NOT talked about yet.

1) The Harvest changes (missing crafts). I personally believe these are gone, as they told us they didn't want this stuff back in May 2021. BUT. It was not clearly communicated what was changing and why before 3.19.

1a) The Harvest crafting in general. In 3.18, if you ran Harvest in a T1 map, you were guaranteed anywhere from 18-30+ crafts, which you had to use immediately. Most of these were low value, but very important for people in early maps for gear upgrades. They were only slightly deterministic, and remain in game in 3.19. Now, even AFTER the changes, a T3 map with some Harvest juicing (full node to the right of the Kirac circle in the middle) gives me about enough juice for 2-4 of the same low-value crafts (essentially a chaos with slight deterministic ability). This is not good. Early maps is where players -need- that crafting ability, similarly to how players in Acts 3-8 need orbs of Binding for 4L gear but don't get them until maps in any quantity. This is partly because T1-2 beast packs aren't guaranteed to drop lifeforce. I ran an entire node in a T3 map tonight, T1-2 beasts, and received nothing. A Harvest node should always give -some- life force. If it's T1-2, it should give a small amount, but at least 50 (enough to do one craft).

2) The Exalt to Divine change, specifically how this has been handled. Given that there's been zero communication post launch about this, I believe this change was made as GGG has expected, and on purpose. Here's the issue (IMO). In 3.18, you had Exalts (meta-crafting and slamming) and Divines (rerolling explicits). Exalts and Divines dropped at the same rate, but you had at least four methods of getting Exalts: Drops, multiple divination cards, Exalt shards from Harbinger/chests/drops and the ex shard recipe (full set of influenced gear). At the same time, you had two ways of getting Divines: Drops and the 6L vendor recipe.

With 3.19, Divines are now meta crafting and rerolling explicits (I think, haven't gotten one!) and Exalts are just for slamming. They drop at the same rate. EXCEPT there are still at least four methods of getting Exalts, and with the removal of the 6L recipe, only one way to get divines. This has an effective change of making divines much more rare than exalts.

I believe this was on purpose, because again, I think they want to get rid of multimodding / end-game crafting as it stands to an extent. However, I also believe this was a mistake. They should have given us more ways to get divines, not fewer, even if they were rare (div cards, et al). Hopefully, GGG realizes this, and either changes one of the Exalt Div Card sets to Divines, or adds a new div card set for divines.

bring back crafts!! MORE COMMON AND REFORGE KEEP PREF(SUF)

You literally pigeonholed the player(s) into very specific and simple mechanics, where there used to be a million of interesting ways to earn currency, split across multiple league mechanics. I look at the brilliant atlas tree now, not inspired, like it has become smaller in size. I don't mind the archnemesis mobs that much, but the drops are based on pure luck (unless you do the same mindless chest farming, which has very little to do with rare monster drops), opposed to previous leagues, where the good drops were still relatively far inbetween, based on your own effort and knowledge, but consistent and felt rewarding. Nothing to do with group play for me, i only play SC trade. This league is the first time ive not had any desire to progress my character further 1 week into launch.

That should have been a part of the balance manifesto.

Now, no rational explanation of what was done, will reach the people screaming -90%.

The drops are still funky. Look further. We get flask and armourers showers but the amount of other stuff in non-league-content is noticeably lower. I mean 2 lootfilters grade levels lower so I do not leave the map with empty backpack.

PS. fix (bring back socket colour and other stuff crafts) to harvest or just get rid of it please. Its pointless now.

I have played pretty much every leauge and i can tell you now as a solo player the drops are not in a good place. I generally alch and run maps non stop all day because its what i enjoy but this leauge i am leaving maps with an empty inventory sometimes with maybe a couple of basic currency items. Its night and day how bad the drops are if you actual play the game for years on end and the progression is slowed down way to much it gets boring.

Consider Increasing the quant and rarity of the lower tiers of archnemesis It would make lower tier play feel much more rewarding. I think it would also make the playing between the big drops feel much better.

CAN You Bring Back removed Harvest Crafts PLSS???