Development Manifesto: Harvest Crafting

I've never felt the need to reply to a post in the many many years I've played path of exile.

This feels like a step in the wrong direction for the game. Items that were literally impossible to achieve for basically any player were finally accessible.

Mods with no tags were still hard to hit, I finally for the first time since I've ever played the game enjoyed crafting because it was like solving a puzzle.

Crafting felt unrewarding before Harvest and was not something most players interacted with. Other than awakened orbs because they were also deterministic, Harvest was 100% a step in the right direction to get players to interact with crafting, learn about mods and enjoy that aspect of the game.

I understand the mechanic isn't gone but this basically takes it from amazing to I'd go in a grove look at the crafts and just leave if there was no chance at aug influence. So it's basically a mechanic I'll barely interact with and I'm sure this'll be true of most players.

The game was more fun and now you're making it less fun. For what reason? There are definitely other ways to change the system to make it non-redundant.

All of this to say I disagree with the direction of this change, I'm disappointed, surprised even that game devs want their own game to be less fun and this makes me want to play the game less in the upcoming seasons.

The issue is with Discord....which I refuse to use but many do. I have leveled 3 characters one 98, one 96 and my current one at level 87 (soon to be 90+). This league is awesome I love it. I have not got one decent craft from Harvest (for me) and I allocated all of my Atlas bonus to spike it. I have thrown away or put into the tiny 10 slot storage probably 10-20 great crafts I can't use.

Chris you are wrong on this one. I agree with you about almost everything including itemization and I can deal with trading as is. Simply making harvest no-tradable fixes the situation except that it needs to be improved (not nerfed). Nerfing it because you refuse to lock trading goes completely contrary to your vision.

I would much prefer you just eliminating Harvest if you are dead set on these changes and refuse to address Discord.

Good job GGG and crybabies from reddit,
as a crafter i can say i will still do amazing items, but will just need a little more currency for the difficulties.
I'll just use split beast a little bit more often for my crafts as well.

Basically you gutted game for the rest of the people and scared them away from crafting again XDD. For many people harvest was something that allowed them to gain currency on tft or crafting endgame gear many times cheaper (so it could be reached by poorer people) and caused them to play this game more/longer. At least that was the case for me as well, because i could still upgrade my build and after upgrading still wondering what can i upgrade next.

Imo the best way you could satisfy redditcrybabies and people would be:
-Keep change about heart of the grove
-Make harvest drop specific currency type (something similiar to conqueror exalted) and it would be only for reddit people, cuz i dont mind having tft community, it is nice to have player interaction :).
-Heck, if they will still cry make it quest item, but then give us something to store that stuff. (and that would sadden a lot of normal people btw)
-Make seeds a little more scarce, but not that much so normal people can still get what they want.
-Implement rng that doesnt involve more currency for the same effect
*** for example 50% way to get deterministic exalted result would be stupid just as the change you want to do. ***
If you hate deterministic effects and want to stick to your philosophy either delete harvest completely or just make seeds to be "rotten" and possibly change more than it was intended to.
Even making them work like stronger catalyst would be better. (in a crafting way, not stats)

I've never posted a messages here, but this "manifesto" made me VERY ANGRY. It was the first league i truly enjoyed. have been playing since 3.9, which is not a very long distance, but still.
My average league playtime before 3.13 was something about 1-2 weeks.
This league took me 2 full months, and i still have things to do.
It was the first time i really enjoyed crafting, and it became my favourite thing to do ingame. Now, If GGG going to kill harvest like this, i'll probably leave PoE for good. I have no motivation to farm 2 full months and then just lose all my currency by "closing my eyes and slam exalt" LOL

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moldycondom wrote:

"

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 :)

Ok but nobody cares about the standard economy, it's literally a graveyard for league characters and items

Seeing to how most leagues lately have been trash and buggy dogshit I kind of disagree there. With these harvest changes I can also see a lot of people not playing the next league, it's one of the things that made players even stay on Ritual as the league mechanics itself were terrible. The only good thing was echoes of the atlas, most people are just skipping Rituals in maps and not bothering with them. If harvest wasn't in Ritual I don't think many would even be playing in league, aside from those that actually care about trash challenge rewards.

Most people only did Ritual for the hideout, which tbh is a pretty horrible layout for those that like to take time to customize their hideouts.

"Why would I use a regular Exalted/Divine/Annul Orb when I can get one through Harvest that has a deterministic result?"

Because EVERY SINGLE TIME I used one of those damn Annul orb I bricked my items...didn't even take 3 annuls, just every first one I used on some good item with a rare mod, had to choose THAT mod among the other 4...
that doesn't feel good at all.
The nerf would be "good" if you could allow people to store the craft in some orb (like Einhar's bestiary orb) and make harvest crafting and trading safer and integrated in game.
At that point, nerfs would make more sense.

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Appletree2k wrote:

I didn't see any overpowered amount of crafting options myself this league. But maybe 80 hours per week is the level GGG is optimizing towards?

That's my honest concern.
They always said they spent thousands of hours on diablo 2, they probably were that kind of player, all or most of the staff. Maybe it's an unavoidable bias: a game made by nerds for nerds (by no mean I want to sound offensive and I apologize if I do).

At the same time they DO have access to game internals, they can generate any kind of statistics and run in depth analysis on them. Is the average player the 80 hours per week dude? Maybe it is.
I know I'm not and yesterday I "finished" (read: call it done and move on) my first good harvest item: all tier 1-3 mods on a ghastly eye. That's my personal achievement in one year of POE, everything else was grinding and buying from crafters. Me and my buddy will try to pool whatever is left of harvest and try to make at least something of it before it's obliterated (cit. Sirus).

I understand the frustration of the players, but I think it is very healthy for the game to go through these changes.
maintaining the deterministic craft takes away much of the feeling of crafting a mirror tier item.


For me it's nothing big, the game already gives you everything you need to be able to complete all the content.
before harvest there were already absurd items.
if you are an absurd player, you will have absurd items.
Ps: I am not an absurd player.

most players in this league just ran canyons to buy harvest-crafts or strong equipment, and did not make 60% of the game's content.
The game is not just based on items, this is not a fashion show (except for mtx, oh yeah baby).


remember, while you're doing your hh, there's an asian guy ssfhc 40/40 tabula rasa


"Why mirror an item if I can craft it?"

To limit powerful and ridiculous gear created by harvest, we can simply disable harvest crafting when an item has 3 or more influence mods for example.

To me and probably many, harvest offers the ability to play "bad builds" as harvest crafting makes many of these "bad builds" playable. It gives so much more diversity in build creation and makes POE so much more colorful.

I was so hyped for the next league even tho we don't have any information for it yet exclusively due to harvest
now I will probably don'y play it, nice one ggg
this nerf is not helping new players and it is also not affecting the very top 1 of the ladder players, it is only affecting the middle ground like myself