Dissecting and analyzing Harvest Manifesto + Data collection. A clash of philosophies.

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Rakushi wrote:

While I see why you would say in recent years they have had questionable changes, I would argue, that it could also be narrow-minded, or that we take good things for granted.

Whilst it is true that it is easy to take the good for granted and focus on the negative, and there is much more to the game than there ever has been (much of which is good) I can't say that PoE is a better game now than it was two years ago. It has some better things in it, but the whole experience is not the same as a sum of its parts.

It is a fact that I have played less PoE over the past year than the preceding 5 years, at a time where I have had a lot more opportunity to do so.

I think harvest crafting should be taken out of the game (and replaced with other accessible crafting), but not for the reasons GGG seem to think. I have no problem with the crafting power at all and agree that it is a very visible minority of players who's gameplay is affected negatively by it. The real problem is the mechanical access to the crafting, not the power and it worries me that GGG don't seem to distinguish between the two.


I is entirely possible that they are waiting for the opportunity to address the games issues at a more fundamental level and are currently just adopting band aid fixes until PoE2 (or whichever phase of the transition lets them implement big system changes).

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RymdLeif wrote:

My experiences are very much like yours. I've never had a league where I've had this much fun - and I've ripped so (soooo) many characters. Harvest enabled me to try out new weird skill gems and ascendancies and see how they could actually work in a world where they theoretically wouldn't - that being pre-harvest.

Is it the league or is it the expansion - or both? I see a lot of players praising the league but it rolled out along with a big expansion and so I’m questioning what it is that players are really happy about. I don’t think they are putting an accurate finger on it.

I played the league a bit and I had fun. I went back to standard and I am having just as much fun. I don’t miss the league at all even though I really loved this new - more or less - take on a smart loot shop/mechanic. For me it’s because of the expansion, and because Harvest happens to also be in the core game/standard.

I'm a completely new player and admit I no-lifed the game in Ritual. I was surprised at how much Harvest was involved in terms of making really good items. I know what Chris's philosophy on items is from his numerous posts and Game Developer Conference talks. I simply don't agree with him about his random items. He fully understands that items are what makes a character - level and that don't. Yet over the years more and more mods and item types have been added, so that getting the top 10, 5, or 1% item is now less likely than ever before.
I didn't think we'd have Harvest forever simply because of how pervasive it is, like whenever I'd ask someone how to craft something or make money, the answer was almost always 'Harvest'.
The deterministic crafting is what I want to see more of, but spread over more game content so that there's not one thing claiming a monopoly on crafting methods.
The fear of people burning out when they get their good items seems completely absurd due to the sheer amount of potential builds someone can make - especially when items that help make a build function are more accessible due to deterministic crafting.

You are a child of the light.

thank goodness someone took the time to make such a profoundly thorough post and even managed me make mention of the deep complexities of interactions between all of the various crafting systems outside of harvest. harvest does not exist in a vacuum and there are still a multitude of ways to improve the likelihood of profoundly "well rolled" items even within future iterations of harvest.

For instance, crafting physical damage weapons that achieve upwards of 95% of their max dps potential can still be achieved through essentially the same process they were in 1.0.

Additionally, the magnitude of the nerfs can be overcome through repetition. obviously no one feels great about bricking an item with unmatched potential. with a 60% buff to encounter rate there is a possibility that we may find that we actually could be presented with more opportunities to strike gold than maybe we initially assumed.

the harsh criticism is out there.
probably time to just wait till the dust settles.

+1
The most comprehensive post I've read and should be sticky'd IMO.

While I don't agree with everything, I will still be happy to play if this were the post most considered for 3.14.

I recently watched Itsyoji's video on the harvest changes and I think he brings up a great solution where instead of creating a failed/bricked state of an item you instead create a soft lock where you can still use the item but cannot craft/upgrade it any further. Much like the corruption tag.

Another thing I would like to bring up is that something I haven't read anywhere is divination cards. Wouldn't those be considered in the "overly-deterministic" category of Chris's philosophy?.

Everyone has 100% chance of getting a headhunter if they run either burial chambers or tower if they put in enough time and effort. Am I comparing apples to oranges here or is this no different?.

thanks for collecting the opinions, it's quite interesting what those players come up with when some of their toys are taken away.

reminds me on a birthday of my nephew when his parents told me to throw my presents on the pile of junk that already built up in the childs' room.

he would only play with some favourite toys but pretend to love them all but never use them.

poe's crafting options ever had the same problem.

--

but the real issue behind is how to solve the sharing of crafting options.
of course, making those powerful options available by trading would be a stupid move, attaching the risk of getting your item stolen is a good idea that encourages bringing friends in the game and establishing trust.

it just didn't work out the way ggg imagined.

they should have realised sooner that some abomination like trust based communities like the forbidden trove can pester a huge part of the community away.

no game master ever wants control over ingame power wander outside the game to people with contradicting or even commercial interests.

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SandboxRooK wrote:

+1
The most comprehensive post I've read and should be sticky'd IMO.

While I don't agree with everything, I will still be happy to play if this were the post most considered for 3.14.

I recently watched Itsyoji's video on the harvest changes and I think he brings up a great solution where instead of creating a failed/bricked state of an item you instead create a soft lock where you can still use the item but cannot craft/upgrade it any further. Much like the corruption tag.

Another thing I would like to bring up is that something I haven't read anywhere is divination cards. Wouldn't those be considered in the "overly-deterministic" category of Chris's philosophy?.

Everyone has 100% chance of getting a headhunter if they run either burial chambers or tower if they put in enough time and effort. Am I comparing apples to oranges here or is this no different?.

You're not entirely wrong that Div cards are overly deterministic, but I think those fit in a lot more into the game because of the ammount of time you'd have to invest to get it. And it fits more into GGG'S philosophy, because it's, no pun intended, a grind to get some of those. Harvest actually let's you gamble those, so that's quite fun :D (Probably the closest thing we ever get to the sentiment of closing your eyes and click on "Sacrifice half of Div cards, getting between 0 and double of the sacrificed ammount).

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cgexile wrote:

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RymdLeif wrote:

My experiences are very much like yours. I've never had a league where I've had this much fun - and I've ripped so (soooo) many characters. Harvest enabled me to try out new weird skill gems and ascendancies and see how they could actually work in a world where they theoretically wouldn't - that being pre-harvest.

Is it the league or is it the expansion - or both? I see a lot of players praising the league but it rolled out along with a big expansion and so I’m questioning what it is that players are really happy about. I don’t think they are putting an accurate finger on it.

I played the league a bit and I had fun. I went back to standard and I am having just as much fun. I don’t miss the league at all even though I really loved this new - more or less - take on a smart loot shop/mechanic. For me it’s because of the expansion, and because Harvest happens to also be in the core game/standard.

It's definitly both. The atlas became a lot more to explore, thanks to Maven, and there is clearly a lot more stuff to be done within the endgame.

But I did enjoy Ritual a lot. It was like mini gauntlets, with passable rewards, easy enough to do just like that, but also rippy enough. It had a great balance to it. If anything it lacked any sort of creativity past a certain point since there was no "End-Game" in it. I don't know if I would want to see it in core (More than other leagues [Ugh, Metamorph]), but that depends on its implimentation.

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TheSaltPrincess wrote:

You are a child of the light.

thank goodness someone took the time to make such a profoundly thorough post and even managed me make mention of the deep complexities of interactions between all of the various crafting systems outside of harvest. harvest does not exist in a vacuum and there are still a multitude of ways to improve the likelihood of profoundly "well rolled" items even within future iterations of harvest.

For instance, crafting physical damage weapons that achieve upwards of 95% of their max dps potential can still be achieved through essentially the same process they were in 1.0.

Additionally, the magnitude of the nerfs can be overcome through repetition. obviously no one feels great about bricking an item with unmatched potential. with a 60% buff to encounter rate there is a possibility that we may find that we actually could be presented with more opportunities to strike gold than maybe we initially assumed.

the harsh criticism is out there.
probably time to just wait till the dust settles.

I think new harvest will still be quite strong, but people would have to invest more time into it. THis is what I partially dislike about the nerfs, because not everyone has so much free time to invest into the game, and obviously would also like to have their items as they are, but time will tell honestly as to how the current nerfs will be affected.

As usual, I'll have faith in GGG :3 So far, they've been doing a good job in my opinion :3

I have the impression that GGG is ignoring a sad truth.
POE he is old, his philosophy is now boring in its short-term repetition (3 months).
For someone like me who has been playing this game for more than 6 years, it means having repeated the same operation (the optimized dressing of the character) at least 24 times, and with increasingly worse or unnecessarily complicated layers of rng.
Harvest has given a breath of simplification to all that mess of content for crafting (horrible betrayal with all its randomness of unlocking!), Putting the player to enjoy something that is always unattainable.

I don't know what GGG will do, but he will have to be careful in his choices,
because now POE, is a game with so much confusion and little satisfaction.
From the graphic aspects, to the malfunctioning or poorly optimized servers, thinking that only Harvest is a problem is very simplistic.

However, I would like to congratulate Rakushi for the beautiful analysis explained in the opening post.
Thank you

This is SO much work and so well organized. Love it.

I am mostly pro-harvest-nerf but this is super well written, constructive and provides feasable solutions.

+1