Path of Exile

OU Ariakas said:

Once that was given and taken away the idea of going back to grinding currency and then looking at the trade site became distasteful because of what I knew they could do in the game. When they came out multiple times and said that Harvest was an experiment and also a mistake I knew that the thing that kept me engaged in the game was almost assuredly not coming back.

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Harvest in a vacuum is ok, I guess. But what you describe is voluntary SSF-Harvest. But endgame for those leagues was actually using discord to buy and sell crafts and get there MUCH faster. And we're back to the usual problem with trade league.

I do hope LE turns out great, but for me it really depends on their trade decisions. So far it looks like a gimped "we pretend it's trade but it really isn't" system. That's good, because it will allow them to have RNG that is balanced around a mostly SSF playstyle and drop rates to match. But there is the a distinct threat of people too dumb for their own good crusading for full trade and ruining the game.

I hit that point that Chris mentioned in 3.13. I could have gone further with the character. But, I was already instant phasing Maven. Other than delve, and mostly with specific builds, there is no content in-game for that power level. But, I've hit similar points since at least legion, if not longer. I usually quit when I am tired of doing what I've been doing since hitting maps, only faster.

GGG is set on keeping old content relevant. That decision is very limiting. Instead of giving content for the power level that is still available, but became less accessible, they do exactly what they did. They raised the HP for Elder and Shaper years ago. Remember when DPS was SPS? As long as they balance around those old bosses as much as they the power ceiling will be short.

Harvest allowing more people to complete their characters and be done with the game shined a light on the lack of content. 3.13 was the most accessible the game had been. Between harvest and the farming strategies for all gear/skill/play-time levels it was amazing. But, it also gave the Maven content for people to test their powerful builds on.

Kythik said:

Harvest allowing more people to complete their characters and be done with the game shined a light on the lack of content. 3.13 was the most accessible the game had been. Between harvest and the farming strategies for all gear/skill/play-time levels it was amazing. But, it also gave the Maven content for people to test their powerful builds on.

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At some point you've got to take a step back and examine what you consider a 'lack of content'. Just in general, GGG puts out new bosses/expansions/content at a breakneck pace that is unmatched by just about any other designer out there. If you think Harvest shined a light on its lack of content, its very fair to say then that the issue was with Harvest.

Byr said:

At some point you've got to take a step back and examine what you consider a 'lack of content'. Just in general, GGG puts out new bosses/expansions/content at a breakneck pace that is unmatched by just about any other designer out there. If you think Harvest shined a light on its lack of content, its very fair to say then that the issue was with Harvest.

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Deep Delving is the only end-game content that has the ability to test the power levels that have been relatively attainable for 5+ years. It amazes me that players were able to surprise GGG with the depths they could reach. Pre-nerf harvest was an issue because of the lack of content to support the accessibility it offered. To a lesser extent, it still does if one wants to slog through TFT.

OU Ariakas said:

But who was this happening for? In Harvest and Ritual leagues I played three times as long as any other league with one character and STILL wasn't done with that character. The general consensus of the people that want Harvest back was that it made them spend more time playing POE, not less.

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At least me and a good portion of the people on my friend's list. I might be giving too much credit to Chris's statement.

Harvest with stuff like Rog (who I'm assuming is going core) would trivialize a lot of gearing. You'd just pick your base, slam 'enough' T1s and then fix it with Harvest. In Harvest league itself I did basically max a character and I had something like 16-30m dps and just instantly killed Conquerors. It was my first character like that and was definitely fun, but then it kind of diminished other characters leveling up because I knew what I could do. I tried out a lot of experimental stuff in Harvest and it just never compared even with the ability to essentially make all the gear I needed. I think with Harvest we wouldn't see this huge diversity bloom everyone thinks, they'd all just stick to the easiest to gear meta and blast the gear until they melt Maven. I think everyone should experience a character like that at least once, but when the whole league does it just feels like D3 Rifts or something. It also fucks the economy when the amount of people that can run their little T19 Deliriums or whatever goes from 0.01% of the league to 10% of the league. Shit goes bonkers.

I think they should add a "super Harvest" league like they did with Endless Delve. Let people just blast their shit with aug annuls and see how crazy they can get and then realize its kind of like having a hex editor in D2. Fun powering up, but it cheapens the rest of the game when you became God so easily.

Just looked at Harvest retention and it was the same, if not slightly worse than most leagues past the first month. I know those of us who stayed loved the fuck out of it but the nopers from having to set up their Garden chunked their player pool and GGG probably looked at those numbers and go "Oh, Harvest wasn't that good for players." Same as the fuckwads who didn't even start this league or quit before maps. Rog/Tujen are amazing and the mechanic is one of the better ones in terms of in-map mechanics for a few leagues now. But I'm guessing most people who quit saw Rog said "those rares aren't good" and didn't buy a single thing. Then they went and posted on Reddit or Steam reviews on how the league was awful. Shit like that hurts future leagues when people down rate content they didn't even engage in.

the problem with Rog is that sitting at a vendor is not fun.

People noped out of harvest league because setting up the garden was fucking turbo aids. I was one of the few that played the shit out of harvest because it opened up a few gearing options that normally I don’t have the time to farm up.

Deathwing said:

Mapping is the only thing that should be allowed to take an indeterminate amount of time. How many maps until my next exalt? Who knows, having fun blowing shit up, progressing atlas, picking shit up off the ground.

How many alterations until I hit level 20 CoC support? How many tells until someone responds? How many leather belts until Gwennen gives me a HH? Who knows, not having fun.

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Where's the wall you break through then? Like, do you just infinitely blast maps and hope some one else has the item for you to buy? Like I LOVE just running maps nonstop, but usually with builds I have a goal and that goal involves some Harvests RNG or Alva RNG or something and that's the chase. When I FINALLY get to that point it feels like I accomplished something. If I just had to play 10 hours to make my 6 link CoC Bow as a given I don't know that feels like D3 reforges or something.

Xevy said:

Where's the wall you break through then? Like, do you just infinitely blast maps and hope some one else has the item for you to buy? Like I LOVE just running maps nonstop, but usually with builds I have a goal and that goal involves some Harvests RNG or Alva RNG or something and that's the chase. When I FINALLY get to that point it feels like I accomplished something. If I just had to play 10 hours to make my 6 link CoC Bow as a given I don't know that feels like D3 reforges or something.

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I dunno. D3 doesn't have near the breadth of itemization. I think a cooler approach would be this particular mod can only be found by say farming the templar conqueror whatever his name is. However, its RNG if it drops, and, say its COC support, it could be the bow or the sword. Now, it will drop well-rolled, but the other 5 mods could be anything t3 or above. There could be some good items, but mostly that's gonna be shit. In that world, there is no harvest. Instead maybe you do allow some prefix/suffix can't be changed and annuls? I dunno. That becomes way more like d2 but without the + gooder of D3. Plus, you have just the overall scope of PoE's endgame of maps vs. D3 which i don't think has any real target farming.

Again, I'd tune those conq fights to last at least 3-5 minutes then possibly and maybe the tier of said "build-defining" mod is related to Awakener level. There are ways to design this with "fair" rng that aren't as reliant on gambling currency.

Edit - I don't mind the 21/23 drop removal either. Granted, I do agree it took away an exciting drop, but I can also see how it made Alva more desirable to farm. I just think there are other ways to design around ITEMS dropping and not currency. Again, though, this is me preferring that D2-esque over how POE with currency gambling solved the situation. I think frankly POE drops too many items and their mid-tier bosses are shit for farming. I'm not talking about map bosses either. Those should be shit farms. I still think the move of uniques from particular bosses to the core drop pool is awful design.

There's a fine balance between what you SHOULD be able to earn through just playing and what has to be that hurdle or wall you break through that makes your build that much better. I don't have the answer to the balance there, neither do GGG, and neither do Reddit. I don't like the idea of getting what I want by just playing enough hours. There needs to be that MOMENT when you're like "oh shit it happened!" or it's just like grinding dailies. You put your time in and get your thing like every other schmuck and there's no magic to it.

Getting stuff just by putting the hours in sounds good on paper but it just sounds like ARPG daily grinding and that ain't PoE. PoE is great because of RNG and the more of it you remove the more magic the game loses and it just becomes closer to a mobile arpg loot n scoot.

One thing I'm pretty excited about that Chris talked about is the defensive overhaul, if you could avoid being randomly one shot in this game it would be much better. I'd probably play more, being randomly one shot just makes me want to log the fuck out. I just hope it isn't some half assed attempt - if you're gonna do, then fucking do it and give players options to be damn near unkillable if they sacrifice enough dps nodes.

If you're going to one-shot me than I also expect that you will tell me what the fuck happened so I can learn.

a simple death message is all that’s needed. Surely they can suavely program that without showing the entire wizard behind the curtain. We just want the head projection.

Xevy said:

There's a fine balance between what you SHOULD be able to earn through just playing and what has to be that hurdle or wall you break through that makes your build that much better. I don't have the answer to the balance there, neither do GGG, and neither do Reddit. I don't like the idea of getting what I want by just playing enough hours. There needs to be that MOMENT when you're like "oh shit it happened!" or it's just like grinding dailies. You put your time in and get your thing like every other schmuck and there's no magic to it.

Getting stuff just by putting the hours in sounds good on paper but it just sounds like ARPG daily grinding and that ain't PoE. PoE is great because of RNG and the more of it you remove the more magic the game loses and it just becomes closer to a mobile arpg loot n scoot.

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You simply balance the probability via drop. Instead of a roll it’s a kill. Much more engaging. It is still the same. I’d still put in hours of getting alts to then spam which has a probability of making that item.

it sounds like you’re hung up on boss drops meaning guaranteed. No. Math doesn’t work that way. It can be made the same probability, but one action (running and killing) is more fun and engaging than another (shift mouse click spamming an orb). You’d still need the same time. Arguably more grind for the drop mechanism since I’d kill almost all metacrafting. Ask anyone that put big time into d2. You took years to get perfect items.