Crafting -- GGG saying crafting fine made all major streamers quit

So I'm not saying PoE2's system is perfect, but I can tell you the thing that bounced most people I know personally out of PoE1 was them trying to get a grip on its crafting system. To me, it feels like it has all the down sides of a complex system (one without any handrails, onboarding or tutorialization), and few of the upsides.

The recent dev comments and some of the interviews are really giving off "higher than thou" vibes. Similar to d4 originally before they realized they had to change because their CUSTOMERS had other options.

When the high end streamers are in complete disagreement with the game design choice, the devs need to wake the you know what up. I choose my games by the teams that listen to their customer base. People like me are the ones who buy all the extras, all the expansions, the tabs, the cosmetics and tell all our gamer friends the same.

We listen to those streamers. The number crunchers. The ones who literally want to help a game get better and spend the time to actually give suggestions for free. I say free because they can get all their attention playing anything else and don't need to "help"

GGG needs to stop being elitish....the entire gaming industry is currently learning they need to listen to their customers. I am an above average casual and all my gear is from trading. I don't have a single item I crafted or found because of 2 things

1) The crafting system is god awful slot machine with no defining characteristics. It's worse than the original d4 system. I can farm currency and then just buy the power players drop offs before I could rng an item with even 4 good affixes/suffixes

No one wants to RNG buy from merchants or hope for hundreds of drops to gamble with. Your ONLY point of control is the base and ONE afffix/suffix you could change. After that, every random could wipe out the roll you wanted.

2) The loot drop setup is terrible. People are running t16 maps with corrupted/irradiated and 200% rarity and get what, a handful of tier 3 items in a few hours? Let's not forget the 75% of item types your class would never use. That will only become worse when more classes are added. I've never seen higher than a tier 5 item drop in hundreds of hours and juiced maps.

The game is in alpha but to hear "We like were loot and crafting is" is a literal death sentence since why play since everyone (except the devs) know it is terrible.

Same goes for the constant disdain of auction houses. It's 2025, we got hundreds of other games to play. Reminder as game companies close down every day......LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMER BASE

I have to agree, the crafting is awful.
I know they've said they wanted to move away from the POE 1 crafting but I think they've gone way too far.
The only time I craft now is when I get a tier 3+ item.

I agree crafting is terrible. I don't understand why they want to make the game a slot machine with no deterministic outcomes. To form of control. Basically no ability to manifest within a digital realm. It is buying a lottery ticket and 9/10 of not more failing. Spend 100s divines on a multitude of bases and omens to have them brick on you. While others do it with like 30 divine because they hit the lottery. It does not feel good in any way shape or form. On top if that I guarantee you there are individuals exploiting bugs within the craft system to reroll things. It is true that these overpowered items are not needed. Though having the ability to do it would be nice. If you want a mirror tier item you have to exploit somehow or get lucky and drop a mirror. I'm my eyes that says that they condone exploitation. I've played for years and not once have I dropped a mirror. It wouldn't be so bad if we had methods of making 10 divine an hour and do so solo. like you could in harvest in poe1 or many many other ways in poe1. But no it isnt that. The only way to make that where it is consistent and not a slot machine is using a rarity bot and exploiting other players as leeches for xp in the maps you run and stack Quant on towers. So we get one choice that is not a slot machine. I get it if you like gambling and have an addiction to that sort of thing though most individuals I would say do not. Going back to poe1 almost sounds better. Or just playing something different. If GGG is actually going to keep it a slot machine then in my opinion that is a failure after such a success with PoE1. And if you disagree that is okay, I get it you want to play the lottery.

Why bother making noise? The devs will just tell you that you ARE having fun. If you are not having fun, then you are playing wrong. Play their way, The End (Vision).

Crafting is fine for my SSF taste, but we dont have enough ammo to use it, due to currency drops ratios being real bad or better said frustrating. Especially in campaign dont get enough ammo to keep updating main weapon damage (not to mention needed def affixes on armour and jewelry pieces), partially due to non existing alteration orb here and partially to quantity of fragments from disenchanting rares (which drops are damn low on top of that).

There is no crafting in PoE 2, just multiple layers of wisdom scrolls.

I pretty much despise POE1's 'crafting'. So many people bash on POE2's 'crafting' as not being deterministic. The implication here is that POE1's is somehow deterministic, but it is way far away from being deterministic...

UNLESS you are in the top 5% of players, that is. Those people can afford all the currency needed, like fracturing orbs, divines, those extremely rare and pricy essences, all the horticrafting stuff, etc.

When I hear that POE1 is deterministic, that tells me this person is an elitist, part of that very select few. The reality is that in many cases you'd have better luck playing the lottery. Some of the gear I have wanted to craft in the past, I plugged everything into the crafting site, and it said (on the best case) stuff like ~20K tries.

And those were not-so-special pieces of gear.

This is why things like fracturing orbs are so important. Currently, for Settler's league (which has been going for almost a year at this point, so should have very decreased prices), on Xbox where I play, a single fracturing orb is 10-15 divine. So, anyone that offers that up as anything less than for a very select craft, is on a completely different level from more than 90% of the player base- thus, should NOT be the feedback the devs listen to when it comes to things that affect ALL players (including crafting).

The vast majority of the player base needs accessible methods for crafting, and for that, POE2 is actually better than POE1 (not saying it's great, just better). Those same elite level players are the main ones complaining about POE2 because they have the exact same level of crafting that everyone else has- they don't have what they had in POE1.

POE1, they had same crafting as everyone else until they get to end-game, and then they get new stuff opened up due to having so much wealth. POE2, end-game crafting is the same as it was at ~lvl50, which is basically the same as it was at ~lvl10.

If you were trying to craft something that was 'not so special' like say a Reaver Axe with T1 %phys or something like that, turns out, that's actually pretty rare to come by, and yeah it'll take some crafts to make.

The difference is in POE1 you can work on that one weapon for a while. In POE2, no matter how much currency you have, you get like one attempt to get it right, and if you fail, that's it, you're done with that and you get junk in return.

If you're just looking for something that is actually 'not so special' like just a chest with life or something, or shoes with movement speed in POE2, you get one shot, and if you fail, you get nothing.

The crafting system in POE2 sucks. The crafting system in POE1 might be difficult to understand, but at least it's not as punishing as in POE2.

Even like, if you're not doing high end crafting, still POE1 comes out on top because if you are just trying to craft some junk to tide you over for one Act, it's still cheaper.

Also, you might think the Settlers league should have a really good economy, but that's not the case at all because many many players have dropped the game. It's rare for anyone to play an entire league for as long as Settlers has been out, this means vast amounts of resources from the community are just locked into people's stashes never to see the light of day again. There are probably hundreds of Magebloods on people's characters that will never be touched again because the owners are just done with the league. So yeah.

It's so funny, how people who bash PoE as being for "unskilled" players, relative to PoE Deuce, also bash the crafting system in PoE as being "too complex."

I would much rather learn a few crafting basics (which are all you really need to play) than have to rely on trading with people whose luck or trading skills (not to split hairs too finely) are better than mine. If I find or craft a good item, that's rewarding. If I trade for it, that rewards the guy I bought it from.

If your idea of good gameplay is abdicating item acquisition to the merchant princes, struggling even to find one who is willing to reply to your attempts to contact, then, by all means, enjoy playing how you like. As for me, every cool item I craft is a personal success, and part of dynamic gameplay. There is positive tension involved in seeking that good outcome which the most fortuitous discount purchase from some random dude simply lacks.

And that's how I play PoE. You can keep your Deuce. =9[.]9=