Off-colour sockets: What's the deal?

It does seem like I get a lot more "chromatic orbs" than any other currency, since I always pick up RGB linked junk. I still go through a ton just for leveling gear. Vorici should lower his prices to a 10th of what they are, or the chrome recipe should give 10 times as many orbs. Getting colors right stops upgrades just as much as the lack of 4-links did before the linked-socket overhaul.

Making leveling gear easier to find and opening up builds isn't against the hostile nature of Wraeclast, there should be a reward for finding hundreds of chromes, not simply an "oh well, guess it's time to vendor alts in order to try and fix this".

I think it's cool and wear a lightning coil on virtually all life based witches and shadows since I came here. Never wore CoD thought it trash even with good EB and 450 mana/sec, I've had 6 6L lightning coils that had to 4B or more. Makes it interesting and hard because a casters should not be able to easily negate their glassyness. Thats why all the heath and regen are south not north. Thats why Iron Reflex is a mile away. Thats why heavy armor/lightning coil gear is hard to get working color wise.

My last one costed ~2K chrom

Interesting views. I'm all for the complexity of PoE to improve a character, but putting a hurdle before a character can use a skill at all is different. There's a reason the first weapon in the game drops as RGB. Imagine if new players were then given a second skill gem upon reaching Lioneye's Watch and told they had to wait 65 levels to use it. Because that's what PoE's lauded diversity demands, due to off-colours.

A player can advance with lousy gear, 3L/4L gear, and poor passive trees. But they can't play without being to socket skill gems. I like the fellow who said "Play a different build, then," because that's exactly what off-colours tell me: Stick to gear-appropriate gems and I'll be fine. Except synergistic gem choices are frequently off-colour i.e. spell totem, which can be helpful for pretty much any build yet is deemed to be a red/melee skill only. Add in trigger and support gems and off-colours always become the biggest limiting factor in the half-dozen builds I've tried.

Frankly, gems may as well all be white. Main stat already decides who can use them, so why do the colours exist? They create an arbitrary barrier to entry, as opposed to improvement. And when people can't enter, they leave.

PoE would only become more accessible if off-colours weren't a thing. Accessibility doesn't equate to something being easy, just... accessible. For people who "have theirs" when it comes to complex off-colours and take pride in it, that's nice, but I often find it impossible to utilise the diversity PoE is so famous for because of off-colours, or perhaps the arbitrary gem colours themselves (i.e. why is wither a blue gem? What about an evasion scion/ranger/shadow?).

Stat and color requirements give builds a layer of identity in a game where you can do mostly whatever you want. Beginner builds don't need a lot of off-color sockets - melee builds will use red supports, bow builds green supports, and caster builds blue supports, and corresponding armor and defense types.
There's also the trade-off while leveling, which is characteristic of PoE as a whole: do I want the item with the better sockets, or the one with the better stats? Sure, not being able to equip an upgrade without losing skills or supports can be frustrating, but that's what orbs are there for.

Expert players can bypass both stat and color requirements with investment. While off-coloring only requires one-time curency investment, and no item affixes or passive point allocations, which is a bit weird, it creates another tier of rarity for powerful items with off-color sockets, something for players to farm/hunt for.

In your example with Caustic Arrow the off-colour mechanic provides you with a choice. Like you said, use suboptimal gear (you can, by the way, use hybrid Eva/ES for RRBB, it's pretty easy in fact) or spend a lot of currency. If off-colour mechanic wasn't a thing, then you don't have a choice at all, just use your best item and you're done.

In my opinion, a game that forces player to make hard choices is better than one that presents a lot of no-brainers. Also it doesn't hamper diversity, not really, just makes it so you have a harder time getting to the perfect end game character, which is by design, I assume.

Example with a starting weapon on the beach, and part about PoE being hard for newcomers are a bit weak, since firstly it comes from someone with 24 achievements in a new league, and secondly being unable to get easy off-colours is probably the last in a huge list of problems newbie will face starting out. It doesn't even become a problem until you're into maps.

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kamil1210 wrote:

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Nephalim wrote:

It is absolutely archaic and actually hampers diversity when it becomes nearly impossible to make a life based coil caster or an attack based shav user.

The socket color preference needs to be greatly lessened.

Difficulty also happer diversity, we should remove hard content. LOL

I'm pretty I'm not alone when I say I have no idea what you're trying to say.

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Nephalim wrote:

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kamil1210 wrote:

Difficulty also happer diversity, we should remove hard content. LOL

I'm pretty I'm not alone when I say I have no idea what you're trying to say.

I think he means something along the lines of, limiting diversity is not in and of itself a bad thing. Probably a better example than "difficulty" would be respeccing vs freespeccing. Diversity is "hampered" by the lack of freespecs as it is harder to experiment and you face the difficulty of somewhat permanent choice, but according to GGG at least it gives you a stronger sense of achievement and autonomy when you do get a good passive tree.

Similarly, diversity is "hampered" by the lack of free off colouring as it is harder to experiment and you face the difficulty of RNG and/or grind time, but according to GGG at least it gives you a stronger sense of achievement and autonomy when you do get a good colour setup.

The way I see it, it is kind of an issue of taste. Some people are into bullet hells where one wrong move costs you 1 of precious few lives. Some people are into sports simulators. Some people feel satisfied when they work hard to overcome the hurdle of colouring bias in POE. Some people like RPGs with no such hurdles to begin with.

It's a question of what form you want a game's challenge to come in, and GGG has decided gem colouring is a fun challenge to overcome. But if enough people agree with you, perhaps you can get GGG to change their minds. Perhaps!

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Nephalim wrote:

It is absolutely archaic and actually hampers diversity when it becomes nearly impossible to make a life based coil caster or an attack based shav user.

That's what Cloak of Flame and Solaris Lorica are for.. <_<