Make all quest gems purchasable for every class?

I understand that you can buy them all from one place at Siosa, but that is A3 and requires you to go to the library.

Is there really any good reason that the class you pick can't access gems from another class until A3 from the vendor?

You can keep the library quest as a place to buy all of the gems from a single vendor until A5, versus having to travel to the different vendors in each act.

I don't get why we can't level with the skill that we want as league starters, kind of forcing people to choose a starting class based on the best skill to level up with.

This is just thoughts I wanted to share as I'm looking through which character I want to build for the upcoming flashback.

Believe it or not but it used to be much harder than it is now, in the old days you had to quest on a new character to get different gems and people even did this to sell them as a means to make money.

on top of that we didn't have the trade api goodness so you had to troll through trade chat or get lucky by dropping it if you did not want to level a new character.

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SilentSymphony wrote:

Believe it or not but it used to be much harder than it is now, in the old days you had to quest on a new character to get different gems and people even did this to sell them as a means to make money.

on top of that we didn't have the trade api goodness so you had to troll through trade chat or get lucky by dropping it if you did not want to level a new character.

is that a reason to continue to restrict it now, though?

+1

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CaptainFoo wrote:

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SilentSymphony wrote:

Believe it or not but it used to be much harder than it is now, in the old days you had to quest on a new character to get different gems and people even did this to sell them as a means to make money.

on top of that we didn't have the trade api goodness so you had to troll through trade chat or get lucky by dropping it if you did not want to level a new character.

is that a reason to continue to restrict it now, though?

In no way was i trying to say that the OP's suggestion shouldn't happen, but i do think its important to know how far the game has come since its early days. :)

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SilentSymphony wrote:

i do think its important to know how far the game has come since its early days. :)

I remember making threads back in those days about how horrible it was that we couldn't get gems on every character. It's way, way better now, but there are still completely unnecessary restrictions in place that only serve to make playing certain builds frustrating.

The worst is when they "fixed" some old gems by making them less shitty if you used some number of specific unique jewels. They gave us a small selection to choose from in a quest, but tons of interesting or non-shitty builds are still locked behind finding multiple specific unique jewels in the wild, some of which are insanely rare. I still couldn't make a golem build even with every single Primordial jewel I've found in every league combined.

A POE where we had easier access to everything that enables builds would be a far superior version of the game. Even if I had to target farm an area for a boss-specific or map-specific drop (and not something so absurdly rare that I have to shape my Atlas and run a single map for two months), at least I would know I'd eventually be able to play that build. There are countless builds I'll never be able to play due to trade-gating, though.

We're forced to rely on trade to play a non-shit version of POE, but I don't trade because buying my character from other players makes POE feel even more like shit. I want to actually build my character myself, even if I have to jump through a bunch of hoops to do so. GGG doesn't even give us those hoops, though. They just tell us to either hop on a trade site and buy our build or get fucked.

Playing the game yourself shouldn't be anywhere near as punishing as it is in POE. I really hate GGG's mentality when it comes to that.

I think the thought process behind making people wait until an optional quest in act 3 is that GGG doesn't want new players to be even more overwhelmed than they already are when picking out skills to play. I'm not saying this as a value judgement and I don't even know if it's true, I'm just stating the rationale I've heard.

But I'm confused as to why this is even a problem? I mean, the majority of skills in the game aren't even available until act 3 (auras, curses, and of course the 28 skills), and if you go straight from the Barracks to the Library before Piety, it's literally 5 extra minutes to get all of your skill gems from the point when you'd get the 28 skills anyway. And that's only if you're already level 28 when you kill the good General; usually I'm not, and can't use my 28 skills until after I kill Piety anyway.

I know, I know, there's the obvious and perfectly valid responses to this: but why not just let everyone have every skill, what's the real downside? And as far as I know, there isn't one. But I also don't see any real upside, when you're talking about something that saves, at most, a couple of minutes, one time, an hour into your first build of the league. Because of course, when it's NOT your first build of a league you can/should buy all your skill gems ahead of time from other players (quality versions) or Lilly Roth.

So on the off-chance that it does somehow improve newbie QOL to have their skill selections somewhat streamlined, I gotta side with "leave it the way it is."

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate wrote:

I think the thought process behind making people wait until an optional quest in act 3 is that GGG doesn't want new players to be even more overwhelmed than they already are when picking out skills to play. I'm not saying this as a value judgement and I don't even know if it's true, I'm just stating the rationale I've heard.

But I'm confused as to why this is even a problem? I mean, the majority of skills in the game aren't even available until act 3 (auras, curses, and of course the 28 skills), and if you go straight from the Barracks to the Library before Piety, it's literally 5 extra minutes to get all of your skill gems from the point when you'd get the 28 skills anyway. And that's only if you're already level 28 when you kill the good General; usually I'm not, and can't use my 28 skills until after I kill Piety anyway.

I know, I know, there's the obvious and perfectly valid responses to this: but why not just let everyone have every skill, what's the real downside? And as far as I know, there isn't one. But I also don't see any real upside, when you're talking about something that saves, at most, a couple of minutes, one time, an hour into your first build of the league. Because of course, when it's NOT your first build of a league you can/should buy all your skill gems ahead of time from other players (quality versions) or Lilly Roth.

So on the off-chance that it does somehow improve newbie QOL to have their skill selections somewhat streamlined, I gotta side with "leave it the way it is."

Why is it a problem?

Talking strictly from the speed running point of view, a lot of weight in deciding what class you pick lies in the starting gems you are offered because not all starting skills are creating equal.

The same can be said from a non speed running point of view, for example marauder has a terrible skill selection that has only become worse over the patches.

Leveling through as marauder is slow, clunky, and not even safe.

Whereas you can pick a storm brand or ROA hero or lightning trap and literally power through the game.

If the start of some chars sucks from an ssf point of view based on the in game resources provided less prople are going to pick thos classes naturally because everyone chooses the path of least resistance.

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ironstove wrote:

Why is it a problem?

Talking strictly from the speed running point of view, a lot of weight in deciding what class you pick lies in the starting gems you are offered because not all starting skills are creating equal.

The same can be said from a non speed running point of view, for example marauder has a terrible skill selection that has only become worse over the patches.

Leveling through as marauder is slow, clunky, and not even safe.

Whereas you can pick a storm brand or ROA hero or lightning trap and literally power through the game.

If the start of some chars sucks from an ssf point of view based on the in game resources provided less prople are going to pick thos classes naturally because everyone chooses the path of least resistance.

Fair enough, but this seems like you're trying to treat a symptom instead of the disease. I completely agree that ROA and Storm Brand (and to a somewhat lesser extent Freeze Pulse) are much faster and better leveling skills than the alternatives. But why not do something about that instead?

Isn't it of far greater concern that there even are "wrong" choices to make at level 12, where the balance of skills should be the easiest?

Trying to bring all of the skill gems to parity is a balancing nightmare and even if you tried your best there will still be skills that do better than others so you're trying to make the ground a little more even but there will still be uneven bumps rather than big hills.

I say screw all of that and just open the floodgates and let the players decide what they want to play and how they want to play.

The game already does that by allowing all gems to be purchased in A5. There was a point in POEs past that classes had an identity in terms of playstyle associated with them. That day has long since expired and disallowing slower classes access to the fast skills only exacerbates the issue further and why 2/21 ascendancies make up more than 50% of the softcore player base.

Fixing weak skills is another animal in itself, just let me fucking buy essence drain in A1 and not have to level up with ground slam ffs

I am literally just suggesting to make the gems accessible earlier in the game from vendors so all classes are on the same ground when leveling rather than some classes getting a head start with an easy pass.