You can have your cake and eat it too: a different approach to solving socket issues - GGG pls read

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Torin wrote:

I explained my reasoning. It is to remove RNG from active skills while still keep it for itemization.

Well, if you also got rid of GCPs and made every gem a quest reward, you would have completely removed RNG -- and all real itemization -- from active skills. Which would, in turn, remove all conflict, thus removing all choice. This is a bad thing. (You might want to watch that linked video.)

Right now there are a lot of upset players complaining about getting 6L. However, it's important to give players itemization goals that improve various facets of their character, including the skill system itself. It's about differences in kind, not just differences in quantity. If we didn't have stuff like the 6L system, itemization would be one step closer to Diablo 3 -- a boring math game. Like I was saying in the example of the good rare versus the white 6L, itemization like this gives players important choices. These choices are definitely more like calculations if sockets are solely for providing passive bonuses instead of active ones.

What we want is to eliminate the feeling of strict superiority from the socket system. The rune system can do this by itself, especially with the "runes and gems can't link" rule turned on. Changing the core of the skill-socketing system is both unnecessary and unwise.

Well Chris said they read every thread, and they will answer more of them. So I am bumping this one in hope I do get an answer.

Bump, up this gem needs to go. The system is not worked out yet, but the thread is full of the right intentions. Maybe it is time to work it out also on a graphical way?