Allow all classes to get all gems at start

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Baharoth15 wrote:

So bascially lets reject any improvements because acknowledging flaws means jumping on a slippery slope is that it?

I dont neccessarily perceive it as flaws to begin with. I do like some of the things you´d call a flaw.

I do perceive it as a slippery slope tho, thats true. Ive seen too many games going downhill because the devs didnt stick to their guns and tried catering to the masses for profit way too much.

I assume that the main reason they don't give us full gem access early on is so they don't overwhelm newcomers with choice, that was also the reason they moved some skills to higher levels some time ago. What they're offering now is mostly what makes sense for the class, sure, you can play a bow witch but it's clunky early on so it's easier to level with a spell anyway.

Maybe another reason are races but I'm not sure it's a terribly good one, if a skill is popular people will just pick a class with access to it, so you lose both the skill diversity and class diversity. Unless the event has rewards per class, but then you forced diversity anyway.

I suppose they could just have an 'expert mode' that will sell you all gems. It should probably unlock when you free the Scion so people wouldn't still go "Expert mode? Yes please, I downloaded the game 2min ago, I'm an expert".

the goal of limiting gems available to each class, and the story as a whole, is to train new players. The gems that are offered as quest rewards and in the vendors prior to Siosa are carefully chosen to fit the "archetype" that you signed up for when you created the character.

Yes, PoE is a unique game in which all characters can use all gems, but if you stop and think for a second, to do that requires quite a bit of game knowledge that is NOT obviously given to you when you first start the game.

It is a great system that exists now: reduces unnecessary confusion, strengthens core character concepts, and helps to guide newer players without being obvious about it. And plus, all you need to do is get to Siosa to access all gems anyway. Even a completely new player can get to Siosa in an hour or two.

Regarding a slippery slope: you cannot forget that the story, and primarily the first few acts serve as a tutorial to the game. Sure, those of us that have played it thousands of times with every type of character might want certain things to make it easier, but it defeats the purpose of having those first few acts and quest rewards in general if everything were to be offered by vendors right from the start.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

the goal of limiting gems available to each class, and the story as a whole, is to train new players. The gems that are offered as quest rewards and in the vendors prior to Siosa are carefully chosen to fit the "archetype" that you signed up for when you created the character.

That is a valid point but it could be improved on easily.
1. Early one have a quest reward give a HUGE variety of skill gems
2. Depending on your choice the next quest rewards will offer you useful support gems and gears, like when you chose Kinetic Blast you will get wands instead of swords.
Just a quick unpolished idea.

That said, clearly not all gems should be available early on so players find new toys along the way.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

the goal of limiting gems available to each class, and the story as a whole, is to train new players. The gems that are offered as quest rewards and in the vendors prior to Siosa are carefully chosen to fit the "archetype" that you signed up for when you created the character.

That's all well and good, but the gems aren't actually distributed that way. Here's some archetypes for you:

Duelist, literally THE shield class, doesn't get offered Shield Crush as a quest reward... but Marauder, the 2h melee class, does?

Then in act 2, Duelist gets offered Vicious Projectiles, the #1 support for many DoT skills, but neither of the two DoT-centric classes even have the option to buy it.

Templar can't get Critical Strikes but Ranger - a class which does not even have the minimum stats to use the gem - does. This is ALSO true of Power Charge on Critical, by the way... two INTELLIGENCE gems, available to the pure DEX class and not available to a hybrid INT class.

The completely arbitrary way in which the game decides who gets what gem is so badly done that it might as well be random. If the game did it purely by gem color or stats required it would be less bad than what we have now.

...OR they could let players actually use the skills they want. At the very least, you should be able to buy every gem of the appropriate level without having to go quite far out of your way at the end of act 3 to complete a quest most new players don't even know about.

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate wrote:

Templar can't get Critical Strikes but Ranger - a class which does not even have the minimum stats to use the gem - does. This is ALSO true of Power Charge on Critical, by the way... two INTELLIGENCE gems, available to the pure DEX class and not available to a hybrid INT class.

Yeah, some are quite the headscratchers, Templar is an int class, has a bunch of crit around the starting area, even has a crit-specialized ascendancy but you can't buy crit supports. Sure, I can see that in their heads crit is leaning more to the right int side of the tree, but grampa is still very much about it.

The 'new players' excuse is pretty lame, GGG have themselves admitted that most of the people playing PoE at league start are returning players.

And pretty sure new players will just use the gems from quest rewards and not actually go to a vendor to buy gems.

This game turns off new players in so many multitudes of other ways that the gem availability would be of little to no impact. Like you need to have an item with a specific no. of linked sockets of specific colors to be able to even use your abilities (a permutation of 3 random variables) - just this fact is extremely confusing & unintuitive for new players.

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Duelist, literally THE shield class, doesn't get offered Shield Crush as a quest reward... but Marauder, the 2h melee class, does?

Then in act 2, Duelist gets offered Vicious Projectiles, the #1 support for many DoT skills, but neither of the two DoT-centric classes even have the option to buy it.

Templar can't get Critical Strikes but Ranger - a class which does not even have the minimum stats to use the gem - does. This is ALSO true of Power Charge on Critical, by the way... two INTELLIGENCE gems, available to the pure DEX class and not available to a hybrid INT class.

The completely arbitrary way in which the game decides who gets what gem is so badly done that it might as well be random. If the game did it purely by gem color or stats required it would be less bad than what we have now.

...OR they could let players actually use the skills they want. At the very least, you should be able to buy every gem of the appropriate level without having to go quite far out of your way at the end of act 3 to complete a quest most new players don't even know about.

This deliberate or not serves a purpose, if I give you the optimal gems at the beginning you have no reason to try out anything else EVER. you already have the premium build...

a little diversity/experimentation goes a long way