Jeweler's orbs should upgrade gem slots and not the gems

I am sure it was mentioned but currently despite the fact that there are no links and colors anymore, gem system is actually worse in terms of testing and making builds.
Before you had a 6 link item and you could try different gems and supports with it. Now for that you need to spend 4 divines just to try. I dont understand why its gem that we are upgrading and not the gem slots which are similar to the ones we used to link in our gear.

If it will be upgrading slot instead of upgrading the gem - that would imply significantly lower drop rates for jeweler orbs, making them significantly harder to find, and just generally making the whole system less rewarding and more punishing.


So, instead of paying 4 divines for 6-link - you would be paying 40 divines, or even a 100, or even never be able to reach 6-link for an average player. Because it will be super-rare, super-exclusive, super hard to find, and just generally bad - this is just how it works.


Why would it make it super-rare and super-expensive? - Simple, because just giving free permanent 6-link to everybody would introduce significant power creep, and would harm the perception of character progression making spell gems and links a completely pointless thing that everybody gets just as a granted. This would make the whole gem system a completely pointless chore which nobody cares about. Why plan and think about your decisions if everybody gets everything? This is what makes games boring and not fun.


6-link is a moderate investment, and you do need to make a choice if it is worth upgrading something to it, and not everything needs to be a 6-link to be good. Yes, you still need to invest a little bit into 5-links, but that's the whole point of it? That's your character progression? That is your unique journey? These are your choices, which are more meaningful in a Role Playing Game?


4-link is dirt-cheap, 5-link is moderately cheap - so you are free to test whatever you want all day long at the cost of 1 divine. And you do can live with testing it at "just 5-link" instead of 6-link. If the build does not work with 5-link at all during "testing" - highly-likely that it will not work with 6-link either, simply because there are no crazy OP 6-link combos within this game which turn a 5-link-complete-garbage-build into an absolutely godly screen eraser.


Gems are a progression system within the game, one of many. Different progression systems is what stands-out this game against competition, and what makes this game very engaging, deep, interesting, and quite addictive. So by asking to effectively remove one of progression systems from the game, you are effectively asking to make game less engaging, less rewarding, less interesting, not as deep as it is right now, boring, and pointless.


And there is already a great example of that on the market. It is called Diablo 4. No character progression, no meaningful choices, Skills and Skill mods are a complete trash-tier game design with only 2 choices on each, super "accessible", super boring, super meaningless, super pointless, zero sharp edges, zero complexity, zero sense of reward or progression, player can never make a wrong choice - player is always right. Diablo 4 is a great example of a dumbed-down rollercoaster game, where everybody has everything, the game babysits the player, and nobody cares about it, and nobody wants to play it for longer than few weeks on each new season start.


PoE 2 has already dumbed-down some very annoying RPG elements, to the point when it is no longed super-deep, but still exciting and rewarding. And the majority of feedback on these forums is not about making game better by addressing design flaws or obviously unfair/broken/EXTREMELY punishing mechanics, but about dumbing-down the game even more, and turning it into a clone of Diablo 4 - so that there will be 2 games, which nobody cares about.

PoE2 might be the only arpg game, which puts character progression behind heavy rng wall and gatekeeps content from most of the player base. Gems should be leveled, not rare drop, same for links. Endgame should be based on skill and grind, not rng.

the gem system atm is not at the stage ggg lead us to believe.

they wanted to seperate gems from gear so we could swap the gear more easily.

what they failed to mention was that we are stuck on 3, maybe 4 links if you get lucky during campaing and even in early endgame.
just to thow a number here, after the first weekend you get a 6l for about 20c each league in poe1, in poe2 a 6l for 4 div (on top of the price for the gear) means the droprate is low.
4->5 should settle around 3-5 Chaos/Ex while the 5->6 should be around 20 C/E max.

sure if you stack rarity you might find a greater jeweler or are lucky with the vaals you can reach a 5l right in campaign, but i dont see rarity staying like that.

the idea of upping the slot, not the gem seems interesting, sure you cant sell a 6l then and "reduce" demand, but you need jewelers for the twinks instead, so theres that.