"Failed to apply item" - leaves user clueless as to why

As a new-to-POE but 20 year veteran of the genre who is otherwise loving this masterpiece in game design, I'm frequently left frustrated and confused by "Failed to apply item" messages that shed no light on what it was that I was doing wrong.

I'm assuming the current generic message is a placeholder, but would love to see context-aware text telling me (for example) "Sorry, you cannot improve the quality of an item past 20%". I can then have my "Doh!" moment, and move on.

Or, upsteam of the error itself: when I am holding a currency item of some sort, the compatible items in my inventory should glow (or incompatible to be greyed out). That way I won't try anything that's forbidden by POE :)

Better error messages are fine. Glows are unnecessary. Trying and failing will be enough.

as a new poe "user" myself i can say i dont understand what ur failing to see/read?

when i fail it says in a short msg why. i then go ooo ya and take the item off and take the gems out.

as i did not know this as a new user clearly the msg tells u what to do. what are u failing to understand or see about that msg?

btw it says something like u failed to apply item, it could be its equiped or has gems loaded. and i think it says something else also but i forget as a new user i cant recall, but it does tell u all the reasons WHY it could fail.

Fair enough - I get exactly the same error message every time, is all, despite the fact that the triggering conditions are different. It's the message that warns you about the item being equipped, or having gems loaded, rather than a responsive message telling you what's actually wrong. (It's almost never either of those issues)

If I'm the only person playing POE whose confused by this, it might say more about me than the game :)

I also get this message almost every time I try to apply something to an item despite the fact that my item is off and my gems are out. Why? I don't know. It's very annoying. I would like to know what's wrong!