Gem System

Hello,

I don't think the gem system is really challenging at the moment. I like making comparisons to the first game, because that's just what is at hand. It makes everything easier, I think.

Well, in the first game I had to think about whether I have enough gem slots of a certain color in order to use a specific combination of skills and support gems. I also had to think about how many supports I wanted to use in combination with how many active skills, which is usually one active skill and the rest supports, but can also be multiple active skills.

Every time I see a choice that challenges my cognition a bit like that, I think that's a good thing. Especially in games like this. I think it's the one thing that makes games like this fun, well except for of course seeing all the mobs exploding into bits and pieces and feeling a sense of accomplishment when you made the right choices in your build and with your items.

So, PoE 1 also needed me to think about what stats I needed in order to have which color of gem on my items, right? I am not going to explain the whole gem system now. I think people who played it know what I am talking about.

Anyway, in Path of Exile 2, this is suddenly lacking. There is no connection between items and gems anymore, except stats that items give you. And I thought that this is a bummer, because this was something that set PoE 1 apart from other games that are alike and made the impression on me that the designers wanted to be creative. And they were creative. It's a good system.

Now, in PoE 2 they are apparently trying to be creative again. But somehow the system feels lacking. I get that it makes you shuffle around support gems until you found the right skill combinations. But maybe it only does that while you are still relatively new to the game. Maybe at some point there is no real question anymore which support gems should go where. And maybe that's not even a bad thing, because it could very well be, that this is part of achieving a mastery in this game.

But there's so much potential to this, right? It could be a system that makes you switch out support gems from time to time when you are stuck somewhere, which I am already doing, but only until a certain point. The fear I have here is that at some point the system just loses relevance, like the further you progress into endgame.

Also maybe it wasn't a very good idea to have uncut gems instead of specific skill gems to find? Maybe it would be better to go back to a similar way of finding skills and support gems as well as spirit gems, as it was in PoE 1? Maybe it would benefit this system a lot, because then, by randomizing the skills you find, there would be more need to shuffle things around and experiment, which maybe isn't as much the case with uncut skill gems.

My focus here is the cognitive challenge of a system like this. Is this system really challenging the player in a way that is challenging and thus not just tedious and boring?

I feel the system is on the verge of being tedious and boring, but sometimes feels like it gives me a challenge to think about. But maybe that sometimes isn't often enough at the moment and I think there is a certain kind of complexity missing to create depth.

Anyway.



In kind regards