Streamer Feedback Should Be Filtered — Example: Uncut Support Gems

In my experience, people start to complain a lot about this and that at the point where they are essentially bored with the game. I have hard time understanding how some players have played this game for 2k hours by now. That's more hours put in to a single video game than what most people do salaried work in a year.

There just isn't that much content in the game; some people truly enjoy the basic gameplay and the ever-diminishing returns of infinite gear chase, but I do think a lot of players with that much put in are playing in part out of habit and may not even have all that much fun anymore. So they end up complaining.

I also had to check when this was posted.. Cuz, support gems have dropped a lot for me this league. I can't see how there's an issue in gemmin' yourself up, unless you speed ran the campaign and think that you should immediately have all your skills set up with l5 supports at the start of mapping.

IMO it's a fun bit of progress, that happens only once, at the start of the league for your first character that ends up to mid tier maps. After that, you'll quickly accumulate enough of them to support your alts.

Yea, funny how this works - at first the campaign is slow and annoying.....I mean meaningful and thought provoking until you accumulate enough wealth to trivialize it on your subsequent playthroughs. The Vision at its finest - let's make people who don't want to put much effort frustrated with how hard the initial stages are then make the ones who enjoyed the initial stages bored with how easy the other parts of the game become

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tzaeru#0912 wrote:

In my experience, people start to complain a lot about this and that at the point where they are essentially bored with the game. I have hard time understanding how some players have played this game for 2k hours by now. That's more hours put in to a single video game than what most people do salaried work in a year.

Because this game is all they do and most of the time these are the same individuals saying market is fine, temple is cool, no campaign skips/shortcuts, game too easy, more friction, nerf all skills, etc....

The people who play that much, like you said a full time job since the game is just over a year old, are the ones who IMO shape their arguments to gate keep newer players or players who only play less than 10 hours a week from anything high end. There is absolutely no reason T15 and under uncut gems should be rare during the campaign. T15 or T14 (cant remember) is the cut off for the last unlockable skills. Why would ANY of that be gate kept in anyway or send people to the currency exchange?

Trade and Currency Exchange should NOT be the end all be all of obtaining 99% of the things you need. This is the most frustrating thing about the game for anyone who doesn't play all day or is the hideout warrior.

Side note, these are the same people who also say there is nothing to do after 2 weeks. Notice how they use days as a measure instead of hours played. Because 2 weeks to the average person is finishing the campaign. To them, that's already T15 maps because they play 10+ hours a day.

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Johny_Snow#4778 wrote:

Yea, funny how this works - at first the campaign is slow and annoying.....I mean meaningful and thought provoking until you accumulate enough wealth to trivialize it on your subsequent playthroughs. The Vision at its finest - let's make people who don't want to put much effort frustrated with how hard the initial stages are then make the ones who enjoyed the initial stages bored with how easy the other parts of the game become

If you are in the later, why not restrain yourself from twink gear or buying stuff to speed it up then? SSF is what those people really should be playing if that's how they really feel. But its not, because they want to play META and trade simulator while complaining they got their gear too easy and game too easy.

Vast majority of the "too easy" crowd refuse to self impose challenges and would rather have the game be forced into their likings instead of allowing options and choose the one that makes them have the most fun. All this does is push people away. If you really valued the challenge you would play it that way. But in reality its not, they value trade and being rich in the game over that but cant admit it.

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Mr2888#3516 wrote:

By “progression weight,” I mean that when you get access to things matters, not just what you get.

Trying skills is fun, but if everything is available immediately, progression becomes flat. Early limits create pacing: you make a choice, play with it for a while, and later you gain more freedom.

That’s why I prefer recoverable decisions (like re-cut / reforge) instead of flooding players with gems. It lets players experiment without turning the campaign into a sandbox with no sense of growth.

I’ve shared my view earlier in this thread. I’d genuinely like to hear your solution for handling uncut support gems and early experimentation, not just the criticism.

Sorry but I just can’t get why the “when” is matter more than the “what”. Why create a system of skill that requires combination to make it work but then gate keep them by scarcity and “progression weight”, if the argument is to suffer early so you can have fun at the later time then there’s no way new players to the genre gonna stick around, first impression is important.
My suggestion is the solution they already had in Poe 1, the library NPC. If it were me, I’d make every skill gem have a lv1 version so people can try as much combo as the game intended.

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Haplo#7878 wrote:

i think your feedback should be filtered. uncut gem drops should be increased. also they should allow reforging uncut gems to a higher tier.

+1
OP is out of touch and missing the fact that streamers merely repeat what the playerbase already thinks, if it were the other way around the game would be very very different.

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XxxPssySlayerxxX#5201 wrote:

Sorry but I just can’t get why the “when” is matter more than the “what”. Why create a system of skill that requires combination to make it work but then gate keep them by scarcity and “progression weight”, if the argument is to suffer early so you can have fun at the later time then there’s no way new players to the genre gonna stick around, first impression is important.
My suggestion is the solution they already had in Poe 1, the library NPC. If it were me, I’d make every skill gem have a lv1 version so people can try as much combo as the game intended.

I think this is where we fundamentally disagree, and that’s fine.(now it's about skill not support gem anymore)

I’m not arguing that players should “suffer early” to earn fun later. I’m arguing that pacing matters. The when matters because it gives structure to learning, not because scarcity itself is fun.

If everything is available immediately, experimentation turns into pure sandbox testing. That can be fun, but it’s a different experience than guided progression where options expand over time.

I’m also not against experimentation or accessibility. That’s why I keep pointing to recoverable systems (like reforge / re-cut), not permanent punishment or hard lockouts.

This is also why some people say PoE 1 and PoE 2 are meant for different audiences. PoE 1’s progression is so fast that, for me personally, it becomes boring. I actually enjoy PoE 2 more, building power slowly and steadily toward the endgame feels more rewarding to me.

PoE 1’s library NPC worked in PoE 1’s context. PoE 2 is clearly trying something different. Whether that needs adjustment is a fair discussion , but removing pacing entirely isn’t the only way to make the game welcoming.

We just value different parts of the experience, and that’s okay.

Uncut support gems are a problem now? sounds like a weekend user complain tbh. I get tons of them, there's like 1 to 3 that drop every single map. Also you can use Rank 5 for lower tiers, that's why there's no upgrade formula...because it's not necessary.

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Warrax#2850 wrote:

Uncut support gems are a problem now? sounds like a weekend user complain tbh. I get tons of them, there's like 1 to 3 that drop every single map. Also you can use Rank 5 for lower tiers, that's why there's no upgrade formula...because it's not necessary.

I actually don’t have a personal issue with uncut support gem drops either. I get plenty of them as well.

The reason I brought this up is because a streamer framed it as a major problem, and those narratives sometimes turn into design changes. My concern isn’t current availability, it’s preventing over-corrections that could undermine PoE 2’s progression model and the audience it’s clearly aiming for.