Say everyone picks up every last gem that falls on the floor. Everyone has a storage of 100+ chipped gems and flawed gems in their stash.
You still have to spend time grinding and rolling those gems into perfect gems, and once they become perfect gems, they’re still most likely going to end up as bad rolls. I saw Geezer in another gem stacking thread mention he burned through thousands of gems:
So I don’t understand how there could be negative consequences of this?
Doesn’t this promote more activity in the community? As a casual player, I NEVER crafted items because I was never in the position to even consider it (I wasn’t going to fill my stash with hundreds of gems just to end up with a few handful of perfect gems).
If a casual/new player has a storage of gems in his/her stash, they are going to be more inclined to actually find a use for them or trade them.
This is why stacking (by 5 or 10) even in the inventory is a good thing, so people can trade 200 - 400 perfect gems for an item.
But what’s even better I think is that there will be more crafted items in the economy up for trade. I don’t remember ever seeing crafted items for trade when I played D2 through out the years.
This just adds more to the game overall. More things to do, more things to trade for, more things to look forward to.
Does anyone have a good counter for why gem stacking would be a bad thing?
In hell, where everyone will farm once reaching a certain level, pretty much only flawless gems drop. You rarely see chipped, flawed or clean gems. And flawless gems drop quite frequently.
If you remove the stash limitations, people will be able to pick up every single gem they find without having to worry about filling their stash only with gems not having room for other things.
Perfect gems will quickly pile up, without taking additional stash space, removing the need to trade for gems to accomplish your needs. You can easily find enough gems to reroll a grandcharm every few games with gems you find yourself.
There also is the inventory management argument, which is completely valid, since the it’s a core gameplay feature of Diablo 2.
The inventory size: Blizzard considered changing this as a modern quality of life update, but decided against it. “One of the things that’s really different in D2 compared to contemporary [action-RPGs] is you’re not pulling 70 weapons out of your backpack at any point in time,” Fergusson said. “You had a very limited inventory. We had lots of discussions about: Should we increase the inventory size? It’s one of the places where we felt that that was a bridge too far. It was part of the makeup of the game. The fact that you collect charms that make your character stronger but are eating up your inventory space, it gives you this tension of ‘do I want that +15% magic find at the cost of three slots in my inventory?’ Those were interesting and meaningful decisions while you’re playing. The idea of, ‘this will be great for quality of life’ became ‘no no, we’re actually breaking the game mechanics.’”
However, I don’t see anyone proposing having forexample only flawless gems stack into (3), which is the same amount required for a perfect gem. But i still don’t think stacking in this game is good game design from a multiplayer perspective.
Those are good points. You’re right stacking by 3 most likely makes the most sense.
Is it really a bad thing if people are rerolling their grandcharms every few games? I literally never did these things throughout my periods of playing D2. I’m watching a video of someone rerolling grandcharms and they keep rerolling as charsi food. That looks like a LOT of perfect gems to be burning. Which makes me think having stackable gems would actually promote more gem trading in the community - knowing people have them for trade.
I also think motivating people to actually use the crafting feature is a good thing, casuals like me NEVER considered rerolling charms or crafting boots/gloves, etc (maybe you might see this as a good thing). If people see others easily trading 120 Pgems for an item, they’ll be more likely to find out why everyone wants them and what they can do with the ones in their stash - and if they find that burning through thousands of Pgems isn’t worth the risk, they’ll just trade them.
I 100% agree with the inventory management. I was actually anti gem stacking a few days ago. It wasn’t until someone brought up the points in this thread that I realized I might be wrong and this might better serve the community in the long term.
What do you think? Will there be more gem trading activity in the community? I think your idea of 3 stacks max is a happy medium for inventory management. That means someone can trade up to 120Pgems at one time.
Part of Diablo 2 is inventory management. You see evidence of this with limited inventory and stash size, and with the inventory space you do have, you’re forced to prioritize extra space or room for power-enhancing charms.
Socketables not stacking adds to the inventory management mechanic. Gems and runes are powerful. You should be actively choosing whether to sacrifice critical storage space for socketables, or use that space for hoarding items.
By playing the game endlessly and hoarding hundreds, if not, thousands of gems across a small number of slots, you can conveniently wait until your target item drops and slam it with as many rolls as you want with a cube recipe until it’s perfect. You can hoard low runes for days and transmute them up to high rune levels when there are no stacking penalties.
On top of this, you now have more room for hoarding loot, which removes the inventory management mechanic, thus nullifying one of the core features that adds to the magic of Diablo 2.
There isn’t one particular feature of Diablo 2 that makes it a great game. There are many mechanics of Diablo 2 that synergize to make the game a pleasant experience. Even the features that some people find to be “tedious” are intentionally made to be that way to add to the game experience. Players that don’t sacrifice storage space for socketables will be unable to make runewords, or do transmutes or cube recipes. Players that don’t participate in the systems of tedium within the game will be out of reach of the most powerful items.
These inconveniences are part of the allure of the game. Some would be quick to dismiss systems of tedium as a feature and say they are a distraction or an unnecessary burden; however, as we’ve seen repeatedly with games in the past - World of Warcraft retail being an excellent example, removing too many systems of tedium dilute the entire experience and result in a dull game all-around. We need inconvenience so that we feel triumphant and accomplishment when reaching the pinnacles of power. This holds true in gaming and in life. If you are given everything you want without effort, you will never feel like you truly earned what you have.
Gem stacking means increasing gem supply (x2 or even more)
Increased supply means reduced price. Currently, 40 pgems = pul. And… nobody will trade 80 for pul. So, actually, gem stacking completely ruins gem market.
The players that make the mules, that go through the time of transferring and dealing with the hassle, are the players that end up creating the most valuable, sought after equipment.
The players that don’t make the mules, that only use one storage and fill it with items, are losing out on the pinnacles of power, adding value to the highest-rolled items.
I agree, I prefer the game to be more difficult and leaving it as is is a good way to do that.
My points were kind of a trade off by making the game “easier” (easier meaning less grindy) but also promoting more community activity - as in people actually standing in town rolling their gems, learning to craft their own items, trading them, etc.
So I see what you’re saying, the people that go out of their way to grind the hell out of gems get rewarded for it.
The downside to this is (in my opinion) is that most of the community isn’t going to engage in the crafting feature (especially casuals). Is that a good thing? Or is it better if people feel like they have more to do in this game besides exp runs and dueling? What is better for the game overall?
The problem with crafting is: most casuals will not even know it exists unless they check a wiki and even then they are there probably only for those mysterious runewords they heard about and stop right there when they found those.
At least for runewords you are getting a hint in the game itself.
What I’m really talking about is I NEVER saw any game rooms called “Pgems here” (maybe once in a blue moon). If more people learn how to craft, could we see more game rooms involving Pgems and people joining to make these trades because they learned the power of crafting? Some people won’t feel like its worth it to burn their gems and see more value in trading 120 for a rune of some kind.
That’s how it’s always been. But crafted items are incredibly powerful. If everyone is crafting them, they lose their allure.
It’s best we make some items more difficult to obtain than others. Not everyone can have a Lamborghini, after all. There need to be high-hanging carrots that only the most dedicated players can reach. It gives a goal to work toward!
Incorrect. There are a lot of people that don’t even know the cube’s crafting recipes aside from rejuvs and higher rune/gem transmutes, etc, OR they don’t even fiddle with it. We shouldn’t be making it easier for everyone to obtain powerful gear.
Okay. Well if there are guides out there for it, we don’t need to make it easier by saying “Here, don’t even worry about inventory space anymore. Just play and play and play and hoard your stackables and eventually you can spam perfectly-rolled GG gear!”
There need to be items that are out of reach for the common player.
That’s a good point. My reasoning for making it more accessible is because I thought it would still be extremely rare to get a good item from rolling (and noobs wouldn’t find the trade off worth it, and instead sell to those that do). I don’t know what level crafted gear usually requires (I think I remember it being high).