Now that PoE2 is a separate game, when will we get the promised gear socket revamp / fix?

We won't. They are going to hold this update hostage in PoE2.

I don't think they should do this. I'm really excited about the new system. I've basically been sleeping through several leagues waiting to try it. I think it has the potential to be a much more interesting game. But putting those changes into PoE 1 would result in it not being PoE 1 anymore. The changes to gear and sockets in PoE 2 are so radical that most of the assumptions PoE 1 content has been built on would be drastically altered or nonexistent. You're just carrying around the name and the narrative structure of the Acts at that point, it's not really PoE 1.

If both the old system and the new system continue to exist, the devs working on the old system have much more breathing room to fix things rather than continuing the rapid design by accretion that has made late PoE 1 so unpleasant. Actual rebalancing and adaptation of old content to new paradigms and all that other stuff that can't always keep the seasonal user count high enough to appease The Investor I don't need to name. They'll be able to do this because PoE 2 is obviously where they're going to be moving fast and breaking things, so the team working on PoE 1 will, at least some of the time, consider themselves to be maintaining a legacy product.

I don't necessarily have a whole lot of faith that they'll do this the right way, but on some level they must've decided to at least try. The only other reason to announce something like this, when the original plan was already "keeping" PoE 1 by shoving the old campaign in the new game, is that you think you can get people to whale out for two mtx farms with the same aesthetic identity.

Surely they haven't become that awful. Right? Surely. We'll see, I guess. It could be that's exactly what they're planning, seeing as they're also promising new expansions for PoE 1. What they really should be doing is freezing it as legacy software, as that would facilitate cooling off the dev cycle, which they really, seriously need to do if they're going to try to offer two live service games. The main problem with PoE 1 is they put too many friggin' mechanics in it! It's a teetering mess, almost entirely defined by a struggle between power creep and the one-shot portal eaters necessary to combat the power creep.

I detailed a plan I think would work well back in this thread. It's obviously pretty unlikely to happen this way because business cult logic almost always wins, but I'm already pleasantly surprised by GGG changing course to keeping PoE 1 alive, so perhaps we can dare to dream that they'll adopt a more sustainable dev and release model for it?

Ultimately, the primary reason to continue to offer an old version of a game is nostalgia. You're trying to cater to the people who miss that one league five years ago where their favorite build really took off. So, I'm really hoping that new expansions for PoE 1 will be more like updating old ones so they can be periodically run again when the devs need time off or the new hotness in PoE 2 needs more attention. That's not even my ideal, because that would be if they made a new questline that lets you join Bone Mommy in Betrayal. But I do recognize that practicality demands we leave some things in the past; PoE 1 will only continue to exist in the long term if GGG can get away with putting as little new work into it as possible.

"

Raghin wrote:

That's kinda the main point though. They set out making PoE2 to not only add new content to the game but address long standing issues in PoE1. Both are being developed simultaneously. Better sockets in PoE1 wouldn't kill its identity so much as do the exact thing they originally set out to accomplish.


The real core identity in PoE1 is the speed of the gameplay and the way players build their characters, which is indeed what is fundamentally changed in PoE2.

im not sure the speed really will be that different when its released, even the devs being interviewed said that in endgame its essentially still gonna be as fast for almost everyone.


you wont completely kill poe identity with the socket change, thats true.


but, what happens to all our influence gear with socketed gems supported by this and that? + to level of socketed gems? corruption mods with + gems? theres loads of items in the game that will be completely fked if they change sockets in this way right?

what they previewed at first still had gems in sockets when they said merged games with shared endgame. your skill gem sockets still came from your gear so even tho you had this other screen the gems were still in your boots or your weapon.

now thats not a thing at all right? its just a gem screen, got nothing to do with gear. and the socket idea still being in gear that they showed before was kind of botched, it was half a good idea but the still getting the skill sockets from the items was really messy. what happens when you swap gear with different socket colours etc...



so its a change that does destroy a lot of things in the game, a lot of uniques, a lot of rares, items people have spent in some cases 10s of mirrors crafting. the vibe was well, its poe2, its such a big update that yes we are destroying all this stuff but thats just what comes with such a big update, or maybe it doesnt destroy stuff but now in poe1 you have what? 6 links in your 1h weapons that also have 6 built in supports and are supported by the gems in your shield via squire that are also 6 links so now you have 18 links?



on its own this change doesnt end life as we know it, but its massively disruptive. the thing with poe2 is that its multiple massively disruptive changes that together are just unacceptable. but they all improve the game. so the decision to keep the games seperate and move forward with them in a new game, doesnt that mean you dont add any of them to poe1? why would you make that choice to sp0lit the games but then go back and add some but not others to poe1 anyway?

"

sephrinx wrote:

We won't. They are going to hold this update hostage in PoE2.

This is my assumption as well, which is a shame because I honestly think coloring sockets is the single worst aspect of PoE currently.

If your problem is with how much time and currency you have to put into getting the right sockets on stuff, they could fix that anytime by just making it cheaper to do. You don't need a deep systemic overhaul for that, the new socket system is to fix other issues.

"

Raghin wrote:

PoE1 will have it's own leagues, content and development cycle, alongside PoE2.

That is their currently stated intention... and they've had a lot of those that didn't actually happen because of valid business (or other) reasons. Ref. the earlier statement that PoE 2 would include all of PoE 1.

PoE 1 will stay alive as long as it makes GGG and their investors money... Once it doesn't, or once they decide that the money is better spent on PoE 2 for better returns, it will quietly die.

This is a business, not a charity...

"

Raghin wrote:

Since PoE2 will now be an entirely separate game, when can we expect to see the socket fix coming to PoE1?

I hope not! I hope PoE1 will keep orbs of fusing, I like them a lot.

"

007Bistromath wrote:

If your problem is with how much time and currency you have to put into getting the right sockets on stuff, they could fix that anytime by just making it cheaper to do. You don't need a deep systemic overhaul for that, the new socket system is to fix other issues.

It's not at all about the currency sink, it's about the fact that coloring sockets is annoying and arbitrarily hurts build diversity. If I'm running a melee Raider, let's say, one of the best chest options is a Kintsugi. What if I want to play Infernal Blow? The skill itself and at least 3 of the supports you want to use are going to be red gems, and almost everyone playing Infernal Blow on the right side of the tree also wants to use Trinity. That's 5 off color sockets I need to roll, on a 170 DEX base.

Compare this to a nearly identical build using Frost Blades, where you'll have a minimum of 3 green gems in your skill setup and could easily justify 4 or 5. Build A is significantly more annoying to gear, for zero real reason other than "we made the game this way." There isn't an argument to be made for balance, it's purely annoying and makes it arbitrarily harder to play one build over another.

It's equivalent to, "what if 6-linking a 2h mace took more fusings than 6-linking a 2h sword." There's no balance justification for this sort of thing, all that change would do is make less people use maces and more people use swords.

yep.

its also the entire design space issue. with this other system you get 9x 6links, so you dont just have 1x 6link in your body armour on a 1h+shield setup. this means you can have a dagger character with frostblades as an aoe that also has a fully supported doublestrike single target skill and a spectral throw ranged attack while also having a 6 link totem skill.

the whole thing was supposed to open up the skill system so they could completely rebalance skills. you dont have to have every skill be a pack killer and a boss killer and work for speed clearing and be safe to use in all situations. you can have many skills equally supported that are situational.

with the current game state that sometimes doesnt seem like a big deal because theyve had to make every skill a jack of all trades, so youre not missing a great deal on any viable current build, all 'good' skills do everything with 1 button. but the overall picture is that we have essentially a 1 button game where all our other skills just buff our main damage skill that we use in every situation. thats 95% of builds.

this new system would have revolutionised the games skill design which would completely change the way we play the game.


this is where that gets into the grey area tho cause to take full advantage of the new system you then need to redesign all items that effect skills or sockets and redesign all offensive active skill gems and supports. so is that within the scope of poe1 being kept going?

maybe, maybe theyre still willing to totally revolutionise large parts of poe1s systems. but maybe not? i can see it both ways.

The single biggest thing I was waiting to see for FOUR YEARS was the new gem socketing system. I have been planning and preparing for it all this time, only to have all of that anticipation shot down by the announcement at Exilecon 2023. Based on a quote from Jonathan in an interview (posted by Jix_91 on the initial post of his "The promise of a shared endgame fooled collectors and standard players" thread), it appears that GGG knew they were gonna change the plan to making a new, separate game as early as August 2021.

Yet they somehow neglected to share that information with those of us who, assuming everything was going as promoted at Exilecon 2019, continued to support based on those assumptions.

And, no, I don't think GGG will be arsed to bother giving us the system for PoE 1. ='[.]'=