Diablo® III

Why only 4 types of gems? And why do these gems only add one of the primary attributes when socketed to everything else except maybe helm / weapon?

Diablo 2 had 6 types of gems and so many more types of Runes which all could be socketed into items and gave different effects.

I know, in D2 gems were pretty weak and were not used except for Cube recipes while runes were mainly used for Runewords, but that's a numbers issue and can be solved.

There are so many cool and interesting affixes in Diablo 3 and all the 4 types of gems basically just add damage. Str, Dex, Int they all translate into more damage for their respective class. You call this customization? Here, the item has a socket: guess you can add some more damage to it huh! Why not replace all the socketed items with some extra +%damage to everything... it will be roughly equivalent.

I am sorry for the rant, but this thing has soooo much more nice potential than what you are showing in your webpage here.

How about you introduce a couple more gem types and add many more affix attributes to them so that if I want to customize, I really get to customize.
You know, stuff like
- crit
- frost damage
- chance to stun
- pick-up radius
- armor
- resistances
- move speed
- attack speed
- lifesteal
- mana steal (or any kind of extra resource steal)
- resource regen
- extra resource
- +damage to undead, demons, beasts, humans
- etc

Look at the huge list of possibilities I made. Isnt that better than "insert moar damage hier" generic gems you have?

I agree man i hope they will reconsider..

The only issue I see with multiple gems is the inventory issue.

If I keep all my gems to combine when I get enough I need room for 2 of all 13 tiers.
=26 slots per gem

So that's already a possible 104 slots. That's a lot of my stash tacken up.

Admittedly they could cut down the number of tiers, which I wouldn't mind, but others might.

I do agree that it's a bit of a shame that the only gem I will put in my SC chars armour is the +dam one for that specific class but I think I can live with it until Blizzard come up with something else, maybe in an expansion ;)

Ok you need inventory space... not a big deal really. Not like it takes too much server space to add an extra of 104 integers per account

if they are capable of having servers holding WoW characters for 11 million players (each with huge inventories, guild banks and all that stuff), I believe they can have room for some gems.

Don't believe everything blizzard tells you...

I think the inv space is still a money thing though.

11 million WoW players are paying whatever a month for the privilege.
They don't know how much they are going to make out of the RMAH yet so they are being cautious as to their outgoings.

I agree they could easily give us back our 2 stash tabs, but it WILL cost them and they don't know yet if it will be financially worth it.

Hell, give it a few weeks and they may realise they could afford to give us 10 times the storage space. More chars, more stash, more gems maybe. We can only hope.

yeh, I guess you are right. Still it's a damn shame that it end up this way

Give us skulls and jewels back!
i bet I am wrong and they are ingame and i sound super stupid

I kinda agree with this too, there should be more gem types...

27/02/2012 20:23Posted by okrane

if they are capable of having servers holding WoW characters for 11 million players (each with huge inventories, guild banks and all that stuff), I believe they can have room for some gems.

The cost of additional inventory space is tiny compared to the budgets allocated for the servers as a whole. However, this is a tiny cost that is tied to a tiny portion of the game and things like this still need to be weighed up in terms of what's needed to support them and what value they give to the game.

Ultimately, this is a drop in the ocean compared to the overall costs of development. It's more than likely that Blizzard decided that this number of gems was the best decision for now. Maybe later, we'll get more options.

On a slightly related problem, increased stash sizes were dropped for Diablo 2 because Blizzard couldn't guarantee that the servers could handle the additional storage requirements.

rember the are still in the beta fase this is not a final release perhaps the have more runes but /bugged /glitching /or just dont have it. We need to wait and hope the have more gems at the end of the release or the patching afther there release or just not....

This is not Diablo 2, it's Diablo 3. Probably implementing the same gems as the ones you had in D2 will disturb the balance in the game.

It's sad to see that some people are thinking that Diablo 3 is a D2 expansion with better gfx..

This is not Diablo 2, it's Diablo 3. Probably implementing the same gems as the ones you had in D2 will disturb the balance in the game.

It's sad to see that some people are thinking that Diablo 3 is a D2 expansion with better gfx..

you must be trolling me right now. you mean to say that adding anything else than raw damage on gems is bad for balance?

do you ever think for yourself or have you already reached max level on your fanboy skill?

I just hope that they don't remove gems altogether because they take up inventory space like they did with runes.
Lets face it: There never really was inventory problems with runes. Sure it would take up lots of space to save one of each kind of rune but in reality it was only 6 slots for every build you wanted to save. Now the game is completely gear dependant so in endgame you need to stash a full set of gear for every build. How is that any different?

I just hope that they don't remove gems altogether because they take up inventory space like they did with runes.
Lets face it: There never really was inventory problems with runes. Sure it would take up lots of space to save one of each kind of rune but in reality it was only 6 slots for every build you wanted to save. Now the game is completely gear dependant so in endgame you need to stash a full set of gear for every build. How is that any different?

I agree, I would like to have more options rather than less...

wow so many wrong statements in this thread:

27/02/2012 20:06Posted by okrane

Diablo 2 had 6 types of gems and so many more types of Runes which all could be socketed into items and gave different effects.

diablo 2 had 7 gems

27/02/2012 20:06Posted by okrane

There are so many cool and interesting affixes in Diablo 3 and all the 4 types of gems basically just add damage. Str, Dex, Int they all translate into more damage for their respective class

stats do more than damage

Strength
+Barbarian damage
+Armor
Dexterity
+Demon Hunter damage
+Monk damage
+Dodge
Intellect
+Wizard damage
+Witch Doctor damage
+Health from globes
Vitality
+Health

If I keep all my gems to combine when I get enough I need room for 2 of all 13 tiers.
=26 slots per gem

So that's already a possible 104 slots. That's a lot of my stash tacken up

true, if you think that level 1 gems will drop in inferno

27/02/2012 20:23Posted by okrane

if they are capable of having servers holding WoW characters for 11 million players (each with huge inventories, guild banks and all that stuff), I believe they can have room for some gems.

they have explained this before:

Diablo III has both the benefit and disadvantage of having completely random items. Pretty much everything can roll up different affixes, if not a range of its benefits. That's obviously great because the item hunt is what it's all about, more randomization means you can keep chasing that perfect item, but that means the amount of data needed to describe an item is much, much larger than say, a World of Warcraft item, which is static and only needs a unique number to identify it.
A Diablo III item first has to say the base item, then each individual affix that it rolled up, then the ranges of each variable, and if it has any sockets. And we have to think about everywhere an item can be, an item on the ground is still an item, and so is an item on the auction house.

27/02/2012 20:19Posted by Bullit

Admittedly they could cut down the number of tiers, which I wouldn't mind, but others might

I would mind... very much so in fact.
From what I undestand the gems will be able to stack so that cuts the amount of needed inventory space in half.
And I would also love to see more gems... there's just something about that ever-improving item class that really brings out the mad collector in me (that's also why I - after thinking about it for a bit - approve of the decision that you can remove gems without ruining the gem or the item.

true, if you think that level 1 gems will drop in inferno

If they havn't changed this, since they havn't said anything new about it really what I know of, gems will only drop with the rank 1-5. I assume inferno won't only drop rank 5 gems because then the lower ones will be quite redundant same as hell in d2 did drop chipped sometimes.

And you have to combine them to make the higher gems.

29/02/2012 20:02Posted by Biqu

diablo 2 had 7 gems

ok, yea, whatever 7>4

stats do more than damage

Strength
+Barbarian damage
+Armor
Dexterity
+Demon Hunter damage
+Monk damage
+Dodge
Intellect
+Wizard damage
+Witch Doctor damage
+Health from globes
Vitality
+Health

These are still boring as fck,. Nobody will care about socketing +strength to add armor on wiz when you can socket intellect. It's that simple. If you want good customization, you need to make available things like crit, speed and stuff, which work well with builds.

Not only 1 defensive option and 1 offensive option and that's it...

Diablo III has both the benefit and disadvantage of having completely random items. Pretty much everything can roll up different affixes, if not a range of its benefits. That's obviously great because the item hunt is what it's all about, more randomization means you can keep chasing that perfect item, but that means the amount of data needed to describe an item is much, much larger than say, a World of Warcraft item, which is static and only needs a unique number to identify it.
A Diablo III item first has to say the base item, then each individual affix that it rolled up, then the ranges of each variable, and if it has any sockets. And we have to think about everywhere an item can be, an item on the ground is still an item, and so is an item on the auction house.

gems are not random, so they will not take more space on your stash than 1 stack per type.
And I am sure that if stash space was the issue, solutions like storing gems with the Jeweler in a Gem only Stash could have been a decent solution instead of oversimplifying the whole system with just 4 gem choices.

There would have been many very simple solutions to this as pointed out.
Adding inventory space, adding a Gem Stash like said by okrane sounds good as well.

The same could easily go with runes as well in my opinion.

Besides, I don't really understand people who say, "oh but it would have taken too much of inventory space", (same applies to charms etc.).

News flash, you do not have to carry anything in your inventory if you don't want to. Don't want your inventory to have gems/runes, fine, don't collect them or sell them or something. Problem solved.

Same would had applied to charms as well in my opinion. Nobody is forcing you to collect and/or carry any of these things. If you think they take up (too much) space from your inventory, don't have them there.

News flash, you do not have to carry anything in your inventory if you don't want to. Don't want your inventory to have gems/runes, fine, don't collect them or sell them or something. Problem solved.Same would had applied to charms as well in my opinion. Nobody is forcing you to collect and/or carry any of these things. If you think they take up (too much) space from your inventory, don't have them there.

IMO you can't compare gems and charms because charms were something you were forced to carry around with you.
The inventory with gems/runes can easily be solved by adding more stash space.