I think the Gem Store is broken...

[Rytrik]

In (never mind the gem bill for socketing gear).

But even though I'm a casual player with resources, I'm never buying guaranteed sub-par jewelry.

Also, if your target is a stat of 87 (say), you have even far less incentive to pay gems because you're going to get a bucket of those before you know it just doing the random grind. I've sold literally hundreds of those.

^ This

Why would I waste gems on non-perfect or upper upper near-perfect (no, 83.3% doesn't interest me enough to part with gems) gear?

No thanks.

[osoviejo]

I agree it's not any more pay-to-win than those examples you mention (never mind the gem bill for socketing gear).

But even though I'm a casual player with resources, I'm never buying guaranteed sub-par jewelry. For me, the real cost of jewelry isn't grinding for optimum greens (which I do as an occasional diversion a few minutes at a time over a period of months), it's grinding for gemstones. I'm not wasting top-tier gemstones on second-rate greens.

Also, if your target is a stat of 87 (say), you have even far less incentive to pay gems because you're going to get a bucket of those before you know it just doing the random grind. I've sold literally hundreds of those.

[Sindyr]

That would be pay to win, the devs are against pay to win.

I disagree that it would be pay to win, anymore that anything else in the store - gemstones, purple and gold items for sale, buying companions so you can have 3 haste buffs, paying to unlock abilities early, paying to unlock 3 at once, the list goes on and on and on. That ship has sailed.

We're WAY past the point of all purchasable options being merely ornamental!!

Also, if my idea was p2w, I would have said 100%, not 83.3%.

So there's that.

PS: if they are going to have an option to spend gems that is SO unpopular and makes so little sense, they should either fix it or remove it.

[Humus]

That would be pay to win, the devs are against pay to win.

[Sindyr]

I think the Gem Store is broken. I don’t mean that it is *technologically* broken, I mean *economically* broken. Here’s what I mean:

Let’s say you want to craft some jewelry. You have two options, crafting a piece with a random stat or paying XX gems to choose the stat of the piece you are crafting.

But it seems to me that no one (apart from newbs) ever chooses the latter. As you know, regardless of which choice you make (random stat or selected stat) the VALUE of that still will still be random. And anyone who wants to make a great ring will not want to spend gems, a rare and precious resource, and likely wind up with a result that has poor values for its stat – that would be a waste.

That’s why the recommended practice is instead to make random pieces, which only cost gold, and simply sell off the ones that either have an undesired stat, or a desired stat that is not good enough.

What this means is that Making Fun is offering a chance to purchase something that costs far too much for you get, compared to the alternate path.

There is I think a simple solution. (I hope the devs read these forums!) For spending real gems on the crafting effort, the produced item should have a much higher stat VALUE.

You could simply have a much tighter variance to gem-purchased crafting attempts, like instead of Power varying from 72 to 90, it only varies from 85 to 90, but I think I have a better idea:

Make it be that when you pay gems to craft a piece of jewelry with a selected stat, you get a piece with close to max value, but not max value. For Power, for example, you *always* get an 87, nothing higher or lower.

This way people going for absolute maximum will still feel compelled to keep rolling the randoms, but there will be (I think) many people like myself who will happily pay gem prices for jewelry that may not be perfect, but is much better than average.

Some possible value for gem purchased jewelry to have could be:

Ability Rate, Power, Haste, Crit Rating, Dodge Rating, Vitality: 87 (very high, but three other results (88, 89, 90) still beat it.)

Critical Damage: 58%
Life Regen: 70
Experience, Extra Gold: 43.5%
Life on Hit, Damage Reflected: 348
Armor: 174

This way, you spend gems, you will always get a piece of jewelry with 83.3% of max value of it’s range, but not less – and not 100% either.

That would make ME spend gems on crafting jewels, and I think would fix this broken purchasable option!