World of Warcraft has items called metagems, which are placed in special gem slots and can only be equipped if a specific number of other gems are equipped. While they can provide powerful bonuses, they actually only frustrate you to the point of yelling at the computer while shopping for colorful gold sinks at the auction house.

Path of Exile 2, which was detailed today at ExileCon, also has meta gems, but they are part of a revamped skill system that discards item links in favor of skill gems and sockets more gems.

Gem Conception.

Meta gems in PoE 2 can do all sorts of nonsense. For example, a spell totem meta can equip a totem with multiple skills. For example, they can be placed to first immobilize an enemy, then curse and debuff them, and finally inflict heavy damage. The cast-on shock meta-gem can also be used to link multiple attack skills, and zapping the mob a few times can create a huge cacophony of destruction.

Since Path of Exile 2 was announced as a new start, I thought there might be an opportunity to simplify things a bit. What did game director Jonathan Rogers say about it at the press briefing?

"Simplicity is not our goal."

He expanded on that, of course, and said that Path of Exile 2's skill gem system has been slightly improved to be more user-friendly, even though it does not actually pare down the available choices, in a sort of "have your cake and eat it too He said that it was a "have your cake and eat it too" kind of situation. Frankly, I was relieved to hear him say that, because Path of Exile is great because of the absolute craziness involved in building and customizing characters, not despite it. [There are plenty of great ARPGs for players who don't want to dig through a 1500 node skill tree, and hearing that Path of Exile 2 is not going to sacrifice the craziness on the altar of primarily imaginary "more user appeal" made me even excited about it.