1. It's not entirely clear how you propose the new prime gems to work.
Do you add them to the gem pool and keep the same gem pop rate? Then they lower the chance of getting non-prime gems everyone needs.
Do you replace a few gems? Ok, but how useful are those gems you remove? (btw, bloodstone and dark green spinel are not entirely useful, unless someone wants to enlighten me).
2. As for gem competition, I've suggested an idea and tried to uphold it for a bit - about
limiting 20lev players to t1 gem calls and 20-3x40 chars to t1-t2 gem calls. This limits the competitiveness among the new players and the old players.
Also, this actually benefits the new/lower level players, because they can get t1-t2 gems much easier, than t3 gems everyone will offer to trade for. E.g., a newbie pops a salmon pink garnet. A few 9x40s can clean their vaults and sell/give/trade the remaining 4 gems for the rune.
Another reason why this is better for new players is that they don't have items to socket high-end t3 runes to. Heck, even I only have 1 sacred bracer of the order to socket a GYT rune, if I get it (have only 1 gem). I haven't had armplates (the saurian sleeves) to socket the Amethyst rune for a while and I've spent a month just killing Diplodocus - you'll know why, if you want the sleeves. This can be said about many other items for t3 runes, such as:
- Ars Magica or 9x40 light for +max wis or +max int runes
- the scarab of destruction for the Malachite
- the nekodes for the Jet rune
- the Golden Dagger of Thieves or the black kris of power for the Black Onyx rune
Of course. there are a few items that are easy to get, such as drachma robes (but then you need t1-t2s for them) and the Relic (the first item I got).
***note: adding more 6x40-9x40 forges would help reduce gem competitiveness, because you can't socket t3 gems at 20 or 3x40 if you don't have a 8x40 forge.
3. Doubling the poprate for ring/neck/wrist gems would solve the rarity issue for these gems.
4. Gem pop already depends on the number of players and mob level. I've long suggested making it depend on mob hps (to reward effort put in killing the mob), but it isn't in yet and I haven't heard feedback on this (maybe that it needs to be done and some changes were going in). I suspect this will also reduce poprate for t1 gems on 2-5mil solo mobs.
You could factor in xp, but do keep in mind that eq mobs have average exp, and some exp mobs are pretty easy to kill - so mob hps is a more reliable factor here, imho.
5. While I'm calling Tomb Jade now, and only have a few gems, I've been calling Rhodo, Amethyst, Colorless Sapphire, Malachite before - and I've got them over the course of 1-2 years.
It also helps to play a lot, join groups first and call your gems. I wouldn't really hope to pop the gems you need fast, because, like Splork said, they are a bonus, even though some are pretty powerful.
With this low gem poprate, we are lucky if we pop a few gems with 15 ppl, and those gems could be anything. It's pretty hopeless to count for the gems you need to pop.
As you solo offlyme, you should pop more gems. 41 level mobs start from about 1-1.5-2mil. If you keep killing them, instead of soloing on lyme, then you may pop a number of t1 gems solo.
To save some Splork's time, so he doesn't spend time to post the same again, I'll just quote him:
Splork wrote:And yes,
we purposely raised gem pop rates to make sure that newer players were not excluded from groups. It wasn't that long ago where new players were never invited into groups. Now there is a huge reason to invite them and I think its extremely beneficial in actually maintaining a player base. All it takes is one good group and some nice people to make a lifer out of a new player...
(I don't remember upping gem poprates, I remember them being higher at the time of Shyla)