Official Blizzard Quote:
Extensive character customization is one of the primary design goals for Diablo III. Players will have many ways to customize and build each of the five character classes, including charms, traits, enhancements, gems, armor, weapons, dyes, skills, and the feature we're highlighting in this article: runestones.
The page comes complete with recaps and demonstrations for a select skill of each character. Here's a selection of other articles that you might be interested in if you haven't been reading up on these lil' guys:
Resurrections, Shrines, Poison Clouds and Rune Effects
Bashiok on Rune Levels and Progression
Working Skill Rune Names Disclosed
Of course, the most accurate and up-to-date information on runestones is now all on the official page. Special thanks to peign for posting this information first!
Talisman Gets Cut
Furthermore, the Talisman, which was previously a storage device for the player's charms, has been cut for the foreseeable future.
The device essentially forced players to allot a specific amount of space for charms, a mechanic and item hold-over from the days of Diablo II, while simultaneously freeing-up real inventory space for everything else found on Sanctuary escapades. The decision between power and inventory space often left Diablo II players with conflicting desires to gather items and to become exceptional and efficient warriors, and so the talisman largely resolved this issue. Bashiok elaborates:
Official Blizzard Quote:
Well, I can say from feedback and testing we've made the decision to pull the Talisman from the initial release of the game.
It was a cool idea at its core, but right now it's just really too basic and doesn't provide anything you can't get from the armor and weapons you're equipping. It requires a lot of the player to invest time and energy into finding and storing yet another type of item just to add player stats. When they do all that, it's just to do something pretty boring that they can already do with awesome things like armor and weapons. Originally the Talisman had a much deeper design, but it proved very ambitious and it got whittled down over the years to a very basic +stat per single square. We like simplicity in our designs, but charms became superfluous in their purpose.
We really like the core idea, but we don't want to stop everything and spend a large amount of time trying to fix the Talisman, although we do have some great ideas already. So, it'll very likely come back in some form or another after the game ships. And be awesome.
So for now, no talisman. But perhaps we'll see one somewhere down the road, say, expansion one?
Trading?? The Dev team even said the trading system is a huge reason why the game has taken so long
I'm sure there's a few more, seeing as the Beta is windowed for Q3 as said in the conference call.
To all the people who always diss on the graphics and stuff, seriously, WTF ?§ These little videos totally REEK of pure attention to details that will make the game look so friggin sweet, especially with all the effects on screen at once etc.
Omfg, this will be so crazy I'm litterally dying over here T.T
Oh by the way, speaking of effects, a while ago when speaking about the 4 players limit and total mayhem onscreen and the confusion ensuing, the devs said they would probably have toned down versions of any spell effects that isn't your character's ? Since then, I've never heard anything about that from them and from the few bits and pieces of footage we've had, I don't think it's been implemented.
Do anyone know ? This worries me somehow, cause I love the spell effects so much, I would rather have them in all their glory and confusion over a slightly better visibility anyday !!
There must be some more details though, the acid puke on the enemies sure looks awesome but it won't be used if it doesn't have more combat-wise advantages.
Honestly, I wouldn't be so sure about that. I've asked Bashiok on the forums, we'll see.
New PC will be needed.
I´m curious to see what Time Warp skill will do with different runes. Faster Cast rate to allies in the blob? Faster Regen?
I think...
Trading system
Resource system (maybe)
Traits system (in depth look maybe)
Monster system (another in depth look maybe)
Achievement/stats/journal system (maybe, lol)
System requirements (see what I did there?)
and 2 other system I won't spoil (kidding, no idea)
This. But honestly, it's a different time in gaming. People who actually enjoy what is apparently "tedious" stat tinkering are in a distinct minority. Or at least, Blizzard thinks so. Still, I can't help but feel like Blizzard is looking down at me like a toddler, handing me a lolly.
The runes are cool. About what I expected.
We have gotten two new system previews since the Conference Call.
Blizzard said they had it planned out when to release the previews.
The way I see it, the most likely (and logical) thing to expect is somthing like 2 -3 more anoucements before the beta.
That is assuming the Beta starts at the start of their window.. My guesses are Trading, Endgame andmaybe somthing to do with B.net player finding for games.
I'm really excited for the runes and I love the Acid Cloud spawning jellys. Made me giggle with excitement. Great stuff here, but I think that with this 'release' we can expect one of the systems to be 'released' will be the differing resources. I say that because we already knew about runestones and that is basically what this was. Still fabulous love the art and the concepts.
As for the Talisman, I was one of the few who became disheartened that this was removed. I remember Blizz talking about how it was really cool and had a lot of potential, but I am glad that they plan to release it at some later date in a patch or expansion or something in the way it was originally intended and not some weak paired down ghost that they ran out of time to produce. So, sad that its out, glad they want to get the game out soon, and relieved that they want to build it back into an awesome additional way to customize chars and then put it back into the game.
As to those saying that they are dumbing it down or catering to those who can't keep there attention I say Read the Blue post again! They want it in but it had degraded to something really weak. When they have the time to make it a deep and complex system, they plan on doing so and putting it back in the game. This isn't for the sake of simplicity its for the sake of time.
Good work Mag. and Force though!
Also anyone else thinking system release every other week?
4 Players max, so sure. A recent Blue post from a few weeks ago was on that topic. Our Spells will be in all their glory.
Not gonna lie, the video Force posted is only in 480p, the 720p and 1080p options are just stretched in the HD codec.
The best quality videos of the Skills can be found on Diablo 3's facebook page. You can clearly see the difference in detail and clarity when HD is enable for the facebook videos.
\o\ \o/ Awesome !
Yeah just wrapping the Bliz video in an excessively long "Force Gaming" tag is, uh, neat? I wanna say? Neat?
www.thehuffingtonforce.com
http://www.youtube.com/thechatgem
"Neat" would be fair enough :P. Don't get me wrong Force is a great member of the Diablo 3 community and contributes more than most, but if you're gonna wrap the content in your name you better make sure it's top quality!
As always, the Dfans youtube comes through
*In a Steve Irwin Accent* CRIKEY! Now THAT'S HD!!