During the Q&A session with lead game designer Jay Wilson at Blizzard HQ Thursday, we were treated to a fairly lengthy discussion about the Skill Runes system. Evidently, runes will not come into play during the Beta test, which led a participant to ask when we’ll see them. Jay responded that Runes will first start dropping in Act II Normal and mentioned that Skill Runes were the only major game system that still had significant revision coming its way. This statement opened the floodgates on a new Rune system that they're hoping they can get into the game. Before I get into the specifics, Jay wanted us to mention:
Official Blizzard Quote:
By the way, this is all theory; we haven’t put this in yet, so this is the way we think we’re going to go, but it’s not solidified. So keep that in mind when you report on it, make sure you say “this is theory,” but I feel like it’s theory worth sharing, especially with the fan community… We haven’t tried it out yet. So it might suck. I’m gonna put that caveat out there, but that’s the one thing we still want to try with that system, and if it works, we’ll keep it. If it doesn’t, then the system works pretty well as it is.
Overall, this theory of Blizzard’s isn’t particularly earth-shattering. Runes will still be placed in skills to alter their functionality in the same way we’re used to. They’ll still be item drops off of monsters, but the team didn’t think that Runes felt like items in the classic Diablo sense. There was no variation, no randomization. A given Rune-Skill combination always produced the same result, so long as the level of the Rune was constant. In addition to this, when moused over, the UI for Runes simply displayed the effect it had on each of your active skills. During the internal alpha testing, they found that this became a nightmare point of comparison and, after a while, just got to be frustrating for the players.
To rectify these issues, they came up with the idea of having Runes drop “unattuned.” This basically means that when a Rune drops, it’s just plain and grey and doesn’t have any specific effect on your skills. Once you socket the rune into your skill, however, it becomes attuned to that skill, providing it a bonus based on the Rune type that it randomly rolls. In addition, they are considering adding an additional random stat bonus – much like the charm system of the now-scrapped Talisman – to attuned Runes. Bashiok had this to say about the new system:
Official Blizzard Quote:
Personally, I love it, and hope it finds a way in.
I'm not so sure about rolling to see which rune effect you get (it could still work), but I *love* the idea of random affixes. That you could have a end-rank rune for the skill you want, with the effect you want, but you still don't have ideal stats on it. That just makes the min/max item hunt that much cooler, and makes runes more important than... "Oh, I found another Crimson rune. Great. /salvage"
These features combine to add an air of randomness, familiar with most Diablo loot, to Skill Runes as well. Skill Runes of equal level can vary significantly from one to another, and high-stat or “Perfect” Runes will likely become incredibly valuable. On the other hand, if you socket a Rune into a skill and don’t get what you want out of it, they hope that it feels much more like any other piece of loot that drops that you don’t want and not like a let-down or a waste of a Rune (especially considering that Rune might be valuable to another player with a different build or playstyle).
Another difference from the current system is that when Runes are removed from skills, they will remain attuned to that skill. In the old system, if you removed a Rune from a skill, you could easily place that same Rune into a different skill to reap its benefits there. Not so with the new system. So, for example, if you put an unattuned Rune into your Magic Missiles and it rolls an Indigo effect (which adds additional missiles per rank), if you later decide to take that Rune out, it will forever remain a Magic Missile splitting Rune, unusable in any other skill. Even this isn't completely set in stone though, as they've hinted that they might add a functionality to the Mystic to wipe effects off Runes.
This proposed system would also play into the new skill system. Since skills are now freely swappable, they felt they needed a soft mechanism to encourage the player to focus on their favorite skills rather than swapping them out for whichever skill was preferable for a given situation. The fact that Runes are permanently attuned to a specific skill as soon as they are socketed in that skill accomplishes this. Although Jay described Rank 1 Runes as “candy that you can throw out and experiment with all you want,” higher rank Runes will be much more precious. Socketing high-rank Runes into a skill will represent an investment in that skill, hopefully discouraging the player from swapping it out for another on a whim.
While the core mechanic of Runes would remain unchanged in this new system, Runes - especially high-level ones - will become a much more valuable commodity. Since each Rune is permanently attuned to a single skill, they will be much more build-specific and, with random stats, highly sought after Runes will be far more difficult to obtain. What do you think? Do you like the sound of this proposed new system or are you happy with Skill Runes the way they are?
The new rune system does that. It just adds a little random to the system. There are still 5 colors of rune, and you still socket them, and each color does something different to whatever ability it's socketed to.
One question we would have to answer with this system is...if a mystic "unlocks" a rune, would it keep the color? Or would it go back to grey so you can re-roll for it.
I would prefer the first one. It takes away from the hunt for the correct rune if you can continuously reroll for a new rune without killing things. So, basically if you use a mystic to unlock your crimson magic missiles rune, it just becomes a blank crystal rune.
The same question can be asked for the random affixes. Do they stay on the rune even when unattuned? Does it let you re-roll for new stats? Or does it clear the affix completely. My vote is actually for the "clear completely" option. Discourage players from just swapping runes around willy-nilly. Let them move a crimson to another skill without it changing color, but you'll lose the affix then.
And then damage experimentation of builds, which was one of their reasons for the current skill systems (To allow you to experiment easier and change your build easier.) Bonding it to the skill to begin with even damages this. At release, I doubt we'll see runes with random affixes being attuned permanently to a single skill. If they attune to one skill on release, it will probably be easy to wipe them, and keep the affix. Otherwise you just harm experimentation with builds, and people will feel like they -need- to always keep the currently picked skills, otherwise they waste a rune and have to find a new one. In theory it sounds more acceptable, than it actually will be in practice. I'm all for randomized bonuses on the runes, but perm. attunement, I just see as being contrary to the direction they want to take the game, and the skill system. After all, it's just another way of locking in a skill, and why bother removing respecs and allowing players to swap skills around to experiment, if you then also introduce a mechanic that punishes them for experimenting? And as far as having to equip the rune to see what it will do, well, that's not something that will fly in release, either. It will frustrate and confuse people and, again, is contrary to the direction of making it easy to view what each piece of gear/skill is going to benefit. They go to such lengths on the character screen, as far as stats and how things effect your character, I can't see runes having to be equipped to show their benefits, as being a good choice, when combined with permanent attunement.
This wouldn't be a terribly complicated system to implement. Speaking as a programmer, most of the framework is already in. I wouldn't be surprised if they're already playing with the idea.
The coding side is irrelevant - Bliz has hundreds of programmers.
But on the design side, the implications are huge, mostly because (unless I'm mistaken) the rune system is not only the only system that defines individual builds/alts now that every other system has been stripped down and has nothing even class-specific to it, but is also the heart and soul of the item/loot game, which has always been the essence of the series (and is the one fundamental mechanic that even this crew hasn't messed with).
Hence, 2012, and if they keep on sounding this uncertain and alienating the fan base with horrible ideas like RMT AHs, make it late 2q 12 instead of mid 1q.
Wall of texts are fun.
You make some good points, and I agree with a few of them. I don't think that you shouldn't know the color before socketing. That part I'm very confident won't make it into the final build, which makes part of my original post irrelevant.
As for experimentation...the entire point of locking a rune to a skill would be to force players to specialize more. Runes apparently drop like candy at low levels, and you can experiment with those. But a lot of players see this new skill system and automatically think "oh god, people can just swap skills out and copy me instantly", and that's something that locking runes would prevent, to a point.
As for changing removing the affix when you unlock it...that's a good point, but I think that it's not quite so bad. One question that's important is...how big will these bonuses be? If they're big and noticeable, then yes, you have a good point.
I guess another point I didn't really make in my post was that you should be experimenting with, say, level five or six runes, and focusing your level seven runes, which will presumably be fairly rare, on your main abilities. It makes respeccing more of an investment, while not making it impossible. You shouldn't be pulling runes from your main abilities to experiment anyways.
Wise wise wise man!
That's a good middle ground between randomness and predictability.
Effect predictable - stats random.
They could also add rares and legendaries runes, like jewels, with more random stats on them.
Would taste even more like an item.
What we heard is initially self-contradictory:
First, Jay says unattuned runes don't have a type. Then he says, that rune ceases to be an Indigo rune when becoming Magic Missile Splitting rune. My take is that runes do have color when dropped, as some people here ask. There's much less to cry about, don't you think?
By the way:
An obvious case of belief that programmers can do anything. Programmers are like builders. If something was constructed in 3 years, yo can't throw over 9000 people there and make them rebuild everything. Quantity is not speed, and there's a certain lower bound of quality, below which a program just doesn't work.
make a poll
It would be interesting to see how the majority feel about this.
Personally, I'm okay either way. It would be a nice change from the standard +attribute system. But on the other hand, the +attribute systems seem to work rather well. <shrug>
1.The rune is lower level than you would wish. If D2 is any indication of droprates, highest level rune might take a few ages to find. And that's just one high level rune while you have potentially 6 skills you want to 'socket' with the highest level runes available (times the number of characters you are training so potentially 60 level 7 runes total).
2. The rune is the wrong type. Since there are five types of runes the chances of socketing it into a skill and finding out it is no the one you needed is pretty damn high. Add to that that you perhaps need a level 7 rune which won't drop that much and finding another 3-5 level 7 runes to finally get the effect you want might be EXTREMELY difficult and you get almost to the point where a rune dropping for you equals zero excitement because in the majority of cases it isn't what you wanted anyways. Since the runes remain attuned to that single skill you can pretty much throw it away instead of unsocketing it and placing it into a skill which might use the effect as you would have done with the old system.
3. The rune gives wrong attribute points. Seeing as the values of the attribute bonuses might vary widely and seeing the number of attributes you might need, chances are you are not going to get what you wanted.
All of this put together would mean that socketing just a single skill the way you wanted would be next to impossible without either trading the rune or farming for ages. Trading the rune of course again will be a problem because the chances that someone on your server has found the highest level rune, attuned it to a skill you want to use, got the effect you want and the stat bonus that you want AND is actually willing to trade it are slim at best.
In my opinion dropping the right rune with the right level and the right bonuses with the old system will be hard enough without giving it this insane amount of randomness to boot. Worse this attunement system results in runes going to waste completely while with the earlier model when a rune dropped you might at least find some use for it in one of your six skills. Now you have to just throw the rune away.
Picture this: I have a skill that I know I would like to add a specific effect for me to be able to (or want to) use it in a way that suits my game-play style. Under the earlier rune system, I would use a particular rune type to modify the skill towards my desired effect(say reduced resource cost or turning it into a stun). If I had a spare rune of the correct colour I would use it easy enough (or take it from an unused skill). However, under the new system I would have to wait for that random chance that the rune will 'attune' to the type I desire - potentially wasting my valuable runes in the process - binding them to a skill type. This may cause significant delays in us using the rune system to good effect - as we are not able to control what we get, and they bind to my one skill.
Now picture this: I have one rune of each type. This allows me to experiment with all my available skills, all the different effects and modifiers that the runes allow. This seems to me, to be the direction they were going with the removal of skill points - to allow more experimentation and open, easy game-play. The new proposed changes to runes would make us much less likely to experiment, and instead of using 5 runes to trial the 20-odd skills, we would need a minimum of 100 runes (and that is in the unlikely event that you never double up on the runes-skill binding). Realistically this would be more likely to be closer to 300 runes. I know which way I would prefer to try my skills out, and find a play style which I like.
They already change a skill entirely, they don't need to affix runes
I like they greyed out idea but i'd prefer the original
I think I understand what you are trying to say, but I don't agree fully. I am actually in favour of adding stat bonuses to the runes - that would make it interesting, make runes a bit more valuable, and a little harder to flood the market. However, I think that if the runes 'attune' (bind) to that one skill and are random, then it actually affects the game mechanics. This is where it is VERY different from equipment (or that legendary axe you were talking about). Sure a good axe will hit harder, but the mechanic is the same. I think that customisation is important, and would benefit from early and easily interchangeable skill effects. If the low level rune drops are really common, that will go some way towards making it easier - but storing 100 different types of runes seems to be a bit of a pain (not including any differences in stat bonuses or rune level) just to have one of each type for each skill. Once we hit the higher levels, it's much less of an issue. We will have mostly developed a particular game-play, and know what we want - just some fine-tuning and then stat hunting on the runes. But in those early to mid stages I can see it being a bit of an issue blowing your first 300 runes or so just trying out the skills. But hey, if it needs to be done - I guess I'd better get used to looking through my 100+ level 1 stashed runes
I would prefer Bash's suggestion. where I find a rune with an already identified rune type that can slot in any skill but can have random affixs.
I don't need to stop play if i find a crimson rune, when i know I am looking for alabaster for instance.
If Jays idea goes ahead then every time i pick up a rune i will quickly open the UI, plug it into a skill, see if it is the rune type I want and if the affixes are better than before and if not then i rinse, wash a repeat every time i find rune...
Of course I want a challenge. Fighting and working hard to get the high level rune I want is what I'm after. But that can be easily achieved by simply making high level runes drop very rarely. However the system as proposed by JW is just straight up frustrating. Either runes will have to drop a LOT or the absolute and I mean absolute majority of players can forget about ever getting more than ONE skill runed the way they actually wanted across all their characters they ever make. If runes are rare and this system of randomness remains then even the most farming of all farmers will hardly ever rune up a single character the way he wants (not considering the ideal attribute bonuses). If you factor in the level of the rune, the various effects it can give and the attribute bonuses, the probability of EVER getting a single rune that actually suits you are next to zero. Even if we consider that all 7 levels of runes would drop at the same rate which they surely won't, the chance of getting a lvl 7 rune and with the right effect for the given skill and the right attribute bonus is just too small if runes remain the rare item they were intended to be. They would have to drop a lot to give players a fair chance of ever getting the one they want. Which in turn somewhat decreases the excitement in hunting for runes.
Picture these three situations: Runes drop very rarely with fixed effects and random attribute bonuses. You strive hard and finally a rune drops for you. You grab it and open your inventory. YES! After three months of trying it's finally a level 7 rune. The attribute bonus is not what you hoped for but screw it. Now you carefully consider which skill you are going to use it for and place it in there. Then you just rush headfirst into battle and enjoy your newly awesome skill.
Sitation two: Runes drop a lot but have a lot of randomness about them. Chances are when you find a rune it won't help you in the way you wanted. You play for hours and runes drop left and right. You try one, it's a good level but it doesn't give you effect that you wanted. If it were for another skill you might have used such an effect but now it's attuned to another. But at least it gives you some advantages so you keep it and use it. You find another and try again...nothing, the effect is not what you wanted and the rune is only level 2...so you salvage it since the previous one was better. And then you find another and try it with a different skill...again, not what you wanted...but you keep it because it's better than nothing. After a while you have almost all skills runed but none they way which would really help you. By the time you actually do get what you were looking for, the excitement in finding a rune is all but gone.
Situation three: Runes are a rare item and have a lot of randomness about them. After a month of playing you might find maybe one rune higher than level 4. In 80% of cases the rune doesn't do what you wanted it to do (not counting attribute point bonuses), the chance of getting level 7 rune with the right effect is not even worth mentioning. You play for a year and never ever get the rune you wanted for the given skill. Finally frustration just gets the better of you and instead of playing to earn it you just buy it on Auction House. The feeling of a hard earned reward = nonexistant.
Which system is better in your opinion? I personally prefer to have a very rare item but guaranteed reward rather than a pretty common item that most of the time does nothing for me or a very rare item that most of the time does nothing either. Take it as unique items. Is it better to drop low level uniques everywhere with a slim chance that you get a high level one or is it better to have uniques be very few and far in between but when they drop they actually have a fair chance of helping you? It's choice two for me in every imaginable situation.