Hi all, i'm posting here the ideai had for making runewords work in diablo 3. My only gripe is to be unable to work in photoshop to make the idea more "realistic" with images and such. So i'm posting the idea here and if anyone is willing to help me creating some screenshots, i'll update the post to give it even more visibility.
Hope you like the idea overall.
1. Intro
Runes in d2 were a specific type of gems and putting them in a certain order in socketed items you would get a legendary item. Some were incredibly hard to get and gave incredibly strong items (Enigma or the 6 runes with Zod weapon).
While they were cool, i don't think that an exact transposition would work well in D3 because of two main reason:
- in D2 sockets were not only a suffix but also worked like item quality; you could find grey items meaning they had no magic properties but only sockets. Also, certain items could roll up to 6 sockets, giving room for more complex runewords, something not possible with current system given the scarce amount of sockets overall.
- making runewords tied to items will make them either mandatory or useless. We have already limited gear slots and the competition is really high so the runeword becomes either mandatory for every character (ala RoRG before F/R) or uselss like all the orange items without special affixes. Maybe some would become good for specific builds, but that's it. No freedom at all.
The basic point is that the metagame of D3 is completely different from D2, where gear was not as important as it is in D3 - we already have plenty of "get this set and these items for best GR build", so adding other items in the equation imho doesn't work quite well, since basically sets are now what defines a character build for the biggest part.
2. What can be done? The basic setup
What i suppose that can be done is to make runewords like "special powers" in a similar way that Kanai Cube works. We get 2 or 3 "rune slots arrays" and into these sockets we put runes. We can either fill every slot with single ones to get all the benefits of the single runes, or we can get "lucky " and discover a runeword that will "lock" the current array but grants us a special power (example: all your attacks leave a dot for 120% weapon damage as fire over 3 seconds - random numbers).
Visual text example (near zero photoshop skills, forgive me):
O O O O O O
O O O O O O
O O O O O O
these are the three "runewords slots" - let's take the good ol' El rune (+50 armor) from d2. I have dropped 3 of them, and i want to use them. I can socket them on any slot i want , example as follows:
El El El O O O
O O O O O O
O O O O O O
With this setup i get +150 armor. All other slots are still free for other runes i may drop.
Also worth noting that i can go with a different setup for the same bonus:
El O O O O O
El O O O O O
El O O O O O
or
O O O O O O
El O O O O O
El El O O O O
What matters is that i have to start from the leftmost socket and going forward from there. Order is important for runewords - so placing runes on random sockets is not allowed.
3. Runewords activation
I play more and i get lucky: i drop the runes Jah, Ith and Ber which grant me 5%hp, 15% cold damage and damage reduced by 8% in this order (i know, they're not all the old ones but damage to mana is no more). Socketing these three runes will grant me these 3 passive effects.
However these runes are also the requirement for the runeword Enigma; its special power is to give to any char the Wizard Teleport skill (base one). The runes setup will look like this:
Jah Ith Ber X X X
O O O O O O
O O O O O O
A correct runeword activation will grant you all the passive effects plus the special power.
Since a runeword is active on first "array", the unused slots will deacivate to mantain the cap of 3 runewords active per character. We don't want to have setups like 3+3 or 4+2 which will make multiple runewords active on the same line since would cause more balance issues and will complicate the system for no actual reason.
As said above, i can also put the runes in different order and/or lines, but in this case the runeword is not activated, while still getting the passive effects.
4. Balancing the runewords
Runes will be the same as gems in terms of item drops mechanics. We can have either of these two systems:
- a unique power ladder for runes like it was in D2, starting from the less powerful (which will have more chance to drop) ending with the best ones.
- a multi-ladder system like for gems where we have runes differentiated for type (hp, resistance, damage, etc)
In both systems, runes can be upgraded via recipes/artisan; the second one would be a little more accessible since everyone remebers how it was to find a Zod rune; first sytem implies that every rune can drop from monsters, the second makes possible to drop only the first two levels of runes around and then get all the other ones via upgrades.
Both systems support possible rare runes recipes that mix completely different runes to get other "special" ones, though again this would work better with the second system (think mixing a diamond and an amethyst to get a new gem type).
Runewords powers in D2 depended directly from:
a) the runes rarity
the runeword lenght to a certain degree
In D3 however we will always have to deal with the fact that everyone is craving for the most powerful stuff. So, offensive runewords should give more or less the same raw amunt of damage (it's fine if some are better than others for specific builds) or provide comparable utility.
Runes rarity matters - however give the GR environment, we cannot give a too big advatage to lucky people and put some sort of safety net against RNG. On the contrary, runewords lenght has less impact since eveyone has a fixed number of rune slots and a fixed number of runewords that can be activated.
TL;DR: We don't want to end with a "furnace" runeword.
5. Runewords interface concept
Runewords will obviously have their dedicated interface screen. Upper half will be occupied by these 3 arrays of rune slots, and the lower half should occupied by a runes-dedicate inventory; since they drop like gems, imho it isn't a problem to make them stack to 1000 and have slots for runes there instead of putting all of them in the stash (since we have already limited space).
We can still use the stash to pass over runes to other characters.
This is all about my ideas on Runewords. Feedback is always appreciated, i'll gladly read all suggestions/opinions, and i hope you like the idea.
Hi all, i'm posting here the ideai had for making runewords work in diablo 3. My only gripe is to be unable to work in photoshop to make the idea more "realistic" with images and such. So i'm posting the idea here and if anyone is willing to help me creating some screenshots, i'll update the post to give it even more visibility.
Hope you like the idea overall.
1. Intro
Runes in d2 were a specific type of gems and putting them in a certain order in socketed items you would get a legendary item. Some were incredibly hard to get and gave incredibly strong items (Enigma or the 6 runes with Zod weapon).
While they were cool, i don't think that an exact transposition would work well in D3 because of two main reason:
- in D2 sockets were not only a suffix but also worked like item quality; you could find grey items meaning they had no magic properties but only sockets. Also, certain items could roll up to 6 sockets, giving room for more complex runewords, something not possible with current system given the scarce amount of sockets overall.
- making runewords tied to items will make them either mandatory or useless. We have already limited gear slots and the competition is really high so the runeword becomes either mandatory for every character (ala RoRG before F/R) or uselss like all the orange items without special affixes. Maybe some would become good for specific builds, but that's it. No freedom at all.
The basic point is that the metagame of D3 is completely different from D2, where gear was not as important as it is in D3 - we already have plenty of "get this set and these items for best GR build", so adding other items in the equation imho doesn't work quite well, since basically sets are now what defines a character build for the biggest part.
2. What can be done? The basic setup
What i suppose that can be done is to make runewords like "special powers" in a similar way that Kanai Cube works. We get 2 or 3 "rune slots arrays" and into these sockets we put runes. We can either fill every slot with single ones to get all the benefits of the single runes, or we can get "lucky " and discover a runeword that will "lock" the current array but grants us a special power (example: all your attacks leave a dot for 120% weapon damage as fire over 3 seconds - random numbers).
Visual text example (near zero photoshop skills, forgive me):
O O O O O O
O O O O O O
O O O O O O
these are the three "runewords slots" - let's take the good ol' El rune (+50 armor) from d2. I have dropped 3 of them, and i want to use them. I can socket them on any slot i want , example as follows:
El El El O O O
O O O O O O
O O O O O O
With this setup i get +150 armor. All other slots are still free for other runes i may drop.
Also worth noting that i can go with a different setup for the same bonus:
El O O O O O
El O O O O O
El O O O O O
or
O O O O O O
El O O O O O
El El O O O O
What matters is that i have to start from the leftmost socket and going forward from there. Order is important for runewords - so placing runes on random sockets is not allowed.
3. Runewords activation
I play more and i get lucky: i drop the runes Jah, Ith and Ber which grant me 5%hp, 15% cold damage and damage reduced by 8% in this order (i know, they're not all the old ones but damage to mana is no more). Socketing these three runes will grant me these 3 passive effects.
However these runes are also the requirement for the runeword Enigma; its special power is to give to any char the Wizard Teleport skill (base one). The runes setup will look like this:
Jah Ith Ber X X X
O O O O O O
O O O O O O
A correct runeword activation will grant you all the passive effects plus the special power.
Since a runeword is active on first "array", the unused slots will deacivate to mantain the cap of 3 runewords active per character. We don't want to have setups like 3+3 or 4+2 which will make multiple runewords active on the same line since would cause more balance issues and will complicate the system for no actual reason.
As said above, i can also put the runes in different order and/or lines, but in this case the runeword is not activated, while still getting the passive effects.
4. Balancing the runewords
Runes will be the same as gems in terms of item drops mechanics. We can have either of these two systems:
- a unique power ladder for runes like it was in D2, starting from the less powerful (which will have more chance to drop) ending with the best ones.
- a multi-ladder system like for gems where we have runes differentiated for type (hp, resistance, damage, etc)
In both systems, runes can be upgraded via recipes/artisan; the second one would be a little more accessible since everyone remebers how it was to find a Zod rune; first sytem implies that every rune can drop from monsters, the second makes possible to drop only the first two levels of runes around and then get all the other ones via upgrades.
Both systems support possible rare runes recipes that mix completely different runes to get other "special" ones, though again this would work better with the second system (think mixing a diamond and an amethyst to get a new gem type).
Runewords powers in D2 depended directly from:
a) the runes rarity
the runeword lenght to a certain degree
In D3 however we will always have to deal with the fact that everyone is craving for the most powerful stuff. So, offensive runewords should give more or less the same raw amunt of damage (it's fine if some are better than others for specific builds) or provide comparable utility.
Runes rarity matters - however give the GR environment, we cannot give a too big advatage to lucky people and put some sort of safety net against RNG. On the contrary, runewords lenght has less impact since eveyone has a fixed number of rune slots and a fixed number of runewords that can be activated.
TL;DR: We don't want to end with a "furnace" runeword.
5. Runewords interface concept
Runewords will obviously have their dedicated interface screen. Upper half will be occupied by these 3 arrays of rune slots, and the lower half should occupied by a runes-dedicate inventory; since they drop like gems, imho it isn't a problem to make them stack to 1000 and have slots for runes there instead of putting all of them in the stash (since we have already limited space).
We can still use the stash to pass over runes to other characters.
This is all about my ideas on Runewords. Feedback is always appreciated, i'll gladly read all suggestions/opinions, and i hope you like the idea.