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?
Everyone continue discussion here.
God that stuff looks so cool. I can't wait to see what else these runes will do!
Anyway, looking for future arena partners My friends are PvE only faggots!
Yes you did, there's a video for each character!
Oh, the wizard's ray of frost with the Indigo rune has got to be my favorite. I don't care, I can see myself running to the middle of the arena and spamming that without doing anything else, just for the awesomeness of it. Ofc then I'll proly die but that's just detail.
Anyway, Barb runes look really good too. I think they could have chosen a more interesting skill to show the rune demos on the witch doctor, right?
I know, wasn't that one great? And look at all the detail on the animation--her blowing clothes, her posture, even the special effects, themselves, look so awesome and legit It looks powerful! I hope it is. Don't let me down, Blizzard
Thats really sad. Booh complexity. May the player never have to learn -anything- to master a game, right?
*insert classic SFJake rant here, don't forget swearing*
Puking on someone as a fatal blow is definitely a win in my book.
Compared to the farce that was corpse throwing of barb and rain of frogs/snake throwing from WD in a the blizzcon display, acid spit looks really good..
I agree, the build possibilities are flowing through my mind.
This. The game needs to be out already, and I'm not saying that because I really, really want it. I say it because the game isn't getting any younger. They can add this feature when the time is right.