D2 had runewords, which were a combination of runes. Runes were rare items, with 20+ tiers of power and droprate, with the most rare being one drop a year and the most common being several drops an hour. You could combine the runes of lesser power to make more powerful runes, so runes were never really worthless. The Items they made were so powerful, that they were often BIS until you made a more powerful runeword. The items that were contenders to the BIS runewords, were so rare that you may have to farm weeks or months before seeing one drop. Runewords were the reason D2 lasted so long. Another reason was PVP. People would want to be the best, and to be the best you had to have the best. Some bosses had increased drop rate of runes, so that depending on the runes you needed, you could farm specific bosses for increased chance at specific runes, and the drops were relatively predictable, with 1-50 chance youâll get a fairly powerful rune, and 100% chance to get at least something. Runes & Runewords were the single reason I loved D2 for so long. Bring Runewords to LE!
Technically, there is the bear.
Thatâs already how the crafting system works atm, so itâd need to function differently (is what Mike says when the suggestion comes up on his streams).
The current implementation has very few similarities with runewords. Runeword is basically a unique item with fixed affixes, while crafting lets you choose which affixes you get on an item. Also affix shards are not runes in a way that you can get any shard you want pretty easily, and canât combine them.
I think the TS suggests to implement something similar to runewords as a separate mechanic. That being said, LE already has: craftable items, uniques that can be combined with craftable items, and sets, and is already struggling to make all of them relevant at the same time, and has a lot of complaints considering the uniques (both baseline and legendary potential). I personally doubt that the game needs another variable on loot department.
No ARPG has anything like runes from D2. With LE current system there is fail chance. You get a super long wait for a good drop, then % chance to fail to carry over what you want. With current system, LP is given to random uniques, most of which are useless to almost every build. Runes were currency in the game, I cannot sell LP to put onto an item. I have to sit and read every unique that drops, to see if it rolled well. With Runes, I know exactly what Iâm getting the second it drops. I can get excited if a BUR rune drops, because I know that I can use that for something Iâve been wanting badly a long time, that will give me an insane power spike. Right now Every item that drops I have to sit and read, to see if it had LP or not, if it rolled well or not, and so I spend tons of time looking at items in inventory or on floor instead of actually killing stuff. Runes were combined to form items you wanted for your build, with 100% chance of being good, and 10% chance of being amazing, and 1% chance of being perfect. Right now, even with 2LP on an item you can actually use, with stats that you actually need, then here is a more than 50% chance youâll get the wrong stat carried over. Itâs like BUR or nothing. In D2 runes, there was a near infinite value in any rune drop, and 100% useful, since they could be combined to form more powerful runes. Itâs a little or a lot, but it was always something. In LE is, 95% of uniques are trash. 5% are useful, but then you need to have it roll with LP. Once you have LP, high chance to fail. Itâs just not the same at all.
Marvel heroes had runewords pretty much like D2. Also a few indie games, including one made by a former diablo programmer (forget the name now).
Runewords are very hard to balance. In D2 they were mandatory because they were clearly superior to everything else. I donât think LE needs this, though all ideas are welcome. Maybe EHG can come up with something that is inspired by them but is also new?
Thereâs nothing thatâs actually interesting or engaging about D2âs Runeword system.
What people like about it is the ridiculous, powerful items they get out of it. The underlying system itself is meh, and the only thing that makes Runeword items different from Unique items is that you can acquire them in pieces.
D2 Runes were more than just an upgrade, they were currency. Because the high runes were so rare but possible due to being able combine lower ones plus rare drops, they were valuable. Further, the runewords were so powerful, that having high runes meant having high power. Thus you can buy or trade for power. But it wasnât all or nothing, because lower ones can be made into mid ones, and mid ones could be made into high ones. Everything was valuable. And it wasnât all or nothing, it was a smooth progression. You could get low runes, to make low runewords, the mid runes to make mid runewords, and eventually get high runewords. But every rune that dropped was valuable since it could be upgraded. This is very different then the current system, which is feast or famine. Everytime I played D2, I just killed everything, and only picked up runes or uniques. Uniques in D2 were rare drops. The runes kept the game rewarding. Itâs not fun or rewarding to get a 1 in 20000 chance upgrade, having to read all 19999 fails before hand. Thatâs why most players leave once ARPGs. After fail 1000, they say, well, Iâve about as strong as Iâm going to be, itâs not worth another 19000 kills. With runes not so. You got steady stream of runes, which is to say stead stream of power and currency, which is to stay steady stream of tangible value, and just a failed roll 1000 times.
Itâs like this, LE, you roll 10 dice. If all of them roll 6, you get an upgrade. Not so in D2. With runes and runeword system, you roll a dice. If all of them roll 6 you get an upgrade, but you also get to add up all the 1âs. Once you reach 600, you get an upgrade. Also, if all of them happen to roll a 5 or a 4 or a 3 or a 2, you also get to add all those numbers up towards that 600. You see in LE, itâs all or nothing. In D2 runewords, itâs a steady progression. Itâs not just progression of power of character, but of wealth in game, since they are the same. Since high runes were rare, high runewords could not be obtained in a few weeks, but could be in a few months. Since it was 20+ levels of runes, itâs wasnât 2 months of nothing and then you got your random rng item. It was 2 months of steadily progressing towards the item till you finally got it.
People play ARPGs for a few weeks after a patch, then move on. They move on because time investment to reward not worth reward. In D2 runes and runewords, made it rewarding steadily.
Itâs the same thing with D3 and leveling infinitely in power. Problem is new players could never be as strong as players that had been playing for years. Not so with D2 runes. There was a cap in power that was reachable, but it would take awhile, maybe a year. In D3 you could never catch up.
Can you imagine d2 without runes and runewords? Thatâs exactly how I feel about LE not having Runes or Runewords. LE is good because it is very similar to D2, but it is also like D4 in the way it handles loot, with power being behind rnd of stats with rng of ranges so that you need to read the stats and ranges of each item to consider it worth keeping or not. LE is an improvement over D4 in that it has a loot filter so you only see certain stats, but itâs limited in that you still have to read every single range of every item that drops. Then once you have the item with the range you want, there is % chance to fail to carry those stats over. Itâs all so impossible to get what you want, itâs not even worth trying to most people, hence 90+% people leave within a few weeks. Thatâs insane, but expected, and normal, because ARPGs donât use the rune and runeword system that made D2 great, the game all other games are based off of.
D2 with also not friendly though, you couldnât respec easily, you couldnât get to max level easily, if you die you lose days of experience, etc etc. In single player itâd be almost impossible to get high runewords because decreased drop chance in SP and no way to trade valuable uniques for runes. In LE, with CoF, those that wished for a pure SP experience could get increased drop rate, but not have the runes tradeable. Those that enjoy buying and selling, could trade and sell their runes with others, but have decreased drop chance. In Multiplayer, rather than one person get the rune like in D2, each person has their own loot table, so no fighting over gear. D2 has lots to be improved on.
LE could be the greatest ARPG, even beat D2. But devs refuse to make it so, for they take itemization insanity from D4 and place it over D2âs progressive power system, which did not require people to read every single stat and every item that dropped, for a rune was a rune, with specific value, always. Uniques were rare, and also labeled, so you know it was one of 4 items when it dropped. LE could incorporate Runes and Runewords ontop of their current system or instead of it. With high runewords being the most powerful items by far. Instead, they added to D4âs stat bloat, with LE having over 700 different affixes with huge ranges in stats. Itâs insane. The chance that the item that dropped is valuable to you or another person in very little. In comparison, D2 runes were always valuable, and their uniques were valuable to many with a wide range of specs, because it gave plus â+1 to all spellsâ and not plus to â+1 to swipe.â Thus instead of only one specific spec wanting that item, all characters based on spells wanted it. Thus, it was easily traded, and valuable to many. Closest thing LE has is the Ladel, of which many specs want it, thus it is very valuable to many. D2 was like that, but with many of their uniques. There were some that were specific, but most were generic. LE current system is nothing like D2âs, and D2âs what simply better, by a far margin. Itâs the defining thing that made D2 great, for as an ARPG where gear = power, gear and how to get and obtain it is important. Itâs why people played for years instead of weeks.
Other than a small number of them for niche situations, you only ever used runes for crafting or for runewords. Itâs the reason why Zod is the rarest rune to drop and yet it is worth significantly less than most of the runes under it.
You seem to forget that a big part of the runeword system was clearing them with a hel rune and redoing the runeword so youâd get better rolls. Because rolls were usually atrocious with RNG. And youâd do this over and over again until you got the correct level for the aura, or the damage in the upper ranges, etc.
Not really. The low runes drop like candy but youâd need thousands of them to upgrade into a high rune. And the high runes donât drop enough for you to be able to constantly upgrade them. You would sometimes upgrade when you needed the next one for your runeword, but most players rarely upped runes.
Itâs also why most players wouldnât even pick up low runes on the ground, and some wouldnât even pick up runes below Lum unless they needed it for a runeword, though usually they just traded for it.
I also liked the theory of runes/runewords in D2, but you seem to forget that in practice it never worked as idealized, other than making all endgame gear mandatory runewords.
I donât have to imagine it. I played it. It might surprise you to learn that not only was D2 a game before LoD came out, but people loved it and played it a ton.
The reason people played D2 for years is because they were high school and college students, and didnât have anything else that could comparably scratch the itch. D2 was so much better than its contemporaries in the genre that there was no comparison. Now people have more choices in the space, get cyclical content releases, and have become old enough to learn itâs OK to stop playing a game when you run out of things to do.
When you start, you picked up all the runes, until you were rich enough to get mid ones. Youâd pick up all mid ones, until you were rich enough to get high ones. When you were rich with high ones, of course low ones didnât matter to you. When you were rich with high ones, of course mid ones were the lowest you cared about. But you werenât rich with high ones in a few weeks. That would take months and months. Hence the game was long-lasting, and at every step, rewarding. It did work as intended, and it was awesome.
Low rune trading, even early in a new ladder, was mostly non-existent. You could simply open a game on day 2 of a new ladder called âN Ith Plsâ and some random player would soon log in and drop one for you for free. Rune trading started at Ral and only because it was the most used for crafting.
Much like uniques. Most of the common ones had no value and there were plenty of games with players that just dumped them for newer players to pick up.
Yes, if you were a really slow player, then low runes and common uniques are good to get you started. But they were ignored completely in endgame, which you reached in just a few days. Especially because the tactic you described required multiple mules, which most players couldnât be bothered with. Too much effort for too little value.
It was a tactic that only people that didnât know D2 that well used. Much like picking any unique.
Anyway, Iâm not trying to bash your idea or anything. Iâm just saying that runes werenât that great a system even in D2. Most people that played D2 for a few years only bothered with high runes and specific ones for either runewords or crafting or niche stuff like putting a Ral rune on Andys for the merc.
Iâm saying Runes were awesome, and long lasting for the life of the game. Low runes were valuable to new people, in that they could craft gear that gave them power spikes they needed, when they didnât have any uniques at all. New people could then use them until they got some mid runes and a few uniques, at which point they didnât need them, but could still use them. But then, they pursued mid runes. ANd then, they pursued high runes. That rune system was on top of uniques dropping. It didnât take away from uniques, it added to it, so that there was a short term game mixed with a long term element. I remember D2 before LOD. LOD is what Made D2 the game we remember. Youâre prefer a system of rng on top of rng, with high % chance to fail when you finally got something? Where you have to read every drop to check ranges? A system that lasts a few weeks? I see that you guys are ok with that, but I see it as the reason for 90% of people leaving almost every ARPG, and I think itâs a shame. LE is ok, and only better than others due to simple to play and basic loot filter but wow could it be great.
This was mikes response to people asking for a socket system. The current crafting system other than exalt slaming is pretty much a socket system already
Mike also said the legendary crafting system was influenced heavily on d2 rune words
Mike has said recently that sockets might be a thing in LE at some point. Though probably not like PoEâs.
Yes actually there is i know two diablo likes that do.
It lurks below. Created by david brevik himself as a solo project.
Anima this game is the closest u will come to diablo 2 as far as clones go. If u play this do not getit on steam that version is so far behind the one on mobail. No its not pay to win
If you want to play it install bluestacks. An android emulator for pc and install Anima via play store. Which is kept updated vs steams version
Yes he did believe that was also said in the quote i wrote. I just didnt add that
Yes, because there was no alternative available.
PoE has the high variance in affixes.
LE has the legendary system.
So we already have something similar for lifetime, even if itâs not something which is very enjoyable currently and we need far more system to expand on it to make it a viable solution for the situation in Legacy (which it also boils down towards in PoE, you can achieve high levels during their league but got massive amounts above outside still).
Never happened in D2, low runes were worthless. I never knew a single person using them outside of the initial playthrough and finding a lucky drop while having the right low rune available⌠runewords? Not really used at that time and the first ones were mid runes already commonly.
Only specific runewords were used and only on specific items, hence why the Zod rune wasnât all too useful outside fringe situations. Your merc always had ethereal items since they donât break on them and you personally only had end-game items incorporating a zod runeword with your weapon as the stats simply were insane with a lucky 6 socket drop using âBreath of the Dyingâ.
The runeword system was interesting but modern systems which provide a gradual improvement are vastly better for retention.
If you get a 3 or 4 LP unique you donât have âRNG on RNGâ as you only have a maximum 25% for something to âfailâ. By the time you get a 4 LP item youâll likely have access to a fitting T7 with sub-affixes that are good as well. So not even a chance to fail in the first place.
Also far easier to acquire âoneâ of them randomly then a Zod rune in D2.
So yes, I definitely prefer LEâs system.
The potential for several months of non-stop playing is available.
What LE misses is the content for it currently, which is priority 1 and coming with 1.1, end-game update.
Then when thatâs handled further improvements to the affix system, crafting and so on can happen, depending on need. But itâll guaranteed become more complex and bigger over time, hopefully also more intuitive with the UI then it is now the case.
The reason why 90% of people leave any game is because they invest tons of time into it and then want to do something else.
Only a very miniscule amount of people are interested in playing any game on and on and on.
Itâs impossible to gather the vast majority of those people to become permanent players. Sure, some will be able to be drawn in⌠but itâs generally not worth it in comparison to providing regular updates and hence making the ones which canât be held permanently come back to cause another peak, hence play-time, hence monetary income, hence funds for improving the game further.
Because the PoE sockets are a downside to the game and not a upside.
It makes itemization a disaster for chest-pieces and weapons, utterly demolishes the progression curve for those items as amazing ones can be nigh worthless unless linked and only quite decent items ever actually get linked, leaving a massive gap until that stage is reached.
Which is why PoE 2 has removed that system. It was detrimental.
Sockets with other functions though are more then fine after all.
I could care less about socketed items. Runewords were the reason people stayed playing D2. We donât need 500 affixes and hope for the 4 we are looking for to âdropâ. We need uniques we want, runewords we can craft, that âhaveâ the 4 we are looking for already. No RNG about it. You can âknowâ many low level runes will drop, which get people into the content which they can farm mid level runes. Hardcore and experienced players skip low level items, because they didnât need them. Newbies and casual gamers could use them though, and they did. You can say the this game has this and this game has that, yet still 95% of their playerbase is leaving. So the game doesnât have what it takes to make people stay. Fact. D2 did.
Low runes were useless to avid hardcore players, yet not to casual gamers, initially. They could always be upgraded into RAH, which you could exchange 10 RAH for 1 LUM, which is the entry point to currency, in which you could actually buy items you needed to make a build. So play a few days you could get your build off the ground, because your low runes turned into RAH, which turned into LUM, which turned into gear you wanted.
4LP item is fine, itâs the having to read every single âUniqueâ 4 affix item prior to that, that is a pain. Rather than having to read every item that drops to see if it is good enough, a simple rune drop you know how good it was without having to read it, and since they dropped equally as rarely, you spend tons of time reading affixes, vs knowing instantly something good dropped. Thus half of my time is spent reading affixes, extracting affixes, picking up affixes, sending affixes to forge, itâs just an enormous amount of time not playing the game, and instead sorting inventory. D4 was worse, since it didnât have a loot filter. Since there are over 700 Affixes, and an RNG assortment will appear on a piece of gear that loots, you have RNG assortment on RNG item with RNG range which LP2 and lower has negative chance of applying both stats you are looking for to item, it just means zero upgrade until your 4 LP drops with your 4 well rolled Unique, and for that to happen is months of work. With Nothing to show for it, and no guarantee for it to happen, for months. Months of no apparent progress with exceptions for for failed rolls on LP 1 an 2 items, is straight up depressing and not fun, which is different than the rune system of D2, which lead to steady progression, guaranteed, for mid runes would get turned into high runes gradually, and you did get an occasional GUL or LO rune, which was enough to keep you playing another week or two. And you got them every week or two. It was perfect.
90% of people leave because they are bored with the game, meaning they arenât getting the reward they want often enough to keep at it. Like an addiction, you need some sort of gratification or reward to keep the habit going. LE system is not rewarding or gratifying enough, but D2âs system of runes was. Finally getting the 4LP item you want is great and all, but will happen not often enough to keep casuals from playing, and that is 90% of the player base. Getting runes of varing value daily, every day, is enough to keep casuals playing for years. Since that system is not incorporated and not understood, itâs not mainstream, thus not normal. Thus itâs normal for 90% of people to leave the game, when it shouldnât be. LoL and similar keep players going for year after year, not because of lack of content, but because itâs rewarding and fun to keep playing. Simple as that.
There are some & the way the devs view it, with D2âs runes you got to pick which runes (affixes) you added to an item. In LE you get to pick which affixes (runes) you add to an item when crafting. Runes/LE crafting arenât identical, but there are certainly some thematic/mechanical overlap which was the point I was making.
Neither are D2âs runes unless youâre editing your stash. Pretty sure Zod runes werenât available âpretty easilyâ. I never saw one & I played D2 for years.
Agreed.
No, the fail chance was removed when they changed from the fracture system to the current crafting. I never mentioned nor was I walking about legendaries.
No, thatâs not how stats/RNG works. If you have a 2 LP unique & 4 possible affixes to choose from, youâve got a 50% chance of getting the 1 affix you want. Also, if your exalted item is that good, donât waste it on a 2LP, buy a 3LP, or ideally 4LP instead. Do you know what the chance is of a 4LP unique + your desired awesomesauce exalt? 100%!
Thatâs not how value works either. An El rune would have substantially less value than a Ber rune because it requires 6.86x10^13 (thatâs 13 zeros BTW) El runes to make a Ber.
For a specific build, yes. Thatâs by design/intention.
Ah, yeah, thatâs probably correct.