D2 Runewords

Feedback and Suggestions
21

Yes, think about the reason ‘why’ Runewords kept people playing.
It was depth and player agency in a system which had none of that otherwise. The sole proper ‘crafting’ mechanic available when everything else was purely focused on drops. Hence a realistically achievable goal.

LE has targeted unique drops, a market and targeted prophecies to achieve the same.

So you ‘know’ many uniques and exalted items will be available for you.

Ok, how high was the % of people leaving D2 during their ladder resets?
Do you know? :slight_smile:
I guarantee it was roughly the same number. Ah… but such a shame we have no data on it since Blizzard is a disaster company which even with ‘resurrected’ they never revealed their statistics. Gives them power over people who have no clue how player retention works in the grand scheme.

You seem to be included in that portion of players.

Is it? You don’t though?
First of all, when you come to end-game (which the rune-farming in D2 was) then the equivalent in LE is to have a filter which removes all items outside of uniques and T7 exalted items. The only exception for that is some specific idol affix combinations as well as skill level affixes, those can be shown at T6 still as they’re nonetheless valuable and rare enough to be reasonable.

So already you’re removing 95% of your need to read and each of those items on the other hand is a viable one for a potential craft.

So hence you created:

a simple item drop to know it was good without having to read it.

Use your filter properly, that’s what it’s there for.

Factually wrong in every aspect.

What you’re describing there is that ‘1-3 LP items are useless’ which is one of the worst takes I’ve heard about the system to date. As wrong as it can get.
Any beneficial stat on a 1 LP item is a better item then a non-LP item.
Any 2 good stats on a 2 LP item is better then a non-LP item.
Heck… many times 2 mediocre stats on a 2 LP item is better then a perfect affix 1 LP item even.

So you have a gradual curve but you just fail to see it.

Is it?
I thought you need to slot it into something first to be progress.
Means you need to drop the respective base item for it to become good.

A garbage item with the runeword after all still stays fairly much garbage after.

At least get the equivalency for it right there before you start comparing those systems. That’s the baseline for a discussion.

Oh, the reason for people leaving exactly has never been determined. But ‘bored’? That’s quite a risky statement!
Are you sure that’s true?

This would mean only 10% leave because they burn themselves out, they have another game released which they switch over towards, they simply are prone to switching up what they play, they reached their goal, they…

There’s such a myriad of options but you claim ‘this is the main and nigh only relevant one’. Seems like BS to me. Where does this basis come from?

That I can agree with as the first argumentation you made. First of all… it’s subjective and I feel the same way, secondly LE’s legendary system doesn’t provide unique new outcomes which aren’t seen otherwise.

But that’s something which a 1.0 also isn’t common to have yet. D2 needed their Expansion for them to exist, before they weren’t there at all.
Compare those games and the state of how they were released… LE is vastly beyond several aspects of D2, as it ever was, by the end of it. Which is to be expected form a game that comes decades afterwards. The one major point is that complexity isn’t there yet, you’re basically asking for them to have a perfect product at the start-line already. That’s nonsensical, you’ll need to give it time.

Who says that’s their main audience they cater towards?
If you wanna have a game for more casual playing then go to D3 and D4, that’s their market share.

And they fucked it up despite having a easy to please audience since casuals can’t have a clue about complex in-depth mechanics since inherently - because they’re casual - they can’t or won’t invest the time needed to get into the nitty-gritty of it.

22

Not really. People farmed hoping for an Andy or Shako. If a good rune dropped, nice. But that was never the goal.
In fact, this is easily seen by the fact that most rushers don’t even bother asking for the forge quest. This was something that was a staple in the early years of runes and was since mostly dropped.

Again, you seem to forget the huge RNG runewords had, where you had to use hel runes to clear the runeword and do it again because your aura was level 12 instead of level 18. Or your enhanced damage was 200% instead of 300%. There was plenty of RNG in runewords as well.
In fact, runewords were introduced primarily to introduce RNG into chase items, since uniques have always the save values.

It’s a live service game. People join a new season/ladder and start leaving some time after, only to join again when a new one starts. This happened in D2 as well.

This is equivalent to D2 crafting. You crafted hundreds or thousands of the same item hoping for a 2/20. So you spent long period of time reading the affixes.

This also happened in D2.

I love D2. It’s the game I’ve played most in my life and I still play it regularly. But you’re romanticizing too much. There was lots of RNG. Getting BiS gear was a lot harder than it is in LE.

In fact, the reason why players stayed with D2 for a long time is exactly because there was a lot of RNG and grind. Because BiS gear was hard to get. For the majority of players, it was even almost impossible to get. And that chase was what kept people playing.

2 Likes
23

It wasnt removed. Its not as bad as it was with the old system.

It is still possible to brick an item while crafting once u run out of FP which in away is the same thing as an item being fractured with out the old risk of the item becoming less powerful due to fracturing it.

If i remember correctly once it was fractured u couldnt craft on it anymore

24

No, it’s really not, that just means the item can’t be crafted anymore. The old version had 2 fail states wherein the affix you were crafting was reduced or, for a critical fail, the item could be wiped clean. Very different to what we have now where the worst case is that the craft you were doing consumed all of the forging potential. The current one doesn’t have the 2 fail states, but that doesn’t mean the item is “bricked” (unless you were trying to chaos a non-useful affix to a useful one, didn’t get & then ran out of FP) by any means, it just means it can’t be crafted on anymore.

1 Like
25

You have exactly 0% chance for a item to become unusable - and even worse - after using a craft.

So yes, the fail-chance was removed.

It’s not the same at all though.

In the current one you just run out of upgrade options, in the old one you could brick the item any second.
If your item has 40+ FP then you’re guaranteed at least 2 successful crafts no matter what you do. So no, it has no fail-state and brick-guarantee. You could even get critical successes and hence not even use up FP at all.

26

Excessive romanticizing and Diablo 2 - Name a more iconic duo.

Didn’t you know that the word “bricked” had its definition changed from “thing becomes completely unusable” to “any time the outcome isn’t perfect and exactly what you wanted it to be”? Try to keep up, gramps!

4 Likes
27

I will as soon as you young skallywags get off my damed lawn!

I didn’t want to use the “s” word, but it seems appropriate.

28

Yes it actually does. Once u have no FP

U can in fact still brick items. Its no where near as bad as the old system. I agre woth that.

But in the end an item can still be bricked. Current system is far far better. The item may not be bricked for a different build but sure can be for the build u where crafting for. Exalts make this easy to se how items can still be bricked

Its much harder to do now. But to say Current system cant brick ur item is false.

29

Scaramouche?

1 Like
30

That’s only for fandango.

2 Likes
31

Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening!

2 Likes
32

You know, the guy, who sings that song? Lets keep it that way. lol
LE needs to make its own music

33

It may actually be appropriate because, today I learned, it is not just a nonsense word, but rather a traditional stock clown character originating in 16th century theatre, and can be used to refer to someone as “a cowardly buffoon”.

1 Like
34

Yeah, I know. It was also popularized (at the time) as a character in some novel in the early 1900s by an italian writer. I forget his name or the book’s name. And he was a part of punch and judy puppet shows. But that’s mostly all I know.
I think it fell mostly out of “favor”, other than as a funny word in a Queen song. These days it’s mostly forgotten.

35

This has turned rather entertaining. Anyhow, some people think and write in general terms, others in very specific, very literal terms. Think of Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. Very literal, everything. When I say D2’s Rune system not in any ARPG, I meant any mainstream games, such as D3, D4, PoE, Torchlight, Grim Dawn, etc. When I say chance to fail, I mean chance to fail, I mean fail at getting desired outcome. Since 0-5% of uniques are actually good for a build, then you get a 25% chance for those uniques to have 1 LP, then you have 75% chance to “Fail” to get the single stat you want from it, perhaps it’s a +2 to a skill you need, or the experimental affix on boots to make ward. You fail it 3 times in a row, and it starts to feel bad, and unrewarding. On the other hand, runes make it so you farm, and after an hour get maybe 1 of 100 of the materials you need for it. Then the next your you get 10 of 100 of the material you need for it. Then the next hour, you get 0 of the 100 materials you need for it. Then the next hour, you get 2 of the material you need for it. Then the next hour, you get 5 of the materials you need for it. Eventually you have the 100 materials needed, and you make the item with the exact affixes you need. The main affixes that are needed, are guaranteed flat amounts. There are also other affixes of the item that come with a range, maybe armor, movement speed, resistance, or crit chance or crit multiplier. I’d rather “Craft” an item that is made of materials that I gathered or traded for, with the specific affixes I want guaranteed, some affixes flat amounts, other affixes in a range, then “craft” an item with chances to fail to to have affixes I need, and have to do it over and over until it “succeeds” to have the affixes I want. One system, is a progressive, with small but tangible rewards coming in every few hours. The other system, is feast or famine, and one could go for weeks without seeing a 2 LP version of the item drop, or maybe even months before a 3 LP version of the item drop, and only to still have a chance for the item to fail to inherit the affix you want most on it, for example a T7 +4 to skill on helmet. Thus reward is coming in every few weeks or every few months, with addition of frustrations at “failed” desired-affix transfers. I’d rather the tangible progress version over the feast or famine version.

That’s not it though, as runes are also currency. I can buy or sell runes for items, keys, etc. If I have 20 dungeon keys, maybe someone will trade me 5 materials I need for my item, for my 20 dungeon keys. Since that is an option, I can farm dungeon keys and end up with an item. That is because runes were not just crafting materials, but actual currency. My 3 LP unique bow that is useless to me, could be traded for 10 crafting materials, so I craft my gear by selling the 95% of the uniques that are useless for my build. Or vise versa, I can sell 5 of my crafting materials to get the helmet I need. In game now, you can’t buy or sell anything without favor, and you can’t buy or sell crafting materials, keys, or anything but gear. The gear you can buy cost hundred of millions per gear, with 4LP uniques costing 1+ billion. You can’t sell 20 dungeon keys for 5 crafting materials, with at 100 crafting materials you get the item.

The feast or famine of the current system, no guarantee of affixes desired unless 4LP, no trading without favor, no buying without reputation, the value of items is also feast or famine. I like crafting materials as the currency of the game over in-game money. Crafting materials (D2 Runes) were the currency, the wealth, the power, the reward, and quite fun. I didn’t have to read each and every unique that dropped with a T7 affix. There was no %chance to fail getting desired affixes. There were some items with fixed stats, others with rolled stats. You could make a 5 material item worth 5 power, and could also make a 10million material item worth 10million power. Once you had all your craftable gear slots filled, bank full of mats to make more, basically, the game was done. After that, hardcore gamers could then try to get max stat rolls on all their items, and then go out and dominiate PVP with those items. But that was for the hardcore. Most just wanted the most powerful gear, and once they had it, the won, even if the most powerful gear they had didn’t have perfect rolls on them.

The system now, is you get to have the most powerful gear at the start, then the rest of the game is getting better rng rolls on it. But once you have the best gear in the game, most people (a vague term I use, to consider the majority of people that play, by a substantial margin, like lets say 90% , not exactly and not specifically)… most people are like “yep, played it, got all the best gear, time to move on. I don’t need 140 crit multiplier on my helm, 107 crit multiplier is good enough.” The ARPG genre’s end game is about getting the best gear for most people. But once they have the gear, and can kill all the bosses easily, they are done. Runes made it so the best gear by name was speical. “Grief” was the best sword. “Heart of the Ancients” the best caster weapon. It was a specific gear with 10million power behind it at the low end, and 13million power behind it at the upper end. For Most, getting “Grief” with 10million power behind it was good enough. The Hardcore 10% it wasn’t good enough, and would spend hundreds of hours and billions of crafting resources till the 13 million power version was finally theirs.

D2 had a better system. When I say make D2 runewords come back, that is to say, make crafting materials of varing worth and rarity, make items of immense power, that can only be made by crafting those rare marterials, and make those materials tradeable, as well as other things that people might want to sell in exchange for them, such as keys, items, gems if you end up socketing.

In addition, those materials could be used to modify current legendary gear, like increase affixes to T7, or remove affixes, or re-roll stat range of specific affix. Of course it’d cost a lot of mats to do these things, but one could gather the mats, and over time, upgrade and make exact gear that they wanted, which was only good insofar as they couldn’t afford the 10million material uber gear, which cost tons of materials. Once they got those, what were perfectly rolled legendaries, which only had 5million power? Free up trading too! Make high corruption zones, so monos are for 0-300 corruption. Then you have a different area, say “Time Rifts” that had 5 bosses, and little zones with it, that were hard and scaled and were 300-600 corruption. Then endgame you had “The Gods” 4 bosses or Gods, that were for 600+ corruption, but were nearly impossible to do without perfectly rolled legendaries, which of course you were able to make using materials, and once you got the Uber 10million gear crafts, you could speed farm. The higher the corruption the greater the chance of high runes or very rare materials dropping, but they could drop at any corruption, and make a poor man rich instantly.

Bring back D2 Runewords, Runes, and Make items like keys sellable. Make the items of the game itself the currency of the game, instead of money! Make ARPGs Great Again!

36

First off, please @SEQFTW format a bit more, your texts are ridiculously hard to read. I try… but it’s actually quite hard.

I didn’t quite the tangent you went off on with your example since it was too long, take it as included into the quite part there.

So, it would take many hours to get the respective set of runes. In D2 it was usually around 20-30 hours of play-time at least before you had a singular runeword available.

In comparison in 20-30 hours of targeted farming for a specific unique I can guarantee you’ll see several LP1 and maybe a LP2 variant of it, that’s counting for the rare dropping uniques, the others you’ll have… a good chunk commonly over time.

I would say you get 6-8 tries per 30 hours at least. Which will guarantee a decent outcome basically. In comparison you’ll likely not have a ‘fantastic’ runeword available by then, which would be the equivalent of a 2 LP rolled rare boss unique. So the outcome is that one system has no clear-cut goal but is a bit faster (LE) while the other is more or less deterministic and is slower (D2).
So it can be put down to flavor.

The solution to solve it is to make a more deterministic way of getting the respective item. In MG that’s the case, in CoF the boss-drop uniques are screwed up still. We can hope that to be fixed with changes for better droprates.

3+ LP is a runeword which has a ‘Zod’ rune included in rarity. Not equivalent for your example, nonsensical since it takes ridiculous amounts of time. Only meant for off-cycle, hence legacy… or pure unadulterated luck.

A T7 skill roll of the right type is the value of a full-scale runeword itself if you wanna put an equivalency to it. Often better then a specific unique which would be a pure end-game upgrade… or unneeded at all if the unique has baseline so good stats it’s not viable to switch out, which is already a clear indicator of the power scale there.

And EHG has decided to not allow any sort of consumables to be traded. So those wouldn’t be currency either here. By design.

So the whole example is not relevant.

That I have to agree with. Gold is a very bad method for value currently. We don’t have respective sinks to alleviate inflation.

That needs to change, then the market functions properly longer term.

That solves the MG issues mostly, besides functionality which has been screwed up, but that’s a huge different topic in itself.

You get baseline 4 T5 gear + baseline uniques and then go from there, yes.
The higher you go the more affixes you free up if the rolls are good, especially for T7 resistances as they insta-cap you at the highest roll.

Which won’t be solves by runewords.

No content to beat means no gear needed for it. Same issue.

Which means 1.1 is the solution there to a degree.

Once again, partial quote.

The answer to the whole content part there:
We don’t need another D3 situation, heartless shoddy slapped together mechanics without meaning have felt shit there and will feel shit here. Simple as that.

What’s needed is proper content and not some stop-gap small-tier zoned garbage. It works for a baseline but from there you expand into more grand mechanics with variety… unless you want your ARPG to die off gradualy.

It’s a outdated way of handling progression, it barely works and there’s better options available, PoE has proven that with their league mechanics (which they then remove to 90% and fuck them up rather then making their game more ‘grand’ and long-lasting, but that’s another topic as well.)

37

I still believe chasing gear with random stats with random ranges, hoping to get the lucky drop with perfect stats and good ranges, it’s D4’s version of endgame gear chasing, and is simply not good for ARPGs as a genre. In D4, I spent tons of time reading stats, and didn’t bother with most uniques, because most uniques are worse than a well-rolled stat stick, to which you just apply whatever legendary affix you wanted. It’s why I stopped playing D4: since every item can have the stats you want rolled randomly, I have to read every item that drops. I spent more time reading items then actually killing monsters.

LE improved that system with a loot filter, so I only read items with a T7 of an important stat. Of course, 300+ corruption and speed farming, I get a lot of T7s of an important stat, but the other stats are rng with rng ranges, so I end up still having to read a bunch of stats on gear every few minutes. It would be better if the in-game loot filter was more advanced, like you can tell it only show gear with specific ranges. Also since any rng gear that drops could have a skill-based affix, and there are many hundreds of them, I also have to shatter every item that drops with a skill-based affix. For in order to roll that skill-based affix off of an otherwise good T7 drop, I need affix shards for every skill in the game, as any of them could be on it. So it’s not just T7 I’m having to go though, it’s hundreds and hundreds of affixes that I don’t currently have, that I need. And The loot filter is too dumb to know which affixes I don’t have, so I can’t filter it to show only affixes I don’t have, so I end up having to pick up, read and disenchant tons of gear, just like D4.

Instead, gear should be uniques you farm, or specific items in-game you craft (d2 runewords are an example of that), With names and specific stats on the item, that are perfect for builds already, some with flat numbers, others with ranges. Make the uniques difficult to get, but possible to get, like D2. Make the crafted items in tiers, some easier to get, others very difficult to afford, but with matching power spikes. Aka, D2 runewords and rune system. Looking at every random T7 that drops hoping it has all 4-7 good stats with good ranges… it’s just like trying to swim through mud. Like it takes tons of effort to go through everything, and at the end of most days, you haven’t gone anywhere.

It’s frustrating that “BIS” gear isn’t a unique or a legendary with a specific name, it’s just a well rolled purple item. Most builds are like that. Because the stats on the uniques are not very good in comparison to purple items that can drop, which since it’s random you can get 7 stats you want, vs uniques which have maybe 1 thing you need about it, and otherwise it’s useless. Since it’s basically useless aside from that 1 important thing it does, you have to slam stats you actually do care about on it, with a high %chance to fail to get the stat you care about most on it, unless it’s an LP3 or 4.

Thus I’m calling for a 4 fold change here. 1) Make uniques more powerful than random stat sticks, thus we actually want to farm them, just like D2. (Yes, there are rare exceptions, but those are rare and exceptions.) 2) Rather than finding random items you have to read every stat on hoping for the best, instead it would be better to drop crafting materials (like runes) that have exact value already, so you don’t have to read all about what you just picked up, but know already what it is. You only have to read uniques that drop. They should be rare enough that they dont’ fill up your bags every few minutes. 3) Crafted items have many tiers and at the end are way more powerful than uniques that drop, so that builds come alive once uniques are gathered, but become crazy OP with end-game crafted gear, which would take a long time to get. FInally 4) Crafted items become currency, as do other acquired items such as keys, and loot. Rather than sell items for gold, you can put “selling” and put whatever you want to sell there, and “Wanting” and put whatever you want there out of an item database, like a rune, or a number of keys or whatever.

Now, the game becomes a game about getting specific uniques, specific OP crafted items, and not about random stat sticks. Since Uniques are so weak without slams, purple items are often better. Thus many end game builds just include a set of stat sticks, plus a few uniques that 1 or 2 stats about it that make it better than a full stat stick. I miss the days when ARPGs were about getting specific named pieces of gear, and not “lets see what 7 stats these boots have, it might be the BIS item for my guy.” Instead “I sure hope this unique is the phaseboots, for the phaseboots have +60 movement, +20 all resist, and -10% damage taken from all sources.” Then Wow! Phaseboots are awesome, I can’t wait to Craft the “Sabersandels! Everytime I kill an enemy, the boots will teleport me to the next enemy I attempt to melee attack! Plus +90 movement, +30 all resist, -15 damage taken from all sources, +10% Cooldown Reduction!”

Crafting Materials are great because you can recieve it as a steady reward, which leads to an epic item. Right now it doesn’t matter how many armor shards I pick up, for it’s not like after collecting 1000 of them, I’ll be able to craft an epic armor. Instead it’s rng stat stick I am looking for, and when I see it’s crappy rng range roll, I can change the 24 armor into 40 armor. But it’s about the rng stat stick, not the material. Make materials actually craft specific items, and make common materials be exchanged or upgraded into more rare materials, so all materials would have value. Thus, I still stand by my feedback and suggestion: Bring D2 Runes and Runewords back.

38

If there ever will be a rune system I realy hope it will not be a D2 copy but rather something fun . I don’t need another endgame collection game… I’m good with LP. If there was some kind of late game progression where you unlock runeslots to slot in runes that offer various stats I’m fine. Some kind of D4 paragon system where you are able to slot a glyph in and be done with it. I’m not a fan of adding more time consuming mechanics to the game because the game can be frustrating enough depending on how unlucky you are.

39

Agreed! Fully even!

That’s why games like PoE and LE have their crafting systems, those work to counteract the exponential difficulty to acquire better items through pure drops.

Hence you ‘only’ need a T7 mod on the right base item and everything else can be acquired accordingly. Not with a 100% guarantee, but a ‘decent’ combination has as much of a ‘decent’ chance to be the result.

That’s a loot-filter issue you’re describing. Adjust the loot filter accordingly and you don’t need to read.

That sounds unlikely. T7 stats are not that commonplace in ~300 corruption. Vastly above it they ramp up massively though.

If you’re MG those are sale-fodder if you don’t need them, hence useful since someone else might likely require them. If you’re CoF then once more… more strict filter to only drop viable combinations that result in a more likely outcome for you.

The ranges of the specific rolls in comparison to the tiers are nigh unimportant in the most cases, unless you’re at the end of the end-game even. And by then it’s to be expected to need extreme amounts of time to upgrade.

Once more, that’s more of a ‘you’ issue.
I never had this problem, especially not since they increased the amount of shatterings available to buy from the trader every 10 minutes… or when switching areas.

Once more, loot filter set up to provide all the class-specific and rare mods, solely displayed on ‘rare’ and ‘magic’ items as the uppermost one. It’s a quite huge list and you don’t need to sift through the ‘wrong’ exalted items. This way you can mindlessly shatter items and when you see you have a ‘decent’ - whatever the amount is in your mind - number of a respective shard you remove that affix from the filter.

Solved.

A BiS is always a top-tier unique as a LP4 item with a 2 T7 2T5 exalted put into it to be exact.
But that’s a unrealistic expectation to have.

Hence why should it be bad that a random drop can be a good item? In Grim Dawn it’s the case, in PoE it’s the case… heck… in every diablo clone outside of D2 because of said runewords it’s the case… and that’s not a negative but a positive since it allows a fantastic drop to theoretically come to you with unadulterated luck while commonly you’ll still have to put in a big amount of effort to achieve it.

That’s… a whole different game.

A simple no, unrealistic to ask for, nonsensical even to ask for in the first place.

As well as the system you recommend being majorly flawed in terms of potential power progression. To allow it the power ceiling would be substantially lower, hence the ‘OP build’ from extreme amounts of effort can’t happen. This is a driving factor of a modern diablo clone for long-term players though, breaking the game by sheer quality of equipment which can’t be acquired without substantial time investment.

40

I have a few points on this:

  1. Socketing in general would be an obvious way to expand the current itemization, but that’s a major addition for a later point in time. Since OP doesn’t care about socketing in general, I wouldn’t open that can within this topic.

2a) Runes in D2 were great as trading currency for every price range, something we could use here to unlink gold from MG, but I wouldn’t know how with the current trading system.

2b) The top end runes were too rare to be good for a game, in which trading shall be optional. They only existed in such quantities due to duping/botting etc. People think of BER runes (Enigma) like they think of Tabula in PoE, while their drop rates were closer to that of a Headhunter or a 3LP Red Ring of Atlaria as in <1 per lifetime. I think having these 3 and 4 LP items out of realistic reach is fine, but we shouldn’t create too many items that most people can never get.

  1. I disagree on the idea of removing all random rolled items from relevance. With D2 LoD rare items lost all meaning because of uniques and runewords that came with predetermined affixes that could have been a rare. The LE equivalent might be a unique dagger with t7 flat phys, t6 crit multi, t5 armor shred and t5 health on hit. I don’t want that. Before LoD, there was excitement for rare rings, amulets, lances etc. Uniques should be just that, something different, not an ideal rare with a bonus.

  2. I dislike the notion of earning items in steps like 2% at a time. If there was a quest to kill Mephisto 1k times to get a Shako, it’d only feel like work and didn’t trigger any emotions. It was fun because every single run had the chance to grant a Shako, like a slot machine. That’s a huge psychological difference.