Diablo IV's Runeword system

General Discussion
1

Hi guys,

I was rewatching some gameplay footage of MrLlamaSC at blizzcon. When an idea came to me to revamp runeword system of D4.

The actual system is pretty “meh”, no complexity only 2 runes combination (one condition + one effect). Lovely runewords of D2 are gone and it’s too bad.

But what if Runeword now belong to the character himself rather than an item ? This is my idea :

https://tof.cx/images/2019/12/05/705b3e4cc93c3a569470977e2d32bd72.jpg

We keep the actual combination of 2 runes with one condition and one effect. Pretty basic and simple for newcomers (easy to learn).

Like Vex + Lem on the torso : When you use health potion (Vex) add 5% damage as Fire during 10 secondes (Lem)

or Amn + Ko on legs : When you freeze an enemy (Amn) reduce a random skill cooldown by 15% (Ko)

But if we gather the rights runes through our entire character (taking into account each item) we can unlock RUNEWORDS (hard to master).

On my example we gather Amn, Ko and Lem that’s unlock the runeword LAWBRINGER who grants :

  • -50% Target Defense

  • Slain Monsters Rest In Peace

  • 75% Extra Gold From Monsters

Some details :

  • Only whites, magics and rares items can have sockets (very unlikely on unique and set)

  • You can have up to 10 runes (5 conditions and 5 effects) for every charater except for Barbare who can use 4 weapons and have 14 runes (7 conditions and 7 effects)

  • You are not limited in number of Runeword

  • A same rune can be share on differentes Runewords (one Ko is use in both Lawbringer and The Oak)

  • You can run multiple time same runeword (2 x Lawbringer)

  • But a rune can’t be use in the same 2 runewords (for 2 Lawbringer you need : 2 Amn, 2 Lem and 2 Ko)

  • If a runeword need two times the same rune, like Pheonix (Vex-Vex-Lo-Jah), you need to socket 2 Vex in yours items.

  • Powerfull Runeword need more rune (5 or 6) and minor Runeword less rune (3).

  • It should be very difficult to have 2 powerfull runewords (2x 5 or 6 runes) because you need to have the perfect combination between 5 conditions and 5 effects on your gear.

  • Runeword can be a combination of any runes for example “Grief (5)” can be : 1 condition and 4 effects and “Fortitude (4)” can be only 4 effects . So you can easely prevent too powerpull runewords combination. In my example if you want to stack Grief and Fortitude, they need to share at least 3 effects rune.

Tell me what you think about it.

TL;DR : Runes are shared through all items to create Runewords who belong to character now.

Ps : Lem an Pul aren’t revealed yet so I invented it

2 Likes
2

I don’t love your idea, but I’m far from hating it.

I’m actually look forward to hear more information about Runes in D4. I believe we just saw a small part of how the system works or, at least, the possibilities it opens.

The thing that keeps me from loving your idea is that Runewords will eliminate the customization on Runes Trigger/Effect in a sense that you won’t be able to choose your Trigger/Effect, because you are aimming at the Runeword.

So, even if I’m not interest on having “Fire Damage after Using Potions”, but I want the Runeword that goes with Vex (Trigger on Health Potion), I’m tide to using it unwillingly.

3

I have a sinking feeling that runewords will be the odd one out this time around.

4

On another consideration:

Trigger/Effect is a awesome premise and is suffering greatly, and mostly, because it is made upon Runes.

I would love to see this system developed to its full potential the way it is currently working.

6

Personally I LOVE the idea of “custom trigger” system in D4 cause it opens so many avenues (with sooo much untapped potential for the future)

Whilest Runewords in D2 were a cool “sudden twist of power” once you assemble the right stuff, I’d personally prefer the new system cause it’s game-defining impact is much greater than it was in D2… ALSO it’s mid-tier rewarding, meaning you don’t have to put ALL the things in the right order so you gain the effect, you can simply experiment with things half-way-through

Though I might see the concern/disappointment, consider the following effects, just a few examples:

Effect runes

  • Increase Angelic power by X for X seconds

Think of the game-defining MOMENTS you could have with such a system…

You could make your character gain unstoppable after dodge, you could make your character drop a meteor after using a displacement, you could make your character do X things you wouldn’t otherwise dream off of

A bit of “analysis” of the D2 runeword system

Personally, think that the +X to all stats or +X to all skills, or +X to all resist kind of things are mainly “boring”, meaning kinda permanent/passive…

More over, think that’s a “consequence” of how the mobs (especially elite mobs) in D2 were designed tbh

… The main reason that things like that made such a huge impact in D2 (IMO) was because mobs were designed to get “kinda countered” in such ways

IF mobs are more dynamic (as opposed to neigh-unkillable unless you have the right iitems/sills/stats) then the in-combat-power-gain system wouldn’t need to be such “permanent” either I’d say

2 Likes
7

Random but… what if runewords were a hybrid between D2 and D3 and Path of Exile? What if you could basically make runewords in different pieces of gear and those runewords would give you skills modifiers? That solution is interesting for multiple reasons :

  • You could make it in all types of items (from magic to unique… except for sets which would have their own synergy).
  • You dissociate skill modifiers from uniques, giving you a much broader range of items to consider for gearing up, giving the opportunity for blue or yellow items to be BiS (for exemple in D2 the +3bow +30ias or yellow +2bow +20ias, resist, life leach gloves).
  • Still provides the ability to modify your skills and thus customize your build.
  • Makes runes great again and exciting to find.
  • If runes can easily be unsocketed, it’d be fun to experience how a same runeword would graphicly affect different skills from a same or different class.
8

The necromancer has arrived 10 months late.

9

I personally love to play hack and slash because you don’t have to go too deep into “if I do this, it’ll trigger that, which will allow me to do that…”. I don’t know whether I represent a majority or minority of the community but I much prefer having +2 to skills (a constant effect) than “random” boosts or power. I hate, when tearing up through hordes of monsters, try to think about of all my triggers and see how I can unleash them or even coming up with a build that synergizes my triggers.

It’s a very niche way of playing in my opinion and it’s fine if a player makes his hero some kind of glass canon that draws its power from a very meticulous method of playing, so the option SHOULD be available but not made mainstream.

When I picture a hero fighting for balance between good and evil, I picture a hero depending on a much more stable and constant source of power, not by relying on triggers.

10

I agree that too much focus on triggers is not good thing. I like triggers, it’d be cool to be able to make characters focused around triggers… I just don’t want them to be a part of every character.

11

A few trigger effects are fine.
Several or many i dont know how your monitor spamm fiesta will start to turn out even with more players in your party.

12

Both yes and no… Depends on the character of the game, the way how D4 did things (or at least it’s my hypothesis) is that opponents have certain high defense rates or resistances in late game and the MOST of your damage will come out of triggers (or hit-effects as they call them), so then you end up in a D2-ish “territory” without going overboard with the immunities

For example, let’s say your ATK is 7k, the target’s defense is 6.9k and it has HP of several thousand. The regular attack would do 100 dps, then you might have hit-effects of type elemental damage (one extra way to deal damage other than spells/skills) or maybe simply have a crit-effect that deals 1k extra damage per hit (meaning you’d get 1.1k damage per crit against the target), or maybe simply having a CB (i.e. %max HP, most likely a bludgeon weapon)

Now, let’s say you have a wand or staff that does 5k damage (meaning some minimal amount, probably not 0 per hit) and it has a stat of 40% extra elemental damage source or even 40% extra DoT of DoT effects. Like for ex. DoT being 400 per 5 sec, well now that particular DoT with a 40% amplifier would feel more effective than plain physical hits. Same with skills, it’s probably better to have a Meteor that scales up to 1.2k and with some gear you can make it go up to 2k per hit (as opposed to plain straightforward talent it to deal 2k per hit)

NOW you have a very nice balance between damage sources, Crit with a hit-effect/trigger, elemental-damage, or crushing-blow/chaos damage where chances are mobs won’t have resistances against. If instead you make the IDK Meteor or Upheaval do 2k damage per hit, what’s the point ?, you use a certain skill 4 times and such mob is dead either way

You won’t use any other damage source but the spell damage regardless of the class you use (as long as they’re not pigeonholed to not having a something, OR super hard-countered by immunity), anyone regardless whether playing melee or ranged will simply use “hard hitters” and wreak havoc with it

I actually like this idea of the triggers being primary source of combat and skills/spells come out as second (AS LONG AS it’s not just a lifesteal or life-per-hit or life-per-resource-spent being mandatory for survival) because it makes the game more dynamic in the category of “damage pie chart” at the end of things

Having a 93k damage from Meteor, 5k damage from Lightning and 2k physical doesn’t sound right (at least to me). Hard-counter i.e. rock-paper-scissors isn’t a right approach for the combat in game (regardless whether early or later in game), having trigger effects per hit can deal with this problem much better I think

And yes, at the end of days the whole question and make/break is whether or not the devs will have enough creativity to make this philosophy feel like diverse and enriching (rather than mandatory as the life/perhit/steal/perresourcespent that we’re used for it to be)

1 Like
13

We’re talking about a game that will deduct complexity by watering previous systems down piece by piece and not allowing complex synergies to not “confuse” new players.

I don’t think they’d go for complex runewords. They’ve been loud and clear they are not willing to replicate “D2 or D3”, yet their actions not entirely correlate with it. We all saw how legendary item powers in pre-alpha demo turned out; do that tell you that they’re willing to experiment on anything beside a “working formula”?
Big studios make games for more sales by investing in huge advertisement campaigns; not for hooking up players with ground breaking mechanics to the point of becoming detrimental to work hours worldwide.

It will be a casual MMO-lite; for the benefits for being a completionist, there’s always the choice between longevity of journey and trading which begs headache inducing question and accusations of “oh-em-gee it iz pay-to-win!”.
As a developer they can not amuse or make anyone happy by their choices so they always go for benefit of the masses.

Also let me plug this in; if there are runewords in D4, why there are none in Diablo 3? I’m sorry, I’m not buying excuse of a “skillrune system of five runes” as a runeword system. It sounds like a fastfood franchising coughsubtlecough compared to a complex restaurant that serves different cuisines. IF there be any crumbs of creativity, you’d also include new systems in D3 but I’m not seeing any.

14

What confuses people isn’t a complex system, but rather a large/rainbow one, i.e. depth doesn’t confuse as much, breath however does quite a bit

You can make something cool out of 5 types of damages as long as they feed into one another, on the other hand you can end up with 20 different types of buffs/damages/damage-types/armor-types and whatnot and still be not interesting to invest in. THAT is what should be tried to avoid

Something as simple as:

Damage done = (Atk - Target_Def) [Physical]+ Elemental dmg % (caster_amp/1+target_res) [Elemental] + TriggerUnitDMG* (1 + PrimAttrib/TargetPrimAttrib)[TriggerDamage] isn’t something one is gonna head-scratch all day

it’s quite intuitive one might say… And yes there may be even a space for one or two two more damage “sources” (for Ex. summon/trap damage), but as long as the “formula”/interaction is relatively simple, things are gonna be relatively straightforward and simple quite a bit :slight_smile: