Def shouldn’t return to this affix bloated “itemization”. They can’t create a baseline of uniques and items to keep it interesting, so runewords are def above their limitations of creativity.
But they will add runewords, blizzcon 2019, they show you. And guess what, it’s a much less interesting version of what runewords were originally. So there’s that.
Your using lod not d2 that’s two different thing in the original d2 the itemization was the same… hunt for rares and uniques werent good. It wasn’t until the expansion that they gave tier 2 and 3 uniques and runewords even though those destroyed balance. So no my statement is still valid on that when comparing base games. Also trading is irrelevant when the game isn’t competitive everything is for personal achievement so it doesn’t matter plus trading equals third party and real money sites and spam
Ok so we need to add which patch version we’re talking about in d2 as well? Or can we use our brains and the concept that folks are talking about d2/d2lod/d2r in general?
Not here to argue with anyone, there are masses of folks saying th same things over and over. This itemization is doo doo, comments show it, reviews show it, meta critic shows it, my own gameplay shows it, my dog can realize it as well.
Knick picking when 20+ years ago which version is being compared to is a joke as much as D4s itemization. It’s a loot based game for crying out loud.
Also trading is relevant. And your point of adding spam is incorrect, why are we getting spam now in d4 with no trading? I’ll wait….
Your missing the point. D2 had the exact same issues as d4 and d2 had the original devs everyone lives to bring up. It took years to find time d2 into what it is now I’m basing release version to release version is the only way to compare the games since one has been heavily patch with an expansion and the other is 6 weeks old
Ok that’s fair. But considering the amount of time does between the two does raise a concern. But I agree in that regard, release to release they have a lot of similarities.
Amount of time shouldn’t be factored. If d4 had the same dev team and even the same company (blizzard and activision blizzard are didferent imo) then that can be a factor hell even d3 and d4 have different design teams that’s the biggest issue each new team needs to learn the game itself if d4 had the same team as d2 then the time frame can factor in
I get it, however I’d still say it should be considered. Yes very diff dev teams, what most people remember is blizzard north, blizzard ent is what we’ve had since d3 hense the difference in games. But I also don’t expect my new phone to have missing features that my phone from 10 years ago had because the development team is different.
Your new phone did have missing or changed features bad example. Hell do you remember the stash in d2 it was practicality non existant
Rune words go from nothing to holy wowzers, that’s not good. D3 itemization actually had a few nuggets of brilliance that I think solves many issues.
The Legacy of Nighmare mechanic, with some tweaks, would make Diablo “easy to learn, difficult to master”, give casuals adequate power while giving hardcores the space to min max.
Diablo 3 had 3 item tiers - legendary, ancestral legendary, and primal legendary. Legendary was the base model, ancestral had higher values for certain attributes but still random, primal had ancestral level values but always rolled max values.
IIRC - ancestral was 1/10 legendaries, primal was 1/100.
Legacy of Nightmares was basically, “for each piece of ancestral legendary gear, get 5% DR and 100% increased damage”.
You could make LoN a baseline mechanic such that….
For each legendary get 1% DR and 25% damage, double that for ancestral, double again for primal.
Two reasons this could balance for hardcore vs casual:
Casuals get a solid baseline with reasonable investment and have a perpetual carrot / progression
Hardcores get real dilemmas (with properly tuned numbers) of things like perfect roll tier N for imperfectly rolled tier N+1 plus the rarity of max tier x perf rolls gives them a real grind
Diablo 3 had some very clever math underpinning its mechanics, basically it was linear (with steps) player growth vs. exponential enemy growth.
The only flaw in D3 itemization was set supported skills were the only viable option most of the time. If you remove that and focus on the “no set set” mechanic, you got a nice recipe.
I don’t see that steady progression with rune words unless they grant material “partial credit” like dragon shouts in Skyrim.
Edit: i know D4 doesn’t have ancestral and primal in the same sense, it’s a concept i’d like to borrow tho.
Keep runewords away from d4
D4 does though a sacred is a rare with higher stat rolls and ancestral is sacred with higher start rolls. Aspects make anything a legendary so they are still baseline the only thing different is the legacy of nightmare which can’t be in the have now because of no sets so it’s not really different
That’s my point, game is already “set-less” so just make LoN, or something like it, just how the game works.
Lon was made to counter sets if you added it right now it would just be unnecessary power creep
Just like uniques aren’t BiS for most builds, runeword gear can be implemented similarly. The thing was it was a fun mechanic. As was crafting in general in D2.
The game could use a little creep, IMO
Not really it’s 6 weeks old let it grow the only annoying mechanic is perma stun other then that there’s nothing that warrents a power creep
I am hoping to see the return of Rune Words. However this is my fear if they do decide to bring it back. I have some questions about it
Will it be the same and add the set affixes some with % range values to the item with “Unique” abilities?
What about legendary aspects could they be imprinted on to a Rune Word? Because we can’t with Unique items.
Will this take away from the value of legendary aspects and make it nullified?
Items will need Socket reworks since most weapons and or armors can only have 1 or 2 sockets.
It would be cool to see them back, but idk im kind of skeptical about it really. They said Unique items would be build defining. I have yet to see that really.