From when I first heard Blizzards idea on runewords, I was demoralized. I was hoping they were going to be the beginning of a crafting system that would be slowly added upon for the foreseeable future of D4.
Very similar to D2, I was hoping there was a base armor players would hunt for, then find the runes (through trading or otherwise) and craft it themselves.
I know blizzard has some odd fascination with, “We can do better, we don’t want to adopt the same thing we did in the past, or take things from other games that had worked” cough cough Loot filters…
I really hope there will be more gear optimizing that isn’t so linear.
My dream would be;
All items dropped have a “Base” which can roll only a specific things. It would be the most important part of an item and when people are looking for gear, they can determine if its good or not very quickly by the base.
Magic items have an additional stat effect.
Rares have 3-4 effects
Legendaries have 4 additional effects with 1 special effect that changes gameplay.
Runewords would be pretty much the same in D2 where you craft a super juiced item that could be special for leveling, endgame, or a niche situation.
Crafting, I think should take a similar approach that PoE has. I’m not talking about having 30 different crafting materials, implicits, prefixes, suffixes, and all those super confusing things that takes players forever to learn about, but instead, have a more simple foundation.
Most importantly, have the entire community able to trade crafting materials, crafts, and item bases. Since base items are the most basic of things, they can be found on low difficulty and would mean that even new players can find very valuable items that could be traded for end game items.
Many players have amazing ideas on how they could add on to this and I hope people do, but is my opinion of a crafting system too confusing? I understand Blizzard wants to keep D4 simple, but I think there is a balance that can be had with interesting systems and still keeping it simple.
Runewords are just D3 legendary gems. I don’t know why anyone was expecting anything different. They tried before to copy D2 a s admittedly failed by stating it didn’t work yet everything they have copy from D3 has. This is simply due to the audience their targeting.
The name runewords is just a nostalgia name that’s all
End of day games never. Never going to resemble anything from the D2 era . That’s not a bad thing . Based on their target audience they would be silly to try
I agree with just about everything you said. But I think you misunderstand me. I’m not saying to take much from D2, only the idea of runewords being crafted, and the way they were crafted.
Starting with a base item, and finding the pieces to add to it.
Thing is though they would need to re do the entire socket system. Remember D2 had 6 socketed runewords. D4 only allows max of 2 sockets, which are exclusive to only chest, pants and 2 handed weapons.
They could of started with low end 2 runes runewords also but not even that, just a shout everyone that plays will take because it’s miles better then any of the others, yay more balance , as bad as the PTR is I think they should do one for VoH now because I just see that being a total mess considering their track record
this game is overindulged in gear and crafting…runewords were never going to capture any sort of good feel. Runewords were amazing in d2 because thats all it had in the endgame
Runewords were only for certain slots so you still have to farm the higher end uniques also in d2… They actually did a good job with the rune system there to not make it the end all be all, also a good chance you won’t see the op ones like enigma every season
While the system may need work I’m glad they didn’t try to copy D2’s system. First off it just wouldn’t work in D4 and D2’s runewords weren’t perfect either. Espescially for more casual players, which are the majority.
this is not d2 we are taking about, it is d4. it is expected to be different and easier to farm since the game is intended for the casual playerbase. so will be working as intended
I’m glad they are not like D2 runewords. I don’t want to hunt for base items. In fact I never want to look at another white, blue, or yellow item again. Once you’re in full legendaries anything below shouldn’t matter anymore. Their only purpose is to sell for gold or break down for crafting mats, as they should be.