The Final Redesign of Diablo III’s Rune System

[News Portal]

[app=4089]Diablo III[/app]’s shaping up to be finger-clickin’ good, but nothing’s perfect and in the wake of many a beta sesh one aspect of Blizzard’s belated third word in the franchise has been slightly problematic: The rune system. The good news is that it’s been drastically redesigned. Yes, again, and yes, this close to the game’s release. Blizzy director Jay Wilson checked in from the blogosphere…

Read full article by Toby McCasker

[André Axe'm]

Eh? Those numbers don't make sense to me.
There were only 25 different runes when you included quality.
And they could be put on any skill.
Sure, 600 different skills could be hard to balance, but the players would likely work out which rune they use with each skill when they have the first quality level.

[Auld]

Eh? Those numbers don't make sense to me.
There were only 25 different runes when you included quality.
And they could be put on any skill.
Sure, 600 different skills could be hard to balance, but the players would likely work out which rune they use with each skill when they have the first quality level.

Sounds like he is including every skill from every class into his numbers, which makes it seem like a bigger problem than it was.

Still I have faith in Blizzard to get this right.....right up until the point that they don't

[Lumen Melano]

I still can't believe they are making these big sweeping changes so close to release.

Although this has been bone after bone for Runic Games. If they can't get Torchlight 2 out before Diablo then I have no one to blame but themselves.

[Mythor]

I still can't believe they are making these big sweeping changes so close to release.

How do you know it's close to release? They haven't set a date.

In any event, large changes were still happening in D2 towards the end of development, this isn't at all unusual and it'd be great if people would stop freaking out every time Blizzard twiddles some knobs.

[Breakin]

I still can't believe they are making these big sweeping changes so close to release.

Although this has been bone after bone for Runic Games. If they can't get Torchlight 2 out before Diablo then I have no one to blame but themselves.

people will still buy torchlight 2, i mean for $20 u'ld be pretty stupid not to....

[hellboy1975]

people will still buy torchlight 2, i mean for $20 u'ld be pretty stupid not to....

Perhaps not, but there's plenty of stupid people out there. If Runic can't get Torchlight 2 out before Diablo 3, then they should spend another 6 months or so after the D3 release date making it better.

[Shuth]

Eh? Those numbers don't make sense to me.

With 120 skills and 5 different runes = 600 possible combinations.
Then the different rankings of the runes provide different values for the effects (1% 2% 3% etc) = 3000.

Played around with it a bit last night and the rune system is easy to follow in the skill interface. The skill window does need some more work though as when first looking at it, it isn't really intuitive how to remap abilities to the different keys. Once you know how, it is simple but the step of logic to figure it out was a bit ~

[Lumen Melano]

I still can't believe they are making these big sweeping changes so close to release.

How do you know it's close to release? They haven't set a date.

In any event, large changes were still happening in D2 towards the end of development, this isn't at all unusual and it'd be great if people would stop freaking out every time Blizzard twiddles some knobs.

It is pretty unusual to make big changes to the core mechanics of the game so late in development (beta). Beta is supposed to be feature complete and bug testing. Of course balancing comes into it as well but we have seen big features dropped from the game recently. We all know this isn't the first example of features being dropped from the game and doing so now means that a whole new wave of in-house testing needs to be done to make sure everything is all bug free and balanced (or at least balanced enough).

And in regards to Torchlight 2 you will have a huge market that won't want to buy two different loot-based RPG's, so if they don't get it out before D3 then they have lost a huge section of the market.

[Marius]

I'm not going to buy Torchlight 2 because I find Torchlight far too cutesy. It's like someone took the game mechanics of Diablo and put them into Pokemon.

The game's fun, but it feels like a 'game', rather than Diablo feeling like a dark adventure.

And even though it costs $20, there are great $20 games being released all the time. I already have a backlog of 17 indie games to play. I don't know if I want a copycat game -- I play indies to experience something fresh and restore my faith that not all of game development is franchised, not play an indie that imitates an original.

[Plonker]

Rather disappointing change to be honest.

Jay Wilson might wobble on about it being "concentrated coolness", but it just feels like "streamlined laziness" to me. They've taken away yet another major part of the game and replaced it with a watered-down equivalent. While not much has changed from a mechanics point of view, you still get variations of each skill with each type of rune, it seems to take a massive chunk of itemisation and discovery out of the game.

Being given all these "runes" from just levelling up really takes away from what Diablo is about - looting items. If you wanted a high-level Crimson runestone for a particular skill, you'd have to go out and find one. It might take you 6 hours of slaughter to find one, but that's what separates you from someone who is willing to settle for less. That's what makes an item feel valuable, makes your character feel powerful and unique.

Now everyone gets all the available options just for getting to level 60?

The concept of finding a specific runestone and augmenting one of your skills appealed to me. It would make my game experience feel more rewarding and productive, like I had achieved something to progress my character and make it feel more customised. Now the "runes" are just part of the levelling process, they are more akin to variations of the same skill, rather than an augmentation or enhancement.

It just feels like they've removed an entire system from the game and replaced it with 5 variations of each skill. It was a cool, interactive system that felt like part of the game world - now it just feels like part of the user interface.

Cheers.

[Marius]

I prefer the new system.

Diablo may be aobut itemisation, but it's about gear itemisation, not having to sift through 3,000 different skill runes.

Basically, runes aren't gear. Keep Diablo focused on gear.

[Silvercup]

Runes were pretty much the only thing I was looking forward to in this game. I thought it sounded great that at endgame you wouldn't just be farming gear for progression but you'd also be finding skills and different build options through runes. Now it's just back to gear like every other generic Action RPG. I haven't been too fond of some of the other changes but I was prepared to adapt to them, I found the Beta underwhelming but it's such a small portion I didn't put too much stock in that. Without runes though my interest in this game literally dies and so does my purchase. Pre-order cancelled.

[Ooshp]

Rather disappointing change to be honest.

Jay Wilson might wobble on about it being "concentrated coolness", but it just feels like "streamlined laziness" to me.

Uhhh... they've redesigned a mechanic they've spent a long time trying to get right. How is that lazy? It's MORE work.

We fully expect that some of you will be disappointed that runes won’t be part of the itemization system. Internally, it took us a long time to let go of that notion too and stop trying to force them into being items

It seems to me that they thought pretty hard about it, and given how much time they spent trying to keep runes as items, it wasn't an easy decision to make.

[Marius]

The issue is that things that sound great on paper often don't play so good in game.

I don't think anyone can expect it (the old runes) to be an awesome amazing system without ever having played it.