Runestones: can they be adverse to game feel in some cases?

Dan

The New Helper.Net gives me great Anxiety... o.O;;
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I want to know what you guys think about runes getting in the way of the original feel of a spell? In some cases, once you can rune a spell it will always be better than it's original form... and the animations can be drastically different. Something like "companion" on a DH, for example, starts off as a raven. Each rune changes the type of animal that is summoned, but in addition, grants extra powers to that companion that the base spell does not provide.

Several spells do not see many graphical changes and are fun to rune in different ways, but there are still a few that have a cool feel in their original form. What do you guys think about this issue? I feel like the rune system is the most amazing and innovative thing that they are doing with Diablo 3, but I see this small point as something of a failure in a near perfect system.

Obviously, the graphics come secondarily to playability in any game really, and this is pretty much a non-issue, but it does seem counter intuitive to game designers spending time on the base spell animations.
 

AgentPaper

From the depths, I come.
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Remember that the players will probably be playing with the abilities un-modded for a significant portion of the early game, so they'll see plenty of use there. I don't know when we start getting runes, but I'd suspect that we won't see any in significant numbers until level 30 or even later.
 

Jedimindtrixxx

┻━┻ ︵ ¯\(ツ)/¯ ︵ ┻━┻
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On your first character maybe. Shared stash and all...

well obviously its on your first character... thats like saying inferno items wont only drop in inferno because of shared stash. its not a maybe. runes start dropping in act 2.
 

Dan

The New Helper.Net gives me great Anxiety... o.O;;
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well obviously its on your first character... thats like saying inferno items wont only drop in inferno because of shared stash. its not a maybe. runes start dropping in act 2.

What I meant was that your first character will go without runes for the first act, but ever after you will probably be hooked up from the second you enter... Further pushing the issue that I brought up about not really getting the full effect of the base spells; which in some cases, are completely wiped away from their original artwork by the rune art.
 

Jedimindtrixxx

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Ic where you are coming from now. personally i like the runestone skill gfx more in my opinion.
 

Dan

The New Helper.Net gives me great Anxiety... o.O;;
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Ic where you are coming from now. personally i like the runestone skill gfx more in my opinion.

Yeah, I mean it's hard to tell because we can't play all the abilities in their different forms. But it does seem counter intuitive to spend artwork design on something that your player base will hardly utilize. I also hope that the original spell art for some abilities isn't too cool that we would miss it. Again, I suppose we would have to see all the abilities to really tell... but it is a small shame.
 
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