You can have your cake and eat it too: a different approach to solving socket issues - GGG pls read

Yes martinezz some rng and nasty ones at that still exists but what that rng no longer does is halt or prevent builds and since you get more control over crafting more rolls should be usefull to you.

In general you will be dependent far less on rng, just cookiecutter rng and godmode rng will exists, which is what grinding should be about, not grinding for viable endgame.

Free bump and still supporting this idea. I would love it if GGG goes into this direction and for the long term fun/ replay value etc. of this game I think this idea is too good to pass upon and I would invest resources into making the changes even if it only bears fruit within a year.

Balancing will lie in items such as kaoms and 2 handed weapons and single handed wepaon (no socket "balanced" unique, 6 socket "balanced" weaponry or wepaonry offhand balanced around having 3 sockets). One more item got added to this list with the tabula white shirt thingy me thing, but having that item read something as:

Socketed runes get a 100 or 200% bonus, would keep the idea intact (or let teh guy redo hsi design, is just 1 unique).

The post on page 3 by CanHasPants should be required reading to fully understand the proposal. Since I can't say it better, I'll instead focus on my initial concerns.

Regarding the Rune System

Introducing character buffs in the form of runes will undoubtedly change game balance, but the question is to what extent. Another question to be considered is whether reducing mods on rares by 1 would be enough to balance rune buffs, and if so whether such a fundamental change to current equipment is feasible for GGG.

Example 1: +5 strength rune, 50% rune bonus, Endgame Gear

It should be stressed that the values expressed in the proposal are not intended to be final, but rather starting points for conversation. Say the rune bonus was 50%, and our endgame gear is: a 6-link Mace, 6l Chest, 4l Helm, 4l Gloves, and 4l Boots. Now say all sockets are red and filled each with a +5 strength rune. What kind of buff do the runes grant?

Example 1 Analysis
An endgame buff of 360 strength for 2-Hand characters and 315 strength for SwordnBoard characters granted by runes is too strong. To reduce the buff, either the base rune value
(r = 5) or bonus percentage (b = 50%) need to be reduced.


Example 2: +5 strength rune, 25% rune bonus, Endgame Gear

Example 2 Analysis
After halving the rune bonus percentage to 25%, an endgame buff of 240 strength for 2-Hand characters and 217.5 strength for SwordnBoard characters granted by runes is still too strong.

When b = 10%, we get total values of 168 and 159 which is better, but a 6l would only grant 10 more strength (45 vs 35 or 28% more) than a 5l, which sort of dashes incentives.

So would we want the bonus percentage to be high in order to further distinguish 6l from 5l? (For example if the bonus was 50%, a 6l yields 40% more strength than a 5l, or 105 vs 75). If so, we've seen that the buffs get too strong, and we must reduce base rune values. Yet I wonder, who would be excited by a +2 strength rune? Would a 6-link be exciting in this system, if runes must be so individually weak in order to not throw game balance completely off?

Conclusion
These particular examples show that a large rune bonus percentage does a good job differentiating 5-links from 6-links, yet inflates rune buffs beyond current balance. On the other hand, if we were to reduce base rune stats it would lead to better balance but at the cost of weak runes, which would be boring gameplay.

Most importantly, do you agree that the buffs would be too strong? Keep in mind my example was stacking one type of rune only, the most unbalanced scenario possible. The bonus percentage would be no different if a variety of runes were used, but such power would be more balanced when spread over multiple stats. How then to encourage diversity if a strong rune (i.e. life) emerges?

[Edit: fixed a copy and paste error in the math on ex. 2]

You have to take into effect that game is currently balanced around 4L. Yes, if you got perfect items, as in 2 6L and all else 4L you will get lots of strength. But people with top gear with 6L for skill gems also have crazy damage and defense.

All this example does not take into consideration how hard it is to have all red sockets on all gear (and it would need to have all strength gear). A melee armor user with a pure Strenght weapon would need to use this and we know they could always use a boost ;)
360 str is 180 life more and 72% more physical damage, really not that much. Also he would be losing 5 mods from his items (6 if using weapon + shield). Maybe those mods will be life or strength. Maybe they are Dex he needs for some supports/skills.
Stacking all same rune would probably be most powerful but would rarely be a best choice unless it is a specifically built char for that.
And to me that sounds like this empowers new builds and combinations.

Maybe adding a cap for the same runes in use would be the solution, so you cannot have more than, let's say, 6 runes of the same type in all of your gear.

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You have to take into effect that game is currently balanced around 4L

I must admit, I did not! In my example then, a 4l item would grant 50 strength. This is certainly reasonable, especially if they can reduce rare mods by 1.

Regarding the difficulty of finding all red linked sockets as in my example, I insist that the variety of colors involved doesn't even matter when considering rune percentage bonuses.

My example was trying to show what impact a 50% rune bonus would have on a 6,5,4,3, and 2 link. The bonus is the same regardless of type of rune (and hence, color). Imagine a R-R-G-B with +5 str, +5 str, +5 dex, +5 int. Each rune gets a bonus of 150%, resulting in 25 str, 12.5 dex, and 12.5 int. The raw sum is still 50, just the same as an all str 4-link.

I would think that finding links of the same color is fairly easy due to current socket color bias on equipment, which would encourage stacking the same strong rune. To solve this, I would propose a restriction that no two sockets on a single piece of equipment can hold the same type of rune. There is currently an almost identical restriction of mods on equipment (the same two mods simply cannot be rolled).

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Torin wrote:

You have to take into effect that game is currently balanced around 4L.

This was the case in most of CB, and was already becoming less true at the end of CB.
Since OB, the game feels balanced around a 5L.

(And no, I'm not a fan of this shift.)

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pneuma wrote:

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Torin wrote:

You have to take into effect that game is currently balanced around 4L.

This was the case in most of CB, and was already becoming less true at the end of CB.
Since OB, the game feels balanced around a 5L.

(And no, I'm not a fan of this shift.)

Have to agree with this. Game feels strongly balanced around a 5l, based on mana consumption, and the 'required' supports for the main dps skill. Things like a need for LMP/chain/lifeleech/WED/fastercasting

On to the main topic though, this is a nice idea, but it adds complexity, a ton of coding (for the skill passive tree), and includes an entire new set of items. Would there be levels of these runes aswell, so theres weak str, average str, and strong str? What would be the drop rate of these? Would they be a quest reward aswell? How would you balance life/str being so valuable in comparison with other stats?

What stats would actually be included? From the top of my head theres str, int, dex, fire res, cold res, light res, chaos res, possibly an all res white socket thats super rare and lower stats than the fire. What else would there be, dps ones? Cast speed, spell dmg, physical damage, WED, attack speed? Would there be reduced damage taken, armour, es, or evasion? Would there be anything else such as increased max resists, or % life regen (cause flat regen would be pointless except at low levels). Would there be life leech/mana leech negating the requirement of those supports.

Reason I ask is because simple math can show that in terms of 'balance' (be aware this is an arbitrary setup for a ARPG as true balance can never be reached of everything viable, unlike the MOBA genre where there is potential (potential only) for true balance), for every new rune type, it implements a challenge to balance it that is at minimum multiplicative of the number of new runes, if not exponential. So if we just run str/dex/int, it wouldn't be TOO difficult to spend some time making these values balanced yet rewarding. if we added on resistances (not all res), that would be of a fair bit of difficulty. If we added all those other stats though this is something that is changing the entire basis of the game, where the runes you use would start to either define you, or be completely irrelevant. It is difficult to make them balanced to a point that they aren't required to be powerful, yet are powerful enough that they are worth paying attention to (besides minor twinking, like getting +20 strength)

So in general, its a nice idea, but its potentially MORE game changing than you are taking into account. Sure it would change RNG related to gem sockets, while still providing some benefits for fusings/chromes/jewellers (though it is skeptical the value of these would stay at what it is), BUT it would have a side effect of balance difficulties which is significantly above what you anticipate

Do they roll fixed amounts or can they be blessed orbed?

Bumping because I still love this idea.

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Torin wrote:

1) Introduce runes which grant passive bonuses. Bonuses are applied while runes are placed in gear sockets, and augmented in linked sockets.

I like this is the part of the suggestion a lot. I think it's important to make them capable capable of being magic (but not rare), with a wide variety of affixes (pretty much anything you can find on gear). I also believe that links should not matter for runes; more on this point later.

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Torin wrote:

2) Introduce a new active skill tree with red, green, and blue nodes in which skill/support gems are placed. Gems can no longer be socketed in gear as this is the function of proposed runes. Current Passive Tree remains functional and unchanged.

And this is where I start to disagree, and disagree strongly.

Your system, although functional, sets up several rather arbitrary, level-based rules. If you ask me, it's already awkward enough that 6L has a breakpoint at level 50, etc. You system would introduce countless more level-based breakpoints to the game. I feel that the passive tree system already places enough emphasis on gaining levels. The whole thing feels to me as if it started as a frantic desire to make sockets rune-only, similar to D2/D3, with an implementation that got more and more polished as you worked away at it, mad scientist style, without ever asking yourself: why? Why am I doing this?

Well, other than a strong dislike of the current socket system, I can't see much reason. However, at this stage in the troubleshooting process we're not working with the current socket system anymore; we're working with the current socket system plus runes.

One of the beautiful things about runes would be their competition with skill gems. Think about Kaom's Heart. We can all agree it's a very powerful item, but its drawback is actually very interesting. If we don't fundamentally change the socket system, runes would create some very interesting, "mini-Kaom's" dilemmas for the players -- assuming we give runes sufficient power, which we should.

What's the "advantage" of your active skill tree? That it isn't itemized. However, I look at itemization as an advantage, not a drawback, because it also gives the player the opportunity to make some interesting choices. Let's say you have a rather nice rare with good affixes, but no 6L, as well as a white 6L. Do you work on making the good rare a 6L, or do you work on making the 6L a good rare? There is undoubtedly potential for interesting decision-making there.

This is all about giving players choices. Here's a video on the topic. Unlike many other things with an ARPG, the two situations above, everyone once in a while these systems would give players some truly interesting choices... although usually just some interesting calculations. However, that's still more decision-making than the automated active skill tree that OP presents.

The problem, I think, is that players view this as necessary. Although it isn't mandatory, right now 6L is strictly superior to 5L in all situations, as opposed to a rare with a somewhat wacky roll (they might not be the stats you were looking for, but you'll take them). The thing is, your suggestion already fixed this problem at step 1. Let's say you find a really strong rune that you definitely want to socket in your gear somewhere. You might have 4L gloves/helm/etc., so putting a rune there would break links. What you'd probably do is toss it in the spare socket on your 5L chest, which makes the rush towards 6L much less of a pressing matter.

If you really wanted to turn the "strictly superior" paradigm on its head, just institute this simple rule: runes and gems cannot be linked, the game just won't let you insert them if it would cause them to mix. This might lead to some builds actually preferring a 5L chest, which is an advantage that your system actually can't claim.

I explained my reasoning. It is to remove RNG from active skills while still keep it for itemization. Runes replace gems in current sockets so the whole system (which is unique to PoE) stays.

Active skills go to seperate skill tree which is somewhat similar to classic skill tree design of previous aRPG games but still lets you use whatever skill combinations you want with whatever class (again unique to PoE).

Your proposal would neither fix active skill RNG and would make the game harder to balance with rune+rune; skill+skill and rune+skill combinations.

Also it would promote using even less skills and focusing on one or two.