Suggestion: Rune Augments

Rune Augments

The ability to customize runes with additional effects.

I love customization in games since it lets me create my own unique builds and create something cool or thematic. Basically, I love interacting with systems since it builds up anticipation for the eventual reward – a powerful build or unique playstyle. Currently, most playstyles are fairly similar, either an AA build, Rune spam or some hybrid. With adding augments to runes, players can create unique effects and build runes for various purposes. It should add more depth to combat.

How would it work

  • Each rune would have a singular slot to which an augment can be added.

  • Augments would be common, rare, cursed and legendary – following the games rarity tiers.

  • Augments can be found in later stages of the game and could be attached to the Crucible as a form of a reward.

  • Augments can be added to your gear at the enchantress’ shop.

Augment examples

These examples would NOT stack and can come with some negative effects. Not all augments would be able to fit on every rune.

  • Gain a shield equal to X% of max hp after rune use.
  • Gain increased movement speed and attack after rune use.
  • This rune gains X% lifeleech.
  • Transforms the damage of the rune to be Plague damage.
  • Gain 3 circling icicles around you after rune use, they deal X damage and slow enemies hit.
  • Adds a snare to enemies hit by this rune.
  • Enemies killed my this rune are raised as plagued minions.
  • Each hit on an enemy causes lightning to spark from the initial target to nearby enemies.
  • This rune now shoots flame waves a short distance with each attack that lower Heat resistance.
  • Enemies hit by this rune are knocked back.

Rune Augment negative modifier examples

  • The rune gains a cooldown of X seconds
  • Focus cost of the rune is increased by X
  • The rune now also costs X% of max hp
2 Likes

Those effects sound intersting. However, I do not think we have to overcomplicate the game with rune augments. All those effects could be gear affixes instead.

I would rather see a rewamp to runes themselves. Like, do we really need 5 different “Flurry” runes for 1H weapons with almost the same animation and/or conversion to an elemental attack? There are many examples where 1 runes is cloned several times with minor changes.

In my opinion the game would be better with fewer yet more distinct runes.

that’s true but exactly then augments can shape runes into customized skills without having to waste gear affixes on it.

Yeah this is how I am seeing it as well. Instead of having 5 different flurry runes we have 1 that we can then customize. Gear affixes won’t work since those apply to our entire character or are item specific. But, the rune augments modify a singular rune. This means we are more incentivized to use different runes. Maybe we change 1 rune to Heat damage for a weakness, another for lifesteal in case stuff goes wrong. Maybe for particular enemies I want a specific augment on a rune.

We can then synergize more between affixes and runes to create fun stuff. For me most of the crafting/enchanting/rune systems are too simple/random. Interacting with it is not fun.

There are several reasons I am against said suggestion:

  • Runes themselves already work like augements for weapons and expand the options the player has with a weapon. An expansion on an expansion is confusing and creates clutter.
  • There are well over 100 runes in the game atm, with even more in development. It was not specified whether 1 augment should work on all runes or only on a few selected ones. I also assume there should be more than a handfull augments for every single rune, otherwise this system as a whole would be fairly pointless. The endresult would create an interaction between several hundred runes with N augments - hundreds or even thousands combinations. Not only is it a design nightmare to create such an extensive system, it is also absolutely impossible to balance.

I don’t view runes as augments but more as my abilities. They define my playstyle, yet with how focus works it creates competition between runes.

It also wouldn’t be as complicated or extensive as you make it out to be.
V-Rising did it quite successfully. They even had augments with multiple affixes.

I can see your point with balancing issues as runes don’t have a cooldown and can be spammed. But, so far Rune Spam seems to be allowed/intended - I dislike it though.

Yeah I did:

Many of your suggestions are already partially in the game in form of enchantments. You mentioned life steal, that’s already in the game. Shield on rune use sounds like an already existing “Gain % health/focus on focus use”; I also do not understand what benefit this effect would have if tied to 1 specific rune instead of all runes as an affix. The elemental ones are already realized with elemental gems/affixes. (This is the reason I see elemental rune clones as redundant, because we already can imbue the base rune with an element if needed)
My point is, enchantments already fulfill a similar role as your proposal.

I have not played V-Rising, yet I played other games where similar mechanics resulted in confusing bloat and 95% of combinations were ignored.
And such project would be extensiv as each rune would require adjustments for each augment with new animations, soundeffects, programming etc.

That is NOT true.

3/10 suggestions have ‘some’ overlap with things currently in the game. And, these suggestions are just examples…

  1. An augment that changes the elemental type, so they can keep elemental variations of runes. The elemental runes already exist, this would allow players to modify the base into what they want.

  2. Increased movespeed/attack speed exists in the crucible and some rings have these. But, stacking such effects is desirable. Many players, myself included, stacked agi rings. Having more sources is always good.

  3. As for lifeleech, it can only exist on cursed weapons and only triggers on hit. This means some runes don’t have a lifesteal effect. Eruption for instance does not heal with this, but when you gain the corrupted echo with lifeleech or w/e it is called. You can lifeleech with it. This opens up the opportunity to not have a cursed weapon and instead have a rare one. This means you can have 4 rune slots and reserve 1 rune for when you are on low health. Or you spam it into infinity, but I can imagine a cooldown to be added then as negative affix.

Also shields are not the same as health, they are vastly different. A shield is added upon your health bar and does not cause it to change. Where is regaining health changes the values of the health bar. This means gaining a shield on low hp is a temporary lifeline untill you regain your hp. And, on high hp the shield is an added bonus so you can tank an additional hit.

I envision the augments to be closer to the boons in the crucible rather than enchant affixes.

Of course there will be a Meta. People will always gravitate towards what is the strongest. Look at Wicked with how powerful plate is over other armor types. Or how players look for the ‘‘one-rune-to-rule-them-all’’. A lot of players seem to want more depth to the runes than what is currently presented. A lot of old discussions about it. I would say that it would be worth the effort to implement. Even if it is like 50 total possible augments.

I assume the feature to change element should be available for all elemental rune. As a result it would homogenize all elemental runes as you would be able to swap any of them to any element. That is how you make 9 out of 10 runes useless.
The idea to swap element on an elemental rune takes away its identity. Players would just pick one rune they like most and use its modified versions on all occasions.

Combat in NRFTW is still closer to souls games than Diablo. Movement as well as attack speed buffs are very powerfull. Now, that Agility & Willow rings are fixed developers reduced sources of those buffs. Agi ring does not grant attack speed anymore, while “overall speed” affix cannot be rolled on gear anymore. Only unique items can have addition speed buffs now.
All in all a sensible change.

Lifeleech is way to powerfull. Echo from Crucible proves that. Even “gain %HP on damage dealt” is too powerfull, it enables easy heals and brainless tanking.

I ment that the mechanic to gain [something] on focus use is already in the game.

It would remain largely the same as it is right now. So some basic moves such as nova, weave, dash, whirl etc. Would be able to have elemental modifiers. Whereas, moves such as glacial spike, chain lightning, eruption remain unique to their element.

Oh for sure, the cursed echo with life leech almost guarantees you can kill Cyvion. But, it has life leech on everything, all runes all attacks. As an augment it could be like 5-10% of damage dealt but then inflict a 10 second penalty on the rune. You control how often the player can use it.

Then it doesn’t really make much sense.

The situation right now is not good, as I already explained.

Yet, you suggest to be able to swap the element on those runes, which will negate their unique feature.

Or, there could just be a rune that has inbuild lifeleech, which would set this one rune apart from the other 100 runes.
If lifeleech is available to every rune via augments, then there are less fearures/mechanics that make each individual runes special. And each additional augment removes one additional unique fearure. The endresult is a complexity trap.

No real thought put into this as it’s just popped into my head, but what if certain runes had a gem infuse slot?

Blood Stone: x% damage dealt with rune attack returned as health
Tiny Feather: x% rune attack speed increase
Diamond: x% extra exp if an enemy is killed with this attack
Topaz: x% reduced focus cost
Shield Emblem: Increased poise and/or defence during rune attack
Emerald: Allows x% decreased stamina regen during rune attack
Spike: x% extra physical attack
(Elemental) Stone: x% extra elemental attack, or applies (element) buff for x seconds

2 Likes

Which I refuted.

Not true, reread what I wrote.

Also not true, the augments don’t make the rune special. They are an added bonus upon the runes to make them more special. You suggest a life leech rune, this would skew players towards using 1 specific rune and create a Meta rune. That is something I consider very bad. With augments players themselves decide what rune to customize in what way. This leads to more freedom of choice with the tinkering of builds. Something which is currently lacking as most build tinkering is gated by a RNG wall.

I can apply this argument on how affixes on gear currently work, so this also does not hold water.

I think that is a great idea :+1:

It builds upon how gems and enchanting currently work and they retain a similar function as with enchanting. I also think this is easier to conceptualize and put into practice.

yeah that would be another easy fix until the devs have the time to make a bigger overhaul :wink:

Are we still talking about runes that are clones of themselves, like the 5 Flurry runes? Earlier, you said this redundancy wasn’t great.

I cannot peek into your head, I can only work with what you write.
Only in this segment you suddenly talk about “moves”, not “runes”. This implies you mean animations.
At multiple occasions you mentioned the idea to swap elements and not explain what restrictions you imagine for it. When you address restrcitions, you mention Glacial Spike, a rune that has a clone in every element - namely Hellfire, Thunderstrike & Pestilance - and is not unique in any way.
How am I supposed to interpret your words?

You missed the point I was trying to make. I will elaborate more on this later in the post.

What makes you think a rune with a life leech effect would be overpowered? It is one rune and developers can decide how it is going to work, how long the animation should be, what would be the damage scaling, what weapon it comes with. If this one specific rune becomes too strong, then only this one rune would require a revisit.

Let’s apply the overpored scenario to your idea of a life leech augment. The augment would go on all runes, on all weapons, on ranged runes, on runes with high damage scaling, on runes with i-frames, on fast runes, on slow runes etc. (I do not know restriction you have in mind, so do not nail me on single words.)
If something goes wrong with a rune+augment combination(s), what do you do? Do you fix the rune, that could be only mid without said augment? Or do you fix the augment and impair its effectevess on all runes? Or do you target this one combo specifically?
Suddenly the issue becames more complex than just one specific rune. “Complex” is a segway to the next point.

It is natural that it gets progressively more complicated to create a new, usefull or exciting thing and add it to an existing library. However, it is up to you how complicated the creation process can be.

Following your suggestion, a life leech augment would remove one degree of creative freedon during the rune development process, simply because life leech effect is already in use. And even if a rune with life leech is created, it will stand out less among other runes, because other runes can have life leech via an augment.
Moreover, enchantments with life leech properties also become less distictive, because numerous runes can already have this effect. Suddenly enchantment development is also impaired.
This is development hell.
(In order for something to be special, it must stand out among all available options, it must be distinct. You cannot make someting “more special” if you add a generic, wide spread attribute - an augment)

Balance also becomes more complicated, because augments add another power-up layer, while runes, enchantments and augments affect each other at the same time. All rune+augment combinations might be fine, but throw in an unexpected enchantment and the mix becomes unbalanced. (Kinda what we have with Twirl Dash + gain focus on hit enchantment, even though on many weapons and runes this enchantment is unimpressive.)
This means, during development of an augment every rune as well as every enchantment must be considered in order to avoid undesired results.
This also means, during development of an enchantment every rune as well as every augment must be considered in order to avoid undesired results.
This also means, during development of a rune every augment as well as every enchantment must be considered in order to avoid undesired results.
This is balance hell.

And all of this is complexity trap. Do you understand this argument now?

Sorry to restart this thread just wanted to say I LOVE the idea of it, I just wish we weren’t so late because implementing it with the current systems feels like a big big overhaul. Cuz think about it we have 5 different variations each of flurries, whirls, etc for blunt/element and even though they are the same in use and are EXTREMELY similar, they are all slightly different in animation. Like just enough of a difference, so you would have to pick ONE of the five to now be used.

Another thing is since weapons come with default runes, suddenly 5 weapons minimum are carrying exactly duplicate runes until you infuse it. I also don’t think the casual player infuses often enough, they often miss how strong gems are, so you would need a teaching system to get players used to infusing. Love the idea, wish you were on the team from the start it could’ve saved some time LOL

Given the tone of your latest reply, this discussion has come to a natural end for me. I don’t appreciate the condescending tone, arguing semantics and making false assumptions about my arguments or what I mean. You could have simply asked me to further elaborate if things were unclear.

Unfortunate news:

This was from this discussion:

Thomas answering questions in Wicked Discord

But, maybe we can change their mind about it! I think the gem infusing suggestion for runes is fantastic as well. I also agree with you that it would be a big overhaul and I think they are hesitant to make too many big ones given that a talent tree is coming. Probably smarter to see how that turns out and then look for other things.