Upgrading Crafting with a Lore Accurate Rune System

DISCLAIMER:
This is meant to be a rant about how GGG can make an actual crafting system utilizing the already existing rune system. This is not meant to be EASIER crafting, nor PoE 1 type of excellence, just using what we already know about runes.

So, with that out of the way, let's start with…

What are RUNES?

Both Johan on Settlers League and Remly on PoE 2 told us that runes are a way the Kalguuren, and some other people living on Wraeclast, use to canalize the power of the stars onto an object. They are supposed to be made with Verisium, a strange material that comes from falled comets.
And we are also told that only the best blacksmiths can extract the power they contain, and use them correctly.

But… How are they used?

Every rune has a name, let’s say, a meaning; and every name is associated with what that meaning represents in a given case.
An easy example of this is a Fire Rune, which gives fire resistance on defensive gear and fire damage on offensive ones. The name is “fire”, the meaning is “to give fire” and the context changes what it gives.
But… just using one rune is not actually rune crafting. We learn from Johan that runes are meant to form sentences to maximize their power, and even to change the effects they give, in which case, depending what runes a blacksmith utilizes, and the order they are used, it affects what these Rune Words do.
We have two excellents examples of this: Rune crafting in Settlers of Kalguur League (PoE 1), and creating the spikes we use to free Sin from the tree he was chained to (PoE 2).

In Settlers League we used runes, and Johan, to add enchantments to items; depending on which runes we use, it can give us things from simple flat damage up to invoking wolves or being possessed by spirits. The game tells us what runes we need, and Johan knows the order they must be used to give what we want.

In PoE 2 we need to release Sin from a tree, and to do so we need to destroy a couple of runes that bind him to that tree. Remly tells us that we need to find some runes on old equipment so he can craft the spikes we then will use to free Sin.
Every piece of equipment has 1 rune, which has a name and a meaning. When you take those pieces to Remly, he crafts the spikes with the runes, and the text (combination of the runes that were on the items) has a special meaning, different and composed from the runes it was made from. The runes by themself couldn’t free Sin, this new sentence can.

So… Why didn’t GGG give us Rune Words/Sentences?

Well, that was a question that was asked directly to them, to which their response was that they don’t want the endgame “crafting” being just to find items with sockets, ignoring every state on the item, just to rune-craft some “artificial unique”.
Even when doing so is Lore accurate, as we know from The Light of Meaning unique jewel, To Name a Thing Is to Give Power; so making a thing like and Enigma unique armor by giving it the name with specific runes.
This is obviously reminiscent of D2 crafting. But we have seen, thanks to Settlers League, that Rune Sentences can actually coexist with other crafting systems, as it was made using enchantments, and is actually the way runes work on PoE 2.

Then…What happened?

That's the question we can’t answer. GGG preferred to add Soul Cores, Amulets, and even MORE Runes to give us the power that Rune Sentences should have already given us.
I imagine it is even easier to increase the number of sockets an item can have instead of making new socketables, and having a system that is more complex, and expands upon what we have and already know about runes.

What do I propose?

First, delete all the “higher level” runes. You can make it so the higher the lvl of the base you are socketing, the higher the stat the rune gives.

Second, make Runes give stats that affect only the player's general stats (resists, general types of damage/defences, int/dex/str, etc), and let us combine them to create better stats (Ex. 1 fire rune and 1 threshold rune could combine to form “increased ignite threshold”).

Third, make Soul Cores give stats that affect only abilities or powers (gems, as making them vaalish).

Fourth, make Talismans create permanent buffs on players (as long as you have the item with the talisman socketed), like the effects the spirits create on monsters but to a lesser extent. This would create better interaction with the gems, as for example, you could have a Talisman that lets you shoot a chilling whirlwind when you roll, and then consume those chills with a skill (just a random example, the power of the Talismans should be balanced around a trigger type imo).

one of the problems with runewords was that you often needed to tab out/look up the recipe and thats after you learned them all. Neat idea to have not-BiS runewords but having a shit ton of 'recipes' isn't ideal imo. Maybe with some clever UI implementation, but this would have to be done so well that players wont ever feel the need to tab out, or memorize them

Well thats already a problem on PoE 1, where people have to go to third party's to look for things like "what influence i need to get this or that stat on an item".

The thing is, socketables are not permanent. Players can change the "Rune-words" by just changing a rune, so there isn't a big problem if mistakes are made. GGG can also add some kind of "Artificer's Book", where you can look up ingame what "Rune-words" you have "discovered". It already exist for Beast-crafts on PoE 1, and the crafting bench in PoE 1 does something similar, thou is way more general and uses resources that are also way more common.

They can also let us dismatle or disenchant runes to get verisium, and let us "craft" our own runes with it.