Binary Mage

We're already running around with axes and picks for 99 levels--can't be worse of a grind than our current skills. Jagex has certainly learned a lot over the past few years as far as skills go, I have the feeling we're going to be in for a treat as far as the overall design concepts go for Divination. There's many ways they can approach this, but I think that they will pick the right one. Oh I'm fine with the grind :razz: I more of meant that I hope the skill doesn't involve running around with a dowsing stick, and that it would instead involve something more magical/arcane in that respect. Just not a dowsing stick. Knowing the link to the Gods, I have the feeling that we're going to get a good amount of different magical/divine rods and implements. Zaros' secret cache of enchanted socks isn't going to be found using any mundane tool. The skill seems to be a lot about magic, so I doubt they would go the straight up wooden stick route for the whole skill. Perhaps only for the level 1 implement :P

We're already running around with axes and picks for 99 levels--can't be worse of a grind than our current skills. Jagex has certainly learned a lot over the past few years as far as skills go, I have the feeling we're going to be in for a treat as far as the overall design concepts go for Divination. There's many ways they can approach this, but I think that they will pick the right one.

They've already said that the Gathering and Production skill aren't directly linked (a la Mining/Smithing)--I'd say that we're probably going to see a good amount of current Production skills getting additions using Divination resources even before the second skill is released. It's also pretty likely that we will get some instantly-usable items being harvested every once in a while through Divination as well, since they said that both of these skills will be providing uses for the pocket slot quite a bit. It will be interesting to have a modern twist on a Gathering skill--I have the odd feeling they have some amazing game mechanics and inter-skill relations up their sleeves.

Considering that Mod Mark described the skill as "an old-fashioned Gathering skill like Mining or Fishing" when asked if it was going to be complicated like Dungeoneering, I doubt it is going to be anything that is particularly innovative in that regards. Divination is a broad subject, but the particular part I believe they are going for is that known as Dowsing. Here's an article all about it. In Dowsing, you use an object known as a Divining Rod (two L-shaped metal or wooden rods) to search around for things hidden under the ground. It's sort of a magical precursor to the thing we now know as Metal Detecting, except it was meant to find burial sites, ley lines (magical sources of energy in the world), relics, water, and rare materials. Considering that the Diviners in Guthix's memories were excited about the discovery of a new source of magical power, not linked to the gods, makes me think that this is the most likely route. It is essentially, in many ways, a lot like an Archaeology skill would have been. Places like Guthix's final resting place are exactly the kind of discoveries a Diviner would detect in the world--and it's likely that we will see many more like it. This ties in with Jagex's announced plans for "resource war" world events--where players would discover a rare cache of materials that are useful to the Gods, and be able to decide which god their portion of the spoils go to. It's likely that those will be found through Divination. Think about it this way--through Divination, you could find old journals, rare materials to give to the god of your choice, new parts and resources for making things in other skills, ancient ruins full of new lore, and potentially rare weapons from the God Wars that are still leaking power. The potential is endless. Of course, this is just my thoughts, but considering what we know about Divination so far and what the in-game hints are pointing towards, I think it's likely to be something like that. Note: This wouldn't necessarily need to be something where you particularly have to track down discoveries, like WoW's Archaeology or the Frozen Key buried treasure trails. It could just be patches of dirt in the world that you can randomly search through for all we know. There's lots of directions they could take--I would enjoy it either way.

They are planning on having certain types of weapons and armor that will be able to gain experience and level up on their own. This was included in part of the Special Edition BTS for 2013, but was listed as something that is only an idea for the future and isn't in development yet.

"Freemium" is the name for the current business model, and that is exactly how to describe the current influence of Members on most F2P skills. You get access to a good deal of a skill, but can pay for Members to get a bit more content on top of that. It sounds a bit weird when filtered through a journalist who probably knows next to nothing about the game besides buzzwords being thrown at him by Jagex press briefings. I think it is more indicative of how much of the content will be F2P than the idea that they are going to be putting another paywall in front of Divination content. :-k

Further update: According to a tweet by the author of the IGN article, Mod Mark mentioned Divination as one of the new skills at a press event yesterday. (Once again, thanks to jshimmy from /r/runescape for digging up the tweet :) )

In the same podcast (actually I believe it is the same sentence as the Sliske emissary reveal) they mention that Seren gets an emissary as well. :P

To add more credibility to the Divining skill: Guthix mentions Naragi Diviners in his memories. Reinforces the idea that Diviners are running around using Divining Rods to find pockets of magical power, burial sites, etc.

I was thinking of making a post for this, but I knew there would probably be an official response from you guys soon enough. :P To quote my Reddit comment about it:

A huge reveal has been leaked by IGN in its latest RS3 article. To quote: The way they said it sounds like they intended for people to already know about the skill before the article went live. Whoops. :P Here's a screencap just incase they edit it out.

Dungeoneering was popularized by Dungeons & Dragons as a sort of "knowledge of dungeons" skill, and has been a focal point of D&D ever since. It has since been integrated into a lot of other games and products, much like a lot of other D&D innovations. So no, Runescape didn't create Dungeoneering :P It just made its own take on the idea.

I'm perfectly fine with you using my post for that :) It'd be nice if you would source or quote me for the parts that are my ideas, but I'm not going to force you to. The RSOF might not be the place I would personally choose to put something like that (considering the level of negativity and ignorance that seems to generally flood any intelligent discussion over there) but it's definitely not going to hurt anything. Jmods do seem to check fan-sites just as much as they do the RSOF--perhaps it would be a more effctive idea to do something (not entirely sure what) on our end of the discussion, where the best ideas can filter to the top instead of being drowned in the mass of EoC suggestions on the RSOF (that seem to mostly amount to "remove it and change things back to the way they were").

My logic was that dual wielding, like the Keris, would be more precise (allowing you to find breaks in their armor) while 2h weaponry is generally more brute-force raw strength. I agree that your idea makes more sense, though.

I think the EoC could be fixed with far less drastic changes--for the most part, the most glaring issue with the system before this week's changes was the lack of influence from your skill levels. The armor changes this week really seem to be making things more complicated than they need to be. The main problems right now are: 1) We don't have nearly enough armor types in each tier to make the new armor class system work well. When a single tier of equipment only has tank armor or offense armor, it's not working to its best extent. However, adding player-chosen variations or more types of armor to each tier isn't the right way to go. The simplicity of the armor tiers is one of the things that makes RuneScape's combat system appealing in comparison to most games, where there's often more equipment at each potential level than anyone could ever possibly memorize. 2) Dual Wielding and 2h combat are both relatively equal at the moment. While it isn't that large of a problem, it's still something that makes dual wielding really fall flat. It should be something that has a specifc use over 2h weaponry. 3) The new level-influenced hit formula, while it works, makes things more complicated than they need to be, and the difference isn't really too noticable. The system before this week's update felt like it was a bit more stable and understandable, but needed more skill influence. There's a variety of ways to change these, but my personal opinion is: 1) Remove armor classes, but standardize the equipment curve to be somewhere between where it was and where it is now. Trying to keep weaker armor relevant to the endgame isn't a very good idea, but at least make it that someone who can't afford the next tier isn't completely useless. The choice between having a shield and having 2h/dual weaponry is already enough of a choice between offensive and defensive capabilities. If we really need another layer of choice, at least move it to something more optional like jewelry. (Which already has more variety at the moment. Why not give a combat use to necklaces?) 2) Give dual-wielding a bonus effect where it has a chance to break through armor, and give 2h combat a bonus effect to deal a percent of the enemy's health as damage. Something like this makes the choice between 2h and dual wielding another aspect of preparation--is the enemy I am facing one that has high health, but low defense? Or are they loaded up with difficult armor that I need to penetrate? Player armor tiers don't really have a choice between armor and health, so both of these should be balanced so that 2h and DW are equally effective in PvP. There doesn't particularly need to be another level of complexity/rock-paper-scissors for PvP combat. 3) Remove the current influence of skills as its own portion of the hit/accuracy/defense formula, and instead make it that your level can increase the effectiveness of your equipment if you surpass the requirements to wield it. (For example: If you have 60 Defense and wield Dragon armor, it will be at the same point it is now. However, if you have 70 defense and wield Dragon, its defense stats will be 10 or 20% higher.) Potentially there should be a cap on this (10 or so levels above requirement) where it is about 75% as effective as the next tier of equipment. Essentially, moving to the next tier of equipment would be something that you don't need to do right as soon as you hit the required level, but once you start exceeding the requirement it becomes more and more drastic of a change. With Ranged and Magic, your skill level would influence both the Damage and Accuracy of your weaponry, but with melee it would be split between Attack and Strength for Accuracy/Damage. This way, there is a visible influence--but it is easier for the majority of players to understand, more drastic between levels, and eases the gradient between equipment tiers. I think there doesn't need to be any particularly massive changes to the abilities system, it's rather nice at it is. More and more abilities are going to be added over time, which means that the system has plenty of room to grow and adapt. Potentially, some balance changes or added effects for some of the more lackluster abilities would be the best way to make it better right now. Someone made a list a few months back showing the most effective Threshold and Ultimate abilities--at the moment some are just more powerful than others. The difference in effect they have (single massive hit, multiple smaller hits, overall damage boost for a certain amount of time) makes some more useful in certain situations, but the lack of balanced damage output between them just makes some Ultimates better in every possible situation. The EoC is, overall, a very very good change--it's something we've needed for a long time. It just needs to be balanced and altered slightly, not removed completely. Some of the changes that have been made to it haven't really helped it overall, but I think that it's slowly getting closer and closer to that eventual balanced state. We just need to keep up the constant supply of feedback so that we can help get it there that much faster. It's nowhere near the monstrosity that some folks like to make it out to be.

My best guess is that it's going to allow you to combine numerous items that you already have (say, a clan ring and SOF necklace, for example) which currently generate separate bonus XP into one item that you can wear/use to give you their combined bonus XP result -- either in terms of a higher amount of bonus XP or a longer duration, therefrom ... :unsure: No, much simpler: it essentially removes the bonus XP from items whatsoever. The bonus Hunter XP rewarded through the Christmas event last year already works in a similar way--it shows the Bonus XP as a part of your mouseover XP display on the skills window instead of requiring you to wear any item. For example: If you had three Pendants of Smithing each with 5k Bonus XP each, they would lose their charge and your new Bonus XP interface would show you as having 15k bonus Smithing XP left to use. You wouldn't need to wear anything at all to spend it--just start training Smithing and you will gain bonus XP until your bonus runs out. So you will be able to train whatever you want without worrying about losing out on combat stats or appearance because you have to wear a silly necklace to gain any bonus XP.

System Update (2/5/2013) QFC: 15-16-843-64954415

The new skills have been Early Summer and Late 2013 since at least January--no way it was going to be out for May. The slayer dungeon is another thing, considering we haven't heard about it for ages. It's likely been delayed for one reason or another--which is fine considering that we just got a new Slayer dungeon in February. Slayer gets more updates than most skills, it's fine to have some time off to add more content to those that currently lack a good amount of 70+ content, like Farming.

Bandos, Armadyl, and Subjugation armor all have the same stats and are marked as Offensive armors. (The only difference is which combat style they protect from)

That's the way the new loading system works. Instead of pausing you until it loads, it slowly loads in everything around you as it gets downloaded. Slow loading is likely a connection issue. However, once it does it, it should be a lot faster in future logins. Most objects should only need to be loaded once and then should load nicely afterwards, from what I've seen.

It's the Buffs panel. If you go into the Edit mode for the interface (where you move around invisible elements) you can move it around to a location where it isn't in your way.

Smithing is supposed to get a rework this year--I doubt they would release any major non-quest smithing additions until then, sadly. They already said they won't be doing any major Summoning updates until the rework for that, probably the same for Smithing. It's nice to have some neat Mining-related thing to do at least. It gives you a nice goal to work towards, in order to get a pretty great looking set of weapons that have good stats for their level. They've sort of taken the Christmas Presents idea and spread it out over lots of different item sources to make it more interesting. These sort of events, where the rewards aren't unique to the SoF, are my favorite kind of SoF updates.

You'll be happy to know that the NIS Alpha has zero of these anymore. (And will soon have a completely reworked quest journal as well) So in a few short months you'll be back to seeing the world around you whilst figuring out what the heck you were just asked to do again.

I would seriously appreciate some added functionality to the performance of the HTML5 beta. What he means is that the primary features (HTML5 engine, new graphics effects, etc etc) are all complete, and they are now moving on to optimizing it, getting rid of bugs, and helping it work on all systems. The interface is probably about 40% done features-wise, and will still have a ways to go before its in beta stage. (They're just testing how people like the current features so they can potentially change them massively if they need to. That's what an Alpha is like)

I think it's very unlikely that Jagex would use the same complex symbol just as a random decoration. Jagex is known for very drawn-out, highly secretive storyline hints that can stick around for years without anyone ever noticing them. Adding all of these symbols to the world that only seemed to show up after The World Wakes was added seems like a very deliberate decision. Sure, if it just showed up on some books around the world it could possibly be just a reused graphic, but they're not going to slap a random meaningless sigil very specifically on the last floor tile infront of Guthix. It just doesn't seem like something that a developer so finely focused on detail and storyline would do, especially Jagex. The question is what it actually represents. My best guess is something related to Sliske, or the Elder Gods. There's a reason it seems like every magical institution in Gielinor seems to be researching it.