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20-Aug-2013 - Divination


Saradomin_Mage

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There are a lot of maxed Divination players because the community has declined in number and is now more disproportionately dominated by veterans and older players. The rate of newer players joining is abysmal, as is the number of free players and newbies. Also, the culture of efficiency above all has been firmly entrenched. Everyone is interested in getting levels and less interested in fun and 'time-wasting'. All of this adds up to lots of people getting 99 Divination very fast despite it being a slow skill, by means of probably fiercely grinding.

 

How does "not getting new members" have anything to do with a higher number of maxed divination players? Your statement "the rate of newer players joining is abysmal" seems to be accurate, but doesn't actually have any bearing on how many people get 99 divination unless you're saying that new players joining the game would force old players to leave?

 

So I think the most accurate answer to the high number of 99 divination players is that the game has been around so long that the knowledge of the mechanics of the game is at an all time high, and the obsession with efficiency likewise is at an all time high. Both of these work toegether in contributing to players with 99 divination. Also there were different motivating factors for getting 99 this time around. Before divination came out, there were so many players that were already maxed that "lost their cape" or lost their prestige or w/e. I believe that this would have added motivation for a number of players to grind to 99.

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the knowledge of the mechanics of the game is at an all time high, and the obsession with efficiency likewise is at an all time high.

I don't think this is true. Just before EoC, the knowledge of the game and the interest in efficiency was higher. EoC and its regular reshuffles have all but killed the interest in exact game mechanics, simply because the required amount of research is too great. It has to be redone every time Jagex 'fixes' something, which is very discouraging. Some people make valiant efforts of course, and skilling is understood very well (because that hasn't changed as much, I suppose) but I think the knowledge of EoC mechanics hasn't spread so far yet.

 

That said, your point stands in a way: Divination is so simple, that everyone can understand it and train it at near-maximum efficiency. That this also makes it incredibly boring is something Jagex is willing to put up with for the sake of a level playing field. Apparently Jagex hasn't realized that strategy and tactics are a key part of gaming, as every shooter, rpg [...] card game and board game proves (also randomness, which is really quite lacking in Divination as well).

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Supporter of Zaros | Quest Cape owner since 22 may 2010 | No skills below 99 | Total level 2595 | Completionist Cape owner since 17th June 2013 | Suggestions

99 summoning (18th June 2011, previously untrimmed) | 99 farming (14th July 2011) | 99 prayer (8th September 2011) | 99 constitution (10th September 2011) | 99 dungeoneering (15th November 2011)

99 ranged (28th November 2011) | 99 attack, 99 defence, 99 strength (11th December 2011) | 99 slayer (18th December 2011) | 99 magic (22nd December 2011) | 99 construction (16th March 2012)

99 herblore (22nd March 2012) | 99 firemaking (26th March 2012) | 99 cooking (2nd July 2012) | 99 runecrafting (12th March 2012) | 99 crafting (26th August 2012) | 99 agility (19th November 2012)

99 woodcutting (22nd November 2012) | 99 fletching (31st December 2012) | 99 thieving (3rd January 2013) | 99 hunter (11th January 2013) | 99 mining (21st January 2013) | 99 fishing (21st January 2013)

99 smithing (21st January 2013) | 120 dungeoneering (17th June 2013) | 99 divination (24th November 2013)

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I agree with Q, on both counts. EoC has somewhat discourage exact game-mechanic interest because it's constantly redone and obscure. Even I don't know too much about and I don't bother to learn. Also, Divination is the simplest skill to understand as far as experience goes.

 

With regards to my reference of newer players, that was my attempt to explain why veterans and older players are dominating (in terms of population), rather than explaining why we have so many Divination maxed players. You're right on that, that didn't directly influence the number of 99 Divination players.

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while we talk about strategy/tactics, we have to also realize that a lot of what jagex provides in terms of that is one problem/one solution type things that only actually work part of the time (the rest of the content being pretty much useless as a practical solution to anything), and that most of what you would consider to be closer to that has resulted largely from jagex's failings in terms of being able to limit the parameters of the environment to the level of control they intended, and that a large portion of that type of gameplay is either in a grey area, or pretty much against the game's rules/spirit

 

historically, jagex has not directly provided anything on the short list of what we consider important/cool innovations in runescape gameplay, and a bunch of those were later found to be "unintentional bugs we never noticed"

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previously i was mildly amused that we couldn't use our bonus xp on div. now i am merely frustrated that we cant. at this point i just dont care any more, div can rot at 97 while they fiddle fart around i guess.

 

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