20-Aug-2013 - Divination

[Matey]

What's the difference between some of the signs and portents?

 

The sign of life requires 78 divination and the portent of life requires 99. You'd assume from this that the portent would be better in some regard, but the only difference I can gleam from information in-game and on the wiki is that you can't equip the portent. For any situations that I can think of, this actually makes the portent worse. Am I missing something?

[Quyneax]

After that AMA, I feel they intentionally released a skeleton skill and they are intending to flesh it out later. If they keep up a good pace of updates, and if the second skill is very good, then I can see it working somewhat. They don't update that often (apart from SoF/SGS). I'd rather have them add a full skill, which allows for more exploration - releasing content piece-by-piece means you can already see the border when you start exploring. It's also so that I don't have to lose my comp cape to a bare-bones update like this, but okay.

 

The locations for wisps are known, and linear. There is no reason to go back to earlier wisps so far. You do exactly the same at each place - there is nothing to learn.

 

A thought experiment:

 

Imagine that you could get xp in one skill only, X. All other skills would exist, but they would simply level up proportional to X - if X is 99, all your skills are 99, except dungeoneering which is 120. If X is dungeoneering, other skills are at 81 when dungeoneering is at 99.

 

For what X is the game still fun?

Hitpoints, defence - Combat-based game, still very playable.

Slayer - More annoying, but still playable.

Other combats - Messes up the triangle, but doable.

Dungeoneering - Very playable, probably quite fun.

Prayer, fletching, herblore, firemaking, cooking - Skills would be irrelevant, everyone maxed.

Divination, agility, runecrafting, mining, fishing, woodcutting - Nobody would start playing.

 

This indicates of course that hp/slay/def/dg are much more widely applicable than other skills. I think it's also test of skill strength - how well a skill can carry a game, or make up a game in its own right. For skills which combine with others, like mining + smithing + magic, it's relevant to look at training methods instead. If you do that for skills like agility, runespanning and divination, the skill is a training method - they are essentially self-contained. That weakens them, I think.

 

Not that each skill should make up a game by itself, but each skill complex should: combat with slayer is the biggest complex we have, and dungeoneering with all skills is a sort of super-complex. "Skilling" has much smaller complexes. The aforementioned mining/smithing/magic is one, you have fletching with a bunch of skills, you have divination/hunter and woodcutting/firemaking, you have a bunch of skills with magic, but no big complexes, as training goes (SC is not efficient training, sorry). That's a gap in the content here.

[Blofeld]

Does anyone remember when they first told us we were getting 2 new skills this year, because I swear it was before February?

[Sy_Accursed]

The best bit of that video is those clearly are not what memories look like...

[Kimberly]

So, the first vid from Mod Silent, that's pretty cool.

 

No surprise though that Wreck3d didn't do the vid, hyuk hyuk. But seriously, I like that they released that. Very clever of them.

[Sy_Accursed]

I dunno I feel a bit skeptical about these new 'mods' judging by this video they are being given pre-made content to narrate to a script and just throw their well known name in there for a bit of gravitas. I mean what do these guys really add to the social media front that we didn't have already?

 

About the only genuine use I see for them is to do more twitch streams and even then it's a bit eh cause other than brand new content that not everyone can do/see easily (eg high quests and bosses) livestreams of rs just aren't that interesting. The main reason I view back any live stream is when the mods reveal stuff about upcoming content or lore and I feel many are in the same boat.

[Fallstar]

Got to level 66/500k xp. Not sure if I'm going to do more today or not.

 

They've done a warbands, and their 'fix' has made world hopping far faster xp/hr than it was before, as all the worlds are nicely spaced out now due to world lag or w/e and all the timings are known, so you can usually be in each world before the enriched spawns and get the whole wisp.

 

The current rotation for the level 60-69 tier is world: 39->84->69->64, join wisp chat fc for more details. I'm out for now.

[Sy_Accursed]

Got to level 66/500k xp. Not sure if I'm going to do more today or not.

 

They've done a warbands, and their 'fix' has made world hopping far faster xp/hr than it was before, as all the worlds are nicely spaced out now due to world lag or w/e and all the timings are known, so you can usually be in each world before the enriched spawns and get the whole wisp.

 

The current rotation for the level 60-69 tier is world: 39->84->69->64, join wisp chat fc for more details. I'm out for now.

 

The whole enriched spawn thing is a great example of Jagex failing: Not learning the lesson.

 

The issue with warbands was it being spread out and the need for it be closely synchronised so what do you do for the big xp boon in new skill? Disregard that lesson entirely and have to hotfix it on day 2, but of course the hotfix isn't nearly as fool proof as it ought to be as it's not been tightly coded to enforce sync and thus we get warbands 2.0 where they were 'synced' but laggable to space things out.

 

I think the only greater example is D&Ds without timers! Nearly every darn D&D they release timerless and nearly every D&D they then have to patch it in because predictably we want it; apparently it's impossible to learn - thing happening sporadically players like a timer for we should make it a priority to add.

[miracleman58]

I hope this enriched spring spawn is fixed and it just becomes random like nodes in Runespan.

[Sy_Accursed]

The original problem was it was random allowing fcs to camp across worlds and use qh to abuse massive xp from it.

 

It needs to be synchronised in a way that cannot be lagged or broken so that all worlds do the node at the same time to avoid the issue.

[Calm Koala]

I think They made some stupid errors in that video

 

- roughly 50% more exp if you use the third trade in option (its way less then that)

- the more people are on the enriced the longer it lasts (have been playing a total off 30 hours now and always got the same ammount of ticks even when there were almost no people syphoning it)

 

 

[Flyingjj]

Easiest fix to quick hopping: Remove quick hopping.

 

Sure it's a nice feature, but we lived 10 years without it and it's been abused to no end.

[WeatherMatt]

Easiest fix to quick hopping: Remove quick hopping.

 

Sure it's a nice feature, but we lived 10 years without it and it's been abused to no end.

 

Don't remove it. Give it a cooldown. Once or twice per hour is fine.

[strilmus]

i think i'm mostly annoyed at chronicle fragments because of the shitty click area that seems to be done on purpose

 

while i'd still have a low chance of getting it when i'm competing with other people, it wouldn't be because jagex was trolling and handwaving it as a skill based thing

 

What's the difference between some of the signs and portents?

 

The sign of life requires 78 divination and the portent of life requires 99. You'd assume from this that the portent would be better in some regard, but the only difference I can gleam from information in-game and on the wiki is that you can't equip the portent. For any situations that I can think of, this actually makes the portent worse. Am I missing something?

i think the difference here is that you can only equip one sign at a time, and it'd be taking up a slot that you could instead be using for something like a scrimshaw that boosts your damage output

 

this is assuming that in the future, the pocket slot will have many more items you might want to have in there

[Krampell]

Silent sound exactly like another dude on youtube I watch daily.

Maybe it's just me.

[HunterDexter]

Because he's that youtube guy who became a mod a few weeks ago. :P

[Yoko Kurama]

So I have returned after a several month hiatus to check out all hoo-hah about the new skill. At first I did it some, didn't feel too enthralled or excited so I left and returned later that night. Preliminary thoughts: a completely tedious, boring, and slow skill, no doubt purposely designed to torture us with Skinner box mechanics. It of course has the orange chronicles which forces you to compete with everyone around so that when you're bored stiff you will have minor incentive to stay awake. Same goes with the social aspect of, forcing a ton of people into one place competing for the occasional enriched wisps and everything else. I will see it through, but seems ultimately lame. The only interesting things are the rewards, and the uniformity of it, at least it isn't like other gathering skills such as mining or woodcutting where you have to wait, it seems each tick between harvesting is uniform. Aside from that this skill is simply the tired old "How can we absolutely bore the hell out of our player base?" To which the answer is to make extremely slow and tedious things and force us to do them for very long times.

 

Aside from that, why are we not allowed to use bonus experience on new skills? (I am aware that they do this for all new skills) Because apparently that would give a so-called 'unfair' advantage to the people in the mindless race to be number 1. The only problem being the one people interested in seriously racing to the top are something like 500 people who are on top of the highscores who have deranged priorities, and thus have decided to waste all their time on this. Well, if they want to do that, sure, they can. But why is everyone else being held hostage for the senseless hobbies of a few people? Let us use our bonus experience, damnit.

[Byzantus]

Aside from that, why are we not allowed to use bonus experience on new skills? (I am aware that they do his for all new skills) Because apparently that would give a so-called 'unfair' advantage to the people in the mindless race to be number 1. The only problem being the one people interested in seriously racing to the top are something like 500 people who are on top of the highscores who have deranged priorities, and thus have decided to waste all their time on this. Well, if they want to do that, sure, they can. But why is everyone else being held hostage for the senseless hobbies of a few people? Let us use our bonus experience, damnit.

Because then the first person to 99 divination would have been somebody who bought tons of spins to get divination xp.

Actually i'm quite surprised they don't allow bonus xp yet, it would have made them so much money.

[Kaida23]

And completely undermined the legitimacy of the race to 99.

 

I hope they wait at least until someone gets 99 before they allow lamps to be used.

[Yoko Kurama]

Total nonsense. The 'legitimacy' was already undermined for all other skills when they decided to load the wheel with spins, and hand out bonus weekends like they were nothing. I have never bought any spins and I never will, and I couldn't care any less about some phony concept of 'legitimacy'. I simply want to get this done with fast. I don't care if the zombies who occupy the top of the highscores decide they all want to buy spins and get it instantly, it does not affect me in any way. Unless you're a contender for the first person to 99 Divination, you shouldn't care about such things.

[Maxingmck]

Its ok, Dragonseance will have 99 well before the lamps can be used.

[Sylpheed]

Total nonsense. The 'legitimacy' was already undermined for all other skills when they decided to load the wheel with spins, and hand out bonus weekends like they were nothing. I have never bought any spins and I never will, and I couldn't care any less about some phony concept of 'legitimacy'. I simply want to get this done with fast. I don't care if the zombies who occupy the top of the highscores decide they all want to buy spins and get it instantly, it does not affect me in any way. Unless you're a contender for the first person to 99 Divination, you shouldn't care about such things.

 

If you detest the skill so much, why are you even bothering to train it?

[Kimberly]

If you detest the skill so much, why are you even bothering to train it?

 

That has absolutely no relevance to the point he was trying to make. The race is irrelevant in the long run, something that will last for less than 3 weeks. That's separate from his opinion on the skill entirely. The SoF will be available for the long run, and it's a fair bet to assume that within the coming months, divination xp will be obtainable from it. The "race" will be a flash in the pan and the high scores, which are being played up by hyping the race along with the integrity of them, will soon be influenced by bonus exp be it SoF lamps or hoarded pendants...or tears, or troll invasion, or JoT whatever. For a skill that has such low rates (not a bad thing) then any bonus exp will be pretty influential.

 

And anyway, it's far more valid a point to make than arguing opinions.

[Gandalf14141]

When collecting the chronical fragments, I just stay zoomed in and click on them (much easier to click on as they are bigger). I'm easily getting 10-20 before the next enriched comes. Just throwing that out there.

[Bxpprod]

And completely undermined the legitimacy of the race to 99.

 

I hope they wait at least until someone gets 99 before they allow lamps to be used.

 

Legitimacy of player "achievements" vs profits. I'm honestly surprised they didn't choose the second.