20-Aug-2013 - Divination

[aspeeder]

When you get a chronicle fragment, you also get xp. Does anyone know what sort of xp it is?

Hunter

[Sy_Accursed]

When you get a chronicle fragment, you also get xp. Does anyone know what sort of xp it is?

Hunter

 

Also it is exactly 10*hunter lvl for xp given so 10-990

[Fallstar]

Link to the AMAA with the divination developers

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ktc10/we_are_the_runescape_developers_for_the_new_skill/

[PolarBearBlue]

Dude, your interpretation sucks potato.

 

I pointed that out, because he has 99 in skills in which you need effort, and you don't. So you don't have to teach him anything about effort.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzpndHtdl9A

 

In other news I did the Divine herb patch I yesterday and got about 40k (all unnoted herbs). I feel another daily profit added to my list. Also, the porter signs make for good cheap yak scroll...too bad they don't bank bones :D

[Krampell]

Too bad the Divine Herb patch costs 20 irit to make to begin with.

But if someone else makes it then it's nice.

[Fallstar]

"We're planning loads more, both for Divination and the next skill.

We're not planning to change XP rates. To provide a decent high-score race of the kind that lots of players like and to give you a good feeling of continual improvement we made it the kind of thing you can't just burn through in short time."

[xSxqPowerx]

Haven't had a chance to personally train Div yet, but I think I have a pretty good idea of it from reading this/other threads.

 

Anyway, I think the current issues are that:

1. Gathering skills are boring. Period. They also tend to be slow. This is pretty much how every gathering skill was on release; limited to one method of training where you progress through a series of tiers for slightly higher experience every X levels. But then eventually faster methods are put out, although they may not provide you with resources (see: ivy, sawmill, zmi, runespan, c2 fishing, lrc, etc etc) and I imagine in the coming months/years it would be reasonable to expect that the rate of experience will increase with a new update. For now it makes sense to keep it pretty slow so that not everyone has 99 divination when the production skill comes out.

 

2. It feels incomplete because you can't do much with it. Once the production skill is done though, who knows - it might be super useful or profitable.

There could also be a complete rebalance like there was with summoning (every familiar was useless other than the unicorn prior to batch 2 iirc). Better to be underwhelming and buff later than to instantly throw the game out of whack and then have to do damage control and/or rebalance other aspects of the game.

[PolarBearBlue]

Too bad the Divine Herb patch costs 20 irit to make to begin with.

But if someone else makes it then it's nice.

 

Well Divine Herb Patch I was like 10 guams. So if not for v2 and v3, then the first 1 seems worth while for me if I have a few energy left over.

[Peronix]

Honestly the skill seems only psychologically slower than the others, since you're getting a steady stream of tiny gains as opposed to the more sporadic, randomized chunks you get from fishing, mining, and woodcutting. I don't recall getting 30 fishing in a few minutes, either. In fact I'm sure it took longer than divination did.

[mousepad]

I really like this new skill. It feels very classic runescape to me, with it being right along the lines of mining woodcutting, and fishing. I am excited to see what the second new skill will do with divine energy.

[muggiwhplar]

Dude, your interpretation sucks potato.

 

I pointed that out, because he has 99 in skills in which you need effort, and you don't. So you don't have to teach him anything about effort.

 

That doesn't invalidate his point lol

[Lucky Flame]

Sooo this is the skill im goan be doign for next few weeks... Well thats boring

[Omali]

Who at Jagex thought it was a good idea to make the chronicle fragment require a microscope in order to hit it with a mouse?

[PolarBearBlue]

The same people who thought click through chat boxes were a thing of the past. Grinds my gears that one stops for two seconds but I have to rotate my cam because I can't click it in chat box.

[Binary Mage]

There's a Divination AMAA going on on Reddit over here. I'm not doing a full transcript since its two mods and a lot of questions, but I'll do a summary of interesting info. Sorry if its a little slower than normal, fitting in Divination training whilst doing so :P

• The Enriched Wisp Springs were previously spawning much too often, they fixed it as well as the tick-timing clicking.
  
• Confirmaiton that Chronicle Fragments are instanced to you for a short while after they appear.
  
• It was intentional that all of the Wisp nodes are the same color--they wanted Divination to have a specific unique color to it that is recognized quite easily. They decided to differentiate size and shape instead, as well as not get people confused with 12 unique colors that would likely have some overlap. Colored wisps ended up being a color blindness problem and tended to clash with the environments they were in.
  
• Divination has been in development since February (or late January). The second skill has apparently been in development much longer.
  
• Your chance to get Enriched Memories increases as your level does--there is a constant increase in the XP rate.
  
• Divine Energy will be one of many resources used in the next skill, but there will also be elements where a higher DIvination level will be beneficial.
  
• They will be making changes to the rewards balancing, but won't do so until players discover how they intend them to be used first and give it some time to make sure they actually need balancing.
  
• It was a decision they made to not have lore directly as part of the training itself. They found that it was much too annoying to have story elements popping up constantly for players who just wanted XP. Future Divination updates and rewards will expand on the lore instead.
  
• Naragi Fairy Ring is on Mod Ana's to-do list right at the top
  
• The Divination XP rates are going very, very well--almost exactly as planned. They intentionally left some gaps and other slower areas in the XP rates so that they have plenty of room for new training methods and D&Ds and such.
  
• Divination will be getting more updates as we get closer to the release of the second skill. Instead of releasing them both at once (A development nightmare) they decided to separate them, which means some Divination content has been left until the second skill release.
  
• XP Lamps and other XP-boosting things will be allowed to be used on DIvination two weeks after release.
  
• There is a Divination quest currently in development.
  
• The original concept for Divination had a different name, but they aren't revealing what that name is because it has been changed to become a part of the second skill.
  
• Divination and the Second Skill won't have a direct lore link like Mining and Smithing, but rather a more complicated relationship where practitioners of both don't necessarily get along with one another.
  
• They are looking into "backwards" transmutation and "sideways" transmutation--the original idea for transmutation was completely sideways. (IE: Logs into ore of the same tier sort of stuff) They are going to pick and choose these very carefully if they do end up making it into the game, as to not upset the market.
  
• They would "love to fit [the second skill] into this year". They are uncertain as to how the release date will turn out, its up in the air between late this year and early next.
  
• They would really like to get more people using Clan Citadels, and are looking into updates to help make them more useful and popular. However, with the update schedule for this and next year so packed, he isn't sure where it would fit.
  
• Transmutation is meant to be convenience more than profit, but will give profit in the right market situations to people who keep watch over the prices.
  
• Mod Ana will be investigating reported bugs where certain levels don't seem to be getting any Enriched Wisps randomly at all.
  
• They definitely had a challenge in releasing a "support skill" to a skill that hasn't been released yet. The current rewards were put in to tide people over until the second skill's release, as they couldn't release a skill that didn't do anything yet.
  
• Mod Chris L created Max and updated him for Divination--he wanted to add dialogue to reply to people who called him a bot, but ended up not getting to it.
  
• Divination had a massive design phase compared to other updates and skills--they have refined it to where it feels and works exactly like they want it to be.
  

[Cheefoo]

I'm almost certain the second skill is going to be some form of enchanting.

[Binary Mage]

I would put money on it being some sort of Artificing. The like of using Divine Energy to power machinations and weapons with the power of the gods. (a la Sixth Age Circuit)

 

I can see a very good lore battle between Diviners who want to heal the Anima Mundi using divine energy, and Artificers who want to tear the world apart to get as much energy as possible, with no regard for nature.

[Kimberly]

Why do they keep referring to the high score race? That does not last forever. If you're going to answer long-term concerns (how the skill is trained or structured), then why give answers that are only relevant in the short term? (race 2 skillz 2 fast 4 furious)

 

It bothered me before in all the BTS videos, but they were limited in what they could say. They wanted to keep the skill under wraps and there's only so much that can be revealed. Okay, I get it. The skill is out now, though. The reliance on that tired line when addressing already grumpy players is only going to fan the flames. The longer it takes to quench them, the longer it will be before people can start calming down and appreciating the skill for what it is.

 

This whole ama is more upsetting than it is enlightening. It's too hard to get 12 different colors yet they manage 9 different ones at least for the milestone capes no problem, eh!? EEHHHHH?!?! Or how about the concept that gathering skills don't have to be complex. Or the fact that no one thought to mention a key part of how chronicles appear -- that they're instanced to you briefly. Or the entire skill's premise being that we're healing the world by casting fused bits of guthix's memories to the world, yet they didn't want story bits "popping up" in this often advertised as lore-heavy skill. That the messages from chronicles are deliberately vague because making something where players could re-read what they've witnessed was too damn difficult! The wilderness isn't used at all, not even as a D&D, because they don't want to shut out non-pvpers, presumably because they don't want to make the same traditional mistake that agility did, yet they won't buck tradition where it matters -- making the skill more complex. Or that there's not really much of a point to any of these "convenience" signs/portents/transmutations aside from Divine Locations because they don't make any money - the only thing a gathering skill could be good for. Or that really, this skill won't be "fully released" until its companion skill comes out god knows when because they keep flipflopping on the damn dates. Or that this skill only had 5 months of development time and resources...and it kind of shows. >_>''''

 

It's enough to make a person scream. I've stopped reading for now. I wish I could say I'm going back to training divination, but I've been doing that the entire time I've wrote this post.

 

I'm sure that the majority of high lvl players don't like the XP rates because they aren't used to doing a gathering skill..

 

..

 

I think that if you went to do the math of training WC, mining, or fishing, while competing for spots (Especially mining) that the xp is about the same as divination

 

I think you haven't trained a gathering skill since 2006 if that's what you really believe.

[Nobody]

Really want to know how DV will interact with the 2nd skill.

[Kimberly]

Really want to know how DV will interact with the 2nd skill.

 

I would've rather had one complex hybrid skill released next year or even the year after that than this oddly-split skill released right now. Maybe it would've allowed them more time and budget to make this skill seem less...stale and reused as Quyneax rightly pointed out.

[Kaida23]

I can kind of believe that they've only been developing this since February. At this point it seems to be nothing but a retread of RuneSpan, with F2P-ish xp rates.

 

I hit my cap of level 5 in about 20 minutes this morning, so I guess I'm done with it until the new skill comes out.

[Nobody]

Really want to know how DV will interact with the 2nd skill.

 

I would've rather had one complex hybrid skill released next year or even the year after that than this oddly-split skill released right now. Maybe it would've allowed them more time and budget to make this skill seem less...stale and reused as Quyneax rightly pointed out.

 

That would have been nice, could have AFKed more Castle Wars games then. :P

[Kimberly]

 

There were loads of aims. Among my top ones:

• Simple, old-school gathering skill, more like Fishing or Woodcutting than Summoning or Dungeoneering
  
• Non-competitive: positively social where possible
  
• A 'free' training option, with no waste products you didn't want to make
  
• Tie-in with the new age and the evolving story of RS

Note that these aren't all goals we set ourselves: many of them came down from Mod Mark. There are always things I wish we'd had more time for, but I'm happy with the results.

 

It's changed a lot as we went along, but it's difficult to point at any version and call it the 'original design'. At one point it was something completely different, and you can now look forward to that as part of the next skill.

 

Main challenges were big design questions about exactly how we manage the stuff above and fit it all in with the way the game works. We had to ditch a lot of ideas for reward/product objects because they'd ruin something or other. We also had to think carefully about this skill was different to previous ones, because while it's always tempting to fall back on 'well Mining does it like this' but some of the things Mining does were ones we didn't want to replicate.

 

Maybe now that I've had a go at those, Ana will drop by and admit she makes awesome quests :-)

 

I found this answer particularly interesting, since the goals of the skill seem to be a point of discussion.

 

I appreciate the aim of "no waste products" personally. A lot. In that, I'm glad they bucked convention.

[Binary Mage]

Here's a new official video they just released explaining Divination to new players. Useful to F2Pers who want to see how enriched wisps and memories work at Level 10 as well.

 

[kamil1210]

1. that bugged map 0:17

 

2. hi-res orange memories :