I see more info has come out about a possible update to more Divergence stuff that has a google doc linked on the PC: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kN-1Of1A8HvgERjNQdBrXpQGk-SH72q4gqja9dkp33I/edit#

I've got zero interest to visit these areas with all the spell nerfs. What a horrible game design.

I do have some thoughts about them and I'm wondering.....why?


What really gets me is the suggested weapon changes under Divergence in these hunting areas.....seriously? What is wrong with you guys? Just do a weapon overhaul instead of trying to band-aid things.

Whips have been updated to match crowbills for DF and AvD.

Base RT increased to 3s.

Damage type changed from 100% crush (KKKKKK) to 50% slash/ 50% crush (SSSKKK).

Pilum damage factor against the plate armor group increased to 0.100.

Short bow base roundtime reduced to 3s from 5s.

Many weapons need tweaks/adjustments to bring them up to a point where people will use them for things other than RP. A lot need some love and brought up and some need slight down tweaks.


What's with the tanking of spells viability in these areas? Perhaps if you guys weren't looking to make a quick buck off the pay events you'd have stopped making outside spells so easily obtainable. One of the main changes from GSIII to GSIV was to reduce accessibility to so many outside spells so capped areas could be better controlled....all the SK spells you've been tossing out the doors and adjustment to spells to over the past decade, massive adjustments to what can be added to weapons/armors has put you right back to where things were in GSIII days and your only way to fix it is to nerf how spells function in these new areas? What kind of logic is that?

Stop doing unwarranted stuff to put yourselves in this position.

Fix things, stop nerfing things.

>Just do a weapon overhaul instead of trying to band-aid things.

I think a new hunting area is a pretty good place to test new things, as long as players can see the changes in advance. If the goal is to eventually overhaul, or even just fix a few of the weapon bases, then having a real hunting area to test them in will result in better feedback than putting something on the test server. It would be nice to confirm this, but I see these changes as a stepping stone.

>One of the main changes from GSIII to GSIV was to reduce accessibility to so many outside spells so capped areas could be better controlled....all the SK spells you've been tossing out the doors and adjustment to spells to over the past decade, massive adjustments to what can be added to weapons/armors has put you right back to where things were in GSIII days and your only way to fix it is to nerf how spells function in these new areas?

Just so, it seems. Too much focus on selling expensive band-aids and not enough on curing the ailment. But I applaud the effort to fix it. Given the track record of changes over the last few years, I'd be very surprised to see a real nerf without compensation of some kind.

>Just so, it seems. Too much focus on selling expensive band-aids and not enough on curing the ailment. But I applaud the effort to fix it. Given the track record of changes over the last few years, I'd be very surprised to see a real nerf without compensation of some kind.

I don't see it as an effort to fix it, though. It's just another band-aid they're putting on top of a broken limb. All the band-aids aren't going to fix it. I'm sure they can be more creative about creating new hunting areas that doesn't require an all out nerf on 66% of the hunting time for pures.

515/212/215/219/240/919 - all these spells will be functional with a 33% potential uptime. The other 66% of your hunting time they will be in cooldown.
950 - 5 minute cooldown. This is massive. I don't make use of 950 that often, but some people do and rely on it heavily.

This has a heavy impact on multiple classes that rely on these spells for normal hunting. I can understand that not all hunting areas cater to all classes, some struggle in certain areas while others excel. But when you introduce two new post-capped hunting areas and make it much harder for certain classes by nerfing how spells function, why not just put up class restrictions to the areas and design creatures for the few professions that aren't getting hindered?

I guess there's nothing more impressive than those folks that have spent hours building up their characters into the 20/30/40+ million experience range to work on capping out all their profession skills and to have them walk into an area and all of a sudden having their skills reduced just because it's easier for them to nerf how a spell functions instead of fixing the underlying problem they've created with massive SK items out there and every Tom, Dick and Jane has built up on their weapons/armors/shields to make them super powerful in terms of AS/DS/TD and weighting/padding.

It's not fun to earn all these things (spells, skills and/or items), whether it's through pay events or experience from time spent playing, only to have it taken from you because they don't find a better way to handle the situation.


There are interesting creatures out there that have restrictions based on their lore - like Vesperti, for example. They're immune to any CS type magic, but not to bolts (except for some reason they're immune to 510....why?). You can read in the vesperti area the journal of Augustin Vespertinae, he created the Vesperti and why they're immune to most magic.

>Dev is going to give empaths/clerics access to some other AS increaser to compensate, right? This is a significant hit to bolt AS (and weapon hunting).

You have this the wrong way round. Empaths and clerics are the ones that gain. Its the group effect that is getting toned down, not the self cast version.

The spells get to be unique to them again rather than something that everyone has all the time. Cutting back the amount that other professions can use these spells is actually a boost to the native casters.

Its only talking about the group versions.

"That wasn't what I read... I saw both of them go from "permanently on" for those two professions, to "choose A until it runs out then B until it runs out, then get neither for the last 1/3 of the time."" -- Me
"Its only talking about the group versions." -- RathboneR, replying to Me

.

Then I take exception to the way in which the bullet-pointed sections are laid out.

To me, I see "211/Bravery" as a section, and "215/Heroism" as a section. The top bullet-point in each section is, "group version moved to Evoke." Additional bullet-points exist with other information.

By that writing/with that layout, they are now DONE with "the group version" information.

.

If they want to say/imply that "all of these changes are for the group version", then they should EITHER:
- title the section appropriately (211/Bravery group effect),
OR
- sub-bullet-point (== add one layer of tab indent) for the additional properties.

OR just write an explanatory sentence (either for "these spells as a whole, that have a group effect", or "These changes are all for the group effect of this spell." and copy/paste that for each one to which it is applicable).

.

But AS WRITTEN, "no", that document does not convey the fact that all of the posted changes are for the group version.

"Once that is complete, the updates in Divergence will become game-wide and no longer exist as a mechanic isolated to a few areas."

What annoys me a bit about this is that if I recall originally Divergence was to be focused on the post cap Gemstone (the other Gemstone as I like to call it) and not the whole game. Unless I misunderstood when it was being discussed before I ended up blocking the Discord Mechanics channel. Now it's about to impact the whole game, or as I like to say, "both" Gemstones. I'm not sure how I feel about that honestly, it reminds me of mmorpg balance. Talking about how pvp game mechanics tweaks would negatively impact pve aspects of the game repeatedly in most of the mmorpgs that I've played.

Basically 0-100 Gemstone IV is getting impacted by 100plus Gemstone IV in my opinion. Now to learn whether these changes and tweaks will negatively impact those of us who have no real desire to play the Gemstone Uber levels game. Historically speaking, my silver is on that negative impact. Oh yeah and can we please, please, freaking please get a Discord channel for 0-100 level Mechanics? Because Mechanics is currently useless by and large for those of us who aren't playing GS Uber. ;p Trying to navigate the waterfall flow of posts in Mechanics and get your questions seen and answered is frustrating and tedious. Plus having to read through all that drek that I have interest in wading through. Talk about a time sink.

>If each character only has their OWN spells, with possibly some additional benefits from someone who happens to be with you, everything looks a lot easier for the GMs on what their creatures are likely to face.

That's how things were from the change over from GSIII to GSIV. Reduction of player level to 100 and adjusting spells so they all aren't as heavily relied upon or being able to be cast on other players. This was the game change design to make it so they could better balance the game and end level areas to players.

Sadly, with how the GMs have taken the game and monetized so much from the pay events and kept adding stupid stuff such as SK items or X times a day items....then allowing the whole stupid Invoker to blast everyone with spells outside of their own spell circles it's made it easy for them to say "we have to balance the game". They screwed things up and now they want to tank things with Divergence and Spell Sever.

Now, after seeing how crappy some professions are with Divergence and Spell Sever in place, they're pushing extras in DR (such as going to 15x for AS/DS) in what appears to be a way to offset issues of the backlash of spell adjustments and spell loss.

The GMs have pushed the game so far out of balance that they now need to nerf aspects of the game to try and rebalance things.

Gee...thanks GMs! /sarcasm

>Not really. Essentially all of the spells that can be other-cast now, were able to be other-cast after change.

No. But that's okay if you can't remember. We even had a few spells that had durations adjusted to make them "emergency" use so the GMs wouldn't have to bother worrying about them being used all the time so they could better balance and create new hunting grounds.

They need to stop trying to make this into a PvP MMORPG to make everything balanced like players are trying to PvP and to stop trying to slow things down. It's okay if a rogue or warrior can hunt certain areas better than other classes and it's okay if those same rogues and warriors can't hunt very well in another hunting ground, but other classes can.

I have multiple characters of varying classes and I can't hunt all of them in all of the exact same hunting grounds and I can't hunt them all with the same tactics. That's what I find enjoyable about the game. I've got some mutant characters that I'm guessing are going to get trashed when more adjusts are made to spells and that's just sad. I find them just as enjoyable, even more so, of the creativity it's taken to get them to where they are today.

If they really do push a system wide divergence change then that's when I walk away. Maybe I'm just getting tired of all the changes after all these years....

>I agree that things like Wizard Shield/919 are now of MUCH shorter duration.
But it was other-castable then, and it is other-cast now.

I recall a few wizard spells that were removed from other casting: 905, 507, 508 and 513
* on a side note, 513 was still able to be cast on others for a while, but it was set as a CS check and shouldn't have been possible, according to NIR. For a while after the change over 513 was able to be cast on others as long as they couldn't ward the spell, but that was rectified.

I can't say for sure about other classes, I wasn't much into playing them back then. Folks I played with, I used to provide spells for and I could cast pretty much anything in the wizard's circles on them and after the change over they had to get used some spells no longer being cast on others.