Major PVE and Content Patch "Zero Five Zero" Announcement

For two months we've been describing, what we think of as, "a big damn patch" that when ready will give players a lot more than our standard patches of bug fixes and additions.

This "big push", we've decided to designate based on it's internal version number for us, which brings Divergence: Online to v0.50 and thus will be named "Divergence: Online "Zero Five Zero".

Zero Five Zero represents a major milestone in our development which will take our game from being an MMO with tons of potential professions, unrivaled crafting, unrivaled player and guild housing and twitch-combat, to a game with "a life of it's own" as well.

Tons of New Players

You've probably been wondering why, instead of constantly advertising the game and trying to bring in new players, we've instead used exactly zero of our allowed exposure powers that Steam allows since our January launch.

The answer is that, we simply decided that, while people knowing about the game is all well and good, a good number of players simply cannot wrap their minds around the concept of "Early Access" and are reviewing as if, this game built by two people, claims to be solid, complete, and a contender to games with ten times the staff and one hundred times the money. At the time of this new post, we're sitting exactly 1% inside of "Mostly Positive", and we simply do not wish to "mass sell" the game in it's previous state "until it's further along", at which point we can feel more confident that the new players buying the game won't simply buy it, play it, then get one of those automatically-granted refunds from Steam. We just can't afford that stuff dudes, so we've been holding out since January for a chance to "sell a better, more complete version of Divergence" and finally Zero Five Zero will allow us to do just that. Again, "not finished', but far enough along that we're at least willing to, again, allow it to be exposed on Steam, resulting in (what Steam estimates we'll receive as) over one-million page hits on our steam page and lots and lots of new players.

Better get your house in order before the new neighbors see what a shit-hole your property looks like!

And so without further ado; Behold, our official list of upcoming features intended to be released in "Divergence: Online Zero Five Zero"

Trees Choppable/Harvestable!

Most trees in the game world will soon be able to be chopped down by the player, allowing their logs to be collected and turned into wooden defenses, structures, homes, and even huge forts!

Scout Profession

The Scout basic profession we released in previous builds will finally provide the player with a ton of useful features.
Build fires, camps, and basic defenses out of collected wooden logs, sticks, and natural structures.

Armorsmith Profession

This specialized-branch of Artisan will allow the player to finally craft body-armor for themselves and others with resistances and characteristics completely dependent on the crafting process itself. Create armor with high resistances to ballistic weapons, or even a specialized set with corrosion-resistance for you and your friends right before that big acid-spitting raptor hunt you're gearing up to go on!

Ranger Profession

Expanding beyond the basics of scouting, players will be able to then advance to scout's elite profession; Ranger.
Rangers will be given additional buildable schematics, skill bonuses and modifiers that enable them to;
1) Construct fortified defenses, huge wooden structures and even whole forts out of chopped lumber.
2) Reduce your likelyhood to "aggro" nearby wild creatures by making yourself seen less threatening to skittish creatures as well as more threatening to predators, drastically reducing your likleyhood of being attacked.
3) Track creatures by their species or other criteria, even players themselves.
4) Eventually even tame wild animals for your benefit.

PVE Comes To Divergence!

It's been a long-awaited feature since our January Early Access Launch and we're very pleased to say that Zero Five Zero will finally see the surface of Rook explode with dynamic life of all types both timid, friendly, inquisitive, and deadly.
Players will be greeted with lifeforms that can trample them, steal their goods, provide food and nourishment or even provide them nightmares in the dark evenings to come on Rook's surface. Players and their friends can now enjoy many more activities that simply gunning down newbies, such as hunting creatures for sport, food, materials, or simply something to run for your life from.

Creatures will come in many sizes, even including a massive boss-style raid requiring the collaboration (and firepower) of potentially dozens of players to "bring down the beast" and gain coveted resources and materials for ultra-rare crafted goods and new quest items.

New Vindicator Tier-2 Armor

Finally Vindicator will be able to quest for Their first upgraded VK suits in Tier-2. These new suits will allow Vindicator players a big boost to agility, rigidity and most importantly, combat power. Forging these suits will require exotic materials and undoubtedly cost many lives in the process, but the rewards for Vindicator players are great.

Theta-Blade Weapons

At long last, our signature weapon the "Theta-Blade" will be making its debut in Divergence: Online.
Theta-Blades, the ancient weapon of the Vindicator, will finally be available to be crafted by both Vindicator, Verrator, and psychic-trained humanoids alike. Crafting these weapons requires devotion and dedication as fabricating a weapon capable of opening a dimensional rift and transporting their blade through space and time during every use is no simple undertaking.

Omicron Factional Armor

Since, up to this point, armor served no practical purpose until other game features were in place, it had long drawn the short straw. However, with Zero Five Zero, armor will finally begin to see its day come in Divergence: Online. Our first set will be Omicron Light Field Armor, craftable by Omicron-aligned Armorsmiths, this armor relies heavily on laminated fibroplast and aluminium layers to provide it superior protection in the field against most kinetic damage. Anyone of any faction is able to equip this armor, although we hope to be able to offer armor-options for all three factions in the near future for our VRTek and DC friends as well!

Factory and Grid improvements

We'll finally be giving factories and grid terminals the love they deserve, creating additional layers of bug prevention that "catch" mishaps before they happen and jam up your sweatshop-running-business on Rook.

Turrets Improved

We're also in the process of allowing defensive turrets to visually track and fire upon enemies, instead of simply dealing damage. They were "better than nothing" before, but now they'll be something you don't have to be embarrassed of! In addition to their damage, players will now be able to craft-into-them increased turning speed based on the quality of materials they put in during crafting.

Additional Feature We're Trying To Fit In

Cybernetics Profession

If things go as planned, we're also planning on adding the Cyberneticist profession, which will finally allow players to craft those combat and military synthetic chassis we've all been so eager to see more of in game. Through cybernetics crafting, finally these guys will be able to create chassis for themselves that actually do have the ability to attack back XD

Doors and Gates

We'd love to be able to offer "actual doors" to players so that people didn't need to resort to "picking up and dropping walls" to get in and out of their property, while keeping others out.

Survival-Style Features

Divergence was always intended to be a game that rewards "survival-style play" without punishing those who simply wish to play it for it's incredible crafting or social aspects, such as dancing. To accomplish this, we've come up with our own new take on survival-style gameplay.
All humanoid players will have a thirst and hunger bar in addition to their existing HAM.
Thirst and hunger will begin to deplete the moment the player enters the world.
When thirst and hunger are controlled, the player receives a "healthy" bonus to stats.
Players also however will only suffer thirst and hunger depletion at a normal rate when outside of a hopper range with a "rest" component.
What's this mean exactly?
While you're "out in the world" hunting creatures, hunting players, doing your thing, you need food and water to survive. While you're at home on your couch, in a friends apartment, dancing in a cantina, or chilling in your castle, your hunger and thirst will deplete at a drastically-reduced rate which can be as low as just 1%, virtually nonexistant.
What we hope to accomplish with this is to allow players to play the game any way they wish, even if that be as a purely non-combative role and not be required to constantly "feed" their "survival-mode" requirements, while simultaneously offering players who do wish to venture out into the wilderness a real sense of survival gameplay.

Tell us what you think on our facebook group page!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/415812755276522/

That about covers it so far! We thank each and everyone one of you who've chipped in to help us make it this far and with your continued support, we've never been more certain that Divergence: Online can be the game we all know it deserves to be.