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Dueling Tournaments - Issues with Duel Mechanics TruthScape Special Reports - Understanding and Surviving the RuneScape Market Crash of 2007

I’m sure that some people will read this review and say to themselves, “there goes Qeltar, ragging on Jagex again, why doesn’t he ever have anything nice to say?” The truth, though, is that I have liked most of the new features I have reviewed here; my articles on the godsword and Ourania Runecrafting Altar were very positive, and I also mostly like the Assist System despite its problems. But this one, I’m afraid, gets a solid failing grade (or at the very least, an “incomplete”).

It’s to be expected that new features will have the occasional bug or flaw; something that wasn’t foreseen or that got overlooked. Hey, we’re all human. In fact, when the tournaments were first released and nobody could enter one, that didn’t bother me, as it is was just a little temporary glitch. But the problems here go far beyond that. Simply put, this system is a great idea that was ruined by developers who clearly knew little about staking, QA people who obviously have no idea of how RS players can exploit flaws, and managers who clearly were in a rush and approved the release of a feature that wasn’t ready.

For players, my recommendations are simple. If you are not very high level, then do not bother with the dueling tournaments unless you enjoy them for fun and do not care about wasting a lot of time and money. If you you are lower level and do want to try some tournaments, avoid ones with food as they will drain your bank account and are the only ones where the silly tie-breaker comes into play. If you are very high level and have great equipment, then you have a chance to win some tournaments.

For Jagex, I have some specific recommendations in the next section for cleaning up this feature. My more general recommendation is to overhaul the QA system, because right now it doesn’t work. Nearly every feature that is released has major flaws—not mere bugs but design flaws and exploits that reflect a lack of understanding of players.

In particular, Jagex’s refusal to have any sort of beta test program is glaring in releases like this one; even one hour with a handful of high level players during the design phase would have eliminated much of this mess. If Jagex doesn’t want to put together a beta program, then hire some people who actually play a lot to act as alpha testers. One way or the other, something obviously needs to be done.

I outlined a number of problems in this article, and most of them have a variety of different possible solutions. Here’s a quick list of some options that I and others have come up with:

• Get rid of the annoying requirement to have a certain number of people in the waiting area before opening a tournament.
  
  
• Don’t cancel tournaments once they have started unless it gets down to the start and there’s only one player left.
  
  
• Provide some sort of information display that lets people see what tournaments are running on other worlds so they don’t waste so much time world hopping.
  
  
• Reduce the time between games from 10 minutes to 5 minutes. Alternately, keep the time at 10 minutes, double the number of registrars and stagger the start times.
  
  
• Eliminate random events for people who are enrolled in a tournament, once they get within 3 minutes of it starting.
  
  
• Make more ranking ranges and registrars; four is not enough.
  
  
• Equalize the ranges better so there is a better match of opponents in the tournaments, unlike the current situation where players from 0 to 1,700 are all lumped together.
  
  
• Spread out the default start rankings so that there is no possibility of high-level players starting out by winning low-level tournaments.
  
  
• Adjust the ranking system so that how much you go up or down in rank is based on both combat level and current ranking.
  
  
• Implement minimum rankings for each player based on combat level, to prevent abusive high-level players from throwing matches just to lower their ranks to get into low-rank games. For example, make it so a player over combat level 100 cannot have a rank below 1,701 (though again, I think the ranking system needs to be more fundamentally changed anyway).
  
  
• Change the reward system so that while the winner gets most of the pot, those who win matches or at least get close to the win get some tangible reward; the current “winner take all” system is unfair. For example, make it so the winner gets 60%, second place 25%, third place 10% and fourth place 5%. Or, reward 1% of the total money for each win by each player, with the rest given to the ultimate winner. There are plenty of other schemes that would also be fair.
  
  
• Match increases in ranking points to the amount of money won.
  
  
• Make it so you cannot be bumped out of your current ranking range unless you win a tournament.
  
  
• Increase the range of rule options by expanding the number of games available and/or the number of registrars.
  
  
• Implement a player rules option if possible.
  
  
• Reduce the percentage of food-enabled tournaments.
  
  
• Get rid of silly rule combos like melee-only with obstacles, and substitute in ones like all-combat-types with obstacles.
  
  
• Increase stakes, especially in higher-rank tournaments, and again, make it so you get some financial reward for doing well even if you don’t win.
  
  
• Cure poison between rounds, even if healing between rounds is turned off. Alternately, get rid of tournaments that have all three of magic, potions and healing between rounds turned off; at least there’s some strategy involved.
  
  
• Restore the special bar between duels or at least make it an option.
  
  
• Replace the current ludicrous “percentage of health remaining” tie-breaker with one based on total damage done by each player.

I hope Jagex will consider at least a few of these, or implement other alternatives that will allow the dueling tournament system to live up to its considerable potential.

Dueling Tournaments - Issues with Duel Mechanics TruthScape Special Reports - Understanding and Surviving the RuneScape Market Crash of 2007