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TruthScape.com 9 TruthScape Special Reports - RuneScape News and Reviews 9 TruthScape Special Reports - Dueling Tournaments - Not Ready for Prime Time |
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Dueling Tournaments - Rules and Options
As I mentioned in the overview, I think that the wide variety of different types of rules in tournaments is one of the strengths of the system. Whenever I used to go to the duel arena in a staking world before, I usually left bored—how can there be any strategy or thinking involved in a duel when I am naked except for a dagger and all options are turned off? I think it is much better that players are forced to make choices about weapons and armor, and must plan out how best to use their limited spec bar and inventory space.
Here again, though, there are a number of flaws that really make the whole process annoying. They need to be fixed before this system will have broad appeal. Here are a few of the most important ones.
In part because of the ridiculous minimum numbers of players required to set up a new tournament, there is often only one tournament at a given skill level running anywhere in RuneScape. If you don’t like the rules offered, too bad—you’ll either have to stand around waiting, or leave and come back later.
In particular, the current system really is unusable for single combat type specialists. If you’re mainly someone who likes to do ranged-only duels or ones with armor off, you can easily wait over an hour between duels, and sometimes longer.
Having more tournaments going in more worlds would help, but even there, the need to world hop all the time is far from ideal.
There is no way for a group of players to set up a tournament using a custom set of rules. This is an unfortunate restriction that really reduces how much interest people have in the minigame. For example, the game will occasionally randomly choose a tourney that is mage only, ranged only or melee only, but never one with, say, ranged and magic (and no melee). So if you like that style, too bad.
Similarly, there is no way to specify that you want some types of armor on and some off.
There’s a reason why nearly all stakers fight with food turned off: it makes duels boring, tedious and expensive. Despite this, at least one third and possibly as many as one half of the tournaments have food on. This does nothing but waste a lot of time and money.
Again, if the developers actually spent some time staking they’d already know this.
A more minor but still odd issue is that, for example, strawberry baskets aren’t considered food by this system. (Tell that to the ghasts in Mort Myre, would you! J)
The rules chosen by the game seem random but they aren’t; it appears that there are a number of preset combinations that the system uses. It either cycles through them in a sequence or chooses them randomly. Most of these seem to at least make a certain amount of sense—the over-emphasis on food notwithstanding—but some are just plain wacky.
For example, it is rather common to be put into a melee-only duel with obstacles turned on. Um, why? J The only people who take advantage of this are fools who try to run all over the place just to annoy their opponents. In contrast, I cannot ever recall being put into a tourney where obstacles were turned on with all three combat styles, where it actually would have relevance in terms of choosing combat strategies.
Another problem relates to the use of poison in tournaments. There are many tournaments where potions are turned off, magic is disabled and there is no healing between rounds. This means that you can beat your first opponent solidly, but if he gets in one lucky DDS hit, you’re poisoned for the remainder of the tournament. People frequently die of poison in the waiting room between rounds!
When Jagex announced dueling tournaments, the company mentioned that you can win up to 64 million gold in a tourney, if you have a 64-player contest with a stake of 1 million. Many players got quite excited about this, assuming that this would be a frequent occurrence. I have even seen some people claim that because “you can win up to 64 million”, the tournament system is a viable replacement for the now-destroyed single player staking.
In practice, though, this “up to 64 million” ends up being similar to other cases where companies promise that you can get “up to” some number—most of the time the number is far less. Even leaving aside the very small chances of actually beating 8 opponents in a row to win, the reality is that most tournaments—even rank 4 ones—do not have the 1 million gold stake that would be necessary to win 64 million.
In fact, in all the hours I spent at the arena, I saw a 1 million stake tournament exactly once, and in a couple of other cases I saw stakes of 400k or 800k. Most of the time, though, the stakes even in rank 4 are in the 5,000 to 10,000 range (Figure 56). Hardly big money, and certainly no replacement for single player staking. And for Registrar 3, there is never any chance of winning more than around 1 million.
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