Dungeoneering: a case study

**Note: this was written before the Evolution of Combat update.  The "90+ f2p combat" penalty no longer exists, but this is kept for historical purposes.**

The expression "you can't please everyone" and its class of small variations has perhaps just as much application to gaming as to real life issues.  Consider, for example, the skill Dungeoneering, comparatively with the skills predating it.  Visiting any world at any place with a sufficient gathering of people and conducting a quick search will undoubtedly yield a substantial subset who are disgruntled with this latest skill.  They will provide different reasons for their displeasure, claiming either it is not a skill, or it is too slow to train.  Rather than strongly arguing for one side or another, this article seeks to uncover "the good, the bad, and the ugly" things about Dungeoneering.

Single-spot and isolated training.  Almost any previous skill can be trained in a multitude of locations-consider rocks to mine or trees to cut, for example.  A skill like Magic is completely location-independent, as players can and have trained it by repeated casts of the spell High Alchemy virtually everywhere.  However, Dungeoneering must be trained in the dungeons of Daemonheim, and no where else (aside from some one-time bonus rewards).  Furthermore, although it seems fair to argue that every skill is needed to train Dungeoneering, it seems that (excluding rewards) no skill requires Dungeoneering to train it.

Beginner-unfriendly training.  One can imagine the frustration felt by a beginner to the Dungeoneering skill-to facilitate understanding this, I have included a short video of what happens in a beginner's dungeon, if they were to repeat a floor on Complexity 1 (the size could unfortunately not be altered; click the pop-out button for full-screen mode).  After the skill corners bewildered newbies into Complexity 1 and having a completely irrelevant "Guide Mode" forced on them, as well as alien-named armor, weapons, and food, they are subsequently presented with the "winterface."  In this interface, players are confronted with a barrage of numbers, which somehow ultimately determine their total XP.  Although these numbers are each a simple concept and easily understood and even predicted to some extent, a new player is completely overwhelmed, especially with a majority taking away their XP even though the decisions, such as "Complexity 1" and "Guide Mode" were out of their control.  Although there is a one-off bonus in XP for completing each complexity for the first time, it is not what initially draws the player's attention.

The f2p "90+ combat penalty."  Shortly after releasing Dungeoneering, Jagex realized that the lower floors, which are much less xp than the higher floors (see figure), could be completed and cleared "out of the way" much faster by members on an f2p world than by the same players on their own p2p worlds.  This left presumably a few solutions: decrease the difficulty of p2p dungeons for those floors or decrease the rewards for f2p dungeons; Jagex chose the latter option and supposedly chopped XP in half for f2p players above 90 combat, claiming 95% would be unaffected [1].  The dependence of an XP reward prior to this update is unknown due to its short timespan, but the post-update dependence for a few dungeons is sketched below and is more complicated than they indicated.

A graph of prestige controlled for a few variables against the average combat level of the party.  It is suspected that the change in convexity at the endpoints is due to the nature of the cubic regression rather then the behavior of Dungeoneering XP at these extremes.

Image © Arceus 2011.

A graph of XP awarded for an arbitrary floor plotted against the projected XP for Floor 35, assuming this floor has not already been completed and one has "Prestige 35."  It is unknown if converting to reduced variables (Floor => Floor/Prestige) yields the same curve for different prestige.  This works for ANY dungeon under the above restrictions.

Image © Arceus 2011.

This average combat penalty has effectively been neutralized by bringing along three players with combat level 3, bringing the party's average combat level down to about 50.  And in addition, coordination among two high level players responsible for the majority of keying and opening doors is far easier than among five of them.  Thus one wonders if the infamous penalty actually affected XP rates substantially or was merely a nuisance.

Cooperation-requisite training.  In training most skills cooperation is anything but requisite.  Indeed, many skills are competitive for resources, meaning a higher density of people yields lower XP.  Furthermore, in general, other people's opinions have limited or no influence on the efficacy of your training-players can and will swear and flame all they want without penalty.  The game engine will not retaliate and give fewer logs from the same tree, for example.  Dungeoneering differs since there are up to four other people who all must be willing to train together.

Difference from previous skills.  Dungeoneering differs from most previously released skills in that it is a "net zero."  Nothing is taken in, and nothing comes out.  Although rewards are given, they are all untradable, so some players argue it is a minigame instead of a skill.  Cooperation among multiple players becomes a necessity for fast experience.  Furthermore, although there is some grinding, it is completely different from other skills.  If one considers a skill like Mining or Agility with the goal of gaining some experience as quickly as possible, the method is to travel to a designated spot and not move around much.  In contrast, Dungeoneering requires a conscious effort to keep track of keys and respond to different situations by offering a degree of randomness.  Although it was probably not the initial intention, these factors outlined above also increase difficulty and decrease efficacy of botting this skill-although without a profit motive, it is difficult to imagine many players doing so.

Expensive rewards.  Many players claim that the rewards are expensive-such as "chaotic" weapons in p2p, requiring 200,000 tokens to purchase [1], requiring an amount of experience equivalent to level 80 in the skill.  However, there is room for disagreement-if they were cheaper, everyone would be using one, and they would become as devalued a rune scimitar.

These are some of the factors that have made players dissatisfied with the Dungeoneering skill in general.  Rectifying these problems would require a colossal effort, a lot of programming, and overhauling the whole skill.  Anyone is free to suggest ways in which the skill could have been more successful from the outset, but at this point, it is not unreasonable to say we are stuck with it.

References:

[1] "Dungeoneering rewards.”  N.p., n.d. Web.  10 November 2011.