In Dungeoneering, we have further evidence of what most intelligent RuneScape players have known for years: Jagex is a company with excellent developers who are being hamstrung by an inability to understand what is important to players and to act accordingly.
This skill isn’t a skill, it’s a minigame that uses “experience points” instead of “zeal points” or “pizzazz points”. Some people think this doesn’t matter, but it does. Players waited for over two years for a new skill, and when it arrived, it wasn’t one. That got Dungeoneering off on the wrong foot to begin with.
I think most of that would have been forgiven if the minigame/skill/skinigame/miniskill/whatever had at least been properly balanced and fun. But most players don’t believe it is. I won’t bore you by repeating what you’ve read before many times, about the problems with slow leveling, very confusing and poorly documented features like “prestige”, bugs, XP nerfings, and absolutely idiotically expensive rewards (nobody thought to compare the level requirements to the level you’d be at when you had enough tokens?).
This is not about *what* the problems are with Dungeoneerng, but with why they are at all. And the answer is very simple: a lack of understanding of customers on the part of the development team, and the nonexistence of a beta testing program for RuneScape.
Nearly all software companies use beta testers, because this allows them not only to detect bugs, but to get feedback on new features and content before the software is finalized and released. Jagex, though, seems to think it knows better, and doesn’t need a beta test program. And I’d agree, if they were actually able to put out major releases without it being obvious *every* time that they have serious flaws that could have been easily corrected with a little bit of input from customers.
Just one specific example from this new “skill” would be the problems where you lose progress if you log out. A Jagex employee said in the forums: “‘…after stressing that the ability to save progress was a high priority for our players, our Game Engine Team are currently trying to overcome the issues that are involved.” And to that I say: “Thanks for being responsive, but nearly any experienced player could have told you that this was a ‘high priority’ within 10 minutes of trying out this feature; why didn’t you already know this?”.
I obtained a computer engineering degree in 1989 and I had been programming for nearly 10 years even before that. I know a little bit about what’s involved in this process. An axiom of software development is that the earlier in the process you discover a problem, the easier it is to fix. The best place to find it is during requirements analysis, which is cheaper than finding it during design, then implementation, then various levels of testing. The absolute *worst* time to discover a flaw is after the software has been released.
Dungeoneering is actually a pretty impressive piece of content, and that’s what makes this such a shame. With a little more effort and greater input from players, this could have been something really cool that players would like, and that Jagex could rightly be proud of. Its potential has been wasted due to poor gameplay balance and poor implementation, not to mention the attempt to shoehorn a minigame into a skill and hope nobody would notice.
I’m really not sure why Jagex so stubbornly insists on remaining isolated from its customers when it comes to the development of major features. Maybe they think this is saving them money, but I highly doubt it. In fact, the nonexistence of a beta program is costing everyone. It costs players wasted time and frustration, but it costs Jagex even more, in terms of wasted patches and rework, and time spent dealing with unhappy customers.
I think they know exactly what they are doing with the token rewards, and that Dungeoneering hasn’t been entirely released just yet (think Summoning part 1 and 2). They will probably make an alternative method of getting tokens in future, possibly a reward for a quest to do with it, or something like that (no guarantees, but I don’t think even Jagex would miss that you need 21 dungeoneering for a bonecrusher and 110k tokens, the equivalent of 70-something).
Also, by not making it obvious how to get maximised XP, they are rewarding players who actually think, not just try to rush into a skill without knowing anything. I know I’ll be glad if a greater proportion than about 1/10th of RS actually knows what the new skill is about before going there and then spamming “How do I start” over and over.
I agree completely – there are far too many grind skills that require literally no thinking (and hence are INCREDIBLY) easy to bot. Putting more input that clicking is what separates a good game from a great one.
I actually like Dungeoneering … I’d just like it a lot more if they had designed it the way it should have been, instead of putting it out the way it is now. 5% more effort could have yielded something a lot better.