It's foolish to not include the scoring system in a judgment of a game.

[Halo Fanboy]

-snip-

Perhaps I'm looking at this too much through the lens of a software engineer, but i don't see how you can make the claim that a scoring is truly part of the mechanics.

Isn't the basic rule for scoring in basketball the primary mechanic of that game? Score a basket, get a certain amount of points. The scoring system is the most integral aspect of that game. It is most certainly a mechanic.

It is an objective in basketball, yes but not necessarily the primary objective if ou don't want it to be. You can't win the game without scoring the most points, true. However, your primary objective could then instead be to stop the other team from scoring and play a strong defensive game. The primary objective in basketball is to win the championship. To do so you don't have to have the highest collective score than all the other teams for that season. It is entirely possible for the team with the least amount of scored points a season to win the championship. If this happened, nobody would would feel that the champions didn't earn their trophy and take it from them.

Technically speaking in a game that has a scoring system it is a mechanic of that game. But it may not be an important mechanic. Difficulty level is a mechanic of a game too. But you wouldn't discredit someone who never beat a game on "easy" or "hard". SOme people do but that is kinda douchey as it would be if the Lakers demanded they should get the trophy instead of the champs that year because they scored more overall points.

Preventing others from scoring well is still a mechanic that wouldn't exist without scoring. If we removed all score from that game what would be left?

And even bad players who play on easy have score to deal with, people who ignore score are more people who play Monopoly without any Monopoly money. They can hardly be said to be playing the game at all.

 

[Mittens The Kitten]

i think we should get are terms straight, what exactly do you mean by "score"?

 

[Halo Fanboy]

i think we should get are terms straight, what exactly do you mean by "score"?

Points used to place in leaderboards and win competitions.

snip

It serves the purpose of determining the best players and who wins. Like Go, Basketball, Halo the Olympics.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

Alas, I stand as the lone voice of dissent.

TO be honest, Many people don't care about their scores in games. Yes, they may miss out on some of the things you enjoy, but this does not mean they enjoy trying to get everything perfect. But on to the point that they are integral to the games mechanics. This is a silly notion if you look carefully. To say that a score affects how you play may be true, but is a psychological part of the experience, NOT part of how the game plays. Mechanics are the controls, moves, combos, and everything that the player can do, or is done to the player. The scoring is not completely separate from this, but is only influenced second-hand by the player. It is more akin to gamer-score. People strive to get achievements, but what can they really do with them? Nothing.

Perhaps I'm looking at this too much through the lens of a software engineer, but i don't see how you can make the claim that a scoring is truly part of the mechanics.

Isn't the basic rule for scoring in basketball the primary mechanic of that game? Score a basket, get a certain amount of points. The scoring system is the most integral aspect of that game. It is most certainly a mechanic.

Of some games.

Also, you can play basketball without score. If you're just playing for fun without friends, you don't need to keep score.

I'm not really sure what you're getting at here. You want points added to all games? So, when I'm playing an atmospheric horror game, there's a running point total on the top of the screen? Oh, I saw a monster, 50 points.

I think that would absolutely ruin a good portion of games. It makes sense in Bulletstorm, but Heavy Rain?

 

[Halo Fanboy]

Alas, I stand as the lone voice of dissent.

TO be honest, Many people don't care about their scores in games. Yes, they may miss out on some of the things you enjoy, but this does not mean they enjoy trying to get everything perfect. But on to the point that they are integral to the games mechanics. This is a silly notion if you look carefully. To say that a score affects how you play may be true, but is a psychological part of the experience, NOT part of how the game plays. Mechanics are the controls, moves, combos, and everything that the player can do, or is done to the player. The scoring is not completely separate from this, but is only influenced second-hand by the player. It is more akin to gamer-score. People strive to get achievements, but what can they really do with them? Nothing.

Perhaps I'm looking at this too much through the lens of a software engineer, but i don't see how you can make the claim that a scoring is truly part of the mechanics.

Isn't the basic rule for scoring in basketball the primary mechanic of that game? Score a basket, get a certain amount of points. The scoring system is the most integral aspect of that game. It is most certainly a mechanic.

Of some games.

Also, you can play basketball without score. If you're just playing for fun without friends, you don't need to keep score.

I'm not really sure what you're getting at here. You want points added to all games? So, when I'm playing an atmospheric horror game, there's a running point total on the top of the screen? Oh, I saw a monster, 50 points.

I think that would absolutely ruin a good portion of games. It makes sense in Bulletstorm, but Heavy Rain?

I didn't suggest for more games to have scoring systems. I am suggesting that the scoring system is important to the game.

Funnily enough despite your comment on horror games both Resident Evil and Silent Hill series have had scoring systems.

 

[Halo Fanboy]

i think we should get are terms straight, what exactly do you mean by "score"?

Points used to place in leaderboards and win competitions.

snip

It serves the purpose of determining the best players and who wins. Like Go, Basketball, Halo the Olympics.

See im coming from the point of view of a person who thinks leaderboards are as useless as achievements the scoring does nothing for the game. I play games for fun not to say haha im better then you are you suck or to constantly be checking leaderboards and all that crap. They only matter to people who care about those things, they are not a core gameplay mechanic they are an addon just like achievements.

So the amount of points you get for scoring a basket is pointless? I think we've been over this already.

 

[Great North]

I'd just say: not caring isn't a disagreement, it's WORSE than a disagreement. Saying you are apathetic to something means that, agree or disagree, you don't think this THING is worthy of your thoughts, feelings, actions, w/e.

So yeah.

 

[Halo Fanboy]

So the amount of points you get for scoring a basket is pointless? I think we've been over this already.

Your basketball arguement does not work, I already said that you cant compare apples to oranges. To win in basketball you need to score more points then your opponent, thats not how bulletpoint works. Keeping a score is only integral in things where you are in direct competition with others. How many points your team has in a game basketball is only relevent when your comparing it to the amount of points the team you were playing against. Its a way of determining who wins each game and after that its not important.

In bulletpoint the score is not an integral part of a game, it doesnt decide which team wins because there is only one team. The entire score in bulletstorm is far closer to that of an old arcade game then basketball. In bulletstorm your not really competing against another team your competeting with others against an AI. The only purpose the score does is if you care to compare yourself to how well others do. Its not like your actually in direct competition with them.

Lets take firefight in halo as an example because its extremely close to the one bulletstorm game mode. Unless your into the whole epeen and achievement thing the only purpose of the score is so you can know how far you made it and try to beat your own personal best. Take out the score and its still the exact same game.

Now look at an old arcade game, sure they have scores but the only purpose is to say hey look at how amazing I am at this game. They dont actually do anything its just another thing put in there to try to get people to play more.

The teams are everyone that plays the game. Whether you want to acknowledge it or not you are competing against people simply by playing the game. Just as if you join the Olympics your score is compared the scores of the other participants the only difference is that for game leaderboards it is on a much larger scale.

And if you take out the score mechanics in firefight it would be a dramatically different game. No headshot bonus or combo bonuses, bonus rounds might as well not even exist. Firefight isn't exactly the best scoring game in existence but game is still influenced by specific scoring mechanics and score is the driving behind the mechanic. Just as in CTF the player agency is motivated by the fact that a flag capture scores points.

Video games can be more direct competition like basketball as well as indirect competion like diving, figure skating or gymnastics in the Olympics. Both are competition and if you aren't playing to win or impress the judges you are either playing a simplified version of the game at best or barely even playing the game at all.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

i think we should get are terms straight, what exactly do you mean by "score"?

Points used to place in leaderboards and win competitions.

Leaderboards are pretty much pointless for 99.9% of the players of any game. Only those extremely hardcore players are playing to get a high score on a leaderboard. The reason why almost nobody cares about these leaderboards is because there are those select few people who analyze every single aspect of the game to ridiculous lengths to maximize their score. 99.9% of the players of any game are not going to do that, and if an average or even really good player gets through a level really well in their opinion, they'll take a look at the leaderboard and see that other people have like quadrupled what they thought was an awesome score. No one really plays Donkey Kong to score high (except like Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell), people play Donkey Kong because it's a fun game and they want to get through the levels. Vanquish and Bayonetta were my 2 favorite games of 2010 but I couldn't care less about my score in those games. I know if I'm playing good without knowing my score. If I'm getting through the games levels without much trouble on the hardest difficulty, then I'm playing good. I don't need to see that I'm the best in the world or the 10,000th best player in the world. I played through Bayonetta 4 times because the game is awesome; I never even cared about my score once, my goal is just too look awesome and get through levels without dying. Learderboards are just there for those extremely hardcore players and no one else even cares about them. Therefore, leaderboards should have no effect on the final review score of a game. Leaderboards do not make a game better or worse.

Scoring is not really important in competitions either. People play baseball, basketball, etc. because they LIKE playing those games; they aren't playing those games because of the scoring system. And, really the only important in competitions winning and losing. Score is just there to confirm who won the game in close games. If one team is winning by a lot, score doesn't matter because both teams no who is playing the game better. People play competitive games with the goal of being better at the game than other people, not to score higher.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

Alas, I stand as the lone voice of dissent.

TO be honest, Many people don't care about their scores in games. Yes, they may miss out on some of the things you enjoy, but this does not mean they enjoy trying to get everything perfect. But on to the point that they are integral to the games mechanics. This is a silly notion if you look carefully. To say that a score affects how you play may be true, but is a psychological part of the experience, NOT part of how the game plays. Mechanics are the controls, moves, combos, and everything that the player can do, or is done to the player. The scoring is not completely separate from this, but is only influenced second-hand by the player. It is more akin to gamer-score. People strive to get achievements, but what can they really do with them? Nothing.

Perhaps I'm looking at this too much through the lens of a software engineer, but i don't see how you can make the claim that a scoring is truly part of the mechanics.

Isn't the basic rule for scoring in basketball the primary mechanic of that game? Score a basket, get a certain amount of points. The scoring system is the most integral aspect of that game. It is most certainly a mechanic.

Of some games.

Also, you can play basketball without score. If you're just playing for fun without friends, you don't need to keep score.

I'm not really sure what you're getting at here. You want points added to all games? So, when I'm playing an atmospheric horror game, there's a running point total on the top of the screen? Oh, I saw a monster, 50 points.

I think that would absolutely ruin a good portion of games. It makes sense in Bulletstorm, but Heavy Rain?

I didn't suggest for more games to have scoring systems. I am suggesting that the scoring system is important to the game.

Funnily enough despite your comment on horror games both Resident Evil and Silent Hill series have had scoring systems.

Okay, I think I see what you're saying now. Games that have them should make them more important?

Also, I was referring more to Amnesia than Resident Evil. Regardless, Silent Hill scored you at the end, right? Not constantly updating your score while you played?

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

The scoring in Bulletstorm does have an impact in your amount of in game currency in some modes as far I know. However I don't see how you can say scores can exist for the sake of scores. Might as well say win states and lose states only exist for their own sake. The points in TF CTF exist for the sake of showing who wins and who loses each game, the're there to show you how you're doing and show you how to improve. You can play TF ignoring the points and there by ignoring goal of the game you might as well be as JoshF said using a chessboard to create a neat pattern.

If the patterns indicate perfectly who wins and loses, then what purpose the score? Acceleration of understanding? Memory aid? If you need scoring to keep track of multiple games, you're not talking about a standard game of chess. You're talking about a series, which involves play mechanics outside of the game itself.

Receiving more money qualifies only barely as a legitimate reward. At best, that's delayed gratification; you can't afford something as soon as someone else, so a high score serves the purpose of accelerating your enjoyment. But if the lower scores will unlock the exact same options eventually, there's no real difference. The rewards have to be finite in some fashion so that high scores offer palpably different feedback. If you need a certain aggregate score in the first five stages to see a specific bonus stage, your scoring system is a legitimate mechanic. If you need a certain high score to open up a really awesome gun, that's a legitimate mechanic. If the only purpose of the high score is placement on leaderboards and a sense of personal pride, I think that's a secondary gain that exists outside of the actual game. The value you attribute to such a thing is deeply personal and not inherent.

Maybe part of the problem here is my belief that arbitrary isn't bad.

I agree that a scoring system that forces you to do things that you wouldn't do otherwise becomes much more notable then one where you just do what you would have done anyway. But I would hardly say that simply because a world record track runner didn't use any special mechanics his acheivment is diminished. While a depthful score system is good for some games sometimes it's good to simply measure the prowess of people in one single activity.

To what end, though? If the ends involve changes to the game, scoring is a play mechanic. If the ends are simply the establishment of a social hierarchy, that's secondary.

Anyway as has been said before by me and JoshF: you are free to ignore scoring in games just lke Yahtzee ignores all competetive aspects of games, but you must admit it is an inferior and less complete judgement. It's the reason that there is not one mainstream review of a score based game that is any good.

Certainly inferior to your judgment, for you, anyways. There are other arbitrary aspects of games you probably gloss over in favor of your preferred criteria, and I'm sure a great many people would dismiss your take just as quickly.

I'll put it this way and be done with it, since this was a rather offensive "conversation" and I'm ready to wipe my hands of it: if a game gives the player tangible, in-game reasons to pursue high scores, I think the scoring system has actual meaning. If it's nothing but leaderboard-whoring or ego-tripping, I really can't be bothered. I stopped playing games to see a number go up the moment I played a game where it didn't matter.

 

[Busdriver580]

The points are currency, and it functions as an extremely powerful way to encourage fast paced, aggressive, and creative action. You know? The point of the game.

 

[Halo Fanboy]

Leaderboards are pretty much pointless for 99.9% of the players of any game. Only those extremely hardcore players are playing to get a high score on a leaderboard. The reason why almost nobody cares about these leaderboards is because there are those select few people who analyze every single aspect of the game to ridiculous lengths to maximize their score. 99.9% of the players of any game are not going to do that, and if an average or even really good player gets through a level really well in their opinion, they'll take a look at the leaderboard and see that other people have like quadrupled what they thought was an awesome score. No one really plays Donkey Kong to score high (except like Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell), people play Donkey Kong because it's a fun game and they want to get through the levels. Vanquish and Bayonetta were my 2 favorite games of 2010 but I couldn't care less about my score in those games. I know if I'm playing good without knowing my score. If I'm getting through the games levels without much trouble on the hardest difficulty, then I'm playing good. I don't need to see that I'm the best in the world or the 10,000th best player in the world. I played through Bayonetta 4 times because the game is awesome; I never even cared about my score once, my goal is just too look awesome and get through levels without dying. Learderboards are just there for those extremely hardcore players and no one else even cares about them. Therefore, leaderboards should have no effect on the final review score of a game. Leaderboards do not make a game better or worse.

Scoring is not really important in competitions either. People play baseball, basketball, etc. because they LIKE playing those games; they aren't playing those games because of the scoring system. And, really the only important in competitions winning and losing. Score is just there to confirm who won the game in close games. If one team is winning by a lot, score doesn't matter because both teams no who is playing the game better. People play competitive games with the goal of being better at the game than other people, not to score higher.

Well it seems like your opinion on scoring in games is a little circumstatial to the scoring games you've played recently. Bayonetta is really broken and I started a thread a while ago where I complained about it, Vanquish is OK but I don't really enjoy time attack type of scoring systems, and I don't know much about it personally. It hardly shows a lack of interest in scoring if among your only recent examples is a game with a completely broken system. I think if you were to play a game where the scoring system is more sophisticated like Ikaruga or Dangun Feveron you'll feel a lot more incentive to dabble with those mechanics. I'm not sure if Bulletstorm will have a great system yet, and in order to determine if it does I'll have to figure out what sort of quality true high level play posseses but I think that dismissing criticism of the score system merely because it is a score system is ridiculous. But I think you've misunderstood the gist of what I'm saying. Leaderboards themselves are a useful feature but they are not the vital mechanic of the system. The vital mechanic is the way the game judges your performance.

Also the way it is determined whether a team in a sport is winning or losing is done by measuring their score and their capacity to further score and prevent the other team from scoring. In this case there can not exist winning, losing or good and bad play without the existence of score. So saying score only matters in close games is faulty.

The only difference is that your only competeing if your some hardcore nutjob or are into leaderboards. Not everybody plays a game to compete, and not everybody who plays is competeing. The leaderboards exist only for those people who are into their epeen and like to show off. Take them away and it removes nothing of value from the game.

No, all gamers are competetive and in fact all game play is competetive. To ignore that a comparison can be drawn between the quality of one person skill and another's skill is simply a reaction against wanting to be compared to better players.

Not taking out the score in firefight wouldnt change it for the vast majority of people. They play it because its fun not to stare at an irrelevent number and go haha my number is larger then yours. Tell me what does that headshot or combo bonus actually add to the game other then points. Its not like you wouldnt try to get headshots just because they didnt give you points, you would still go for them since its an easier kill. And removing

The drive behind firefight is to see how long you can survive, how many rounds NOT how high your score is.

The combo bonus adds a layer of complexity to the game by encouraging enemy kills in rapid succession, it adds an element of risk to maximizing your score. Playing to simply stay alive is far less interesting. Playing only to survive is a slightly simplified and thus slighly different game to regular firefight mode since it is clear the actual game is intended to utilize the score systems that the developers implemented.

How about a more straight foward example of a scoring mode: RE4 mercenaries. In order to score well you need to actually put yourself in a prolonged period of danger. So is the correct way to play to ignore all the enemies and time bonuses and to just run away for a few minutes, getting a score of zero?

Are you saying that because I play a game to have fun and dont care about what anybody else that I will never encounter on said game does or how well they do that im barely even playing. Lets take this for example, I enjoy playing nazi zombies on black ops. The fact that some guy who I dont know or care about does better then me does not matter to me because were not competeing against each other. Im not playing to win, not only because you cant win but because I play for fun. Getting the farthest out of anybody or only making it 30 rounds has no effect on me. Leaderboards are only for those who care about that and that is a small 1%.

"Playing to have fun" is a vauge statement. If the statement when applied to Go meant trying to get more points then the other player then you could be said to be playing the game. If your idea of playing for fun is creating a =) pattern on the board then you can hardly be said to be playing the game. Playing a game where you disregard the method to victory or make up your own judgments on the quality of play outside of the game's actual system is essentially playing a different game.

FieryTrainwreck. I'm not sure if I should respond to you if you're not interested in the discussion. The score system in TF is what creates the pattern that indicates the tide of the match. If the flag itself did not have score value along with an absence of any other scoring value then a competition would not even exist. I can't disagree more strongly that mode is only meaningful if baited with unlocks because I find competition meaningfull in itself and see it as the the driving force behind all games.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Well it seems like your opinion on scoring in games is a little circumstatial to the scoring games you've played recently. Bayonetta is really broken and I started a thread a while ago where I complained about it, Vanquish is OK but I don't really enjoy time attack type of scoring systems, and I don't know much about it personally. It hardly shows a lack of interest in scoring if among your only recent examples is a game with a completely broken system. I think if you were to play a game where the scoring system is more sophisticated like Ikaruga or Dangun Feveron you'll feel a lot more incentive to dabble with those mechanics. I'm not sure if Bulletstorm will have a great system yet, and in order to determine if it does I'll have to figure out what sort of quality true high level play posseses but I think that dismissing criticism of the score system merely because it is a score system is ridiculous. But I think you've misunderstood the gist of what I'm saying. Leaderboards themselves are a useful feature but they are not the vital mechanic of the system. The vital mechanic is the way the game judges your performance.

I doesn't matter if Bayonetta's scoring system was broken or not (I'm guessing the Killgore glitch broke it). If the scoring system was perfect, it wouldn't matter as I wouldn't care about it anyways. Only that 0.001% of the gamers that play a game with leaderboards are going to get into the game enough to compete on the leaderboards. Everyone else has no chance because those few gamers analyze every part of every level just to figure out how to maximize their score. Everyone else plays because the game is fun and to get better at the game, not to compete to be #1 or top 10 in the world. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit's Autolog feature was much better than leaderboards, you were competing against other players on your friend's list and not against the world. For the first time ever, I actually did try to beat a friend's time (score) in a video game outside online multiplayer.

Also the way it is determined whether a team in a sport is winning or losing is done by measuring their score and their capacity to further score and prevent the other team from scoring. In this case there can not exist winning, losing or good and bad play without the existence of score. So saying score only matters in close games is faulty.

In every sport, each team knows if they are outplaying or being outplayed without even knowing the score. In football, if you are winning the fight on the line of scrimmage, you are winning the game without even knowing the score. Only in the close games, does score really come into play. Say in basketball that only the referee knew the score, and the players had to play all game without knowing the score. If the game ended up being won by one point, each team would feel they played well. The score then is only there to confirm who the actual winner is since both teams matched up so evenly. In playing in competitive online shooters, I can tell if my team is winning or losing just by how the match is going. If the other team is has the objective point locked down, they are winning. The score only confirms it and shows you how much they won by.

No, all gamers are competetive and in fact all game play is competetive. To ignore that a comparison can be drawn between the quality of one person skill and another's skill is simply a reaction against wanting to be compared to better players.

All gameplay is NOT competitive. Heavy Rain and Shadow of Destiny aren't competitive at all; adventure games are not competitive. And RPGs (sans combat) are not competitive. I will agree that basically every gamer is competitive because even if you aren't killing noobs online, you are competing against the game's enemies. Gamers strive to get better in games that are just single player games all the time. However, in those situations, they aren't competing against people and you don't need scoring because you have death in almost every game. Trying to get through levels without dying or just owning the AI enemies is a kind of competition that doesn't need scoring whatsoever because dying in a game is confirmation of the game beating you, score is not required.

I find competition meaningfull in itself and see it as the the driving force behind all games.

I mostly agree with this statement. Some video games really aren't competitive at all; possibly, by definition, you can consider them to not be a game at all. You don't need scoring whatsoever in a game of competition; you win chess by just winning, not scoring higher and chess is a great game.

 

[Riptide1]

I think i get what your saying... so this is basically a response to people complaining about games whit scoring systems having those scoring systems not being an important part of the games. Right?

Something to keep in mind is that all games in some way have a scoring system, some way of giving out points if you do things right. RPG's give out exp, Racing games usually give out cash to buy new cars, FPS/TPS have multiple things depending on the game exp, cash, or maybe just an in game rating. In most games some form of score is given or rewarded.