Poll: Win or Score?

[ncp]

yes RHE, we get it, everything that measures anything is an "invisible" scoring system in your eyes.

Unfortunately that's completely irrelevant and doesn't help the OP at all, and my first post is still correct.

[RHE]

It's mostly visible but not always as a number, but that's not the point anyway. The problem is to mix different kind of scoring systems, which the original poster probably considers. It's like mixing inch and cm, it can make issues.

But its quite arroggant to say it's not helping him at all. You say that winning is all that's matter with a mulitplayer game, but that's the case with all games. You always want to win, so stuff like winning for winning sound strange. It doesn't say anything about what you must do to win.

[Kpiering]

I didn't really go over this is going to be a competitive multi-player game. Think of it as a fighting game but shmup style with two very distinctive forms of play for each player (ie. they are not just tossing bullets at one another). We are trying to come up with ways to dissuade griefing. One of the problems that has come up is that maybe what we consider griefing is a legitimate way of playing when trying to win and is dissuading it with score good enough or is winning all that matters.

Have you seen Senko no Ronde/Wartech?

Yes, this game is something we looked the problem is that it is a fighting game with shmup elements and not a shmup with fighting game elements. It is in our business case of a versus shmup that did not work out so great.

In a multiplayer game, winning is all that matters. You don't see street fighter tournaments based on SCORE, do you?

edit: The only way people are going to care about score in a multiplayer game is if the winner is decided by score.

You are right. Completely.


Thanks for the posts, it really helped push us in the correct direction. The problem was that our game has two completely different styles of gameplay for each player. It is not like a fighting game where everyone plays the same thing with different move sets. The problem was that we discovered that one player could easily leave the other hanging but this would be a legitimate play style even though we saw it as griefing. We thought that maybe scoring would be enough to dissuade this problem but really that was just a bandaid around a larger problem. What we have done after much brain storming and discussion is to rework the mechanics some so that it is no longer a valid way to play.

I really wish I could give more details to make this make sense but at this time I am unable to release specifics about the gameplay.

Thanks everyone, your input was extremely helpful.

[RHE]

The problem was that our game has two completely different styles of gameplay for each player. It is not like a fighting game where everyone plays the same thing with different move sets. The problem was that we discovered that one player could easily leave the other hanging but this would be a legitimate play style even though we saw it as griefing. We thought that maybe scoring would be enough to dissuade this problem but really that was just a bandaid around a larger problem.

Yeah, that's exactly the problem you get by mixing a shmup system with a fighter system, they're like cat and dog in this regards. A shmup with fighter elements but w/o a elaborate scoring system sounds risky but it can work well with the right balancing. Good luck with the game anyhow.

[Elixir]

I ended up writing a bit about this here:

Regarding the whole "scoring vs. survival" stance - I fall into the survival category, but it's not like I can't score, it's just silly things which irritate me about how the scoring is done, to the point where I get discouraged and don't end up wanting to do so. This sort of thing doesn't remind me of a shooting game. It still requires a huge amount of skill, but it's skill of another kind.

I only recently understood this after playing BL Original for quite a bit. The game's easy enough to clear on a single credit, but scoring is a major pain in the ass. I'd go back to 1.5 Original, but even smaller things bug me like the lack of notification between switching shots (which, in itself, is a really stupid scoring system) and how slow bosses feel in comparison to BL. I'd go back to DS.. but then you either have recharging (MBL included), or milking things before they're on the screen in 1.1.

[Kpiering]

I ended up writing a bit about this here:

Regarding the whole "scoring vs. survival" stance - I fall into the survival category, but it's not like I can't score, it's just silly things which irritate me about how the scoring is done, to the point where I get discouraged and don't end up wanting to do so. This sort of thing doesn't remind me of a shooting game. It still requires a huge amount of skill, but it's skill of another kind.

I only recently understood this after playing BL Original for quite a bit. The game's easy enough to clear on a single credit, but scoring is a major pain in the ass. I'd go back to 1.5 Original, but even smaller things bug me like the lack of notification between switching shots (which, in itself, is a really stupid scoring system) and how slow bosses feel in comparison to BL. I'd go back to DS.. but then you either have recharging (MBL included), or milking things before they're on the screen in 1.1.

Comments like that and similar posts of "playing to win until I get good enough" were what pushed us to change the mechanics. Score is for bragging rights, only the top players are going to get the bragging rights and the new players will end up taking easier strategies of play that let them win instead of getting on the highscore board. This made us change the mechanics in such a way that the better players will have the best scoring strategies leading everyone to try to get better with a good score being the bonus.