I’ve got a game where the basic idea is to survive waves of enemies. Taking out enemies earns you cash, which you can use to buy upgrades (which will be important as the waves get harder).
I’m a big fan of Bloons TD 5, which has no score — just cash. If you complete all the rounds, you get a medal based on the difficulty level you chose.
Similarly, Plants vs. Zombies (another game I poured a lot of hours into) has only cash, no score.
So these successful examples tell me I shouldn’t have a score. But somehow it’s hard to let go. I imagine people wanting leaderboards and bragging rights, and those are much harder without some sort of numeric measure of your awesomeness.
Perhaps a good set of trophies/achievements makes up for the lack of score and leaderboards?
What are the game design considerations when making this core decision?
do you increase your score and money by taking out enemies?
why couldn’t you get rid of the money, and sacrifice some of your score for better weapons.
why couldn’t you get rid of the score, and let money be all that matters?
maybe score could be a hidden value that is a cumulative tally on the money you’ve made? or even your current method for getting score. does score have a useful function?
god of war. you have red orbs. they could be called money, exp or score, but you still spend em to upgrade
I would say these successful examples tell you that you don’t need one, not that you “shouldn’t” have one.
If that wasn’t obvious, I prefer the idea of a score, partially for the reasons you described and also because it’s a great way to play against yourself–to try to get better scores simply for yourself. You could even go a step further and tie a rating system to it like the Sonic series does.
As for design considerations, it sounds simple but make sure the score reflects skill. Such as, higher points for taking out an enemy sooner, and also for targeting certain places (though you may avoid this if you go with the kid-friendly humanoid shapes you talked about in your other thread, because targeting the head might seem a little grisly in such a situation). You might have separate score elements for how long the player is in a wave, how long an enemy has been “alive,” where on the enemy the player hits, whether or not they use consumables or some other thing, perhaps a modifier based on upgrade level (so you get higher scores with lower upgrades). Balance is important here.
This is an aside, and it’s merely a question because I don’t know the answer. But should the arrow be on the other (left) side of the bow? Otherwise how are you notching it?
You could combine the score and cash into one metric (which would be harder to balance). The idea being that each round rewards you with a proportionate amount of cash. This cash can be used to purchase upgrades that make the progression easier, but a ‘hard mode’ would be to purchase as few upgrades as possible.
From an emergence standpoint, the person who got the furthest with the fewest upgrades would have the highest cash balance, and thus score.
Even without a definite ‘score’ metric, players with a disposition towards high scores will find a way to grade it. For example, in the original Ultima Online, one design tool intended to counteract player killing was a bounty system that built up based on the number of players killed. Inevitably, this became a high score chart for people who enjoyed killing other player characters.
A more recent example that comes to mind in citybuilding games like Anno and Surviving Mars is population levels dictating a sort of scoring metric. The more people you’re able to support, the better you’re doing overall. In Stardew Valley, the subreddit is filled with players who grade themselves based on cash per day from crops, or maximum crop yields per season. Point is, I don’t think you need a solid ‘score’ metric, unless that’s what your game is all about. Players will find a way to score themselves.
Alternatively, if you want to keep the two metrics, you could have remaining cash act as a multiplier for per-round scores. So spending nothing on upgrades gives you a 1.5x bonus to the round score, but spending all your money on upgrades would give you the flat 1x rate.
Yes, that’s why I’m hesitating despite examples from games I love and respect that seem fine without a score.
Since this is a shooting game, another idea is to display an accuracy (% hits/shots) at the end of each round and at the end of the game. This gives you another way to measure your skill, and also discourages spamming shots.
Yeah, I don’t think I’d want to punish people’s score for using the upgrades. Though if we have an achievement system, I could certainly see achievements for not using certain upgrades (in various combinations).
My concern about having score depend on so many (mostly hidden) variables is, will players understand it? If it’s hard to explain or perceive, it may end up seeing like just an arbitrary number.
For a right-handed (or lefty shooting right-handed) shooter, the arrow should be on the right… but the whole bow should be right in front of the camera, which is obviously problematic for a game. So I just shoved it over to the side. I need to think about how best to represent this (and maybe look more carefully at other archery games to see if there’s a standard).
Personally I don’t like it so far to the side. Check out videos of Farcry 3, 4, 5, and Farcry Primal. I think that’s closer to a “consensus”. Skyrim is probably worth looking at too. And maaaybe Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, but that’s fairly old.
I like the accuracy idea. And it’s very intuitive.
And for the score, you don’t necessarily have to make it super complex like that. Additionally, if you do, you could have (again, like Sonic) a tally screen at the end where you show the different factors, the score for each one, and the total score as well.
And yeah, the arrow makes sense now. If you keep it like it is you might have the reload animation have it move to the center of the screen or something to indicate that you’re not using a third arm to notch the arrow :P. Just a consideration.
Personally I’ve never cared for “score” in any game. This has also lead me to ask if I should even bother with scores & leaderboards & whatnot, and if people would complain if a game didn’t have these things, because I can’t be the only one who is just indifferent towards them.
At the end of the day though, it probably is something that a decent amount of people at least would want to see in a game, and it’s not really a hard thing to implement, just a bit more time consuming.
But if the result is that it will appeal to more potential players, then I guess that’s a good enough reason to add it in.
Edit: I should mention actually that I do find it interesting how Subset Games implemented their score system with their new game, “Into the Breach”.
Instead of just calling it “score” and leaving it as some arbitrary number of “how well you played”, the score is actually the number of civilans you save, which gives a more meaningful value to this number.
You didn’t just beat the game and get 30000 points, you beat the game and saved 30000 lives.
It really adds a greater impact, in my opinion.
Maybe beyond the scope of a game like this, but what keeps me invested in games is working towards something that is going to expand on gameplay. So if by grinding I can unlock a new weapon that will change the way the game is played (if only slightly), I will grind for that new weapon.
My two longest played games is Dark Souls and theHunter. Both of these games feature core gameplay that is interesting and has a lot of depth, but what keeps me playing them over and over is working to unlock new weapons/perks that give me new ways to play the game. For instance, in Dark Souls you do a full playthrough with the longsword, and then you want to try out the game with the falchion, then the spear, then magic, etc. In theHunter, I grinded for probably a hundred hours to unlock 12 gauge slugs and a pump shotgun, just because I thought that would be great for bear hunting. Sure enough, the difference between using a rifle versus a shotgun makes the gameplay very different. (shotgun requiring a lot more patience and careful aiming)
The key here is that the core gameplay has to be interesting and have enough depth that slight modifications make me think, “oh, but what if I could play it like this.”
In the case of an archery game , I think different bows and arrows that have different flight path characteristics gives you tons of options. Like the higher tier weapons will shoot faster, but of course there has to be some trade off so that nothing becomes obsolete, you just get more options. And the higher tier options would usually be a way to play that requires more skill, actually. The first thought is rate of fire versus damage, but i think with some brainstorming you can come up with more interesting variations. Like field of view restriction with a faster, harder hitting arrow. Bigger field of view with rapid firing bow. Then when you mix arrows with different properties with bows that have different properties, you are multiplying gameplay choices by a lot!
All that said, the main point is that I have no interest in arbitrary numbers beyond a measure for bragging rights.
(by the way, love the little minions you decided on. I imagine them saying “ooga booga”)
Perhaps so. In this case I think I may put it out to early testers without it, and see if people start clamoring for it. If they do, as you say, it’s easy to add.
Yes, that’s a great point. In Bloons TD5, you start out with a limited selection of towers and upgrades, and unlock more through gameplay. Of course I unlocked everything there is to unlock ages ago, and still enjoy playing, so that’s not the only draw.
There’s something of a tension though between things you purchase during the course of a single game, and things you unlock over the course of multiple plays. I guess we could (again like Bloons) simply have some items or upgrades initially locked, such that you can’t buy them for any amount of money. When you accumulate enough related XP or achieve some related milestone, then it unlocks and you can buy it any time after that.
My worry here is that that stuff might be part of the interest in the game. So by locking them initially, you’re giving players a less interesting game, and asking them to stick with it until it gets more interesting later.
So maybe a better idea would be, as you said, things that don’t necessarily make you better, but make the game different. Changes with trade-offs (as you said). A crossbow with a very slow load time, but it shoots straight through whatever you point it at. Or perhaps you can unlock a platform in the middle of the field, so instead of standing on one side and shooting things as they get close, you are in the thick of it, shooting things all around you.
In my opinion, if the rounds are endless then i’d say score would be great , but if there’s limited amount of rounds, like you survive 10 rounds and win the game then no score.
Btw, i haven’t read the replies only main post so forgive me if this is already suggested.
