Game Mechanics Any point in points?

G

Gedor Games

Guest
Does people really care about points? The expression "Nobody cares about the points" seems to be true for most gamers but GM still have a global varible for points and functions for making a local high score table. I can understand back when arcade games were popular that points was necessary in order to show how good you were at a game and brag about how no one could beat your high score but it just seems like they are not as important anymore.

I remember that the original Mega Man game had points but that they got rid of them in the prequels. I can still see online highscore having some value but I dont honestly think that most people care about a local high score system. Sometimes getting points can mean that you receive extra lives or some other upgrade but to just have them so you can show how far you have gotten or to put your name in a high score list seems a little outdated.

So what do you think? Is it a waste of time to have points and high score in your games or is there a lot of people that still think it is fun to have them?
 
Z

Zeddy

Guest
Depends on what you do with it. If it's just there, being a number it doesn't mean anything to me.

If you have a system where every mission has a score that needs to be beaten to achieve an S-rank, even if the S-rank doesn't do anything on its own, it's a good excuse to play the game some more and achieve mastery in its mechanics. Rankings systems are basically the game developer telling you "Sure, you beat the game. But can you beat it this much?"
 

Phil Strahl

Member
oints are a way that enables players to compare their progress/mastery of a game, like in the old arcade-days; as @Alisa mentioned. If your game is more like that, with very linear progression and simple gameplay, points make sense.

Because (in my experience), the fewer options are present for players to express themselves in a game (e.g. by their play-style, customization, creations, etc.) the more important are points and achievements as a way to separate your play-style from anybody else. For this very reason, my Minesweeper-variant on Steam, Fine Sweeper, keeps score and has a global leaderboard for players to compare themselves to others and players often share screenshots of their rank.

In a wider sense, points are almost always in dissonance with the game-world and can be immersion-breaking, e.g. in RPGs we are accustomed to earning XP, spending AP and guarding our HP but those are all very "gamey", artificial concepts. A lot less immersion breaking is that downed enemies drop money, something the player can use to buy stuff which serves two purposes: a) it makes "sense" in the game, as currency is something inherent to the game-world and its depicted economy, and b) it makes the concept "points" interactive, they at as a resource the player has to manage and consider in their strategic planning.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
I don't really CARE about points, but they're an easy way to provide a sense of accomplishment and/or progress, and a feeling of being rewarded. Mario games has had score since the first game and onwards, even though they stopped keeping track of a highscore after the second game (The Lost Levels in the West). The 4-player games has score being a game mechanic in that the player that contributed the most points get to wear a crown for the next level (that other players can steal from them), but other than that they don't really do anything with the points... it just feels nice to have a "1000" pop up whenever you nab a mushroom, or combo enemies with a shell to get a bunch of sequentially higher numbers show up. Score itself isn't used at all, but the act of collecting score is a way to reward the player for doing well in the game... in the end, you wouldn't care about your total score, but each increment to it is hard to not enjoy.

Further reading: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PinballScoring
 

Roa

Member
Points are the product of a bygone age. Back when memory was limited and games were simpler, it was often very hard to make a definitive goal that could be recognized to players. The simplest representation is counting a number based on the actions and achievements you accomplish. Most arcade games were self contained and simple in scope, so the score system not only represented achievement with minimal effort, but also allowed you to directly compare your skill and knowledge of a game simply based on a number.

Make the highscore table on a game used to be a tremendous achievement, but because it has lost that localized community behind it, scores dont do much aside from allow you to measure your own mastery as mentioned by @Zeddy .


With that said, there is still a lot you can do with them. I personally like points in games like timesplitters which by getting score on levels, each teir unlocks a new playable character or cheat code.
 
G

Gedor Games

Guest
I understand that in certain types of games the score is everything, a pinball game for example where the goal is get as much points as you can before dying. So I guess a scoring system that gives the player something in return if forms of different kinds of rewards seems more like the way to go. I also understand that scoring points can be satisfying when you see numbers pop up whenever you defeats enemies, bosses, destroy things and clear levels, I dont mind points but it is not like I care what my final score for a game is, I just wanna beat it ;)
I am actually using points and high score in my game but since it is for the most part a brick breaker game I think it is ok, besides you get extra lives and I am planning to make the ball grow stronger the higher your score is, so the score serves some other purpose.

Speaking of points I just got an idea on something I can add to my game to make it look a little better.
 
My opinion, a lot of the time I don't really pay attention to score, but depending on the type of game, it's always nice to have it there. I say, if it's easy to add and not too intrusive, go for it! Once I get off my lazy butt and actually get working on it, I'm planning on adding points to my platfromer game (inspired by the Ghosts n Goblins series). Is it needed? Not at all. But I like it!
 
F

Fodderbot

Guest
Points by any other name.....

Hi Gendor,

In today's gaming world there are a lot of ways to gain "Points". We just don't call them points anymore and we may not refer to them as a "high-score" but they do exist and so the mechanic itself of "comparative status" is alive and well and going strong. Most people depending on your target market love to compete and they do it in a verity of ways. Some may love the thrill being more socially ept in games and strive to attain rank and position in clans or other social ranking systems. Others may thrive on obtaining the best looking gear in the games so they can strut around and show off their swag. Still others delve into the game and base their success in how many places they have been and how much of the map they have revealed in the game-world. While others its all about min-maxing their characters and success is having the best stats and the most efficient kills. Don't forget about money, or acquired skill levels, or achievements, or levels or...

In today's more complex games we have the ability to deliver the mechanic, and fun, pleasing, play to a variety of player and personality types in a way that they enjoy personally, without the need to simplify it to an abstraction that is confining and immersion breaking.

That being said, for a simple phone game played on a bus or while taking a break for 10 minutes it might be just the ticket.
It's funny how you can change the players enjoyment by just renaming something like points to something that fits into the aesthetic of the game world, thus improving immersion.

Cardinal Rules: Consider your target audience, Consider your target platform, Try to understand your players motivations and expectations. Design around your esthetic.

If your interested, there is a really good book that discusses player types, their psychologies and how they interact. It is called "Designing Virtual Worlds" by Richard Bartle (ISBN 0-131-01816-7). Check it out if you would like to explore deeper.

You will eventually be able to abstract from the personalities to the game mechanics that motivate and please them for any particular style of game.
 
G

Gedor Games

Guest
Points by any other name.....

Hi Gendor,

In today's gaming world there are a lot of ways to gain "Points". We just don't call them points anymore and we may not refer to them as a "high-score" but they do exist and so the mechanic itself of "comparative status" is alive and well and going strong. Most people depending on your target market love to compete and they do it in a verity of ways. Some may love the thrill being more socially ept in games and strive to attain rank and position in clans or other social ranking systems. Others may thrive on obtaining the best looking gear in the games so they can strut around and show off their swag. Still others delve into the game and base their success in how many places they have been and how much of the map they have revealed in the game-world. While others its all about min-maxing their characters and success is having the best stats and the most efficient kills. Don't forget about money, or acquired skill levels, or achievements, or levels or...

In today's more complex games we have the ability to deliver the mechanic, and fun, pleasing, play to a variety of player and personality types in a way that they enjoy personally, without the need to simplify it to an abstraction that is confining and immersion breaking.

That being said, for a simple phone game played on a bus or while taking a break for 10 minutes it might be just the ticket.
It's funny how you can change the players enjoyment by just renaming something like points to something that fits into the aesthetic of the game world, thus improving immersion.

Cardinal Rules: Consider your target audience, Consider your target platform, Try to understand your players motivations and expectations. Design around your esthetic.

If your interested, there is a really good book that discusses player types, their psychologies and how they interact. It is called "Designing Virtual Worlds" by Richard Bartle (ISBN 0-131-01816-7). Check it out if you would like to explore deeper.

You will eventually be able to abstract from the personalities to the game mechanics that motivate and please them for any particular style of game.
Interesting, so I guess points and score is still very active in games but for the most part they are called something else. It seems like most modern games have achivements and trophies which I guess is a substitute for points. Even if the rewards for those usally are kind of boring (like getting pictures :() I usually try to complete them all since I am one of those gamers who likes to beat games with 100 percent completion.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Maybe scores has changed from being a possibly infinite number towards being a finite number you can reach if you try hard enough? I wonder if that's because there's more perfectionists nowadays or because people has lowered their ambition ceiling from "the sky's the llimit" to "EXACTLY good enough to be accepted socially"...
 

Khao

Member
I feel like score systems work best on simple "casual" games. They got rid of the scoring system in Mega Man not because points are inherently bad, but because they don't fit the game. You don't care about score in Mega Man because the game already has goals. It already has challenges to overcome. You won't be thinking "Oh, boy, I'm just 100 points under the highscore, I must keep playing!", you'll be thinking "Oh 💩💩💩💩 oh 💩💩💩💩 Boss Man only has four hitpoints left but I'm just about to die I must not get hit what is this". You're not trying to get as far as possible, you're trying to get to the end.

Now, what if Mega Man didn't have an end goal? What if Mega Man stages were infinite? Procedurally generated levels, random bosses, all that kind of stuff. Score now easily works as the way to track your progress. Sure, score is not the only way to track progress, for example rogue-likes are more into rewarding you with upgrades and things to keep you alive, making you more and more powerful. But if the game is built around it, you'll hardly care about anything else. Though if you're using it, you'll probably have to make sure that it's the way of tracking your progress, as other things will just distract you from it. Like, how many people care about their score in Tetris when compared to the people who care about the level they managed to reach? Even in the example of an infinite Mega Man, people might say "I must beat one more boss than last time!" instead of focusing on scoring, which would instantly make scoring worthless. But if instead of that, you have something like Snake, it's hard to care about anything besides your score, because it's the only way to know how far you've gotten and ultimately, the whole freaking point.
 
I've been toying with the idea of using points to also double as a currency of some sort, so that there's at least some other purpose to it. We'll see though.
 
O

Otyugra

Guest
Points should stay in Game Maker but should not be encouraged in a normal situation for commercial games. Points being so front and center in D&D inspired many people to make their first game like an arcade game, with points as a big theme. I think new users need that to ground them in easy simple game ideas to help them learn the deeply complex and long journey that is making a quality videogame. Without stuff like that, new users' imaginations would go wild with endless possibility. The hope is that people later grow out of it and realize that points are just a stand in for objective or side objectives, and realize most games don't work best with points at the center.
 

RangerX

Member
Points are totally relevant. Your perception of what they are or the name they take in your game at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Points are everywhere in games and always will be.

- Score in sports
- Currency
- Statistics

RPGS are using points for a truckload of stuff. Currency is almost in any game. Anything numbers, you call this points of not --- its the same thing. And its damn useful to make comparison, to track stuff, to calculate stuff, to demonstrate progress for certain things, etc. If there's something that is still relevant and will forever be, its points! ;)
 
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