Sure, let's have this discussion [again]. How should score be calculated? I believe right now it's simply based on player experience, which I think we all can agree is kind of silly.
Here's my suggestion: you should receive points when you do things that are difficult, when you win the game, and for making progress. Say, for example:
* You gain a point each time you reach a new depth for the first time.
* When you kill a unique, you gain a point if the unique is significantly out of depth for your character. Exact formula to be determined later.
* When you win, you gain 100 points.
That list is a little thin, so suggestions are welcome for accomplishments that are a) difficult, b) non-repeatable (no grinding for score!), c) not dependent on race/class/details of level generation, and d) reasonably easy to measure. Oh, and the reason for the "progression" score is to give players who don't win something to work towards. Obviously that portion of the score is going to be relatively easy for veterans to rack up, but they should be planning on winning anyway.
Then we can apply multipliers to your score based on the constraints you were operating under:
* Forced descent multiplies your score by 1.1
* No-artifacts multiplies your score by 1.3
* Playing as a half-troll multiplies your score by .9
* Playing as a mage multiplies your score by 1.15
* And so on and so forth.
The ideal goal is that your highest-scoring characters should be the ones that you made the most progress with under the most difficult conditions. One nice side-benefit of this is that we can display the score multipliers in-game and thus guide new players about what "game modes" are easy vs. difficult. We can also consider doing away with experience penalties (maybe keep humans as leveling relatively quickly, and then move everyone else to the same experience rate).
As a personal preference, I would like to keep the highest scores under 1,000. When you have huge numbers, it becomes difficult to see what impact any one accomplishment had on your score.
Here's my suggestion: you should receive points when you do things that are difficult, when you win the game, and for making progress. Say, for example:
* You gain a point each time you reach a new depth for the first time.
* When you kill a unique, you gain a point if the unique is significantly out of depth for your character. Exact formula to be determined later.
* When you win, you gain 100 points.
That list is a little thin, so suggestions are welcome for accomplishments that are a) difficult, b) non-repeatable (no grinding for score!), c) not dependent on race/class/details of level generation, and d) reasonably easy to measure. Oh, and the reason for the "progression" score is to give players who don't win something to work towards. Obviously that portion of the score is going to be relatively easy for veterans to rack up, but they should be planning on winning anyway.
Then we can apply multipliers to your score based on the constraints you were operating under:
* Forced descent multiplies your score by 1.1
* No-artifacts multiplies your score by 1.3
* Playing as a half-troll multiplies your score by .9
* Playing as a mage multiplies your score by 1.15
* And so on and so forth.
The ideal goal is that your highest-scoring characters should be the ones that you made the most progress with under the most difficult conditions. One nice side-benefit of this is that we can display the score multipliers in-game and thus guide new players about what "game modes" are easy vs. difficult. We can also consider doing away with experience penalties (maybe keep humans as leveling relatively quickly, and then move everyone else to the same experience rate).
As a personal preference, I would like to keep the highest scores under 1,000. When you have huge numbers, it becomes difficult to see what impact any one accomplishment had on your score.
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