New scoring system

[t4nk]

Originally Posted by AnonymousHero

Right and that's "metrics". Any type of single-number "score" in Angband is completely meaningless.

It's not meaningless if it measures something. Maybe it doesn't measure the things that you're interested in, but it doesn't mean it's meaningless.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by t4nk

I think a lot more people (mostly non players) complain about Angband promoting grinding.

A lot of people complain about Angband promoting grinding because they played it 15 years ago and that was their impression then and they want a reason to ignore it in favour of other games (or, you know, life).

I don't know what to think about scores at this point, but I am increasingly wary of people who say "The thing wrong with Angband is ..." where the ... is usually approximately "It isn't Brogue" (or other roguelike du jour).

[debo]

Originally Posted by Nick

A lot of people complain about Angband promoting grinding because they played it 15 years ago and that was their impression then and they want a reason to ignore it in favour of other games (or, you know, life).

I don't know what to think about scores at this point, but I am increasingly wary of people who say "The thing wrong with Angband is ..." where the ... is usually approximately "It isn't Brogue" (or other roguelike du jour).

Get off my lawn!

[t4nk]

Originally Posted by Nick

A lot of people complain about Angband promoting grinding because they played it 15 years ago and that was their impression then and they want a reason to ignore it in favour of other games (or, you know, life).

Hm, I actually think the main reason is the lack of information about monsters... but that's a different topic.

I don't know what to think about scores at this point, but I am increasingly wary of people who say "The thing wrong with Angband is ..." where the ... is usually approximately "It isn't Brogue" (or other roguelike du jour).

Brogue is the proof that graphics is the most important thing in a game (as if the world needed any proof of that).

[Nick]

Originally Posted by t4nk

Brogue is the proof that graphics is the most important thing in a game (as if the world needed any proof of that).

Lucky you're working on them then

[t4nk]

Originally Posted by Nick

Lucky you're working on them then

I'm mostly doing things with the ui; better graphics means tiles, and I don't like any of Angband's tilesets. And I'm not going to draw any... As for fancier text mode, there are concerns like "the main problem is figuring out how to use color meaningfully without penalizing the player for not noticing subtle color differences". Brogue solves this issue by using color meaninglessly while penalizing the player for not noticing subtle differences (really, that's exactly what it does). I assume Angband's old timers won't allow that (oh, I just remembered that grey mushroom patches exist. Maybe there is still hope? )
As for score calculations; looking at the ladder, the high scores are from the versions 2.8.3, 3.0.1, 3.0.5, 2.8.2... looks like currently Angband's players don't care about high scores. Why not change it to something that would be more interesting to at least some of them? And what can that be, other than the fact of winning the game, and turncount? So I think that those should be the two main, or only, variables in the score formula.

[xorzac]

I would go with something along these lines:

( ( (Max depth * max depth * max depth) / (clvl * clvl) ) * 5) - ( (turns / 1000) ) + ( ( depth of lowest unique * 5) )

+ 50% ironman
+ 33% only sauron
+ 100% morgoth

these numbers should be tweaked but it rewards speed and difficulty.

Race and class modifiers could be thrown in too - ex. minus (class or race exp penalty / 5)%

[Nomad]

How about an achievement-based points system, where you get awarded a bonus to your score each time your character breaks a "personal record" like:

- max depth reached
- max character level attained
- number of items and runes identified
- number of uniques killed
- number of artefacts found
- max damage done with a single blow/spell
- max EXP gain for killing a single monster
- highest value or rarest item found
- greatest difference between character level and dungeon depth

etc.

That way score doesn't climb infinitely from grinding repeated actions, but only rewards the player each time they achieve something new/better than they've done before. Plus it would be easy to show the player a scoresheet of all these tracked statistics to give them some feel for what they're getting the points for.

[AnonymousHero]

Originally Posted by Nomad

How about an achievement-based points system, where you get awarded a bonus to your score each time your character breaks a "personal record" like:
[...]

I like it, but it is quite similar to the "track some stats" thing. (That's a great start for a list of stats worth tracking, though!)

[ekolis]

Originally Posted by Nick

A lot of people complain about Angband promoting grinding because they played it 15 years ago and that was their impression then and they want a reason to ignore it in favour of other games (or, you know, life).

Wouldn't a simple solution be to reward winners who do so quickly, so you'd be encouraged not only to play well, but also win quickly? Don't modify scores for players who don't win, though; playing longer if you don't win is a *good* thing because you're surviving longer and doing well! Hoplite does this by giving some sort of score multiplier (not sure how it's computed) based on how quickly you win.