Time for a New Scoring System?

Games Halo Infinite
#1

Halo is classically first to 50 kills.

But what if we instead moved to a team health bar that is worn down is a similar fashion to fighting games.

The baseline would still be 2% damage per kill (ie. first to 50 frags) but moving away from integer locked scoring opens up a number of potential advantages;

  1. Matchmaking mistakes; if any player drifts above or below a certain KDA (ie they have been mis-matched) then the game could dynamically adjust the scoring to compensate. The very good players would begin to score a bit less for each kill, while those who are out of their depth would be worth less to kill. This would hopefully set up closer games, discourage players from dropping out, and encourage the better players to actively seek each other out.

  2. Quitters; if a player quits (damn them to Hell) the scoring can dynamically readjust. The short team would now get more % per kill to keep them in the game. The scoring can then reset if/when a player is found to rejoin.

  3. Game types; moving away from 1 point per kill opens up a huge amount of game variations. Small bonuses (or penalties) could be applied for killing certain players (such as the leader, the longest surviving, whoever is using active camo, etc), using certain weapons, kills over (or under) certain distances, assassinations, grenade kills, assists, or earning medals. Game modes could be set up around doing tasks to replenish health… or a race against time with a decaying health bar.

#2

Am I understanding this correctly?
If I Score a kill, the enemy’s bar is reduced by 2%.
If I damage an enemy to half health, I reduce the enemy’s bar by 1%? Then they may regenerate and I manager to kille them, and get 2%? A total of 3% for one enemy?

A gut feeling I get is that it’d reduce movement and affect encounters as people would want to reduce damage taken, opposed to risking ones life to get a kill.

1: So, Good players get punished for being good by not scoring the same as worse players for the same type of input.
Also, that’s advertised as a band-aid on a fault which is not related to gameplay.
Furthermore, if you start treating players’ scoring differently based on their performance, you can’t trust the skill calculation system anymore. Not to mention the potential abuse, like, playing bad to get better scoring capabilities, then play well to take advantage of the handicap you got.

2: Can be done with normal numbers. Quitters aren’t fun, but not so sure about match resets either.

3: most of these are available to us now.

#3

> 2533274795123910;2:
> Am I understanding this correctly?
> If I Score a kill, the enemy’s bar is reduced by 2%.
> If I damage an enemy to half health, I reduce the enemy’s bar by 1%? Then they may regenerate and I manager to kille them, and get 2%? A total of 3% for one enemy?
>
> A gut feeling I get is that it’d reduce movement and affect encounters as people would want to reduce damage taken, opposed to risking ones life to get a kill.
>
> 1: So, Good players get punished for being good by not scoring the same as worse players for the same type of input.
> Also, that’s advertised as a band-aid on a fault which is not related to gameplay.
> Furthermore, if you start treating players’ scoring differently based on their performance, you can’t trust the skill calculation system anymore. Not to mention the potential abuse, like, playing bad to get better scoring capabilities, then play well to take advantage of the handicap you got.
>
> 2: Can be done with normal numbers. Quitters aren’t fun, but not so sure about match resets either.
>
> 3: most of these are available to us now.

Not quite.

The team health bar only goes down with a kill (it wouldn’t change if your opponent escapes and regenerates). In a properly matched game each kill would take 2% off the enemy team’s health bar. This equates exactly to the status quo… 50 kills wins the match.

The scoring would only need to change if match making goes awry and someone is either way too good for the match… or way out of their depth.

For example… if someone is dominating (with a KDA way above everyone else) then their scoring is reduced. They might then only do 1.5% damage to the opponent team’s health bar with each kill.

Similarly if someone is way out of their depth (horrendous KDA compared to everyone else) then the score for killing them would be reduced.

It’s not about punishing good players. In an ideal world with flawless matchmaking every game would be 50-49 with meticulously matched players all doing 25% of the damage each. But that’s never going to happen is it. And their skill based calculation would be unaffected (coming off raw kills-deaths-assists).

And the other way to look at it is that the match making algorithm could afford to play a little bit looser (and therefore faster) knowing that a dynamic scoring system would cushion the fall.

It would also be very useful when trying to match up fire teams (which is where you often get a wide array of skill level in each team). The algorithm could then make a pre-game estimate of an appropriate scoring handicap for each player.

As for quitters… I know that there are penalties in place… but the biggest penalty is for the poor suckers left behind still trying to play the game. You are inevitably left with the boring countdown of one team bored / hunting while the other team spends their time desperately hiding. At least a flexible scoring system keeps the match interesting.

And yes… there are a lot of scoring options available in custom games… but a lot of scope is limited because each kill scores one point. That’s a prohibitively big step. However, with a % based system you can have whatever scoring magnitudes you like. eg. 2% for a regular kill, 2.5% for a grenade kill, 0.1% for an assist, 5% for a long distance grenade kill, double % for three minutes after a multi-kill, and so on…

#4

> 2585548714655118;3:
> As for quitters… I know that there are penalties in place… but the biggest penalty is for the poor suckers left behind still trying to play the game. You are inevitably left with the boring countdown of one team bored / hunting while the other team spends their time desperately hiding. At least a flexible scoring system keeps the match interesting.

No, it doesn’t. You’re commiting the error of thinking that how interesting a match is is determined by how close the score is. But this is only true in the traditional system of scoring where a close score means that both teams are performing equally well. But in the system you’re suggesting, this is no longer true. When you make the better player score less, and the worse players be worth less, sure the scores remains closer. But that doesn’t change the fact that the worse team is still getting destroyed. The game is still totally one-sided even if the score isn’t. The poor players aren’t having any more fun just because their score is closer. They just have to endure the lopsided match for longer. And what if they win? It’s hardly a fair victory because their opponents were so handicapped by the game. You might as well just remove scoring altogether, and have the “winner” be declared by a virtual coin toss at the end of the match.

#5

> 2585548714655118;1:
> Halo is classically first to 50 kills.
>
> But what if we instead moved to a team health bar that is worn down is a similar fashion to fighting games.
>
> The baseline would still be 2% damage per kill (ie. first to 50 frags) but moving away from integer locked scoring opens up a number of potential advantages;
>
> 1. Matchmaking mistakes; if any player drifts above or below a certain KDA (ie they have been mis-matched) then the game could dynamically adjust the scoring to compensate. The very good players would begin to score a bit less for each kill, while those who are out of their depth would be worth less to kill. This would hopefully set up closer games, discourage players from dropping out, and encourage the better players to actively seek each other out.
>
> 2. Quitters; if a player quits (damn them to Hell) the scoring can dynamically readjust. The short team would now get more % per kill to keep them in the game. The scoring can then reset if/when a player is found to rejoin.
>
> 3. Game types; moving away from 1 point per kill opens up a huge amount of game variations. Small bonuses (or penalties) could be applied for killing certain players (such as the leader, the longest surviving, whoever is using active camo, etc), using certain weapons, kills over (or under) certain distances, assassinations, grenade kills, assists, or earning medals. Game modes could be set up around doing tasks to replenish health… or a race against time with a decaying health bar.

I think that a system like this would have different problems, the first one being not exactly user friendly and easy to understand for casual/occasional players which is something to keep in mind. I don’t think you should punish/forgive the better or the worse players artificially because that’s just part of how performing works. Sometimes you pop off like crazy and get half of the total amount of kills, other times you just feed your brains out, it’s just the nature of any competitive activity.

I’d like them to do something about leavers too though. There’s not much you can do to predict a leaver, but you could do something once it happens. Maybe add a timer for joining back (1-3 minutes should be fair) and then if the player doesn’t come back the rest of the team can choose to leave too without getting a penalty (they’d still get the loss though). It makes sense since you give the players the option to choose since some games are actually clutchable 3v4 or 4v5, while also giving everyone the opportunity not to waste their time.

#6

> 2585548714655118;3:
> The scoring would only need to change if match making goes awry and someone is either way too good for the match… or way out of their depth.
>
> For example… if someone is dominating (with a KDA way above everyone else) then their scoring is reduced. They might then only do 1.5% damage to the opponent team’s health bar with each kill.
>
> Similarly if someone is way out of their depth (horrendous KDA compared to everyone else) then the score for killing them would be reduced.
>
> It’s not about punishing good players. In an ideal world with flawless matchmaking every game would be 50-49 with meticulously matched players all doing 25% of the damage each. But that’s never going to happen is it. And their skill based calculation would be unaffected (coming off raw kills-deaths-assists).

How are you not rewarding a player who’s doing bad by increasing the points they eventuelly get with a kill, and not punishing players doing well by decreasing their points gained per kill?

> 2585548714655118;3:
> And the other way to look at it is that the match making algorithm could afford to play a little bit looser (and therefore faster) knowing that a dynamic scoring system would cushion the fall.

Cushion which fall?
If it takes raw data from the match as skill calculation material, then it doesn’t matter what the end score is, or how close they are. (Not that any of that should be taken into account in the first place).
Thus a more loose MM criteria doesn’t matter.

> 2585548714655118;3:
> It would also be very useful when trying to match up fire teams (which is where you often get a wide array of skill level in each team). The algorithm could then make a pre-game estimate of an appropriate scoring handicap for each player.

So punish/reward players of the team up/solo.
And how exactly would a system like that look? How exactly do you account for “team work”?

> 2585548714655118;3:
> And yes… there are a lot of scoring options available in custom games… but a lot of scope is limited because each kill scores one point. That’s a prohibitively big step. However, with a % based system you can have whatever scoring magnitudes you like. eg. 2% for a regular kill, 2.5% for a grenade kill, 0.1% for an assist, 5% for a long distance grenade kill, double % for three minutes after a multi-kill, and so on…

Still only numbers, all this is doable as Long as the options are there and the score caps can be set high enough.

#7

> 2533274825830455;4:
> > 2585548714655118;3:
> > As for quitters… I know that there are penalties in place… but the biggest penalty is for the poor suckers left behind still trying to play the game. You are inevitably left with the boring countdown of one team bored / hunting while the other team spends their time desperately hiding. At least a flexible scoring system keeps the match interesting.
>
> No, it doesn’t. You’re commiting the error of thinking that how interesting a match is is determined by how close the score is. But this is only true in the traditional system of scoring where a close score means that both teams are performing equally well. But in the system you’re suggesting, this is no longer true. When you make the better player score less, and the worse players be worth less, sure the scores remains closer. But that doesn’t change the fact that the worse team is still getting destroyed. The game is still totally one-sided even if the score isn’t. The poor players aren’t having any more fun just because their score is closer. They just have to endure the lopsided match for longer. And what if they win? It’s hardly a fair victory because their opponents were so handicapped by the game. You might as well just remove scoring altogether, and have the “winner” be declared by a virtual coin toss at the end of the match.

I’ve rarely found lopsided matches interesting. Either in the dominating team or (especially) in the losing team.

Matchmaking algorithms should match teams perfectly… making most, if not all, matches close. But such an algorithm… even if you had a huge accessible userbase is not possible. There are just too many variables in play… and some such as team harmony / balance are nigh on unpredictable.

In the event of an obvious match making fail… would it be so bad to impose a system of minor handicaps?

If done properly it wouldn’t exactly be a virtual coin toss… it would still be which ever team performed better on the day. Not much different to handicap starts in amateur running sprints.

#8

> 2535426983406173;5:
> > 2585548714655118;1:
> > Halo is classically first to 50 kills.
> >
> > But what if we instead moved to a team health bar that is worn down is a similar fashion to fighting games.
> >
> > The baseline would still be 2% damage per kill (ie. first to 50 frags) but moving away from integer locked scoring opens up a number of potential advantages;
> >
> > 1. Matchmaking mistakes; if any player drifts above or below a certain KDA (ie they have been mis-matched) then the game could dynamically adjust the scoring to compensate. The very good players would begin to score a bit less for each kill, while those who are out of their depth would be worth less to kill. This would hopefully set up closer games, discourage players from dropping out, and encourage the better players to actively seek each other out.
> >
> > 2. Quitters; if a player quits (damn them to Hell) the scoring can dynamically readjust. The short team would now get more % per kill to keep them in the game. The scoring can then reset if/when a player is found to rejoin.
> >
> > 3. Game types; moving away from 1 point per kill opens up a huge amount of game variations. Small bonuses (or penalties) could be applied for killing certain players (such as the leader, the longest surviving, whoever is using active camo, etc), using certain weapons, kills over (or under) certain distances, assassinations, grenade kills, assists, or earning medals. Game modes could be set up around doing tasks to replenish health… or a race against time with a decaying health bar.
>
> I think that a system like this would have different problems, the first one being not exactly user friendly and easy to understand for casual/occasional players which is something to keep in mind. I don’t think you should punish/forgive the better or the worse players artificially because that’s just part of how performing works. Sometimes you pop off like crazy and get half of the total amount of kills, other times you just feed your brains out, it’s just the nature of any competitive activity.
>
> I’d like them to do something about leavers too though. There’s not much you can do to predict a leaver, but you could do something once it happens. Maybe add a timer for joining back (1-3 minutes should be fair) and then if the player doesn’t come back the rest of the team can choose to leave too without getting a penalty (they’d still get the loss though). It makes sense since you give the players the option to choose since some games are actually clutchable 3v4 or 4v5, while also giving everyone the opportunity not to waste their time.

Most users would be familiar with the health bars in other games… particularly the fighting games.

And yep… sometimes things just gel. But most of the time it’s because match making has failed. And besides… it’s not like you are reducing your participation in the game to zero. You can still go out and feed your brains out on kills for you own personal stats / satisfaction. Just that the overall damage you do to the opponents health bar. If your output drops from 2% per kill to 1.5% (for example) it’s not necessarily something you are going to notice in game.

#9

> 2533274795123910;6:
> > 2585548714655118;3:
> > The scoring would only need to change if match making goes awry and someone is either way too good for the match… or way out of their depth.
> >
> > For example… if someone is dominating (with a KDA way above everyone else) then their scoring is reduced. They might then only do 1.5% damage to the opponent team’s health bar with each kill.
> >
> > Similarly if someone is way out of their depth (horrendous KDA compared to everyone else) then the score for killing them would be reduced.
> >
> > It’s not about punishing good players. In an ideal world with flawless matchmaking every game would be 50-49 with meticulously matched players all doing 25% of the damage each. But that’s never going to happen is it. And their skill based calculation would be unaffected (coming off raw kills-deaths-assists).
>
> How are you not rewarding a player who’s doing bad by increasing the points they eventuelly get with a kill, and not punishing players doing well by decreasing their points gained per kill?
>
>
>
>
> > 2585548714655118;3:
> > And the other way to look at it is that the match making algorithm could afford to play a little bit looser (and therefore faster) knowing that a dynamic scoring system would cushion the fall.
>
> Cushion which fall?
> If it takes raw data from the match as skill calculation material, then it doesn’t matter what the end score is, or how close they are. (Not that any of that should be taken into account in the first place).
> Thus a more loose MM criteria doesn’t matter.
>
>
>
>
> > 2585548714655118;3:
> > It would also be very useful when trying to match up fire teams (which is where you often get a wide array of skill level in each team). The algorithm could then make a pre-game estimate of an appropriate scoring handicap for each player.
>
> So punish/reward players of the team up/solo.
> And how exactly would a system like that look? How exactly do you account for “team work”?
>
>
>
>
> > 2585548714655118;3:
> > And yes… there are a lot of scoring options available in custom games… but a lot of scope is limited because each kill scores one point. That’s a prohibitively big step. However, with a % based system you can have whatever scoring magnitudes you like. eg. 2% for a regular kill, 2.5% for a grenade kill, 0.1% for an assist, 5% for a long distance grenade kill, double % for three minutes after a multi-kill, and so on…
>
> Still only numbers, all this is doable as Long as the options are there and the score caps can be set high enough.

If your skill metric is K:D (or whatever)… that still stands - despite whatever amount of damage each of your kills inflicts on the damage bar during the game.

The ‘fall’ referred to the faster algorithm picking a wider spread of skill levels into a match… knowing that the dynamic scoring would smooth out any mis-matches.

And fair enough re: the numbers.

#10

> 2585548714655118;7:
> I’ve rarely found lopsided matches interesting.

Exactly, and changing how the scoring works isn’t going to make them any more interesting, because it doesn’t change how the game plays out. The worse performing team is still going to be performing equally badly, and the better team is still going to dominate. Simply pretending that the teams are equal when they are not by altering scoring doesn’t make the match any more interesting.

> 2585548714655118;7:
> Matchmaking algorithms should match teams perfectly… making most, if not all, matches close. But such an algorithm… even if you had a huge accessible userbase is not possible. There are just too many variables in play… and some such as team harmony / balance are nigh on unpredictable.

Actually, the algorithms are pretty good if you have enough players, most matches are going to be close.

> 2585548714655118;7:
> In the event of an obvious match making fail… would it be so bad to impose a system of minor handicaps?

Yes, because I don’t like for the game to pretend I’m doing well when I’m clearly not. It’s pointless.

#11

> 2585548714655118;7:
> I’ve rarely found lopsided matches interesting. Either in the dominating team or (especially) in the losing team.

A new scoring system which changes how many kills are needed to finish the match, does not make the worse team play any better.

> 2585548714655118;7:
> Matchmaking algorithms should match teams perfectly… making most, if not all, matches close. But such an algorithm… even if you had a huge accessible userbase is not possible. There are just too many variables in play… and some such as team harmony / balance are nigh on unpredictable.

Considering the relatively “simple” math that has gone into making these Skill Calculation systems, and the matchmaking system which also take into account latency on top of skills, no, you’re not going to get “the perfect” close match consistently.

> 2585548714655118;7:
> In the event of an obvious match making fail… would it be so bad to impose a system of minor handicaps?

If it’s a rare issue/fail, then it’s not warranted to add a handicap system which can be abused.
If it’s quite common, you go check the root cause of why it’s happening, you don’t add a handicap system which can be abused.

> 2585548714655118;7:
> If done properly it wouldn’t exactly be a virtual coin toss… it would still be which ever team performed better on the day. Not much different to handicap starts in amateur running sprints.

And how is “properly” done?

> 2585548714655118;8:
> If your output drops from 2% per kill to 1.5% (for example) it’s not necessarily something you are going to notice in game.

Let’s say you do 18% damage to the enemy’s health bar.
With 2%, you need to get 9 kills to achieve that much damage.
With 1,5% you need 12 kills. Feels noticeable considering the milestone for a killing spree is 10.
So, with 2% and 18% damage, you haven’t gotten a Killing Frenzy yet, but with 1,5%, you’re close to half way to a Killing Riot which is 15%.

What’d happen if you’re performance is poor, but you pick up and get 2,5% damage for each kill?
The exact amount of kills you’d need is 7,2. But that’s not possible, so, with 7 kills, you manage to do 17,5% damage to the enemy’s bar.

So, with all this in mind, either the system will barely be noticeable, which would defeat its purpose of “helping out”, and we wouldn’t need it in the first place.
Or, it’s noticeable enough to irritate players doing good, and be open to abuse, which we don’t want.

> 2585548714655118;9:
> If your skill metric is K:D (or whatever)… that still stands - despite whatever amount of damage each of your kills inflicts on the damage bar during the game.

Winning, getting kills and avoiding deaths is only part of your skill set in a team game.

> 2585548714655118;9:
> The ‘fall’ referred to the faster algorithm picking a wider spread of skill levels into a match… knowing that the dynamic scoring would smooth out any mis-matches.

So, the MM system would be far more likely to mis-match players based on whatever is used to calculate skill, because there’s a new scoring system in place which smooths out the now more regular mis-matches.
But as mentioned earlier, it’s not like a handicap on the scoring system will make any bad player do better.

#12

A fault with this is that you assume bad players should be winning games. Bad players get better over time by playing good players, not by winning games. This gives bad players the illusion that they are doing well, and rewards them for not improving.
I can’t tell you how many times I was slaughtered in Halo Reach when I first began playing. My teams must have hated me. But after months and months of playing I actually started to do really well. Though my KDA in Reach is forever destroyed, my ability in that game and future games improved because of that learning.

All of that is to say, we don’t need to make bad players feel better about being bad. It doesn’t help them improve, and this system could be taken advantage of easily.

Also, Halo 4 tried to do a different scoring system for points that you could get from assists, assassinations, and other special kills. It didn’t go well, and everyone wanted the old system back.

#13

Wow… tough crowd :slight_smile:

It’s got nothing to do with being a ‘bad player’. That’s such a relative concept. I’m an average player (sigh)… but I can play like Bradman vs a team of Bronze. However, throw me up against a team of Diamonds… and I wouldn’t even be a damage sponge worthy of mopping their brow.

Matchmaking already adjusts the teams to try and create close games. A handicap system on the scoring is just an extension of that.

A bit like a golf game… everyone is set their par score for the game.

When the games starts players just go out and do their thing. You just keep shooting until the score is reached or the timer runs out.

At the end of the game… the team who best achieved (or bettered) their par will win.

The team can now lose if the big fish underperforms… or clutch a win if the damage sponge plays out of their skin.