The final score - are you happy with how it's worked out?

[sylph]

Since Steam is likely to feature a community hiscore, I just wanted to open a discussion about the score, and whether the community thinks that it accurately reflects a game's achievements?

Here's a rough guideline to some rough 'max' values of scores. Note that these aren't always the absolute maximums, they're just close to the maximum of what has actually been achieved in the community. Some of them might be quite far out (you could certainly get more than 700 knowledge of every spell, for example), but at least the order of magnitude is right...

Category	Points			    My Last	 	Typical Max
Skills		skill scores/20			   105	       125
Spells		50+1/5th of memory per spell	   190	      3750
piety		piety-200, max 10mil	       100,000	10,000,000
levelups	levelupsx50			 2,200	     2,450
experience	xp/3.5			     4,750,000 100,000,000?
exploring	all danger levels x30		50,000	    76,500
identification	IDed items x100			28,000	    35,000
intrinsics	various, 200-10,000		17,000	    35,000?
cute puppy	2k				 2,000	     2,000
Blup		20k				20,000	    20,000
attribute gains	200 per gain (131 average, 26k)	26,000	   100,000
Dwarf quests	5k each				25,000	    25,000
thieves guild	5-10k (member, head)		10,000	    10,000
cat lord	1k				     0	     1,000
khelavaster	250,000				     0	   250,000
girdle		2mil				     0	 2,000,000
hp<300		1k for every hitpoint under 300      0	   299,000
atheist		20k for no praying		     0	    20,000
champion	10-20k (fallen or not)		20,000	    20,000
corruptions	-20,000 each		      -200,000	         0

closed gate	x2
left chain	x2 (only if gate is closed)
victory speed	1000 per move under 80k	    15,000,000	75,000,000

Despite what the guidebook suggests, it seems that the score is multiplied *before* the speed bonus is added. That means that 75million is about the best score you can get for speedrunning alone, but the 15million for experience and piety will be multiplied up to 60million for finishing the game, rivalling a speedrun!

Have there been any recent changes to the score calculation (ultra endings, corruption, anything else?)?
I saw the following link:http://archive.today/73yTK but it's a bit vague, and I'm assuming the table above is still somewhat accurate...

The most notable point for me is that I think a player's inventory should be auto-sacrificed to add the the piety score, which itself should probably be limited to 5mil instead of it's current astronomical value. I also think the score for exploring, spells, and particularly skills is a little low...


I'd like to try to open a discussion by presenting my take on every section of the final score, but before I do I'd love to see some other opinions on the matter... What do you think of the way the score is worked out? Is it currently in any need of change? Does it represent the difficulty of a given game for typical players?

[_Ln_]

p16:

 239202980 Empress (blasph). L50 gray elven wizard (F). 362041022 xps. 223394 turns. Ascended on 3/9/2014.
She managed to become the ultimate ChAoS gOdDeSs in the palace of Andor Drakon.

 58767208 Fyrr (ln). L50 dark elven archer (F). 106177088 xps. 90508 turns. Died on 11/16/2013.
She managed to become a ChAoS gOdDeSs in the palace of Andor Drakon.

p21-22:

 133016220 Nara (ln). L50 dark elven weaponsmith (F). 29605423 xps. 116992 turns. Ascended on 5/24/2014.
She managed to become the ultimate ChAoS gOdDeSs in the palace of Andor Drakon.

  12018591 Elf (asdf). L50 gray elven wizard (M). 26084202 xps. 131829 turns. Ascended on 4/23/2014.
He transformed into an avatar of Order in the palace of Andor Drakon.

62371184 Sidar (jouni). L21 trollish barbarian (M). 4380805 xps. 32336 turns. Won on 7/1/2014.
He saved the world with his brave efforts and became a great ruler while saving himself but once.

Basically, UCGs now trump everything else. I couldn't find Balance Avatars on the servers, so I don't know.

As per topic question, I'd cut out the piety part entirely, upgrade Order and Balance Avatars, RoTMC obtaining score to at least 20-30k.

P.S. Your max score for experience seems off by quite a lot. xp caps on something like 999 999 999 for ~100 mil potential max.

[Blasphemous]

The biggest problem I see with scoring is that Ultra Endings for Order and Balance are poorly rewarded versus normal gate closers. It should be the other way around.
It's probably because of the 2x score for exiting Drakalor Chain after closing the gate. Exiting DC should give some small fixed amount instead of being a multiplier.
Another way would be to multiply score for L and N ultras much like it (probably) is with C ultra.
I don't really understand why UCG is rewarded with such a high score compared to lawful and neutral ultras.

In all cases you need to obtain the trident, get two parts of the trinity and switch alignment, which in the lawful case is a C -> L+ switch, after completing the trinity quests. Not an easy feat I think.
UCG players only need to go from C to N to get the trident and then back to C- to crown - it's much easier to commit a lot of chaotic acts for extreme chaotic alignment than lawful acts to reach L+.
As for the "extremely corrupted" state, it's really easy once D50 is cleared. W5 for a few minutes and voila, or just dip the crown/medal of chaos in any number of useless potions you looted from all the monsters there and drink the PoRC.

Let's be honest - anything you do alignment-wise before char lvl 20 and before the tower is subject to change, bar special cases where paladins are crowned early N= with Justifier.
In that last case, you're not going for ultra anyway so your alignment remains N for the rest of the game.
Chars that need to switch alignment to do ratling and crone quests face a different set of problems because of chaotic requirement, especially lawfuls.
You will lose piety after alignment switch and thus prayers with the lawful deity, which may be quite a setback depending on how prepared you are.
Chaotic chars need at least neutral alignment to get the trident after going through scintillating cave so this is a late game event. Not an easy task to get some semblance of neutrality for the trident at that char level.
This is why I think lawful and chaotic ultras should reward the player with similar score, with UCG giving a bit more due to slightly higher difficulty overall.

EDIT: One more thought: players should be severely penalized for excessively high turncount.
I'm thinking divide the final score by 2 for every 50k turns above 100k turn.
Otherwise grindfest and slow archmage buildup will always win over speed and improvisation as you go.
Empress, that 223k archmage UCG of mine that _Ln_ mentioned, was extremely scummed using all methods possible at that time, with 100+ spare wishes after killing Andor.
That was #1 on the score list and unbeatable at that time.

[Soirana]

Since Steam is likely to feature a community hiscore,

I'd like to try to open a discussion by presenting my take on every section of the final score, but before I do I'd love to see some other opinions on the matter... What do you think of the way the score is worked out?

Assuming players gonna play for highscore and other will get frustrated about highscore inflation... piety has simply either to go away or have limit at like 1% of current limit [otherwise casino gold+altar is easy 10mil], and xp contribution has to have upper limit [don't know - maybe a mil or two] otherwise grindfest for xp is going to trump anything else.
Probably need limit on other stuff like spell memory.

Personally I would say crossing chaos gate should count as exiting chain for score purposes.

Rest not so sure, I mean people will find a way to gamble system anyway so why to bother.

[magpie]

I don't really care.

I don't have Steam and won't ever get it, and I don't play on a server (my latency is abominable, especially with my current location).

And as Soirana said, there'll always be people who get way too far into the metagame of maximising their score by any means necessary rather than having fun with the game itself.

So I don't worry too much about the score - it's nice to beat a previous best, but as for what other people are doing - eh, good for them, but it doesn't affect me.

Let me clarify - I see the score as a way of rating my own games compared to past games I've played, rather than a way to compare myself to others. I'm perfectly willing to concede there's an awful lot of people out there who are better than me at ADoM.

If I wanted to compete with others in a game, I wouldn't be playing ADoM.

[JellySlayer]

I don't think that, in a game as complex as ADOM, including a score really makes any sense at all, TBH. In my wins, I pretty much exclusively judge how well I played based on turncount, modified somewhat by class. And whether or not I was doomed, of course. For losses, I usually just go by level/approximate progress.

[Soirana]

I don't think that, in a game as complex as ADOM, including a score really makes any sense at all, TBH. In my wins, I pretty much exclusively judge how well I played based on turncount, modified somewhat by class. And whether or not I was doomed, of course. For losses, I usually just go by level/approximate progress.

Technically there is no reason 'global highscore' could not be fewest turns taken divided into separate subscore lists by class...

Well, I guess that would be promoting certain style of play, but at least it would instantly solve lots of problems.

[Harwin]

Technically there is no reason 'global highscore' could not be fewest turns taken divided into separate subscore lists by class...

Well, I guess that would be promoting certain style of play, but at least it would instantly solve lots of problems.

It certainly makes a very simple, easy to understand high score goal.
I'd separate it by ending as well(at least Ultra vs. OCG vs. Normal). So you aren't competing against an ending with a wildly different expected turncount.

However, it would be nice to reward people (score-wise) for certain trickier things like rescuing puppy. (Maybe those count as equivalent to a certain number of turns)
It also doesn't work for non-winning games.

[YourMum]

Like magpie I've never been interested in the score and judge myself on other things. I think you should get points for completing the different quests even if it's just small amounts. The points you get currently are bizarre and don't seem to relate to how difficult or optional they are.

cute puppy	2k
Blup		20k
Dwarf quests	5k each
thieves guild	5-10k (member, head)
cat lord	1k
khelavaster	250,000

You get 20k for making Blup happy (piece of cake once you have swimming and teleportation) but only 1k for not killing any damn cats?! Yeah the ring is already a decent reward but it can be fairly challenging and annoying (and yes, purely optional but that doesn't matter). You get 5k for killing Yergius once you're in the guild (that is how you become head, isn't it? Not done it in years).

[Harwin]

Cat Lord, Blup, and Khelavaster all provide substantial in-game rewards for their quests.
Puppy doesn't - I feel like it should be worth a lot more points. I guess one problem is that it makes non-complete games that rescue the puppy get much higher scores since it would be a substantial part of your score if it were say, 50k or more, but maybe it could give you bonus points if you win the game.