The bounty and scoring system needs to revamped. A player's score and rank should be a better representative of his skill. It shouldn't just represent how much free time he has to kill 75 bots.

Every time you kill another player, you get 5% of their score and an equal amount of cash. The player who was killed has his score reduced by 5%.

Advantages:
1. Killing skilled players will bring in a suitable reward.
2. Skilled players can reach a high score very fast.
3. Skilled players would need to trade less.

Ummm I totally agree with concept behind the idea... but if everyone starts of at 0, and you start trading 5% around at a time... the result is kinda stagnant and the total skill points are only going to be proportional to the number of players, ie if I want more skill points in the game I've got to make a new char.

It might work a bit better if everyone starts at 100, and you get 5% of their score (and cash equiv.) and they only loose 2.5%.

If you make trading be worth score, then I think this would work great.

Noobs that just start out would not be worth killing, while people that bot all day and have 0 skill would be hunted until their score got close to equalling their skill in fighting and/or hiding. Make it so all deaths lose 5% though, hello player consiquences.

Great, so we encourage even more murderous Valk rampages.

I agree score as it stands is not an accurate representation of skill, but I don't think giving people a higher score based on PK's is the answer. I think score should just be done away with altogether, and "player ranking" should be in order of who has the most accumulated game-time.

Eventually, I hope we do away with 'score' entirely, as its not very applicable to an RPG. A true 'score' system for a Vendetta RPG awaits the mission structure, I would presume.

Eventually, I hope that bounty is tied to something more realistic than how many bots you've err... 'botted', but I would assume that awaits some sort of reputation system.

In the mean time, I don't see alot of point in the devs wasting there time modifying a system that problem won't survive through to the final game.

If you study the S/K ratio, K/D ratio along with score, you can get a somewhat fuzzy idea of how good the player is. The objective of this thread is to arrive at scoring system that translates to accurate rankings.

>A true 'score' system for a Vendetta RPG awaits the mission structure
I think missions should bring in mostly cash, not points. That way traders might be the richest guys, but they'll have a low score. Good fighters will have high scores. They''l also earn enough from their battles to fund spacecraft and weapons.

>"player ranking" should be in order of who has the most accumulated game-time.
Accumulated game time to replace the score? People would just keep their chars idling 24/7. Further, just because someone has been playing for a long time doesn't mean he is proportionally as good.

>I hope we do away with 'score' entirely, as its not very applicable to an RPG
Score is necessary as it gives us an idea how good a player really is. Vendetta was never a pure RPG (role playing game, not rocket propelled grenade). It has the elements of a space-FPS (first person shooter) that we all enjoy.

> so we encourage even more murderous Valk rampages
actaully yes. I believe a player skill is judged only by how well he does against other players. Botting is just target practice. How many bots you killed shouldn't determine your rank.

"If study the S/K ratio, K/D ratio along with score, you can get a somewhat fuzzy idea of how good the player is."

-True, but a player's skill in combat can never really be reduced to a number. If you really wanted to, you could calculate everything from how many ships of each type the player has killed to how often the player wins against ships of certain configurations, but this still doesn't really tell you how "good" the player is.

How do I know if the player will panic if I come in with guns blazing? Is the player a pirate? Is he good with energy weapons? Is he honorable? Is he better in a duel or in melee combat?

Most of these questions can only be answered in-game, by actually knowing the player.

Also, the number of PK's is not necessarily a measure of combat skill. There are plenty of griefers out there who triflarevalkram newbs in busses or station mine just to rack up PK's, but run when a good pilot challenges them. Basing score heavily on PK's will just encourage players to grief and kill newbs and traders who can't defend themselves.

Lastly, why should score be a measure of combat skill in the first place? This is a (someday to be) RPG after all, not an FPS. Players should be rewarded for other non-combat professions. "Building financial empires," trading, training other players, exploring. There are limitless possibilities.

I expect that someday "score" will be replaced with an "experience" system that can be used to upgrade your character in a variety of ways, and can be gained in a variety of ways. This is really what I was getting at with online time; who has the most experience in Vendetta, not just in combat, but in all aspects of the game?

Right now, the scoring system is fairly pointless, but I agree with Celebrim that fixing it is a waste of the dev's time, unless they plan on turning this into "SpaceQuake" in the end.

Phaserlight, the operative words in the comment were "somehwat" and "fuzzy".

>fixing it is a waste of the dev's time, unless they plan on turning this into "SpaceQuake" in the end.
The game already has elements of SpaceQuake as I said. I see no reason why the devs would want to modify the game so radically that a score would be irrelevent.

"the operative words in the comment were "somehwat" and "fuzzy". "

I agree, allstrox.

My thesis is that there is no accurate way to represent "rank" (i.e. combat skill) via a scoring system without overemphasizing PK's. I agree that combat skill should definitely be a part of rank, but please address my argument that PK's are not necessarily a measure of combat skill. How would such a system be implemented without favoring griefers, pirates, and noob killers?

It's fine if we want to hammer out a complex scoring system, but I doubt that there would be one worth the time it would take to implement/balance, and it would be little more than an interesting thought experiment.

"I see no reason why the devs would want to modify the game so radically that a score would be irrelevent."

Quoting the FAQ:

"What's the difference between the Vendetta Test and the final MMORPG product?
The Vendetta Test is an evolving game-engine testbed. It gives us a platform with a live testing audience, where we can try various different ideas and get an impression of real-world performance. In essence, the Test is really just an "engine", the gameplay that exists within it has progressed (so far) from "absolutely minimal" to "pretty simplistic". There are similarities between the Test and our stated intentions for the final game, but the differences are so large as to make the similarities almost meaningless.

Over time the Vendetta Test will evolve into the final MMORPG product. However, gameplay within the Test, at any given time, shouldn't be considered "final", and may not even have any bearing on the final game at all. At various times, many different gameplay concepts have been added or remove from the Test, to temporarily make things a little more fun."

Don't forget that this is just an engine test, and the final version will most likely be radically different. Instead of score, expect something more like "reputation" in the future.

I guess the whole question is up to the devs then.

Note that the FAQ was written a long time ago and that part about "may not even have any bearing on the final game at all" etc has the word 'may' in it. Considering all the gameplay specific changes the devs have already made, (e.g. capping rules) a better scoring system may not be irrelevent.

Btw, I really like the word "triflarevalkram". Now we have offical Vendetta 'jargon'.

Umm PK really has not much to do with it if the score from a PK is 5% of the persons score. Noobs would be worth almost nothing, so if the person killed a 100 of them they still would not get as many points as they would from 1 experienced player. If you do not even keep track of PK its even better, then people won't have PK races and go kill everybody to see who can get the most PK.

Taking 5% of the persons score and not counting the number of kills would work in the favour of most pilots. If a trader sees a person with 100k score they would know they have to be good enough to hold on to that score.

Some aspects of skill can only be judged by playing with people and getting to know them. But this at least gives a ruff idea for people to go on.

Trading should also make up score, or people will start killing others just to get score.

Also a noob protection could be put in place if needed where if the attackers score is so much higher then the defenders the attacker actually loses 5% if they win or lose. This would only work well if we limited the number of player chars per account of course.

"I think missions should bring in mostly cash, not points. That way traders might be the richest guys, but they'll have a low score. Good fighters will have high scores. They''l also earn enough from their battles to fund spacecraft and weapons."

You don't understand what I'm saying. I'm saying that I think at some point noone should have a score. Score is a very arcadish concept. Locking on to a target and recieving as information that character's 'score' has really dubious value. First, as you are arguing, its pretty meaningless. Secondly, it destroys the emmersiveness of the game. What real world quality does score correspond to? Or if score is only 'number of frags', how realistic is it to lock onto a stranger and know precisely how many ships he's fragged? (And why would you trust anyone's claims?)

When I say that 'true score' awaits a mission structure, I mean that once you have fully fleshed out mission structure, you never need to worry about score ever again. You don't need to display scores to anyone, including the owner of the character. To the extent that it serves any purpose, the purpose of score is to give something for players to do. Players keep themselves busy increasing thier score. Overall, that's a pretty boring thing to do, and once you have a full mission structure players can busy themselves doing something more interesting.

Replacing score as a quantization of how much you've done will probably be some sort of 'experience' number. This might initially be as meaningless as 'score' but would be derived in a completely different way. There would probably be a point beyond which killing 75 bots didn't increase your experience at all. Eventually though, an experience system could be used to buy skills or other benefits for your character - just like a real RPG (imagine that).

However, I think what you are really interested in is not score so much as a 'ranking system'. What you want to know is who is better than who. I can think of two legitimate ways to do this. An external (from the perspective of a player) 'ladder ranking' in which the game keep track of a ranking based on the outcome of PKs, and adjust your ranking based on the ranking of the loser (and for Vendetta purposes maybe the relative quality of the ships involved). A system similar to chess rankings works well and is widely employed. If you want to know where you rank, log into the Vendetta website and check the player rankings much as you do with score now, only this system would be much more like real player rankings.

The one drawback of this system has already been hinted at, and that is that in an RPG there is no good way to measure whether combat is 'fair'. Maybe you got the kill by 'vulting' someone else's kill. Maybe you got the kill by ambushing someone that is chatting. Maybe you got all those kills by attacking buses in 'tri-flare valks'. That is why I advocate in addition to or instead of an external ladder, an internal tournament system built into the mission structure. If you want to know how good your character is in one on one combat, take your character to one or more outlaw sectors in nuetral space, pay a fee in the station to register as a duelist in a particular type of ship, and then you will recieve as a mission the goal of entering an 'arena' (some delimited area of space) during a certain time period. If the only people in this space are you and your designated opponent, then the mission 'advances' and you fulfill the mission when you become the only PC in that space before the end of the mission time. And of course there are various forfiets and stuff that would have to be scripted, but you get the idea.

In this way, the 'ladder' could be viewed internally (from the perspective of a character) from the stations in which the mission took place, and it might even be possible to have big glowing bulletine boards listing the Champions with various classes of ships.

I think that Celebrim is right (to an extent, he usually is). The concept of score is completely meaningless. I don't think that and one specific activity should be presented as an indication of a player. Maybe when missions come along and we get a bit more variation in what players can achieve (access to upgrades, special ships, military allowances, trader discounts etc) there will be a much more detailed record of the true abilities of players.

A players over all stats could be broken into a number of variables such as how many Itani combat missions flown, how far they have explored, how productive they are on trade missions/routes, thing like that.

I also think that when the player base expands and 'guilds' carry more meaning and status, this will have a large effect on the way we interact. If a player is affiliated with guild X, you know they rule in combat and you won't (or maybe will) pick a fight. Or if they are affiliated with guild Q, they are a heavy trader and probably carrying a high value cargo, perfect target for a pirate.

You would, ideally, be able to call up the vital stats of a player, listing such things, rather than the very basic system we have now.

and when there is 1000 players annd 100 guilds how would we make any guess at the skill of a player. I might attack a player with a lot of money and skill but I won't attack a noob. How would I tell the difference at a glance on the battlefield

well for one thing durgia in a larger version of the game the noobs probably ought to be nowhere near the combat lines. if we are talking about a thoulsand sectors, split up into 100, ten sector "systems" there are going to be "systems" whre the n00bs can go to learn the game and become well un-n00bish