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TIGSource ForumsDeveloperDesignScore Screen and Achievements and their effect on replayability
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Unplayables
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« on: October 02, 2014, 08:28:45 AM »

I'd say that a score screen is one of the ways to make a game replayable.

By seeing and comparing previous runs, you get motivated to try to beat certain parts of what you've done before.

But it's not just some kind of arcade like score that's interesting.
Rather the stuff you have done well at specifically.
I use this gamification for my life too: runkeeper tells me if my average speed was higher than the rest of the month or that my total distance in a week score is broken.

So I'm curious about experiences and thoughts regarding score screens: are they a help or a waste of time? Do you like tracking meaningful or needless stats? (I remember dungeon keeper tracking all kinds of meaningless stats)
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Alec S.
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« Reply #1 on: October 02, 2014, 09:29:02 AM »

Platinum does a great job with this.  They give you a score screen after each stage with a breakdown between a few categories, and then on top of that they give you a medal based on your performance.  This way you're not just trying to get a slightly higher score than your last score, you have a concrete measurement to aim for (and they make the highest ranking, Pure Platinum / S Rank, genuinely hard to get, so that you have to work at it and replay levels a lot to reach it).
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« Reply #2 on: October 02, 2014, 11:33:57 AM »

for the most part i just ignore shit like ranks and scores unless the goal of the game is literally to get a high score.

for me they are actually more of a demotivator than anything (if i do pay attention to them). i admit that im terrible at action games and i also usually play them rather slow. so it's like, i used the resources the game provided me with to fulfill its goal, i don't need the designer to come in and tell me i didn't do well like some smug asshole just because i used these resources less efficiently than i could have.

« Last Edit: October 02, 2014, 11:39:28 AM by C.A. Silbereisen » Logged
rj
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« Reply #3 on: October 02, 2014, 02:00:39 PM »

for the most part i just ignore shit like ranks and scores unless the goal of the game is literally to get a high score.

for me they are actually more of a demotivator than anything (if i do pay attention to them). i admit that im terrible at action games and i also usually play them rather slow. so it's like, i used the resources the game provided me with to fulfill its goal, i don't need the designer to come in and tell me i didn't do well like some smug asshole just because i used these resources less efficiently than i could have.



thoug i feel the same way for the most part i think it depends; games like hotline miami i furiously played to the end ignoring my rankings but the allure of the game's flow and mechanics made me actually really want to go back and grab all the high ranks and achieves.  some games benefit a lot from this; the literal only reason sonic adventure 2 is good is because of its impeccable high score arcade machine mechanics, even though the game is largely nothing special during its story mode; the "story" makes the levels progress in a way that's highly at odds with what works about the game, so when you finish it it finally opens up and becomes something worthwhile.

other times, it flies in my face; metal gear solid v ground zeroes was a recent example of me playing something i personally loved in the moment that kinda dullthudded once it gave me a high score screen. i recognize that ground zeroes would be far less replayable without high scores, but they should be in a separate mode entirely.

i think literally any game that has this conflict can resolve it with a high score arcade mode; the story mode should be unranked.
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« Reply #4 on: October 02, 2014, 05:56:55 PM »

One thing I noticed is that apparently I end up ignoring achievements because the game doesn't slap them on my face... may as well not be there. (also many achievements I only notice after I look at the list and realize I just missed the window of opportunity to get them and I'd be forced to restart the game to get them, argh)
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baconman
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« Reply #5 on: October 06, 2014, 07:41:27 PM »

Some games are BUILT on their scoring systems. Puzzle games are a perfect example of this. Time Attack gives twitchy action games a new, competitive aspect that they wouldn't have without it, too. But then on other games, they're very extraneous and tacked on. I mean... who would replay a big JRPG just to score better/higher? NOBODY. Unless it were like a dungeon-by-dungeon basis, which is something you can't really do well with a leveling system, unless it's reset. (Half-Minute Hero being the obvious counterpoint to this, but that's what makes it both good and different!)

That said, it's a cool thing to feature - it will appeal to some personalities while being totally ignorable by others. But it's not the be-all-end-all, nor is it a solution to a less-than-alright game.
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« Reply #6 on: October 07, 2014, 09:37:50 PM »

I thought Spacechem had the best high-score screen, giving histograms of three aspects of performance and showing where in each histogram your performance fell:



It's a quite clever solution to the high score board in the internet age; I've never really cared, even in score-based games, that there's some kid in the world who got 10,000,000 points, and it wouldn't motivate me to replay it if I only got 10,000.  But seeing the whole histogram of scores, that's more motivating to me.  (Like: there's a big spike in players that did something a bit better than you; you could catch up with them if you tried.  Or: you're way ahead of the curve, maybe with a bit more practice you could be one of the best.)

The other nice thing is the thing you said, that it keeps track of several things.  I like that -- a player might feel that a fewest-symbols solution is best, or a fewest-cycles solution is best, and the scoreboard doesn't try to impose one thing as best. 

The fact that it's likely (or at least occasionally possible) that I'm better-than-average at *something*, or at least not terrible-at-everything, helps a lot with the demotivation aspect.  I think most games have some opposed goals that make it hard to be better-at-everything but easier to be good-at-something ("most X gained", "fewest X lost", "quickest-to-goal", "longest survived", etc.)  And if there aren't, well, there's an opportunity to add some more depth.
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« Reply #7 on: October 08, 2014, 04:24:33 AM »

Yeah, that screen quite often got me to go back and optimize my solution just a little bit, or go looking on the 'net to figure out how it was possible to do better.  I liked it.  And I usually ignore the score screen.

On the other hand, it's a puzzle/logic/thinking game, and those are my cup of tea.  Most score screens happen on action games, which I'm not quite as good at and don't really care to put the time in to improve.
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