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[Tuba]

Thinking about adding some kind of scoring system to my game like ones in Devil May Cry, Bayonetta and pretty much every Clover/Platinum game. Do you think this really helps motivating the player to master the game? What variables should you consider when designing a scoring system?

[s0]

Personal preference, but I hate when scoring systems in games are unrelated to the core gameplay loop and i have to go out of my way to play the game in a specific manner to get a decent score. Those scoring systems always feel arbitrary to me. Examples would be Kirby's Epic Yarn and a lot of bullet hell shmups. Ideally, doing well at what the game is about should confer a good score.

Secondly, systems that assign you a "grade" at the end of a level can sometimes come off as condescending. It can feel like the designer going "yeah you beat the level, BUT THAT WASN'T ENOUGH YOU FUCKING LOSER! TRY HARDER NEXT TIME!" And I'm like "chill bro, I'm playing a videogame for entertainment, not taking a test".

If you're going to have scoring/grading system, there needs to be a strong correlation between how well the player feels they did and their score/grade. You want to avoid that feeling of arbitrariness I mentioned above. You can pretty much only find this out through playtesting.

[Tuba]

I think grades are interesting because they give a reference. You know that A is good and D or E is bad. If you just give the player a score like 5000000 there's no reference, is that good? Is that too much? Too little?

But you're right, it can sound like the game is dissing you instead of encouraging.

[valrus]

The only grading system I really like is what Zachtronics does (showing a histogram of different metrics and where your performance fell on that metric compared to other players).

That shows the player how they're doing w.r.t a scale but doesn't force them into prioritizing a particular thing, if that's not their thing.  If they care about time, they can see whether they're fast or slow compared to other players (or number of moves or space taken or amount of damage taken or amount of damage dealt, etc.).

[Tuba]

I think it's important to don't force the player to play the game in a specific way to be more efficient and get more points. Creativity should be taken into account, problem is that can be very subjective,  we can measure things like variety of attacks  different weapons used but that might not be enough.

[Sneaky_Seal]

It does have value IMO for games that were intended to be replayed (DMC is a game like that), or Hotline Miami, or Hitman. It adds a challenge and a motivation to replay the level.
Though for me it's important to clearly understand what the grade is made up of and how you can improve the score.

[DireLogomachist]

I'm getting flashbacks to Sonic Adventure 2 just thinking about it.

I'll pass personally. They always seem too opaque for me.

[voidSkipper]

I'm yet to find one of these where the results weren't either so subtle as to be meaningless, or so obviously affected by one particular metric that they may as well just rank you by that metric alone.

[Alec S.]

I like grading mechanics as they provide a good way to incentivize certain play-styles, while not barring progress for people who want to play in easier ways.  Platinum Games are a good example of this, where, even within one difficulty mode, you can have multiple "difficulty experiences" depending on if you're just trying to get through or if you're trying to get a good rank.

[voidSkipper]

I will actually come back and say that I quite like the grading system in Tales Of games. It usually reflects how I feel the battle went, but it also doesn't bar you from progressing or make you feel bad about winning 'wrong'.

I hadn't made the connection between it and "grading" the player (despite the stat being called 'grade') because it's a point value rather than a letter or percentage. Rather than judging your progression, you can spend your grade on in-game boons of varying importance through the series.