Scoring Points: Difference between revisions
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But, as games began to develop plot, even the [[Excuse Plot|excuse kind]], gamers changed. They became more interested in things like the ending [[Cutscene|cinematic]], the new areas and [[Mega Manning|powers]] to explore, [[Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick|the new hookers to kill on every corner]], and [[One Hundred Percent Completion]]. Games became about adventure, or in some cases, simulation.
While today many games don't even keep track of score - and the ones that do keep track do it for no reason whatsoever - most [[Muggles|outsiders to the gaming world]] still believe points are our coke. The truth is, score was never a big deal. Even ''[[
About the ''only'' genres where scoring actually was--and still is--relevant to any significant portion of the player base are games with short, replayable levels, most commonly [[Shoot Em Ups]] and [[Rhythm Game|Rhythm Games]], where beating another's high score or getting a good rank/grade is one of the main points. Then there were the endlessly repeating games where score was the only practical way to measure success: Activision's Atari 2600 games always would have specific guidelines in their manuals for what score you should aim to attain to get their special patches or t-shirts for having become a pro at it if you could send them proof. Pinball is a good example that has survived (somewhat) into the modern age. [[Casual Game|Casual Games]] are also very score-heavy; you'd be hard-pressed to find a ''[[Bejeweled]]'' or ''[[
Games nowadays use "[[Cosmetic Award|achievements]]". Now ''those'' are [[Serious Business]]. They started with Microsoft's Xbox Live service. All online Xbox owners get an online account, and MS decided to design their system so that accomplishing specific objectives in a game would result in earning an "achievement" that can be viewed on that player's online account, by themselves and other players, even when not playing the game. The idea proved popular, and similar functions were added to the Playstation Network (where they are called "trophies") and Steam. A certain few gamers are hell-bent on getting as many of these as possible, but most understand that anyone can buy a crappy game and get the achievements for it, so for most gamers, it's used to simply compare one's stash of achievements with another, especially across the same game.
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* There is [[Pinball Scoring|some sort of inflation]] related to points. Killing one [[The Goomba|Goomba]] gets you a hundred points. You can't get less. Even from a technical standpoint, the extra zeroes are often phoned-in to save on memory; the goomba is technically worth one point, but there are two static zeroes after the score to give the illusion of more points.
** On some games, points are scored in multiples of 100, leaving the tens and ones for a different reason: a continue counter. Each time you continue, either your game-over score goes up by one point, or your score resets all the way down to one point per continue you've used.
* Points might, sometimes, add to something useful, [[Every Ten Thousand Points|like extra lives]]. But, as soon as [[Super Mario Bros.]], these were often substituted by another variable, [[One Hundred Coins|like "coins", "rings" or "crystals"]].
* On [[X Box]] Live and PSN, online leaderboards add a [[Player Versus Player]] aspect to single-player games.
** Some fansites are dedicated to recording scores manually, usually either when official leaderboards or internet ranking are not available or as an intra-community leaderboard.
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== [[Adventure Game]] ==
* [[Sierra]] had an age-old tradition of giving out points whenever the player did something positive, often for completely arbitrary reasons to inspire players to come back to the game later to try and get all the points. For their more comedic games, the developers would deliberately give goofy, arbitrary scores for some actions, most [[Egregious|egregiously]] in [[Leisure Suit Larry|Al Lowe's]] ''[[Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist]]'', which has a maximum score of 1,000 points, and you get 500 points for [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?|opening a locked door at the very start of the game]]. Congratulations, you're already halfway done!
* If you use the cheat code to win in [[The Secret of Monkey Island]], the game tells you you scored 800 out of 800 points. This is the only reference ''ever'' the game makes to your score.
== [[Beat'Em Up]] ==
* ''[[
* The port of ''[[
** Like the NES port of ''[[
*** There is a vitality bonus in the SNES ''Turtles in Time'' and the Sega Genesis ''Hyperstone Heist'' at the end of each stage after defeating a boss. So that certainly helped in grabbing for extra lives.
* Cash bags and gold bars exist to grant bonus points, and a high enough score earns you an extra life. In [[Streets of Rage]] 3, earning 40,000 points on a single life grants you a star, which upgrades your blitz attack. The harder the difficulty, more points you get at the end of each round. This applies to all of the games.
* ''[[The Warriors (
== [[Fighting Game]] ==
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== [[First-Person Shooter]] ==
* ''[[
* Return of scoring points in first-person-shooters appeared in ''[[Serious Sam]]'' series. In Serious Sam XBOX and Serious Sam II and in certain co-op modes in ''III'', score actually provides the player extra lives.
* Points are used to determine the winning and losing team in VS mode in ''[[Left 4 Dead]]''. The infected team also gains points as they attack the survivors, but in the first game they contribute nothing to the competition, thus they are mostly for show.
** In the second game, it's a bit different. As it is much easier for both teams to get the exact same score on a level (if both teams make it to the end with everyone alive), the game gives an extra 25 points to the team that did more damage as Infected.
* ''[[
* Points in [[
== [[
* The ''[[Civilization]]'' games generate a score based on factors such as difficulty level, land area controlled, technologies researched and year of victory/defeat.
** While generally pointless, they did give you an approximate idea of how your civilization compared to others. Also, if no other win condition was met, the game would determine the winner based on score.
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== Minigames ==
* Minigames usually have a scorekeeping system. That's usually because they are meant to evoke a vintage, arcade feel to a current game. Like ''[[
* The entire goal of the ''[[
== Miscellaneous Games ==
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== [[Platform Game]] ==
* The original ''[[Mega Man (
* Averted in ''[[
** Later 3-D Sonic games would also use the points as the basis for their ranking system (though there were often some cases, and even a few entire games, where the ''only'' thing affecting your rank is how fast you are - this ''is'' [[Super Speed|the Sonic series]] we're talking about!) 2-D Sonic games up until ''Sonic Advance 2'' [[Every Ten Thousand Points|gave you lives for every so many points instead]], until ''Sonic Advance 3'' did away with them entirely, then ''Sonic Rush'' brought them back and used them for a ranking system.
* The early ''Castlevania'' games tended to follow the same pattern: you'd get your first extra life when you got 10,000 points, and another extra life for each subsequent additional 20,000 after that. The first Castlevania had a ton of hidden treasures worth a lot of points to help you in this task, including one before you even enter the castle.
* [[Super Mario Bros.]] games award points for squashing enemies, for collecting items, and for time remaining on the clock at the end of a level. No one cared.
** Actually, although few remember this today, the game continued into infinity, as we were still in the Atari era of video games, people not only cared but often DID try to play for the high score, although, like in Frogger, it was secondary to completing as many levels as possible. After 8-4, you were challenged to a "more difficult quest", after completing the "more difficult quest", the game looped into infinity on the "more difficult quest" setting.
** ''[[Purple]]'' is the same case, and there's even a highscore table!
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* ''Captain Claw'' is an odd game, what with being a computer 2D platformer. One interesting quirk is that it's score, represented by the treasure you collected, aside from giving extra lives, was there to incite the player to find the secrets of the game since at the end of each stage the game specifically told you the treasures that you missed. The game was more than a tad harder if you went for the secrets, as each required equal parts non-human reflexes and calculations of non-intuitive reflexes to be reached.
* Parodied in [[Kirby Super Star]] after you beat the "Computer Virus" boss.
* [[Pac
== [[Puzzle Game]] ==
* Unusually used in [[Boppin
{{quote|If you were able to solve all the screens before the final battle without ever having to continue, you could theoretically beat the boss in a ''couple of seconds''. Good luck.|[http://www.jenniverse.com/boppin%20instructions.html How to play Boppin', complete instructions]}}
* ''[[Tetris the Grand Master]]'' uses points as the basis for its grade system. TGM2, however, only takes points into consideration in its Normal mode; its Master mode (the ''de facto'' main mode of the game) use a hidden "grade points" system to determine your grade, and the other modes use completion and/or how many levels you complete to determine your ranking. In TGM3, score is just outright useless, being shown only at the end of the game and even then it does nothing to your grade. It's even useless in Easy mode as well, where the game sets off fireworks when you clear lines and the object is not to score points but instead score as many fireworks as possible.
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** ''DDR SuperNOVA'' then threw out the old, arbitrary point system altogether, sticking with the Oni system in all modes (''MAX2'' scoring in normal play, ''Extreme'' scoring in Nonstop and Oni modes). Your score in ''DDR SuperNOVA'' is just your dance point percentage multiplied by 10,000 and rounded down to the nearest integer. Starting with ''DDR SuperNOVA 2'', it's your dance point percentage multiplied by 1,000 and rounded down to the nearest 10, minus 10 points for every Perfect or Great (thus making the Marvelous count a tiebreaker).
* ''[[Beatmania]] IIDX'' has two different scoring systems. The more visible one (known to fans as the "money score") maxes out at 200,000 points per song and has a small combo factor that maxes out after 10 notes. Even though songs commonly have significantly more than 1000 notes, this is still enough to render the money score unsuitable for comparison. On top of that, there are several bonuses that may be awarded, including one for a full combo and one for completing the song with the '''minimum''' lifebar needed to pass. (Due to the mechanics of this game, it '''is''' possible to achieve both, and doing so while hitting the best judgment on every note would in theory net a money score somewhat over 210,000.) The other score (known as the "EX score") is based solely on judgments (2 points per Just Great, 1 point per Great) and determines the grade awarded. All rankings, official and non, use this score. Since difficulty in this game is largely about weathering a sudden spike of notes at the end, EX score is usually taken more seriously than whether or not you actually pass the song.
* ''[[
** ''[[Video Game]]/Audiosurf'' has many other problems. As ALL tracks except the radio tracks are user generated, and it's based entirely on the tag of the track, you may be competing against others in a totally different track, or even just slightly different because one person uses a better quality sound file. Not to mention, the ridiculousness of a 10% penalty upon overfilling -- so a mistake 30 seconds in may cost very little, while one after 6 minutes of a fast track may cost 50K points just because you messed up there.
** When I overfill in Ironmode, it's game over. But the game's not done punishing me yet; it docks ''99999'' points from my score just to drive the point home.
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== [[Role Playing Game]] ==
* ''[[
** ''[[
* ''[[
** ''[[
* In ''[[
* In the multiplayer mode of ''[[
== [[Shoot Em Ups]] ==
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** Amusingly, ''Undefined Fantastic Object'' had a bug in its initial release, causing the game to crash upon the player reaching one billion points. Until it was patched, players were forced to [[Do Well, But Not Perfect]] in order to get a high score without hitting the brick wall.
* ''[[Hellsinker]]'' probably have the most complex scoring system of any [[Shoot'Em Up]] to date while at the same time averting [[Pinball Scoring]].
* Later games in the ''[[
* ''Computer Space'', probably the earliest to calculate score.
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== Non [[Video Game]] Examples ==
* Parodied in the comedy skit show "[[Whose Line Is It Anyway?]]." Drew Carey, the host, would randomly hand out various kinds of "points" (like Wonder Points, Low Fat Points, etc) during the show to the comedians on stage, guest comedians and even the audience and the viewers at home because it's "the show where everything's made up and the points don't matter." At the end of the show, the person with "highest" point total (entirely based [[Rule of Funny]]<ref>Everyone "won", and whoever's idea got the funniest result was aired.</ref>) would decide the type of skit they would perform for the ending act.
** It's carried over from the original British version, where the host would explicitly give and take away ludicrous amounts of points for no reason other than humor.
** Likewise, its spiritual successor ''[[Mock the Week]]''.
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