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Scoring Imbalances, A Note to Table Designers

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  • Scoring Imbalances, A Note to Table Designers

    I have only played 1 game of Ultron but others have already found and exploited scoring imbalances in this game. It involves spamming the Hawkeye and Invasion modes. A video has been posted on the Steam FX2 forum.

    I have to believe the spamming of these modes was not an intentional design which again leads me to believe that play testing is not as rigorous as it should be. But I am curious about the designers' philosophies about scoring. I believe in the high-risk/high-reward, low-risk/low-reward model. And usually reaching and completing the wizard mode is the most difficult challenge and should be rewarded accordingly. However, the spamming of certain easy low-risk/high-reward modes completely disincentivizes players from even trying to complete all the modes to get a good score.

    I think designers should have a few rules to prevent spamming of modes to prevent these scoring imbalances from ruining the design of the table. These are only suggestions but I think they could help:

    1) After completing a main mode you cannot repeat it until the table resets (after starting a wizard mode). This prevents spamming a mode.

    2) The bulk of the points rewarded for a main mode should be given for actually completing the mode. This should disincetivize a person from purposely failing a mode or drawing it out.

    3) Multiballs are cool and require some skill to score well but you can get some serious points from mulitballs. But many multiballs are too easy to start. After a multiball ends, it should become progressively harder to restart them.

    4) Hurry-ups, video modes, side missions, etc should probably just award some flat score that is reasonable and not excessive so that they cannot be spammed. I think "TRAINING" mode in Clone wars is an example of a mini playfield mode getting out of hand. If I recall correctly every successive completion of the mode results in bigger and bigger scores.

  • #2
    Very sound points and I fully concur. I have a long time ago given up playing for high-scores. I set my own goals which usually goes along the lines of getting to and completing wizard mode and then aiming for a tough but achievable score (if I manage to hook a great game up without spamming anything) such as 100mil, 1bil etc. depending on the ease of scoring on a table.
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    Cloda's somewhat vain and sort of self-indulgent thread

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    • #3
      Brilliant post surf1der, very well put and I couldn't agree more. In fact, I always seem to agree with your views

      I'm sure the table designers want balanced scoring a such as us, maybe they need to test the tables with a few players who regularly top the leaderboards? It seems a bit sad to me that all the care, skill and hard work that goes into making each table can be ruined by imbalanced scoring. Especially as this seems (to me anyway) to be quite a simple thing to get right (or at least not get wrong) Just by using the basic points you have listed would work every time.

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      • #4
        I think designers should have a few rules to prevent spamming of modes to prevent these scoring imbalances from ruining the design of the table.
        http://www.fifaah.me

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