Scoring system needs to be reconsidered.

[Yekaterina]

Recently I found the scoring system at the end of the matches quite misleading. For most people, this is of no significance, however, I still felt the need to bring it up as it is quite useless at the moment and can be improved to have some real uses. 

There are a few issues:

1. Economy score is given too much weight in total score and military does not have enough weight. 

2. Economy score purely focuses on resources gathered, which is of little significance if the player just floats resources without using them. 

3. Exploration score is useless. 

 

Let me show you some replays to illustrate this problem:

Seems like atila1752 is the mvp here, huh?

he indeed gathered a huge amount of resources, but by the end of the game he was floating 30594 resources, and he sent absolutely nothing to his teammates during the entire game! On the other hand, I  spent more than I gathered. How? I loot from the dead enemies for my eco! Now let's see in-game performance:

It's quite obvious who here were the best players in each team. Not this red dude. What you can't see behind the summary is, when I asked atila for help, he had 50 infantry chopping trees right next to where I was getting destroyed by 2 enemies, but refused to move them to help me! I had to pause the game to make him come. Yet the score system gives him the mvp... hooohooo also did a great job at defending his flank against 2 players without any assistance, buying me enough time to kill my side and come to him. 

 

So my suggestions are, for economy score, take account of how much resource you spent and the RATE of gathering. Furthermore, decrease its value relative to military score. 

 

[Player of 0AD]

First of all, the relation of military points and economic seems to make  a lot of sense: To increase your total score by 1000, you can either gather 10,000 resources or you kill enemy units which cost 10,000 resources. So it might be the best ratio already.

Your suggestion that spent resources should be the eco score has a problem: If I send half of my resources to teammates, my score will be very low.

Maybe in the current situation tributes should influence the total score: If I send 100 resources to my teammates, my total score increases by 10. If I receive 100, it decreases by 10.

This effect could be doubled if spent resources should count as eco score.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

I think the scoring system is not perfect, but it is also not too misleading. Players who are concerned with the scoreboard usually understand that there are some factors influencing the score and that there are details they can look at if they want. Only way I see this being an issue is if ddos gets so bad that we need to use score to have closure on the games.

 

[Yekaterina]

14 hours ago, Player of 0AD said:

First of all, the relation of military points and economic seems to make  a lot of sense: To increase your total score by 1000, you can either gather 10,000 resources or you kill enemy units which cost 10,000 resources. So it might be the best ratio

But that is a problem, because killing enemies is a lot harder than gathering resources. In, my teammates defended against a double rush and return rushed the other side, causing 2 enemies to resign. He got around 100 kills in 15 minutes. In the meantime, I just stayed in my base and boomed got 14 minutes straight, and it wasn't even a fast boom. Yet, I had almost double the score of the guy at the second place. I feel like this is not fair on them as they did all of the contributions and played with great skill, whereas I, the eco bot, got the MVP by a far lead. Same applies to that Athila above. 

 

14 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I think the scoring system is not perfect, but it is also not too misleading. Players who are concerned with the scoreboard usually understand that there are some factors influencing the score and that there are details they can look at if they want. Only way I see this being an issue is if ddos gets so bad that we need to use score to have closure on the games.

 

Maybe remove the score feature completely. I have watched every single Newbie Rush video and I found that Jim is often mislead by the numbers when awarding MVP

[Dakara]

Fortunately, unlike age of empire, you can't see the scores of your opponents in part, so there is no impact in having a bad scoring system. But how to improve it? Sometimes killing units doesn't win the game, so don't spend your resources either, so good... But having a system allows you to compare yourself and as you do it well, you know how to compare players with all the criteria and not only the overall score.

[Stan`]

4 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

Maybe remove the score feature completely. I have watched every single Newbie Rush video and I found that Jim is often mislead by the numbers when awarding MVP

What's with removing everything X)

[Yekaterina]

28 minutes ago, Stan` said:

What's with removing everything X)

Remove things that annoy us and start from scratch: only keep the basics, then only add things that pleases us. 

[thephilosopher]

On 20/02/2022 at 7:02 PM, Yekaterina said:

Seems like atila1752 is the mvp here, huh?

 

I agree with your point that the scoring system gives eco too much weight and military not enough. Noticing exactly that problem is one of the things that tipped me off a few months ago that I needed to do a much better job managing resources and troops while playing the game: I was losing games even while winning the score!

But going back to your original example, I don't think it's a very clear one. Three players on your team scored in the 17000s. That's way too close to judge MVP by score alone, and no one should expect that level of precision from the scores. So, it's not at all obvious to me that I should expect atila1752 to be the MVP in that game judging by score alone. Usually if I see scores that close, I'd say the MVP isn't obvious and I need to look at the details to decide the MVP.

I'd have been a lot more unimpressed by the scoring system had atila1752 scored, say, 5000 more points than a player who bagged 800+ kills. Or if I looked at the detailed stats and found that someone other than epemeune was the best player on Team 1.

Edited February 22, 2022 by thephilosopher
addition

[real_tabasco_sauce]

How about eco score is proportional to resources spent?

Really quite similar to economic growth irl: IIRC, a growing economy is one where more and more things are purchased.

 

I think showing the resources spent would show how much cost was required for the corresponding military score: that way the eco to military score ratio would reflect the skill of players including unit micro and strategy.

In addition, I think this would encourage new players to start spending resources more. I often see new players saving up resources for things, when they should usually be spending as fast as possible, investing in upgrades, additional production buildings, early soldiers, cav, etc.

Edited February 22, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[real_tabasco_sauce]

In your case , @Yekaterina by the end of the game, you gathered less res and successfully carried ur team by army composition and skill, while your teammates likely gathered unnecessary res, and were less successful in fighting overall. I bet the solution above would be a much better predictor of the MVP in each match.

As for the rush part, at the time immediately after the rush, the aforementioned ratio would be very high, since a rush resulted in a high KD. However these details will be just as lost to time as what you showed above (except for the charts section, where the ratio could be graphed over time)

Edited February 22, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[alre]

- resources spent are indeed more important than resources gathered

- it's a known issue that rushes lower the total score of both rushed and rushing players, this is inevitable and could only be mitigated including a lot more factors in the score, which would make it more complicate and finally less understandable

[real_tabasco_sauce]

2 minutes ago, alre said:

- it's a known issue that rushes lower the total score of both rushed and rushing players, this is inevitable and could only be mitigated including a lot more factors in the score, which would make it more complicate and finally less understandable

yeah the best way to consider early rushes is by looking at early military score in the graphs section, its not reflected in the final score

[real_tabasco_sauce]

On 21/02/2022 at 7:14 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

How about eco score is proportional to resources spent?

Really quite similar to economic growth irl: IIRC, a growing economy is one where more and more things are purchased.

 

I think showing the resources spent would show how much cost was required for the corresponding military score: that way the eco to military score ratio would reflect the skill of players including unit micro and strategy.

In addition, I think this would encourage new players to start spending resources more. I often see new players saving up resources for things, when they should usually be spending as fast as possible, investing in upgrades, additional production buildings, early soldiers, cav, etc.

I could probably make a diff for this, or at leat part of it. IDK about any GUI stuff, but changing the calculations looks pretty easy. My question is would anyone be interested?

[smiley]

9 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I could probably make a diff for this, or at leat part of it. IDK about any GUI stuff, but changing the calculations looks pretty easy. My question is would anyone be interested?

Submit the patch and find out. If your arguments are convincing, there is no reason why it won't be committed.

[alre]

I find it unfortunate that you have to make a patch before any decision is made about it. currently you can already envision the proposed score in at the address resources>total>spent, so one can already post and compare charts. I'm not doing that now because I'd have some trouble right now, but these are some observations I can do from having observed the charts in my last game:

- resources spent draw a line that is more segmented and somehow jittery, resources gathered make a smoother, more elegant line. also compare to total units trained which is more segmented still, and also a good index of economic progression. 

- players who do not spend resources efficiently do stand out a lot more in the resources spent graph, clearly. you can see precisely when they start falling behind, as well as in the total units trained plot too. with the current scoring system you can only see the late effects instead.

- resources spent show sometimes a decrease and I have some doubts about what is that for, I think that's worth looking into

- there is often one player that has everything going right for them, so they end up having gathered a lot of res without spending it all. in that case the resourches gathered plot may be more compressed in height, and therefore less readable

all in all I like the resources spent system better, and I like that is somehow more alike the widely used GDP index. I think the concept is more sound and that the final ranking is more fair. I'd like the decreasing value issue fixed though.

[Freagarach]

28 minutes ago, alre said:

- resources spent show sometimes a decrease and I have some doubts about what is that for, I think that's worth looking into

Stopping production?

[alre]

1 hour ago, Freagarach said:

Stopping production?

shouldn't that be a flat line. in my mind, that would be the ideal result. I don't understand why there is a decrease sometimes and the reason of its size (seems pretty small, and not completely correlated with losses, although there is an association).

[Freagarach]

Example:
1. One spends 1000 resources on some tech. -> Used resources go up with 1000.
2. One stops the tech. -> 1000 resources are refunded. -> Used resources go down by 1000.

[Dizaka]

On 20/02/2022 at 8:02 PM, Yekaterina said:

Not this red dude. What you can't see behind the summary is, when I asked atila for help, he had 50 infantry chopping trees right next to where I was getting destroyed by 2 enemies, but refused to move them to help me! I had to pause the game to make him come.

People sometimes wonder why I just randomly resign, close client, and go for a walk.  #1 reason right here.

Edited March 7, 2022 by Dizaka

[real_tabasco_sauce]

2 hours ago, alre said:

all in all I like the resources spent system better, and I like that is somehow more alike the widely used GDP index. I think the concept is more sound and that the final ranking is more fair. I'd like the decreasing value issue fixed though.

yes, and also if you compare military score to res spent, this gives an idea of their skills (micro, unit composition, etc)

^this could also help show if some units are too OP for their cost.