How does the score abstraction of "loot" fit into your taxonomy? Many games are built around using items as score.

How does the score abstraction of "loot" fit into your taxonomy? Many games are built around using items as score.

What do you meant by "loot"? Is that the meaning of the score which is used to represent an item?

Sorry for my bad English.

My understanding of your definition of a game-score is: a abstract or concrete metric within a game.

I was missing items, such as gear and property (houses, decorations etc) in your list. Many players like to play game to get more items, or to get the best items.

Perhaps a player's item is not abstract enough and could be described with the terms in your taxonomy.

Great ! that makes sense now, you reminded me that there is a bunch of strategy web games give new player several protection hours to avoid being attacked.tongue.png

Yes, but that's yet another thing :D There is one system where you get a protection for X hours UNLESS you reach certain score before that timeframe (it expires then). And another, where you get permanent protection based on your score (relative to the score of the attacker). The permanent score protection is a direct one (it does not allow/unlock hourly protection, it is a protection in itself).

(I'm a big fan (as a designer) of the permanent score protection, I use it in almost all my games, it allows me to nicely reduce/eliminate "farming" and allows more wild design of the battle system (because I know that if I made it too unbalanced I always have a second safety net in a form of score protection system))

How does the score abstraction of "loot" fit into your taxonomy? Many games are built around using items as score.

What do you meant by "loot"?

'loot' is game slang for taking items and money off of dead enemies, out of treasure chests, and from other defeated or discovered sources of wealth.
"Loot usually refers to treasure or wealth that is found or stolen; see looting." - Wikipedia

But scores can also be used cooperatively, shared between both players. Maybe they together need to collect X amount of points to progress, or maybe (if score is a currency) they have a shared/pooled currency. Or even experience-wise, some games have both players leveling up together by sharing experience equally (which I personally prefer, rather than one player advancing ahead of the other player).

But I can't think about which game has the second function, can you give me an example?

Sure. One of my favorite cooperative games is Shadowgrounds. In Shadowgrounds you gain "gears" that enemies sometimes drop. Gears can be used to upgrade your weapons giving you new skills. When playing cooperatively, both players share all their gears, and when a weapon is upgraded, both players get the upgraded weapon. The gears is shared between both players, and the progress (weapon upgrades) is shared between both players.

The sequel, Shadowgrounds: Survivor, changed that: both players had separate currencies and bought their upgrades separately. Which is one of the reasons I disliked the second game (despite it being better in many other ways).
I like buying upgrades separately! It lets the players purchase what interests them and specialize.
But I dislike trying to make sure I'm not accidentally hogging the resources.

My absolutely favorite cooperative game is Dungeon Defenders. Dungeon Defenders pools the cooperative players' gemstones (score/currency), but lets them spend it separately, taking from a shared pool of currency. This is great! But because they can spend unequal amounts from each other, hogging their chest, it's not perfect either.

The ideal (in my mind) currency pooling system in cooperative games looks like this:
1) Whenever either player picks up currency or upgrade-points, or gain experience, they both get an equal amount so players don't have to worry about accidentally hogging resources from the ground.
2) Though getting an equal amount, both players have separate pools, so they are always equal in what they have acquired so far, but can spend at different rates without worrying about hogging resources from any shared pool.
3) Players can spend their resources on what they want, and upgrade and unlock how they please, without upgrading or unlocking things for the other player, so they can progress in different directions.

These all seem to look at score on the 0 -> infinity or maximum scale. What about score such as X alignment vs. Y alignment? Good vs. evil is the most obvious example, with evil being negative, neutral being 0, and good being positive. But there are many other options, like faction A vs. faction B vs. faction C, with all 3 being positive. Or in a dating sim, some actions will please one date, some will please all dates, some will please one but displease others, and there can also be checkpoints; for example a checkpoint would be if a date falls in love with the player at a threshold number, the player's score with that date will never go below the threshold number even if he switches to pursuing a second date.

Also, what about gauges? These are scores that fall over time, and the player periodically must do something to raise them so they don't hit 0. The Sims series is all about this kind of gauge, as are most "babysitting" games.

Score can affect available dialogue or action options, then making a dialogue choice or taking an action can change the score, in an interactive story feedback loop.

Thanks for your feedback...

I indeed notice the alignment which you mentioned such as "Black & White". It is composed of "Measurement "(e.g. success, fail, evil, good, strength) , "Identity/Role" (e.g. good god, evil god), "Manipulatable" depend on player's behavior, and "Progression"(e.g. being good god or evil god, being dead or alive). Perhaps I should modify "Progression" to "Tendency" should make more sense.

For me, I would say gauge is like alignment as well(e.g. hungry and full, dirty and clean, sleepy and energetic). The difference between these two is it automatically fall or not.

The third one you mentioned is interesting! can you give me an example?

For progression or tendency, I think of it more as philosophy or personality. It usually corresponds to the player's pattern of choices within the game, and the player makes that pattern of choices because of their personality or philosophy. The game (ideally) recognizes the pattern of choices, allowing the game to respond in a way that recognizes the player's personality or philosophy. Titles are one way that a game recognizes a player's choices and allows the player to label themself so that other players can also see that player's personality or choices. For example, in the MMO Runes Of Magic there are a wide variety of titles players can earn, then they choose their favorite earned title to display to other players. Sometimes a titles is earned by accomplishing a single thing within the game, but sometimes it is earned by accumulating a score. (100 levels in a crafting profession, 1,000 kills in PvP, 100 collectibles collected, 1,000,000 coins earned...)

Examples of score affecting dialogue options, and dialogue options affecting score. The Harvest Moon series (and many dating sims) have dialogue or other NPC interaction options that only become available once the player has built a minimum relationship score with that NPC. But, if a player can repeatedly take the same action toward an NPC, the value of that action can change depending on the player's relationship score with that NPC, or the score of number of times the player has already taken the same action. Skyrim is another game where the player may have completely different options available when talking to an NPC depending on their previous actions in the game (which the game "remembers" by scoring them). There are many games where you have to gather XP within a faction to get awarded a rank within that faction to gain access to speak to NPC members of that faction; then when you speak to them you might please them and gain more score with that faction or you might betray or offend them and lose score with that faction.

Score is very much like the memory of a game, actually. That's why poker chips or other tokens were first invented for gambling, to remember who had won or lost how much money. The score of a game like baseball is recorded on a timeline of innings, like a historical record. And score in pinball and other early games was the method by which the top player could write their initials in the game, as a marker of conquered territory or social dominance.

How does the score abstraction of "loot" fit into your taxonomy? Many games are built around using items as score.

What do you meant by "loot"?

'loot' is game slang for taking items and money off of dead enemies, out of treasure chests, and from other defeated or discovered sources of wealth.
"Loot usually refers to treasure or wealth that is found or stolen; see looting." - Wikipedia

I agree with this; normally I think of loot not including money, only items, and also including items rewarded for quests, but that's a minor detail. Related to the idea of loot is the idea of "vendor trash". This means an items which has no use within the game except to be turned in to a vendor NPC for a small amount of money. The game simply rewards players with items instead of money for flavor (and realism, since killing an animal wouldn't logically yield coins).

How does the score abstraction of "loot" fit into your taxonomy? Many games are built around using items as score.

What do you meant by "loot"?

'loot' is game slang for taking items and money off of dead enemies, out of treasure chests, and from other defeated or discovered sources of wealth.
"Loot usually refers to treasure or wealth that is found or stolen; see looting." - Wikipedia

I agree with this; normally I think of loot not including money, only items, and also including items rewarded for quests, but that's a minor detail. Related to the idea of loot is the idea of "vendor trash". This means an items which has no use within the game except to be turned in to a vendor NPC for a small amount of money. The game simply rewards players with items instead of money for flavor (and realism, since killing an animal wouldn't logically yield coins).

How does the score abstraction of "loot" fit into your taxonomy? Many games are built around using items as score.

What do you meant by "loot"?

'loot' is game slang for taking items and money off of dead enemies, out of treasure chests, and from other defeated or discovered sources of wealth.
"Loot usually refers to treasure or wealth that is found or stolen; see looting." - Wikipedia

I agree with this; normally I think of loot not including money, only items, and also including items rewarded for quests, but that's a minor detail. Related to the idea of loot is the idea of "vendor trash". This means an items which has no use within the game except to be turned in to a vendor NPC for a small amount of money. The game simply rewards players with items instead of money for flavor (and realism, since killing an animal wouldn't logically yield coins).

These all seem to look at score on the 0 -> infinity or maximum scale. What about score such as X alignment vs. Y alignment? Good vs. evil is the most obvious example, with evil being negative, neutral being 0, and good being positive. But there are many other options, like faction A vs. faction B vs. faction C, with all 3 being positive. Or in a dating sim, some actions will please one date, some will please all dates, some will please one but displease others, and there can also be checkpoints; for example a checkpoint would be if a date falls in love with the player at a threshold number, the player's score with that date will never go below the threshold number even if he switches to pursuing a second date.

Also, what about gauges? These are scores that fall over time, and the player periodically must do something to raise them so they don't hit 0. The Sims series is all about this kind of gauge, as are most "babysitting" games.

Score can affect available dialogue or action options, then making a dialogue choice or taking an action can change the score, in an interactive story feedback loop.

Thanks for your feedback...

I indeed notice the alignment which you mentioned such as "Black & White". It is composed of "Measurement "(e.g. success, fail, evil, good, strength) , "Identity/Role" (e.g. good god, evil god), "Manipulatable" depend on player's behavior, and "Progression"(e.g. being good god or evil god, being dead or alive). Perhaps I should modify "Progression" to "Tendency" should make more sense.

For me, I would say gauge is like alignment as well(e.g. hungry and full, dirty and clean, sleepy and energetic). The difference between these two is it automatically fall or not.

The third one you mentioned is interesting! can you give me an example?

For progression or tendency, I think of it more as philosophy or personality. It usually corresponds to the player's pattern of choices within the game, and the player makes that pattern of choices because of their personality or philosophy. The game (ideally) recognizes the pattern of choices, allowing the game to respond in a way that recognizes the player's personality or philosophy. Titles are one way that a game recognizes a player's choices and allows the player to label themself so that other players can also see that player's personality or choices. For example, in the MMO Runes Of Magic there are a wide variety of titles players can earn, then they choose their favorite earned title to display to other players. Sometimes a titles is earned by accomplishing a single thing within the game, but sometimes it is earned by accumulating a score. (100 levels in a crafting profession, 1,000 kills in PvP, 100 collectibles collected, 1,000,000 coins earned...)

Examples of score affecting dialogue options, and dialogue options affecting score. The Harvest Moon series (and many dating sims) have dialogue or other NPC interaction options that only become available once the player has built a minimum relationship score with that NPC. But, if a player can repeatedly take the same action toward an NPC, the value of that action can change depending on the player's relationship score with that NPC, or the score of number of times the player has already taken the same action. Skyrim is another game where the player may have completely different options available when talking to an NPC depending on their previous actions in the game (which the game "remembers" by scoring them). There are many games where you have to gather XP within a faction to get awarded a rank within that faction to gain access to speak to NPC members of that faction; then when you speak to them you might please them and gain more score with that faction or you might betray or offend them and lose score with that faction.

Score is very much like the memory of a game, actually. That's why poker chips or other tokens were first invented for gambling, to remember who had won or lost how much money. The score of a game like baseball is recorded on a timeline of innings, like a historical record. And score in pinball and other early games was the method by which the top player could write their initials in the game, as a marker of conquered territory or social dominance.