Topic for people to post there thoughts on how the scoreboard should work.
Questions:
- How many points do you get for destroying each type of ship?
- Do you get points just for damaging ships?
- Are player ships worth more points than non-player ships?
- How do you prevent players from collaborating to game the system?
- Does the leaderboard ever reset?
My answers:
- I’d give all ship types the same point value.
More points for larger ships makes smaller ships useless, literally just a stepping stone to the larger classes where you can start accruing meaningful point awards. If all ships give the same reward it balances out so that larger ships can still get more points as they have more destructive capability, but smaller ships are still useful.
- It overcomplicates things giving points for damage.
Just award the points to the player that did the most damage.
- Yes, but not always.
I’d give all NPC ships and player ships a points value of 1, with an exception. Higher level players (see below) would have a point value equal to their level.
- This one isn’t going to be easy.
One thing you might try is not awarding points if a player kills another player for the second time in a row. However players could still alternate between collaborative kills and combat kills, or four players could team up and alternate. This needs some serious thought.
- An ever increasing leaderboard will just lead to 50% of your players being stuck in the bottom 50% of your leaderboard forever.
That’s not good and will drive players away pretty rapidly. My solution would be to make it work like a Formula 1 (motor racing) championship.
Each battle would be scored using the 1 point per kill simple scoring mechanic. At the end of each battle, the battle scores will be ranked from best to worst with championship points being awarded to the players based on their rank in that battle:
1 - 25 points (MVP)
2 - 18 points
3 - 15 points
4 - 12 points
5 - 10 points
6 - 8 points
7 - 6 points
8 - 4 points
9 - 2 points
10 - 1 points
This way lots of players have a chance to accumulate championship points. It also highly rewards players for logging on to empty servers.
Championships will be time limited, a year is probably too long, I’d probably ballpark it at about three months per championship but it could be much shorter. Then the winner gets a trophy for her profile and the championship is reset and it all starts again.
Current championship points will also determine the “level” of the player*. For every 10 championship points the player gains a level. The level could allow the player to access better ships or equipment more quickly, but it will also give more points to any player that destroys them. This is a nice feedback mechanism where getting better at the game makes more people want to kill you, thus increasing the challenge.
* Previous champions could start the current championship at a level** equal to the number of championships they have won.
** Give the levels fun names with options for the player to choose from.