Bohemond said:

Haha, good point. Well, how about if we can come up with a formula that enough people agree upon...

Taking the average of all the players and calling that the score could allow for a fairly balanced comparison of each quest. I looked at the community averages on the Quest Log, and the average score per player was 30-35. So overall it could be consistent.

I think quest difficulty should be included as well.

If we went with the default formula, used a minimum value for threat, and subtracted double the difficulty level as you proposed the formula would look like this:

(Threat [with a minimum of heroes' threat cost] + Threat cost of dead heroes + Damage on heroes + # of turns - VP - (Quest difficulty level x 2)) /# of players = The game score

I think turns should also be counted and added to the score, so I put that in the equation too. It would discourage stalling to lower your score because it would only be effective for a few turns, and it would be completely useless if you've got 4 players.

Currently tracking individual scores before the average will be difficult because VP go to the team, not an individual player. The difficulty level would also function as guaranteed VP basically.

Here are a few things I notice about this.

1) If you are comparing your score with teams of the same size then dividing the score by the number of players won't change anything. It's an extra step that isn't needed.

2) If you are comparing scores from the same quest then subtracting the difficulty level also doesn't change anything.

I bring up 1 and 2 because in tournament play the teams were supposed to be the same size and the quest should be the same for everyone. However, one of the nice things about averaging out the score is that you could have different sized teams at tournaments. The other nice thing is that you can compare scores of different quests. Your best score could come from a three or four player game as easily as it could a solo game. I guess I was pointing 1 and 2 out because they are redundancies that don't need to be included, but I like them. By adding a couple "redundancies" you add a lot more flexibility.

I'm not 100% sure we need turns included because of threat, but it might not be a bad idea to have it. I guess it's more consistent than threat.

I was thinking that for team games each player scores himself as if it were a solo game, with every player counting the VPs and such for themselves. Then the team score is the average of those scores. I was thinking this over doing a full team score and dividing by number of players because if you add the VPs to the team score, for example, and then divide by the number of players, you are changing the actual value of the VPs. The same thing happens with the number of turns when you divide...

Let me do some quick calculations using a fictional situation (I'm just making up numbers for quick testing):

Player 1 - 1 dead hero (threat 9). 5 damage tokens on heroes. 29 starting threat, 38 ending threat.

Player 2 - No dead heroes. 7 damage tokens on heroes. 25 starting threat, 20 ending threat.

16 turn game. Quest difficulty 7. 8 VP.

Method 1:
Team Score (Total Score Divided by Num Players) = (63 + 9 + 12 + 16 - 8 - 14)/2 = 39

Method 2:
Player 1's score = 38 + 9 + 5 + 16 - 8 - 14 = 46
Player 2's score = 25 + 0 + 7 + 16 - 8 - 14 = 26
Team Score (Average Player Scores) = (46+26)/2 = 36

I think I like method 2 better. In method 1 you get a good average of the threat, dead heroes threat, and damage... but the effect of turns, VPs, and difficulty is cut in half. Plus you can get an idea of how each player did on their own.

I like it so far. You can compare quests with any number of players and still have meaningful numbers. Delaying the game makes your score worse except in some cases where you might wait 1 turn to play a gandalf to hit your minimum threat or something, but that's negligible.

It's still difficult to compare quests directly this way, but I think it's better than the current setup. Again, if I set up an unofficial quest log that people used with these scores you could still compare your scores on individual quests or with specific heroes or something.

I like method 2 better as well. I looks cleaner. If the difficulty level is subtracted from each player, I don't think we need to double it. You also may be right about the turns. Having a minimum cap on threat may be enough, and it saves players from having to keep track of one more thing.

Yeah, I suppose doubling the difficulty is unnecessary. It will be a very minor score adjustment though, which I guess isn't too bad. However, a difficulty 3 and difficulty 7 quest will only vary by 4 points, which is about 1 VP card. :-/ Is that really enough for difficulty you think?

I'm torn on the turns thing. I don't like the idea of trying to track turns... but it still lends itself to the idea of stalling to get your threat to the minimum level before finishing. I suppose with the minimum level it's not as big a deal though.

That's a good point about the difficulty. Only 4 points doesn't seem like enough. In which case doubling is better.

It may just come down to seeing the system in action to see if doubling is too much or if we do/don't need to count the turns.

Kiwina said:

I'm torn on this as well. Doubling it gives it a fair amount of weight, but at the same time that means scores for harder quests can be quite a bit better. With the scores averaging somewhere in the 30s or so I'd guess (probably lower without the number of turns), that means 4 points is somewhere in the range of 13% increase in score... That seems about right I'd say. Doubling it would mean more than a 25% change in score just for playing a harder difficulty quest.

So yeah, don't double it. It gives some weight to the difficulty without making it TOO much of the score. This way you can compare scores between quests more reliably I think.

So, new scoring system:
Threat [with a minimum of heroes' threat cost] + Threat cost of dead heroes + Damage on heroes - VP - Quest difficulty level = new score
For multiple players, calculate each player's score individually then average.

This is a minimal amount of changes from the base formula (just the minimum threat value for scoring and adding in difficulty) but it looks like it should work well. The minimum threat serves a dual purpose of stopping players from simply delaying the game for more points by cycling threat reduction cards, plus it makes picking the weaker heroes give the possibility of a lower score. Adding quest difficulty makes comparing quests a little bit more fair (but still far from perfect considering differences in encounter decks, number of VP cards, etc).

The multiplayer scoring setup gives individuals a good idea of how they did in a particular game compared to the team, as well as allowing you to compare the scores of various size teams more accurately.

Anything we are missing? The one thing that's left is the possibility of delaying the game to cycle through the deck in order to get all the VP cards out of it. Not as big of a deal as the threat thing I'd say, but still a bit annoying. Unless we went back to adding in number of turns, which requires the players to do some additional tracking during the game, I'm not sure how to change that. Number of turns also adds more of a spread between quests of different lengths, which is a negative effect.

I posted this over on BGG to see if we can get some more feedback on it: www.boardgamegeek.com/article/7624261#7624261

Svenn said:

I wouldn't worry about cycling through the deck as much. The risk/benefit ratio is too high on most quests, so I'd imagine that sort of thing will exist more as an anomaly than anything else.

Here is another thought... how about tracking number of turns but NOT putting it in the basic formula. Keep that as a separate number for comparison as well.

So, you have 2 games with the same score, but one game took 10 turns and the other took 15. Clearly the 10 turn game is the better one, and this doesn't hurt the formula or skew scores too much.

Just a thought about the scoring system:

Doesn't taking into account damage on heroes encourage a healing playstyle? Not all decks have access to the ability to heal heroes.

Lenbo said:

My thoughts exactly. I could definitely see the same problem cropping up as players delay to heal characters up before scoring. It could never be as bad as it is now, but I can definitely see it.

Personally I just feel that Hero health should be removed from score - consider double citadel plate-wielding Gimli as an example, I'd either have to cycle my deck for a heal (forcing me to include heals in the first place) or lose a dozen points.

I'd also like to see Threat removed from scoring altogether - some of the low threat Heroes are very, very good at what they do (Eowyn) and you're already penalized by getting high threat by the game itself, through loss of control of Staging as well as losing the game. I agree that this will make it less of a chore to reduce threat and cycle to 0, but people will still cycle to their minimum under this system.

In fact the only aspect of the scoring system I like is the VPs.

Well, you could also just not take damage.

There are a few reasons threat was such a big problem. First of all, it is by far the most significant portion of the score. It ranges from 1-50. Most things only affect score by a few points. The other thing is that there are only 2 cards to deal with threat. Oh, and one more thing... threat increases naturally every turn. Damage is something that is more controlled by the player in who gets it.

Anyway, damage is a minor portion of the formula, and there are enough ways to control it.

Honestly, I don't even know if it's possible or worth it. With threat and damage - and even VPs as noted - as a factor people will cycle their decks and scores will still be meaningless. Same with hero death - people will delay the game for a rez when possible. So under this system we'd have what we have now - less, sure, for not quite as wildly different results, but it would still be the same. As far as I can see the only way to score the game without penalizing people for their preferred playstyle or deck construction would be to include an individual scoring system for each scenario that did away with the numbers and scored people on objectives achieved or "hard modes". Carrock without Grimbeorn, Osgiliath with a Witch King kill under your belt, etc.

I'm not trying to be negative and I (obviously) agree that scoring needs changing but all I'm seeing from this solution is a kind of band aid, I don't think it would actually solve the problem. Just an opinion though, I'm glad somebody's taking a good long serious look at it and I'd be happy to try it out and see if I'm wrong!

Sure, you can delay the game to heal up a hero, but you're gaining what, 3 points? Whereas with the old system you could drop 30+ points by taking your threat to 0. Also I don't think we have to worry as much about someone cheesing a healing deck for the lowest score possible.

Yeah, this is definitely not perfect, but it really negates a massive score difference simply because you cycled your deck for threat for 3 hours. Also, this is why I proposed a score + turn number setup where you can see just how long it took to complete without letting that influence the primary score. If you see someone with a score of 28 and 35 turns played versus someone with a score of 33 and 12 turns played... I'd say the latter was a far better score.

Cletus said:

Agreed.

The simplest measure I can think of for gauging how well you did is amount of turns. Generally speaking, if you were able to beat a scenario, regardless of threat, or damage on heroes, and beat it quickly, you probably did very well.

We could also take into account how much resources spent (the less, the better) enemies defeated (the more, the better), and victory points.

Some kind of formula like this:

Turns + Engagement cost of enemies defeated + VPs - Resources spent

Something like that. I didn't give it too much thought, but what do you guys think?

Well, I see a few problems with this. For one thing, is a higher score better or a lower score better? If it's a higher score, then why does number of turns add to the score instead of subtracting? If it's lower, why does VP and engagement cost of enemies increase the number instead of lower it?

That aside, you still have the problem of someone delaying the game to repeatedly kill enemies increasing their score. By engagement cost of enemies do you mean the threat level at which they attack? I don't think that's a great gauge, and it also inflates the numbers a ton. If you mean the threat value, that makes more sense, but again you can theoretically cycle the deck forever gaining points. As long as you get more than 1 point a turn you're outdoing the turn cost to your score. Also, what about locations? If you leave them out you're missing half of the game in the score. If you add them, that's just another thing to inflate scores as you delay.

These scores aren't normalized by number of players either. A game with more players has to deal with more threats per turn, thus increasing their score far more than a game with less players.

The other big problem I have with something like this is you are asking the player to track 3 more things WHILE they are playing the game. Turns is not too bad to track, resources is going to require either lots of tokens or some pen and paper, and cost of enemies is going to require a lot of tracking (especially when re-shuffling). Personally, I'd like to keep the amount of extra stuff that players need to track to a minimum.

Number of turns in itself is not a bad method of measurement, but as I noted above it is going to vary wildly between quests making the score only applicable to that specific quest really. It is also one more thing to track. It is also somewhat accounted for in terms of threat levels, but it can be negated that way.

Adding up every single enemy cost is easily exploitable and is way too much to be tracking. On top of that, what about treacheries? They can be just as, if not more, devastating than an enemy. How would you track that?

While these ideas are great in theory, I think in practice they would be just as exploitable and still have a score that doesn't mean much, especially in comparison to anything but the same quest with the same number of players.

Svenn said:

Yeah, after I posted I saw the flaws in the equation and lack of explanation.

Here's a slightly more thought out equation (higher the score, the better the score):

Engagement cost (threat level at which they attack) of enemies defeated + VPs + Number of Locations successfully explored through questing + Treachery cards revealed through questing - Resources spent - Number of turns taken

This should now make a little more sense, and encompass all of the oppositions players face. It rewards players for taking down enemies, exploring locations, and dealing with treachery cards. It also takes into account how much you had to spend in order to win, and how many turns you took.

What do you think? I know it's a lot to keep track of, but then, as we all know the game needs a better way for us to gauge how well we did, while not discouraging certain strategies or encouraging degenerate/exploitable behavior.

This actually encourages stalling more than FFG's system does. People will just get to a point where they can maintain the staging area, and they will proceed to kick the snot out of every enemy that comes out of the encounter. Thalin would become everyone's favorite hero when Eastern Crows are in the encounter deck. Not only will he counter their surge he also gives you an instant 30 points to your score, and that 30 points gets shuffled back into the encounter deck to appear again later and give you even more points.

The scoring is also imbalanced. Treachery cards are often the most evil cards in the encounter deck, but they give you one point while enemies like the Black Forest Bats will give you 15. Would victory point enemies give you the victory points and the points for their engagement cost or just one of the two?

Scoring this way may not reward threat reduction, but it still encourages players to prolong their quest for a better score.

Scenario difficulty (and #players) has absolutely no place in the scoring system because the sole reason for the scoring system is to determine a winner in a tournament situation. And in a tournament the number of players and the scenario are set.

Incorporating the number of rounds in some way might be a good idea, however, in a tournament scenario time is limited, so cycling your deck again and again is only possible to a limited degree. Decreasing the effect of total threat on the score might still be a good idea, maybe a cap wouldbe a way to go.

I've already argued that decks without spirit cannot compete in a torunament which is bad. Adding lots of cards that are worth (high amounts of) victory points might alleviate that, though.

Okay, this is the simplest scoring system I could think of, with minimal changes to how the game's current formula works.

By using the same scoring formula the game has, only now every time a card is used that lowers threat, simply add that amount to the total score at the end of the game.

In other words - Increase end score by X amount, where X is the amount of total threat lowered by card effects.

So, if you used Gandalf once to lower your initial threat of 40 by 5 to 35, you would add 5 to your end score.

Under this system, if this was your last turn, your end threat would be 35, you would then add 5, to make the end score 40. In this way, players could not abuse card effects which lower threat to affect score, elminating the need to cycle your deck.

This method works with the current game design formula, such as hero stats=hero threat. Lowering threat through card effects would only affect gameplay, not end score, and only requires players to keep track of one extra variable (using progress tokens).

jhaelen said:

Actually, I have no intention of ever playing in any kind of tournament. I like the scoring system for comparing myself to my previous scores and the scores of others to see how well I'm doing in a particular quest. Normalizing this score between scenarios and number of players gives a much better comparison. Again, this is an unofficial scoring system for people that want to track and compare their scores.

Lenbo, that is an interesting idea, but again that is something more for players to track and remember to keep updated. I find generally that the more difficult you make it for players, the less that are willing to use it. The less using it... well, the less meaningful that scoring system becomes I think since you won't have many people to compare to.

Also, lowering your threat is a valid tactic and I'm not sure it should be discounted completely; I just don't think it should be the only way to achieve a decent score. The minimum cap allows you to have a minor effect on your score in much the same way as healing a hero. In this way you can keep your score low by not taking damage, healing your heroes, beating the quest quicker, lowering your threat... many different ways, none of which is weighted too heavily against the others to the point of game breaking though.

Lenbo said:

That could maybe work, but I feel that if you did that with threat you would also need to have every point of damage taken count towards you regardless of healing (or completely remove damage taken from the equation as previously argued - some deck builds are all about taking damage and this would screw them over) and count every hero death regardless of resurrection cards (or, again, remove it). This would still leave VPs but it wouldn't be worth cycling the encounter deck for them all if threat reduction didn't count for score.

It seems to me that the amount of rounds seems to be the best way of reducing stalling. Allso the idea of having minimum valua of you starting characters as a base is good.

There are some problems... you have to count the number of rounds... Some counter for that would be sufficien though. Other thing is how much weight you put to the rounds? Multibly the rounds or divide, so makin it more important. I would prefer, that the speed is important, so the amount of rounds should have big impact to the score. One way of making different scenarios more "balanced" would be a par system (like in golf) The scenario X has round suggestion of 10 rounds. Anythin better give positive score effet, anything longer would give negative effect. But that would make t even more complex... And only thing that it would make would be makin different scenasios more comparable to each other. It would allso reguire some game playin to deternimate suitable "par" value to each scanarios.

My suggestion would be:

Final treath level (min starting treat valua) + threath cost of each dead heroes + Damage tokens on heroes - victory points earned + (rounds - par)*10

so allmost the same as normal scoring. The problem is that Treath management is still overkill, but this does discourage stalling!

(ten is allso easy number to make multiplies :-)

I still think the best solution is to use two numbers: Score and Number of Rounds. I think trying to tie in Number of Rounds is very difficult, especially with normalizing scores between scenarios at all. Also, this way you get more of a feel for the full game. If rounds is incorporated in the score then someone with a score of 30 who took 4 rounds versus someone with a score of 30 who took 15 rounds of reducing threat and such to minimize score are indistinguishable.

With both numbers you can get a general idea of how well the game went, AND you get to see exactly how quick they completed the match. Two people with a score of 30 did just as well in terms of completing the quest, but showing the number of turns gives you a much better overall picture. You can also then keep track not only of best score, but fewest turns as well. Put that number into a quest log and you can sort directly by number of turns to see who has completed a quest the quickest, and who has managed the lowest score.