I'm working on a game right now where the math seems to work out there's no easy way to balance the game while having rewards be integer amounts. The reward for a certain action may need to be worth 1.333, say, to be fair in comparison with another action whose reward is 1.0. Now, the obvious way to handle this is to just scale up the points, however, even that won't really solve my problem, and moreover, doing so may add more complexity than I want.
As a result, the way I've chosen to handle this is to incorporate "combo" based scoring. For example, "You get 3 points for every 2 of X that you acquire". This means that each X is worth 1.5 points, BUT that doesn't mean you actually get 1.5 points for each X you acquire; you only get points for sets of 2. This introduces what I'm calling a "tipping point" (or actually, in this case, several of them). Collecting 3 X's is worth no more than collecting 2 X's, but collecting 4 is worth substantially more.
What I'm interested in is whether other people have ever had scoring systems that included similar tipping points, and whether they felt this was a good or bad route to go.
I think this is kind of similar to the effect Jonathan Degann described in his article on "the Bomb" (incidentally, he would be a good "expert" to interview in a Chat sometime...), but I think what I'm talking about may be subtely different. Maybe not.
The interesting effect this has on the game in question is a discretization of scoring opportunities which may not be the same for all players. For example, I have the card mentioned above, "You get 3 VPs for every 2 X you collect." You have a card that says "You get 2 VPs for every Y you collect". So right away, you're capable of scoring 0,2,4,6,8, etc points whereas I'm only capable of scoring 0,3,6,9, etc.
Now, to me, what should be balanced is the difficulty of scoring equivalent numbers of points. So, to score 6 points, I need to acquire 4 X's, whereas you need to acquire 3 Y's. As long as it's equally difficult to acquire 4 X's or 3 Y's, I think it's ok. But some don't see it that way, because our scoring potentials are not the same; you have more "increments" in your scale than I do, meaning that your scoring is slightly less "all or nothing" than mine. (Making this worse, I have a couple of cards that say "get 5 points if you did Z", and Z is "tough enough" that those 5 points are well-earned, but you get nothing if you don't perform Z.
So, I guess this post is actually about 2 things -- tipping points in scoring, and discretization in scoring associated with different players having different scoring opportunities.
With regard to the former, can a game be considered "fair" if its scoring systems have tipping points? With regard to the latter, can it be considered fair if different players have different tipping points, and thus, different scoring potential, even if the difficulty of achieving the same number of points is the same? In other words, what should be controlled, the points potential all players have access to, or the difficulty of achieving X points, even if not all players could achieve exactly X points in principle?
I welcome any thoughts on the subject!
Thanks,
-Jeff
It's that "Disciples" game you are talking about, right? ;)
Naturally! But, since this is my first game with "inidividual goals", I thought I'd ask the question from a more academic standpoint. I think the question is equally valid if one is talking about reward schedules that are common to all players, even. (or at least the question about "tipping points" is -- the issue of goals with different scoring potentials is a separate issue, and one that I don't think I've seen many games that provide good examples.)
However, the "problem" in your game is that every player will have a different kind of scoring and that players don't have any control over what goal they end up with. This means that you, as a designer, must make sure that all goals are, more or less, balanced, so that a player won't feel slighted when he gets that "difficult" goal.
Yes, I agree completely. But my question is whether the game could be considered fair if the goals have different scoring potential but equivalent difficulty. I guess below you outline an answer that basically says, "fairness" depends a little bit on the context...
Furthermore, if there is some alternative way of scoring points, that is equal for all players (the Deeds in your game?), then that gives a player the option to pursue that road at the end of the game, if he thinks he will not be able to complete his last set.
I think that's a good point; I think the discretized scoring is only a problem if it's the only way that you get points. I'm trying to think of whether there are any games out there that use differently discretized individual goals. The only "individual goals" games I'm thinking of are games like Dune or Illuminati, that are more like "if you do X you win." and X varies from player to player.
I think this is definitely a question of player styles. Some people will enjoy the challenge of trying to win "against the odds", while some will cry "foul!" that they drew a goal/faction/whatever that was so "difficult". An interesting aspect of the game in question, and probably most games with similar ideas, is that "difficulty" is somewhat related to common scarcity, and thus, will vary slightly from game to game, thus a "whiner" may just be a victim of the common interaction of the other players in a way that coincidentally conspired to make the game difficult for that player. I've seen this happen in Puerto Rico, for example -- a player gets completely closed out of every single opportunity, through no clearly identifiable mistake of his own. The danger here is that by giving players a card that defines their scoring opportunities, you're also giving them a scapegoat if they score badly!
Yeah, I'm not sure exactly where this game is going to end up in the "light/heavy" scale. I think it's fairly light, but I think it also has the possibility of having enough strategic depth that probably a drafting mechanic for more "advanced" players will be a necessary thing to include. Possibly something we'll try out next time.
Thanks for the thoughts!
-Jeff