Why we need a fourth scoring category in Battlegrounds

I get the the KO, opponent times out no KO. I lose the round solely based on attacker health remaining. We need a fourth score category for getting the KO. There's no reason why someone should win a round without KOing the opponent.

Comments

Mackey

Replied to a post yesterday and it’s still waiting for a moderator to approve

I thought the goal was to defeat the enemy since that gives you the ability to score more pts. Why not add a KO bonus , points wise ?
There already is a KO bonus, it’s just one that feels that if you KO someone at 89 seconds, that’s only worth a tiny bit more as a KO bonus than if you timed out.

The time bonus is literally a KO bonus, that reduces linearly the longer you take. If you Ko the opponent very quickly, you get a big KO bonus. If you take 10 of the 90 seconds available, you get a very big KO bonus because you KOd the opponent quicker.
The time is part of the actual scoring , not a set bonus.
The time aspect is to tiebreak in the event that both finish the champ and finish with the same health, it is not meant as a bonus.
This is inaccurate and not what a tie break means. Tie breaks do not factor into the scoring unless they are equal and then, and only then, the tie break is used to *break the tie*.

Time is used in the scoring, therefore not a tie break.

After looking further into it, i will concede that it is not its full intention but it can -in kabams own words (see pic below)- be used as a tie break. Similarly they have said absolutely nothing about it being a KO bonus. Here is the link incase you want to check for yourself 👌

https://playcontestofchampions.com/news/battlegrounds-beta/
It’s not a tie breaker, Kabam used this phrase wrong for something in AW, I think it was defender diversity. It’s not a tie breaker and I wish kabam would work out what that phrase means lol.

Something that is used in the actual scoring is not a tie breaker, so time bonus is not a tie breaker.

Again though, it doesn’t matter if Kabam don’t say time is a KO bonus. That’s what it literally functions as.

Your definition of KO bonus is “Kabam must say it is a KO bonus”, but you’re completely ignoring what it actually functions as to serve your own point.
The article clearly says "it can be used as a tiebreak" just because your interpretation of that doesn't match mine (or kabams for that matter) doesn't mean you're right and they're wrong. It is what it is. A time taken bonus that can in fact be used to break a tie. It is not awarded for KO'ing although I can see why you would think that. But how would a time bonus come into play in a fight that times out or ends prematurely from you dying, it can't... can it 😂

Right, this is where I've gone wrong, I see it now. I wasn't saying I agree with kabam that they believe that's the definition of it, what I was saying about my opinion was of the game and the article I posted, I didnt mean real life meaning definitions contexts ... I meant in kabams game it can operate that way and if they say it does operate that way in the game then I believe them.

xNig

I find the battlegrounds scoring to be pretty fair at this point.

Linear scaling of health with points, additional bonus based on time taken when the defender is KOed.

(@BitterSteel, was really fun matching up with you bro.)

DNA3000

At the end of the day, I just feel the hierarchical system gives way to far too many unfair outcomes.

Whether the system is hierarchical or not is more a question of organizational structure (which would aid in explaining it) rather than actual systemic necessity.

Here's a point based system that has no hierarchy:

Defeat the defender: 1,000,000,000 points
For every point of defender health remaining: 1,000,000 points
For every point of attacker health remaining: 1,000 points

This expresses an idea, but it does so by exposing the players to more math than necessary to convey the same idea.

Also, I don't believe the current system has fewer corner cases or nonsensical results. Rather, the irony is the corner cases of the current system are so much more obvious, that it is much easier to summarize them. That makes them seem like there are fewer than there actually is. I believe if we were to list all possible ending health bars of all four attackers and defenders combined, there would be more situations where the current system awarded a win to the player that fewer competitors would agree on the result.

I mention the above edge case scoring system not to be pedantic, but to point out that the difference between modifying the weights of the current system and questioning the fundamental basis of the current system aren't mutually exclusive: if you change the weights enough, it isn't really the same system anymore. Whether we do that by changing the *algorithm* of the scoring system or the *weights* is mathematically irrelevant (but may affect the transparency of the system to people who have to learn it).

There is at least one area where I think changing weights will *never* "feel right" among most players, and that is in the area of time scoring. I have come to believe that there is no weight you can give to time scoring that will make sense, because we're scoring the wrong thing altogether. At the moment, time is scored proportional to time remaining. In net effect, which ever side kills faster gets a differential scoring bonus. And that creates an intractable problem that I believe the most recent beta exposed, by reducing the fight time. This had the effect of magnifying the value of every second of the fight, and this magnified an existing problem to be more visible.

Let's say I end the fight in 30 seconds and you end your fight in 35 seconds. In a 90s match, under the current scoring rules I would gain about 833 points more than you. That's significant - it equates to 5% net health remaining. Suppose instead I end my fight in 70 seconds and you end your fight in 75 seconds. In that case, I would gain the same amount of points over you: 833 more. However, the difference between me ending five seconds sooner than you is so much less of a performance improvement when it is 70 seconds vs 75 seconds than when it is 30 seconds over 35 seconds. But I'm still being awarded a very large bonus for that small improvement in performance.

The problem is time remaining is not a direct measure of attacker speed: it is actually the inverse of that quantity. So we aren't rewarding attacker speed, which is a direct measure of attacker performance, we're measuring something else besides actual attacker performance. The more intuitive thing to do, I believe, is to reward attacker performance directly, by scoring the inverse of time expended. Say, 30000/(time expended)**. In the above example, a 30s fight gets 1000 points and a 35s fight gets 857 points, for a net difference of 143 points. Meanwhile a 70s fight gets 429 points and a 75s fight gets 400 points, for a net difference of 29 points.

The current system makes very tiny time differences have a huge impact on the fight, and there's no way to remedy that with weights in a way that doesn't make time completely irrelevant. Making it irrelevant with miniscule weights is no different than removing it algorithmically. But if speed is going to matter at all, it should matter most when the time difference actually equates to a dramatic difference in offensive performance. And that can't be done with linear weights on time remaining (or time spent) because time remaining doesn't measure attacker speed: attacker speed is inverted in that metric. Addressing that requires an algorithmic change, it can't be addressed with a weighting change.

** This is an example, the actual numbers would need to be carefully analyzed and set based on fight duration and the other weights, which are at the moment a moving target

DNA3000

One question though, “believe if we were to list all possible ending health bars of all four attackers and defenders combined, there would be more situations where the current system awarded a win to the player that fewer competitors would agree on the result.”

What do you base that on? Because from what I’ve seen, most of the time people agree with the results. We get the occasional person who took their opponent down more, but got battered in the process and lost and they complain, but the forum disagrees them to oblivion and there’s a consensus they should have lost.

Most people don't complain about scoring here. Probably the single biggest point of debate in general, though, seems to be whether defeating the defender should mean anything. At the moment, the current system values defeating the defender as worthless. Some will argue that's false, because you score points for defeating the defender, but that's not true. You score points for removing health from the defender, but there's no material difference between removing 99.9% of the defender's health and removing 100%. Everywhere else in the game, this matters. In fact, in almost every part of the game the difference between 99.9% and 100% is larger than the difference between zero and 99.9%.

The range of opinions for the majority of players goes from "it should matter a lot" to "its okay if it matters a little" to "I don't care if it matters." No one has articulated a reasonable argument for "it should definitely not matter" implying the moderate middle is much closer to "it should matter by some amount." It is also, when presented directly as a question, the most common answer I get.

Lagacy proposed an idea that attempts to compromise the difference in positions here with an idea that also maintains consistency with the rest of the game: if you do not defeat the defender, you lose half your health. This is the penalty in alliance war, and in alliance war that penalty is essentially a cost-penalty whereas in battlegrounds would be a points penalty, but while it isn't precisely congruent, it is the sort of compromise I'd be willing to buy, because while the original war penalty was a bit arbitrary, its long-term existence makes it something conceptually easier to understand and explain.

Mqc19

Whole game mode needs a tweaking in my opinion. Way way to many flaws, from
Scoring, to matchmaking, to cheating, to entry cost etc etc

Worknprogress

One question though, “believe if we were to list all possible ending health bars of all four attackers and defenders combined, there would be more situations where the current system awarded a win to the player that fewer competitors would agree on the result.”

What do you base that on? Because from what I’ve seen, most of the time people agree with the results. We get the occasional person who took their opponent down more, but got battered in the process and lost and they complain, but the forum disagrees them to oblivion and there’s a consensus they should have lost.
Most people don't complain about scoring here. Probably the single biggest point of debate in general, though, seems to be whether defeating the defender should mean anything. At the moment, the current system values defeating the defender as worthless. Some will argue that's false, because you score points for defeating the defender, but that's not true. You score points for removing health from the defender, but there's no material difference between removing 99.9% of the defender's health and removing 100%. Everywhere else in the game, this matters. In fact, in almost every part of the game the difference between 99.9% and 100% is larger than the difference between zero and 99.9%.

The range of opinions for the majority of players goes from "it should matter a lot" to "its okay if it matters a little" to "I don't care if it matters." No one has articulated a reasonable argument for "it should definitely not matter" implying the moderate middle is much closer to "it should matter by some amount." It is also, when presented directly as a question, the most common answer I get.

Lagacy proposed an idea that attempts to compromise the difference in positions here with an idea that also maintains consistency with the rest of the game: if you do not defeat the defender, you lose half your health. This is the penalty in alliance war, and in alliance war that penalty is essentially a cost-penalty whereas in battlegrounds would be a points penalty, but while it isn't precisely congruent, it is the sort of compromise I'd be willing to buy, because while the original war penalty was a bit arbitrary, its long-term existence makes it something conceptually easier to understand and explain.

There is a difference between removing 100% or 99.9% though. With 99.9% you get 0 points for time remaining. With 100% you get additional points based on how much time is remaining

DNA3000

One question though, “believe if we were to list all possible ending health bars of all four attackers and defenders combined, there would be more situations where the current system awarded a win to the player that fewer competitors would agree on the result.”

What do you base that on? Because from what I’ve seen, most of the time people agree with the results. We get the occasional person who took their opponent down more, but got battered in the process and lost and they complain, but the forum disagrees them to oblivion and there’s a consensus they should have lost.
Most people don't complain about scoring here. Probably the single biggest point of debate in general, though, seems to be whether defeating the defender should mean anything. At the moment, the current system values defeating the defender as worthless. Some will argue that's false, because you score points for defeating the defender, but that's not true. You score points for removing health from the defender, but there's no material difference between removing 99.9% of the defender's health and removing 100%. Everywhere else in the game, this matters. In fact, in almost every part of the game the difference between 99.9% and 100% is larger than the difference between zero and 99.9%.

The range of opinions for the majority of players goes from "it should matter a lot" to "its okay if it matters a little" to "I don't care if it matters." No one has articulated a reasonable argument for "it should definitely not matter" implying the moderate middle is much closer to "it should matter by some amount." It is also, when presented directly as a question, the most common answer I get.

Lagacy proposed an idea that attempts to compromise the difference in positions here with an idea that also maintains consistency with the rest of the game: if you do not defeat the defender, you lose half your health. This is the penalty in alliance war, and in alliance war that penalty is essentially a cost-penalty whereas in battlegrounds would be a points penalty, but while it isn't precisely congruent, it is the sort of compromise I'd be willing to buy, because while the original war penalty was a bit arbitrary, its long-term existence makes it something conceptually easier to understand and explain.
There is a difference between removing 100% or 99.9% though. With 99.9% you get 0 points for time remaining. With 100% you get additional points based on how much time is remaining

I should have been more precise. There is no direct incremental benefit to removing the last bit of health from the defender, separate from the enabling of the time bonus which varies based on time remaining. The damage itself doesn't materially score anything of consequence.

Which incidentally is itself a concession to hierarchical scoring. Originally, time remaining was always scored. Now it is only scored upon defeat, a form of hierarchical scoring algorithm intended to respond to the notion that "winning on points" was nonsensical when someone chose to maximize their point total by immediately dying to preserve time.

The only thing wrong with that is purely arbitrary and subjective: people thought it was ridiculous. But objectively speaking, not killing the defender and still winning is no more poor design than allowing suicide to win. If it is all just points and strategy, suicide to win is brilliant.

K00shMaan

But can't we agree that being able to KO a defender in 15 seconds is a more impressive than an 80 second KO. The scoring system that we have in place accurately reflects that one KO is more impressive.

I also don't like the idea that the attacker health remaining is just arbitrarily more important than fight duration. Totally open to having the weighting shifted from what it is currently but with mechanics like Perfect Block Chance, Salve, even Willpower to a lower degree, you can have fights that were done faster but result in you losing slightly more health than your opponent. I don't want a champ like Sunspot to be a Meta Attacker simply because he has access to Perfect Block and can end fights with 100% health and will just automatically win over other champs who don't and end "perfect" fights with 99+% health. Same way that I don't want to lose a fight cuz I used a Robot and they don't get to have access to Salve. I'm ok with stuff like this requiring my champs to fight slightly better but there needs to be room to overcome things like this that were implemented before BattleGrounds was even a thought.

I don't want the mode to just be a NukeFest but I believe that is the job of creating interesting node combinations that slow the top champs down rather than just devaluing speed when you are able to find that solution. Larger health pools also address this as no champ should be able to go full throttle into a fight and not have to worry about the enemy getting to an SP3 unless there are mechanics in there kit that manage power.