What final score depends on?

[lastbreath]

I killed more beasts, I had better stats, I got the talisman, I even won 3 battles against another character, but still I finished with 11 points and he with 14. WTF?

[potterman28wxcv]

When Sudden Death house rule is activated, and the number of rounds is finished, you gain 1 point per strength counter, craft counter, gold, item, follower and spell you have. That's it.

If you don't like the point system, the solution is to desactivate Sudden Death and play with the normal rules instead.

[lastbreath]

I like that system just didn't know how points are given. Thanks!

[potterman28wxcv]

Np :)

[Melkolf]

Originally posted by potterman28wxcv:

When Sudden Death house rule is activated, and the number of rounds is finished, you gain 1 point per strength counter, craft counter, gold, item, follower and spell you have. That's it.

If you don't like the point system, the solution is to desactivate Sudden Death and play with the normal rules instead.

So spending two gold to buy one item on the last turn, as well as firing a spell to stop ones self being killed on that last go, etc, will reduce one's score?

One basically has to accumulate as much as possible and hold onto it all until the very last turn?

Sounds a crazy score system to me.

Or am I, as a complete newbie to this digital version, getting something wrong here?

(Not a complete newbie to the game though. Bought it when it first came out in the early 80's - my mate ran a games shop and got several copies on launch - when there were no expansions etc, loved it, but lost it when I emigrated soon after.)

[potterman28wxcv]

So spending two gold to buy one item on the last turn, as well as firing a spell to stop ones self being killed on that last go, etc, will reduce one's score?

One basically has to accumulate as much as possible and hold onto it all until the very last turn?

Sounds a crazy score system to me.

It is. That's why barely anyone plays with it. 95% of the matches you will find online don't have sudden death - or when they do, it's on a high enough timer so that people have time to win by other more standard means. It's an optional thing to activate - you don't have to play with it if you don't want to.

But it does provide an upper bound to the time you spend on a game, even though the method is (to me) incredible flawed. What would you rather have between a 6 hours long game where everyone is super tired and don't enjoy playing anymore, or a game that lasts 4 hours but with a meh ending (assuming a worst case scenario where people have a lot of troubles to win)?

BTW this scoring system is not specific to the digital edition. It's in the official house rules of the 4th edition :)

[Melkolf]

Thanks for the response - others' experience is always useful to a newbie.

System seems suitable for the board game but with computing power and memory behind digital edition it could be amended to take into account number of enemies/opponents killed, opponents' lives taken, quests completed etc ie things far more pertinent to actually playing the game rather than one's final accumulated pot of goodies. That would bring it back into MP I should think, and help create more convenient game lengths. Or again am I missing something already discussed amongst the community and dismissed?

I'm aware it's optional and haven't used it yet, though was thinking of it to shorten my learning SP games because I'm sitting here far too long as it is. At least now I know how to game it, and what to expect when I do get into MP.

[potterman28wxcv]

You aren't missing anything - the devs chose to stay close to the real rules that's why they haven't done a system more intricate but yes it could be a nice suggestion to implement a better scoring system for Sudden Death. You could probably make a dedicated suggestion thread :) they will read it

[Tyr]

We do read everything, dw.

There was actually an update to it not too long ago, but it likely got lost in a bunch of other changes, you can see the full list here .

(or here)
Sudden Death (ending) now includes destinies, beast rewards and dragon scales.
There's no special weighting that's been introduced in the update, these new additions are only worth 1 point each as well.

If ever we update it again, it would be nice to look at possibly making it much more modifiable so you can assign value to each category, and choose whether or not you want it active (e.g. Completed Quests don't count, but Quest rewards are worth 3 points).

[Melkolf]

Tyr, thanks for this. There are so many aspects which could be tallied during a game it could become a series of different games! However, a good brainstorming session on what and what not to include would probably sort out a lot. Making the categories optional would also help MP games go in so many various directions, all good.

Let us know when you start this up seriously, I think you'll find plenty of ideas will come flowing your way but you guys need to sort out which way you want the game to go. It's your game and vision, not ours. And like many game companies have found out, following what gamers want is hardly ever a recipe for continuing success...