History Main / PinballScoring

The point-value equivalent of RankInflation. Compare MoneyForNothing, where this applies to currency instead of points. The same reason apply though; we feel special and powerful if we can casually buy something that costs 1500 (whatevers)... even if the relative value would make it equivalent to a 15 point item using a reduced currency count. See also Trope2000, another area in which extra 0s are added for the [[RuleOfCool]].

The point-value equivalent of RankInflation. Compared MoneyForNothing, where this applies to currency instead of points. The same reason apply though; we feel special and powerful if we can casually buy something that costs 1500 (whatevers)... even if the relative value would make it equivalent to a 15 point item using a reduced currency count.

* In Quidditch from ''HarryPotter'', scoring a goal is worth 10 points, and catching the GoldenSnitch is worth 150 points. There doesn't seem to be a reason for them to not be worth one and 15, respectively.

** Technically, the lowest score you could earn for doing something in ''SuperMarioBros'' was 50, for breaking a normal brick as Super Mario. Still, why stomping a Goomba was worth 100 points, rather than 2, is a mystery for the ages.

* ''SuperMarioRPG''[='=]s "Beetle Mania" MiniGame. Shooting a shell causes it to explode into stars. If a star hits another shell, that shell explodes too, for 2^''n'' points, where ''n'' is how many shells down the chain started by the shell you shot the shell is. So you think you've accomplished something by exceeding the default high score of 5,000 points...and then you fire one shot at a huge cluster of shells and your score jumps up by as many as 100,000 points.

** The NES game [[TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles TMNT2]] is an odd example: the Japanese version of the game uses PinballScoring, while the American version uses the same "one point per enemy" scheme as the arcade version. The points scheme is different in other ways, too: in the Japanese version, some enemies give more than 100 points, and you get extra lives at different point values. Funnily enough, TMNT3 used PinballScoring in both regions, and [=TMNT4=] used it in neither (nor did the arcade game it was based on).

* Seen in the arcade shoot-em-up ''GigaWing'' (pictured above), needed because of how the game's score multiplying system works. A good player can easily get a ''score multiplier'' in the millions (meaning that the point value of every destroyed {{mook}} is multiplied by a million), and decent final scores start in the trillions. In fact, this aspect of the scoring system is touted in the AttractMode.
** For those confused about the kanji in the picture: the rightmost kanji (''ten'') means "point", the second rightmost (''man'') is for the number 10,000, the third rightmost (''oku'') is for 100 million, and so on. These kanji appear in the Japanese version only.

[[quoteright:350:[[GigaWing http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gwingallclearsx6.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:"Every 10,000 points, I smoke two joints."]]

*** Probabilities don't work that way.

*** Rock Band 3 introduces a couple additions to the system: Keys notes are worth 50 rather than 25 to compensate for the fact that keys charts generally have substantially fewer notes than other instruments' charts; notes for Pro modes are worth 1.2x the value of notes on the Basic equivalent instrument. For example, Pro Drums notes are worth 30 points instead of 25. As far as this troper is aware, there are no inherent scoring differences between harmony vocals and solo vocals, but since each part is counted separately, you (and two backup singers) could score for up to three phrases in the space of one phrase (also worth noting is that the combo is maintained as long as at least one of the parts' phrases is completed, but scoring Double/Triple Awesome will not raise the multiplier any faster).

** 4th mix's endless mode has "only" 32 digits, but it takes even longer to counter-stop than 3rd mix. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgugWIlzYbA See this video.]] By comparison, 3rd mix's Endless mode takes around 250-300 stages of straight Perfects; this troper's done it with a cheat that automatically got all Perfects.

* Averted very hard in the Desert Bus minigame in ''Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors''. It takes ''eight hours'' to get '''one point'''.

** As mentioned, ''Perfect Cherry Blossom'', the player collects "Cherry Items" to raise the value of Point Items. The value would occasionally cap (called [=CherryMAX=]), requiring the player to utilize a Supernatural Border in order to remove the cap until the next [=CherryMAX=].
** In ''Imperishable Night'', game eight, the player collects Time Points in order to raise the value, either by shooting as a human character, or grazing bosses' bullets as a youkai character. This game also is noticeably more generous with score than other games in the series - The world record is 6 billion, while other games tend to only go up to 3 billion at most.
** Game ten, ''Mountain of Faith'' has the player collect Faith Items to raise the value, which would rapidly decrease unless the player constantly collected items or killed enemies. The starting value was 5,000, and the max value was 99,990.
** While the player still collects Faith Items to raise value in ''Subterranean Animism'', the eleventh game, a greater focus is put on grazing. Every one hundred grazes would raise the point value multiplier by .01, although unless the player is constantly grazing, the multiplier will actually ''decrease'' the value.
** Game twelve, ''Undefined Fantastic Object'', has probably the most confusing system, in which players summon [=UFOs=] in order to collect items and have them multiplied by either 1.0, 2.0, 4.0, or 8.0, depending on the color of the UFO summoned. Grazing ten bullets increased the Point Item value by 10, and collecting a UFO Token while a large UFO is onscreen raises the value by 1000. Scoring is a combination of grazing as much as possible, while collecting as many UFO Tokens while the big [=UFOs=] are collecting as many items as possible.

*** RockBand goes a little further by adjusting the points gained based on the difficulty - Whereas (using vocals as an example) Expert would get the full 1000 points for a phrase (done perfectly, before multipliers), lower difficulties would give you fewer points per phrase. This carries over to instruments.

The point-value equivalent of RankInflation. Compared MoneyForNothing, where this applies to currency instead of points.

** This trope was mostly averted before TheEighties and the advent of electronic score counters. Pins from the 60s and 70s usually have room for at most 4-6 digits, sometimes awarding only a single point for hitting a bumper.

[[quoteright:384:[[GigaWing http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gwingallclearsx6.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:384:"Every 10,000 points, I smoke two joints."]]

[[GigaWing http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gwingallclearsx6.jpg]]
[[caption-width:384:"Every [[strike:10,000]] 1 trillion points, I smoke two joints."]]
-->Scoring is quite unique in pinball; the game is notorious for being generous with "points," a unit of measurement analogous to the haypenny, the microsecond, and the nanometer -- they are all units of measurement that are too utterly small to be of any use whatsoever.
-->- [[http://rinkworks.com/lights/ Lights and Noises]]

** ''The Machine: Bride of Pinbot'' partially averts this: locking both balls in multiball mode spins a roulette wheel which may give the player a few seconds to make a ramp shot for a billion points, in a game where a good round might otherwise land you a few tens of millions of points. It is an aversion of sorts because the game keeps two separate high score tables, one for players who did not make any billion point shots, and a "Billionaire's Club" table for those who did, and because the billion point shot can be turned off by the operator.

** Get the right cards out in ''Magic'', and you can literally choose any values for power/toughness that pop into your head. Many players seem to go for "infinity", though that technically isn't a number...

*** In a typical tournament in which players start with 1500 chips, the blind levels will generally start at 10/20 or thereabouts. It doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone to scale this down to blind levels of 1/2 and a starting stack of 150.
**** Having the blinds at 10/20 allows them to be raised to 15/30 at the next blind level, which is only a 50% increase. A 1/2 blind can only be increased to 2/4, a 100% increase that shocks the game play more.

* [[http://i.imgur.com/NvmEM.png This. Apparently to appeal to gamers.]]

*** [[CaptainObvious Because 100 looks more impressive than 2?]]

*** A score exponentializer?

** Come to think of it, what's the point of scoring in ''any'' FightingGame? Is there more value in landing a spinning piledriver than there is in a fireball? And how can it be easily quantified? (Granted, there's always the personal satisfaction of a spinning piledriver, but that's just me.)

* ''BlazBlue'' has a scoring algorithm that can lead to scores ranging in the trillions. IT's very easy to score a billion points before the end of the ''first round'' of your first battle.

** Arguably taken BeyondTheImpossible in ''FinalFantasyXIII'', where ''random encounters'' frequently have HP scores in the hundreds of thousands.

* Between [[ModernWarfare Modern Warfare]] 1 and 2, every XP event you get has a zero added onto its original value (TDM kills are worth 100 instead of 10, etc.).
* The HP and damage of the first ValkyrieProfile can get into this range. Damage easily gets into the high tens of thousands (and hundreds of thousands if properly done), with many millions of HP for high-end bosses, for no apparent reason other than dramatic effect.
* The king of Pinball Scoring in RPGs is arguably Disgaea. The level cap is [[AbsurdlyHighLevelCap 9999]]. Characters' stats can go into the millions. You can do billions of damage with one hit. [[SequelEscalation That's just in the first game]].

* The ''TouhouProject'' games have a different scoring system for every individual games. In the first six games, scores depended solo on how many Point Items you could collect, and how high on the screen you did it (higher = more points per item). However, the seventh game, ''Perfect Cherry Blossom'', and all subsequent games (except the ninth) changed the method of scoring to ''raising the value'' of Point Items, rather than just collect them:

* In the original {{Out Run}}, you get up to tens of thousands of points per second just for driving, and if you finish, 1,000,000 points for every second you have left on the clock at the end.
** Pretty much every Sega racing game that had points was like this. Lots of others, too (Space Harrier, After Burner, Wrestle War, etc.).