Complaining: Scoring Points

Most of the entry on Scoring Points is nothing but complaining about scoring points and how the old media loves the system (already covered under Pac Man Fever) and how stupid it is otherwise (how "no one cares" is utter bullshit — scores in older games were Serious Business, and even now just look at casual games and shmups, for example). I was going to make an edit to clean out the negativity, but feared the whole result would end up People Sit On Chairs.

Comments? Thoughts?

edited 2nd May '12 5:29:44 PM by Coolnut

That description is painful to read. What exactly is this page supposed to be?

It's not that complicated. It's when a game has a score counter and you get points. Simple, common trope.

That's what the examples seem to be about, but the description seems to be more about how gamers don't care about point systems but the media thinks games are all about points, and quite a few of the examples also mention that nobody cares about the points.

Is this just about points or is it specifically about points being pointless?

It's a subtrope of Pac Man Fever, isn't it? It's about how the media portrays games as fundamentally point-based.

That by itself wouldn't be more than "this example has chairs in it".

That's kinda already covered in Pac Man Fever. But you and Fnu might be on to something here. Something like Pointless Points perhaps? That is, there is a scoring system (game or arbitrary) that serves no purpose whatsoever other than an artifact — no winner decided by higher score, no high score table (or a vague forgettable one), no Every 10,000 Points you get a reward, no chance at a "perfect" etc.

(By "vague forgettable high score table", I mean no chance at entering your initials or the like. Like a simple "Hi-Score" at the top of the screen)

edited 3rd May '12 8:23:57 AM by Coolnut

Points is a helluva lot more meaningful than chairs. Points keep track of your progress through a game. More like this work has Page Numbers, if anything.

D'oh, didn't realize Pointless Points was already a trope. Perhaps we can move the "complaining" examples there, alter the Pointless Points definition a bit, and turn Scoring Points into an index and description?

I like the idea of moving all the examples about points being pointless to Pointless Points. Right now this wiki gives the impression that points in videogames are inherently pointless, and that's simply not the case.

All this needs is a helping of Tropes Are Not Bad. Cut all the whining and negativity. This is a subtrope of Cosmetic Award, it shouldn't be treated any worse.

The stuff about the beliefs of mass media is best left to Pac Man Fever where it belongs.

Clocking due to lack of activity.

Actually, I'm wondering if this might need to just have the examples axed.

As a straight-up trope, it's so absurdly common in games that people sometimes miss that it's even present. After all, experience points are just points that do something (and that get tracked for each character, in games with more than one person earning them). Achievements and Trophies are essentially metapoints, earned across all games played.

I think the appropriate reaction would be to axe all examples and just have Scoring Points as an index for the various types of points that can be scored.

It's clearly a trope. I don't see any reason to axe it.

Yeah, that should work.

@13 The trope shouldn't be axed; just the examples. We already have subpages for each variety of points (Experience Points, Every 10,000 Points, Bragging Rights Reward). Collecting them all on a single page would be useful, but examples can get shunted onto the appropriate pages.

Why exactly do we need to remove the examples, rather than just these that already have a subtrope for them?

Because we already have subtropes for all the examples.

Sorry, was busy with RL.

"I think the appropriate reaction would be to axe all examples and just have Scoring Points as an index for the various types of points that can be scored."

I think that's the best thing to do. Rewrite the trope to be about the history, purpose, and omnipresence of points, eliminate or move all examples, and turn it into an index of sorts. The "pointless points" examples should be moved to The Points Mean Nothing and everything else to their appropriate tropes. Everyone good with that?

edited 11th Jun '12 9:28:25 AM by Coolnut

No, unless you can show that all examples have their subtrope. Otherwise, let's turn this into a supertrope + index that also happens to be exampleless at the moment.

The Points Mean Nothing applies to Panel Shows. Points that have no meaning in video games count under Cosmetic Award (which does list examples of that alread - most famously and prominently, Gamerscore for the 360). I messed up before on calling them a Bragging Rights Reward, even though they were classically used for bragging rights.

So we have a trope for when they don't mean anything, for when you get some in-game item (most famously, a one-up) for earning points, and a trope for when you get more powerful when you hit a certain score. Oh, and we have plenty of tropes for when the score is actually how you purchase items. What score-based tropes are we missing?

edited 11th Jun '12 11:41:20 AM by 32_Footsteps

The way I see it, this is a trope about keeping score, not "anything you can get in a game that's measured as a number and/or has "points" in the name." Money or experience is not score.

Things score can do for you:

1. Win the game (?)
2. Get your name on a list (?) (High Scores redirects to Scoring Points)
3. Get rewards (Every 10,000 Points)
4. Unlock Unlockable Content
5. Nothing (Cosmetic Award or The Points Mean Nothing?)

edited 11th Jun '12 12:51:30 PM by DiamondWeapon

Cosmetic Award is an actual award or milestone. The Cosmetic Award isn't when you get 10,000,000 points, it's when you get 10,000,000 points and the game says "Congratulations, you've scored 10,000,000 points, have a trophy!"

And The Points Mean Nothing is something else entirely, of course.

A Cosmetic Reward, according to the page, is simply a proof of accomplishment. That's exactly what points do in games if they're not giving you more power or the ability to purchase something. You're describing it on a meta level - getting a Cosmetic Reward for getting enough Cosmetic Rewards.

But it can't be a Cosmetic Award if there's no award. Unless you're counting any points as an award, which is not an intuitive interpretation—it would mean the first 10 points you get for killing that first Goomba would count as a Cosmetic Award.

The points are the reward.