I've been out of touch with development for a while here, so I may not have anything useful to say. But in general I will mention that I'm the type of person for whom points don't work at all as a motivator. They're just too arbitrary. I can't see much interest in score attack style games. I play through it once and I'm done. I just can't get even remotely interested in playing it again for a high score. If the points actually do something, anything, that's more interesting. If you have to get score > X to unlock a new gun/hat/whatever then that gives some purpose to it. But if, at the end, your only reward for scoring X points is having scored X points... well that's just too arbitrary for me to even understand.
Probably also doesn't help that a lot of games tack on a lot of pointless zeroes to the end of your score. I never did get that concept. That just takes the arbitrary and nonsensical nature of scores and really brings it front and center. But again, I don't really know much about this particular game aside from the basic marketing releases, so maybe there's something I missed that makes this whole diatribe of mine rather pointless. (rimshot)
That's the beauty of a scoring system though: The player doesnt *have* to concern themselves with it if they dont want to, yet it adds alot more for those that DO like it. It's a win/win situation, so long as the core gameplay doesnt attempt to FORCE players to get good scores (and it's very, very rare that they do).
In my case, alot of games simply dont have enough to them without it. Like the shmups. It's one thing to 1cc one of those.... that's cool and all, but it's not anywhere near as good (or as impressive) as beating it while at the same time scoring very high. Particularly considering that scoring in those usually involves great risk, and takes great skill to do. The point of scoring systems like that is usually challenge & accomplishment, as well as raising the skill ceiling. Beating one while scoring high is always *much* more difficult than just beating it, and when the scoring is balanced enough, there's ALWAYS something you can do to improve your game even further. It gets even better when you can compare and compete with other players. And on top of all of that, it really dramatically increases the replay value. A game like, say, Akai Katana (a danmaku shmup made by Cave), while a good shmup, is very easy to beat if played only for survival; there's little challenge there when it's played like that, and it just does not take long to get good enough to beat the game. Without the scoring in place, this would mean a VERY short game, after which there's literally nothing else to do with it. That game though is designed from the ground up to be played for score, and it makes a MASSIVE difference. It goes from being short and much too easy and simple, to very deep, challenging, and quite the time sink, as it takes much practice indeed to get good at it. I can put hours and hours into that game, and yet still have plenty further that I can go with it, and this is a concept that I just love, and I'm definitely not the only one.
But with this game, it's a bit more than that. The core of this game is the idea of maintaining balance against the constant imbalances that YOU purposely create. That's a very, very interesting concept, and it works.... BUT, there *has* to be motivation there. The game needs to give me reason to do things that screw up the balance, thus taking big risks. If it's JUST a "fulfill win condition" game.... there's not much reason for me to throw in things that create the challenge that I'm supposed to use strategy to overcome. There's bandits and all, sure, but that's it.... and past that, I've found it's actually not that hard to maintain balance, by simply keeping the overall power level of red and blue at about the same point, while not using major power shifters that can tilt it too much.
Heck, that's one problem right there: Without enough REASON to tilt the balance, alot of the larger, more powerful things kinda break down, as they lose their purpose. And this is a shame, because I went and had a look at what some of these new things do, and they're pretty freaking cool. But during a game where the point is simply to last to the end, there's next to no reason to USE most of these super-powered items.... it's just not logical at this point.
I really dont think I can stress enough that there are ALOT of really, really strong reasons to keep a scoring system in the game as a whole. The scoring wouldnt be perfectly balanced at first, obviously.... but it's the sort of thing that can just be tweaked over time, and would also be very EASY to tweak (as it's basically just changing some numbers around). And really, there simply arent any downsides to doing it.
And beyond all that.... the more players this game can appeal to, the more it has a chance to SELL to. Adding things like this only increases the value of the game to players that like such things.
