Incline What is an RPG score? How do we measure?

[Not.AI]

@Not.AI Create a ranking criteria for RPGs would be to define them. I'm sure the RPG Codex will quickly come to consensus on that. We're subject matter experts here.

Ok. THE CHALLENGE: We need a compositional, quantitative, valid formula for calculating the RPG-goodness of an RPG. Give your detailed formula for an RPG review score.

This thread succeeds the famous (qualitatively) WHAT IS AN RPG? thread. Now that (qualitatively) WHAT IS AN RPG? was agreed upon by free and fair democratic consensus and unanimously we need to discover what is an RPG score, (quantitatively) WHAT IS AN RPG?

Like psychometrics was created a little over a hundred years ago to quantitatively measure intelligence with an intelligence score. A new field of science.

Given more and more information about a game, you must provide a formula to rank that game.

Rules.

1. It must yield a number. Dimensionless, dimensional whatever. A number with or without units, but a number. Science uses numbers. Scientists measure.

2. It must not be total bullshit. Measurements don't change.

Example: You can't just count the number of quests open to the player. Why not? Rules lawyer says: Not valid! Quests differ in quality and two games, one better than the other might have fewer quests. Also the same game can have different numbers of quests available to the player conditional upon their different characters or playstyles. Or at different times when patches add and remove stuff.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/the-greater-general-codex-theory-of-what-is-an-rpg.106544/

 

[Not.AI]

:arrow_up: Quantitative or it don't fuckin' count. (Literally.) We scientists bruh.

It's not about choice and consequence. It's about how much choice and consequence. We gotta rotate our factor matrices.

 

[Reinhardt]

rpg games are shit. so if it's shit - it's probably rpg game.

 

[Butter]

No.

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

Any correct definition of rpg would exclude Disco Elysium.

 

[Tihskael]

Criteria 1 - Can you bake bread?
Yes - 10/10 No - Piece of shit

Criteria 2 - See that mountain? Can you climb it?
Yes - 10/10 No - Piece of shit

Criteria 3 - Do you have to go look for your son or your father?
Yes - 10/10 No - Piece of shit

Criteria 4 - Can you ride dragons and shout NPCs off a cliff?
Yes - 10/10 No - Piece of shit

Criteria 5 - Does the game director have a sultry voice? Beautiful brown thick hair? Deep blue eyes you can lose yourself in? A silver tongue to dazzle the devil himself? Member of the chess club?
Yes - 11/10 No - Piece of shit

 

[Daemongar]

I think Lemon64 does it right. Folks rate individual metrics of each C64 game: sound, graphics, playability, and an overall rating. Each is a rating from 1-10. Folks then review games and the sum average rating for each game is listed at their site.

Now, Lemon64 covers non-rpgs as well as rpgs, so the criteria rated for this site would have to be customized to reflect what is most important in rpgs, not general games. If you could define the criteria which to rate, you could then develop a rating system.

So, it would be a multistage project.

• Step 1. Determine 20 ratable factors that make up an rpg. (Graphics, sound, replayability, non-linearity, choices, consequences, etc.)
• Step B. Have folks here vote on the top 5 criteria that make an rpg in an open poll.
• Step 3. Work with mods here to put up a master list of RPGs, and allow folks to rate each game on the 5 criteria outlined in Step 2.
• Step 4. Have an active top 100 list of rpgs, with realtime ratings, minimum 30 ratings to count, etc.
• Step 5. Have a separate top 100 list of rpgs, with only invited, prestigious gentlemen able to vote, as I don't want to have my vote dirtied by the riff-raff in Step D - so that we don't have something like Skyrim being the greatest rpg of all time due to an invasion of undesirables.

Done. Now we have a live active list of rpgs and numeric rating for each.

 

[luj1]

it cannot be quantitative because RPG is a format

 

[Crispy]

Gregz indeed did this already, much better than you.

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

Criteria 1 - Can you bake bread?
Yes - 10/10 No - Piece of shit

Criteria 2 - See that mountain? Can you climb it?
Yes - 10/10 No - Piece of shit

Criteria 3 - Do you have to go look for your son or your father?
Yes - 10/10 No - Piece of shit

Criteria 4 - Can you ride dragons and shout NPCs off a cliff?
Yes - 10/10 No - Piece of shit

Criteria 5 - Does the game director have a sultry voice? Beautiful brown thick hair? Deep blue eyes you can lose yourself in? A silver tongue to dazzle the devil himself? Member of the chess club?
Yes - 11/10 No - Piece of shit

That sounds like Skyrim

 

[SlightlyRadioactive]

Roll 3d6 and there it is, your game's total score.

 

[PrK]

Any correct definition of rpg would exclude Disco Elysium.

Gregz indeed did this already, much better than you.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/the-greater-general-codex-theory-of-what-is-an-rpg.106544/

According to the list Disco Elysium is a perfect RPG, Codex GOTY 2019 wins again, haters assblasted, coping with al gul.

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

Any correct definition of rpg would exclude Disco Elysium.

Gregz indeed did this already, much better than you.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/the-greater-general-codex-theory-of-what-is-an-rpg.106544/

According to the list Disco Elysium is a perfect RPG, Codex GOTY 2019 wins again, haters assblasted, coping with al gul.

It's not even an rpg. It's a visual novel.

 

[luj1]

You are going to have stuff like Disco Elysium as long as you use quantitive ways to determine what an RPG is

 

[Jvegi]

Already done. The thread can end now.

 

[Not.AI]

Criteria 1 - Can you bake bread?

Arx Fatalis: 10/10
Divinity Original Sin 2: 10/10

What else?

Probably the notion that scores have to be all positive or integers or between 0 and 10 have to be ditched. Don't even have to be numbers.

Can be operators or matrices.

But should at least be real numbers. I think the lack of negative real numbers in review scores for aspects of games is fucking up any chance of valid and useful quantitative definitions from emerging.

Edit. If the exploration is great, give it a 75.29 but quests are shit, then give a -22.98 for the rubbishyness of the quests, then add 18.506666666666...66667 if the number of quests is satisfactory or something.

A lot of quantitative definitions actually start to be come possible and meaningful when the granularity gets down to something useful.

Just like graphics 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 out of 5 isn't a meaningful category because the grass can be awesome, the trees suck, the water awesome, the fish suck, the clouds awesome, the rain suck, the monsters awesome, the human faces suck. Separate scores for each actually gives something that starts to make sense. Make it all conditional too, like trees looking like cardboard when the grass looks nice being -2.5 but being -7.9 if the grass also looks terrible.

 

[Hammer Of The Heretics]

Criteria 1 - Can you bake bread?

Arx Fatalis: 10/10
Divinity Original Sin 2: 10/10

What else?

Ultima IX: 10/10

 

[Serus]

Criteria 1 - Can you bake bread?

Arx Fatalis: 10/10
Divinity Original Sin 2: 10/10

What else?

Ultima IX: 10/10

Ur mom: 1/10

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

I saw a youtuber who made his own system that gives each game a number, but I think its terrible, and even if you focused on making one of these for years, people will still fight about that shit.
Just make your own system, and claim yourself king of RPGs, so no one can question you.

 

[Delphik]

Already done. The thread can end now.

He actually thinks the Witcher 3 dialogue is 9/10 and this alone proves quantitative RPG measurement suffers from the same flaws as just categorical measurement.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

Already done. The thread can end now.

He actually thinks the Witcher 3 dialogue is 9/10 and this alone proves quantitative RPG measurement suffers from the same flaws as just categorical measurement.

Witcher 3 does have a few parts where the dialogue is laughably bad and just jarring (although, a lot less than any other modern game I've played) and there are several scenes where the presentation falls completely flat. Other than that, pretty solid all around, I can at least call it relatively consistent. They do just enough to make people think its revolutionary, when it's just bland and boring a lot of the time. I've suffered through a lot of slogfests, but Witcher 3 is one of the only games where I started skimming subtitles and skipping dialogues (mostly with NPCs) because its padding on top of padding.

Witcher 1 Geralt voice acting is better than Witcher 3 anyways.

 

[Not.AI]

I saw a youtuber who made his own system that gives each game a number, but I think its terrible, and even if you focused on making one of these for years, people will still fight about that shit.

You just gotta make a more persuasive system and get scientific consensus.

Start by identifying the main independent factors, for example.

Then subfactors, of lesser effect, that are correlated with pairs, triples, and so on, of main factors.

Then note any asymmetry in the n-fold correlations.

Then use this to provide a scale-space and note the transformations that preserve the invariants.

One possible start.

Thesis: Game scoring has been half-assed for fifty fucking years. We gotta science the shit out of this. Make sum progress.

 

[Fedora Master]

Does it have character building, combat and choice and consequence? Then it's an RPG.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

I saw a youtuber who made his own system that gives each game a number, but I think its terrible, and even if you focused on making one of these for years, people will still fight about that shit.

You just gotta make a more persuasive system and get scientific consensus.

Start by identifying the main independent factors, for example.

Then subfactors, of lesser effect, that are correlated with pairs, triples, and so on, of main factors.

Then note any asymmetry in the n-fold correlations.

Then use this to provide a scale-space and note the transformations that preserve the invariants.

One possible start.

Thesis: Game scoring has been half-assed for fifty fucking years. We gotta science the shit out of this. Make sum progress.

Still too many arbitrary factors that contribute to a "good game". Witcher 3 is an example. That game is basically just a checklist for this shit but is soulless and bland when you look last that. If the model doesn't overrate the fuck out of tthat game, I would accept it.

Either way, would be a fun project, especially if can establish a proper narrative and how exactly it would work/how it should be interpreted.

Might be a fun little side project. Already did something like this back in the day for counterstrike stuff when no one had did any analysis past kill death ratio.