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Veteran Dragonstar Arena scoring has improved with Update 9
Saturn
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Thanks to @ZeroIndex for helping me out with some problems and providing the 122 minute score which drastically changed the graph type.
After Update 6 and the major change to the scoring system of Trials and Veteran Dragonstar Arena I made a forum post about the math behind it. Since vDSA was the weekly this week I have been running it a lot, and as usual I record my scores because I'm weird like that. I quickly noticed that the scoring was very different, and therefore decided to try and figure out the math behind it. I'm not a mathematical genius, so please bear with me should I make any errors.
Here is what I found from putting all my scores into Graph and why I think the scoring system has improved a lot.
For anyone who has read my initial Update 6 scoring post it will immediately become apparant that the scoring type is different since the graph is no longer 100% straight. The scoring is now calculated as an exponential function (f(x)=b*a^x) instead of a linear function (f(x)=b+a*x), which means the scoring is more complex. If you look at the graph you can quite easily tell that it decreases the loss of points (y axis) as time (x axis) progresses and the opposite as well, the closer you get to 0 minutes the more your score increases for every second.
Now the picture says "Before Vitality Bonus", which is an important part of the scoring system now for all Trials and Arenas. The Vitality Bonus is a set amount of lives given to a team or single person (in the case of Maelstrom Arena), which upon completion is turned into points, each remaining life is worth 1000 points. Meaning 12/12 = 12000 points, 6/12 = 6000 points, 0/12 = no extra points.
For the sake of transparency and to prove this isn't bullsh*t I will post my plot points here so that anyone can do the math and get the same results.
Note: These scores have had the Vitality Bonus removed since otherwise the graph wouldn't work. The minutes have also been multiplied by 1.67 to fit a 1:100 scale instead of a 1:60 scale.
Scores (before Vitality Bonus):
33.32 minutes --- 25701 score *Originally 33 minutes 19 seconds* --- Submitted by @KoshkaMurka
46.85 minutes --- 22907 score *Originally 46 minutes 51 seconds*
48.87 minutes --- 22536 score *Originally 48 minutes 52 seconds*
51.75 minutes --- 21960 score *Originally 51 minutes 45 seconds*
55.08 minutes --- 21429 score *Originally 55 minutes 05 seconds*
55.35 minutes --- 21226 score *Originally 55 minutes 21 seconds*
55.97 minutes --- 21236 score *Originally 55 minutes 58 seconds*
122.00 minutes - 12683 score *Submitted as 122 minutes, no seconds* --- Submitted by @ZeroIndex
Now let us take a proper look at the graph function: 33126*0.9921^x R=0.999
The first value (b), 33126 is where the graph touches the y-axis, meaning this is the maximum possible score (before Vitality Bonus) at 0 minutes 0 seconds.
The second value (a), 0.9921 is the most important part of the graph as it decides whether it is positive (a>1), negative (1>a>0) or flat (a=1). Since this value is below 1 it mean that the graph is negative and will fall the bigger our x (time) value becomes.
The third value (x), is the variable, in this case time expressed in minutes.
The final value (R=...), is the graph accuracy, 1 = 100% accurate, which means the graph is 99.9% accurate to the plot points. You can run the plot points through several different types of graph functions but the Exponential function gave the most accuracy meaning it was the most likely function used to calculate scores.
Conclusion: Having a scoring system like this and having lives matter as their bonus score is very high means that the vDSA scoring system is no longer only catering to really fast teams, it is now more of a strategy to play safe and save lives than to simply rush ahead no matter the cost (as was the way before Update 9). The only problem that remains is to make vDSA hard again as the mob difficulty is now too low for it to be a real challenge to most experienced players.
As for vDSA itself, there is still the problem of players being able to damage portals before they finish summoning the NPCs, which can result in ridiculously fast burns on bosses.
Also Stage 6 is still broken, as the Rangers and the Boss no longer have a green glow on them when firing their draining shot, which basically makes this round's main mechanic invisible unless you look out for the animation which is slight and can be confused with other various attack animations.
A problem we encountered:
When @ZeroIndex and I were talking this over on Teamspeak we encountered a score that was a deviant to the graph line, by approximately 400 points. The score was:
50.84 minutes --- 21737 score *Originally 50 minutes 50 seconds*
According to the graph, when x is 50.84 the score should be 22129, which is almost exactly 400 points more than the actual score.
What we came up with as the reason behind this is a well-known bug in vDSA where you can sometimes dps too fast and skip rounds in a stage. The run with the 21737 (before Vitality Bonus) score was extremely fast, but had two wipes which significantly slowed down the time, so it is very likely a round was skipped during the run, which would explain why it has 400 less points as that is the exact score value you get for beating a round. It is likely that there is another cause, but this is the most plausible one for now.
If you would like to help:
If you would like to help me add more plot points to the graph you can reply to this thread below in a manner like this:
@Name --- Score (with vitality bonus) - Time (in minutes and seconds) - Lives left (x/12)
Here is an example using one of my own scores:
@Saturn666 --- 30960 score - 51:45 minutes - 9/12 lives
I will do the rest so you do not have to worry about it. Thank you in advance for any submission.
Edited by Saturn on April 3, 2016 2:42PM After Update 6 and the major change to the scoring system of Trials and Veteran Dragonstar Arena I made a forum post about the math behind it. Since vDSA was the weekly this week I have been running it a lot, and as usual I record my scores because I'm weird like that. I quickly noticed that the scoring was very different, and therefore decided to try and figure out the math behind it. I'm not a mathematical genius, so please bear with me should I make any errors.
Here is what I found from putting all my scores into Graph and why I think the scoring system has improved a lot.
For anyone who has read my initial Update 6 scoring post it will immediately become apparant that the scoring type is different since the graph is no longer 100% straight. The scoring is now calculated as an exponential function (f(x)=b*a^x) instead of a linear function (f(x)=b+a*x), which means the scoring is more complex. If you look at the graph you can quite easily tell that it decreases the loss of points (y axis) as time (x axis) progresses and the opposite as well, the closer you get to 0 minutes the more your score increases for every second.
Now the picture says "Before Vitality Bonus", which is an important part of the scoring system now for all Trials and Arenas. The Vitality Bonus is a set amount of lives given to a team or single person (in the case of Maelstrom Arena), which upon completion is turned into points, each remaining life is worth 1000 points. Meaning 12/12 = 12000 points, 6/12 = 6000 points, 0/12 = no extra points.
For the sake of transparency and to prove this isn't bullsh*t I will post my plot points here so that anyone can do the math and get the same results.
Note: These scores have had the Vitality Bonus removed since otherwise the graph wouldn't work. The minutes have also been multiplied by 1.67 to fit a 1:100 scale instead of a 1:60 scale.
Scores (before Vitality Bonus):
33.32 minutes --- 25701 score *Originally 33 minutes 19 seconds* --- Submitted by @KoshkaMurka
46.85 minutes --- 22907 score *Originally 46 minutes 51 seconds*
48.87 minutes --- 22536 score *Originally 48 minutes 52 seconds*
51.75 minutes --- 21960 score *Originally 51 minutes 45 seconds*
55.08 minutes --- 21429 score *Originally 55 minutes 05 seconds*
55.35 minutes --- 21226 score *Originally 55 minutes 21 seconds*
55.97 minutes --- 21236 score *Originally 55 minutes 58 seconds*
122.00 minutes - 12683 score *Submitted as 122 minutes, no seconds* --- Submitted by @ZeroIndex
Now let us take a proper look at the graph function: 33126*0.9921^x R=0.999
The first value (b), 33126 is where the graph touches the y-axis, meaning this is the maximum possible score (before Vitality Bonus) at 0 minutes 0 seconds.
The second value (a), 0.9921 is the most important part of the graph as it decides whether it is positive (a>1), negative (1>a>0) or flat (a=1). Since this value is below 1 it mean that the graph is negative and will fall the bigger our x (time) value becomes.
The third value (x), is the variable, in this case time expressed in minutes.
The final value (R=...), is the graph accuracy, 1 = 100% accurate, which means the graph is 99.9% accurate to the plot points. You can run the plot points through several different types of graph functions but the Exponential function gave the most accuracy meaning it was the most likely function used to calculate scores.
Conclusion: Having a scoring system like this and having lives matter as their bonus score is very high means that the vDSA scoring system is no longer only catering to really fast teams, it is now more of a strategy to play safe and save lives than to simply rush ahead no matter the cost (as was the way before Update 9). The only problem that remains is to make vDSA hard again as the mob difficulty is now too low for it to be a real challenge to most experienced players.
As for vDSA itself, there is still the problem of players being able to damage portals before they finish summoning the NPCs, which can result in ridiculously fast burns on bosses.
Also Stage 6 is still broken, as the Rangers and the Boss no longer have a green glow on them when firing their draining shot, which basically makes this round's main mechanic invisible unless you look out for the animation which is slight and can be confused with other various attack animations.
A problem we encountered:
When @ZeroIndex and I were talking this over on Teamspeak we encountered a score that was a deviant to the graph line, by approximately 400 points. The score was:
50.84 minutes --- 21737 score *Originally 50 minutes 50 seconds*
According to the graph, when x is 50.84 the score should be 22129, which is almost exactly 400 points more than the actual score.
What we came up with as the reason behind this is a well-known bug in vDSA where you can sometimes dps too fast and skip rounds in a stage. The run with the 21737 (before Vitality Bonus) score was extremely fast, but had two wipes which significantly slowed down the time, so it is very likely a round was skipped during the run, which would explain why it has 400 less points as that is the exact score value you get for beating a round. It is likely that there is another cause, but this is the most plausible one for now.
If you would like to help:
If you would like to help me add more plot points to the graph you can reply to this thread below in a manner like this:
@Name --- Score (with vitality bonus) - Time (in minutes and seconds) - Lives left (x/12)
Here is an example using one of my own scores:
@Saturn666 --- 30960 score - 51:45 minutes - 9/12 lives
I will do the rest so you do not have to worry about it. Thank you in advance for any submission.
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Paulington✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭Rather than using a graph, why not just use the formula on sheet 4?
VDSA scoring works like this:Final Score = (Points + Vitality Bonus) + [(Points + Vitality Bonus)*((3600 - Time in Seconds)/10000)
The "Points" is static at 20,500 (as you can see at the end of a run, minus bugs of course) and so the time/bonus is all that matters. This means you can easily calculate the time required for a given score.
Bear in mind the server actually calculates time in milliseconds so you can end up being a few units off in score, but if we plug your values into the formula we get:
Score = (20,500 + 9,000) + [((20,500 + 9,000)*(3600 - 3105)/10000)]
Score = 29,500 + 1,460.25
Score = 30,960.25.Edited by Paulington on April 3, 2016 1:08PM1 -
LadyNalcarya✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭I like the new system, and I agree that it makes things more tricky and fun.
And it encourages player's skill.
My last run for weekly was around 33 minutes, which is a bit slow for our team, to ensure that no-death bonus. ^^ I will look for screenshot to check the exact time, if needed, and the score is in my signature.
[upd] Time was 33:19, score 37,701, vitality bonus 12,000 (12/12 rezzes).Edited by LadyNalcarya on April 3, 2016 1:25PMDro-m'Athra Destroyer | Divayth Fyr's Coadjutor | Voice of Reason
PC/EU0 -
Saturn✭✭✭✭✭
✭Paulington wrote: »Rather than using a graph, why not just use the formula on sheet 4?
@Paulington
I feel like graphs are easier to digest and get a more coherent idea of how the scores fit together, and it is also useful for spotting deviancies. I didn't know about the link you posted
thanks for the math though.KoshkaMurka wrote: »I like the new system, and I agree that it makes things more tricky and fun. And it encourages player's skill.
[upd] Time was 33:19, score 37,701, vitality bonus 12,000 (12/12 rezzes).
@KoshkaMurka
Thanks for the score, I was hoping to get more outliers and getting such a high score will hopefully provide an interesting result.0 -
Paulington✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭Paulington wrote: »Rather than using a graph, why not just use the formula on sheet 4?
@Paulington
I feel like graphs are easier to digest and get a more coherent idea of how the scores fit together, and it is also useful for spotting deviancies. I didn't know about the link you posted thanks for the math though.KoshkaMurka wrote: »I like the new system, and I agree that it makes things more tricky and fun. And it encourages player's skill.
[upd] Time was 33:19, score 37,701, vitality bonus 12,000 (12/12 rezzes).
@KoshkaMurka
Thanks for the score, I was hoping to get more outliers and getting such a high score will hopefully provide an interesting result.
You could just plot a graph with time on the x axis and score on the y axis using the formula I gave and it will give you the score pre-vitality. Might work for you.. 0 -
Saturn✭✭✭✭✭
✭Paulington wrote: »Paulington wrote: »Rather than using a graph, why not just use the formula on sheet 4?
@Paulington
I feel like graphs are easier to digest and get a more coherent idea of how the scores fit together, and it is also useful for spotting deviancies. I didn't know about the link you posted thanks for the math though.KoshkaMurka wrote: »I like the new system, and I agree that it makes things more tricky and fun. And it encourages player's skill.
[upd] Time was 33:19, score 37,701, vitality bonus 12,000 (12/12 rezzes).
@KoshkaMurka
Thanks for the score, I was hoping to get more outliers and getting such a high score will hopefully provide an interesting result.
You could just plot a graph with time on the x axis and score on the y axis using the formula I gave and it will give you the score pre-vitality. Might work for you..
I will use it for comparison, for sure.0