Re: Tempest Multigame (behaviour)

On Wed, 26 May 1999 15:50:32 -0700, you wrote:

>> Someone who can get to 500K
>> in the space of 3-4 credits and walk away is arguably a better player
>> than
>> one who had to play 30 or 40 games to finally "make it through the
>> level
>> once".
>>
>That actually is my argument distilled into a single sentence. (Doug
>must be a writer for a living. ;-)
>
>The fact that I could brute-force my roomates high scores off the chart
>given enough time and quarters doesn't make me a better player than he
>is. (It just proved that I didn't have a life and was a sore loser.
>He'd consistently kick my ass at Star Trek too... Bastard. ;-) However,
>the fact that I *can* do that makes me think the high-score list isn't a
>good metric of player skill.

Just because the first player walks away, doesn't make the high-score
list a bad metric of a player's skill. It just means he walked away!

You just need play Tempest a little more to convince yourself. If
both of the above players played until it took them 30 or 40 games to
finally make it through a level once, the player that can get 500k in
3-4 credits is going to walk away with a possible 650k score, while
the 500k player is still going to walk away with a 500k score. In
some games it might not be the case, but in Tempest high score means
high skill.

Take my challenge, start at any level and tell us the highest score
you could acheive, you'll see what I mean.

-Zonn
Received on Wed May 26 18:10:06 1999