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- Exalted Heroic Member
If you're swimming in a creek, and an eel bites your feet - that's a moray.
Posted by: Pulse of Death
Posted by: Herr Zrbo
I'm confused by Bungie's math. You don't add multipliers together. x4 for Legendary and x3 for Skulls doesn't equal x7. Their chart says a 100 point baddie becomes 700 points, but really shouldn't it be 100 x 4 x 3 = 1200?? Did I miss elementary school or something or is their math off?
100 x 4 x 3 = you add the multipliers first and then multiply. for example. 3x + 4x = 7x then x by 100 = 700
You know, I laughed when I first looked at this, and then I laughed again when I read these posts, and now I'm laughing even more for having considered it further...
According to the post-level screenshot, there were two skulls active, netting a 3x score bonus, and the game was played on Legendary, adding an additional 4x bonus. The math behind this is simple addition of common factors, yielding 4x + 3x = 7x.
Of course, it doesn't say which two skulls, leaving us to determine for ourselves the behavior of the skull bonuses: Is that one skull at 1.5x and another at 2x (1.5 x 2 = 3), or is that two skulls at 1.5x (1.5x + 1.5x = 3x)?
That being said, what happens when I play the game on Normal with those same two skulls active? The "bonus" for playing on Normal is 1x, so if we're adding, that should technically yield 1x + 3x = 4x...
:)
So, if multiplying the bonuses, the math is off in that the individual bonuses should be adjusted to yield the desired values (e.g. one 1.5x skull and one 2x skull), but if adding, which is implied due to the interaction with the 4x Legendary bonus, the math isn't consistent with itself.
Since I highly doubt Bungie intended on using "ugly" fractions or irrational numbers, it stands to reason that the intended outcome required multiple interpretations of meaning to make the math "work" (it doesn't, but that is, again, only because it is inconsistent with itself).
To summarize, I have done nothing but cast more shadow across the scoring system. Consider the following:
Playing on Legendary with these two skulls netted a 7x bonus.
Would playing the same level on Normal with those same two skulls have netted 3x (as we should assume) or 4x (as the math dictates)?
What if we played on Easy with those same two skulls? Would our bonus then have been 3.25x (through addition - a greater bonus than Normal), or .75x (which is clearly the case)?
Does this mean that the bonuses are handled differently for Heroic and Legendary versus Normal and Easy? Or does it just mean that I'm a complete nerd who loves both math and making fun of its accidental misuse?
I suppose we'll have to test for ourselves the actual behavior of Normal and Easy with skulls to determine the actual method here, but once we do that we should be able to manipulate the math to find the easiest, yet most beneficial, combination of difficulty setting and activated skulls.
Of course, regardless of any findings, one should always play with both "Grunt Birthday Party" and "I Would Have Been Your Daddy" active - that's just obvious.
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Stan