Weapon Scoring Calculation Explanation

SCORING WEAPONS - THE CALCULATION AND HOW IT WORKS

Goals
- Create a way in which weapons can be scored in their effectiveness for both PVP and PVE
- Minimise bias and subjective scores
- Make quantitative data from qualitative sources

Step 1: Archetype Score
- Some Archetypes feel very different to their counterparts in the same weapon type - giving them a score/ranking made sense
- I didn't want to rely on my own interpretations, so I created the Archetype Scoring Survey, where people could score each archetype on its effectiveness in PVP and PVE
- The live responses feed the data and will be updated with major changes

Step 2: Weapon Stats Score
- Firstly, the average stats for the archetype group are calculated
- Weapons are then compared to the average, giving a difference of how good or bad each stat is compared to the average within its archetype
- Each of the stat differences are averaged, giving us an average stat difference to the other weapons in the archetype
- I could then add importance weightings to the stats. e.g. in PVP, Range would have a higher importance than Reload Speed
- Craftable or Adept style weapons would get a few extra stats in the calculation to simulate the bonus Masterwork stats/adept mod stat boosts

Step 3: Perk Scores
- Again, I didn't want to rely on my own interpretations/biases, so I created the Perk Scoring Survey, where people could score each perk on its effectiveness in PVP and PVE
- The highest scoring perks for each perk slot become the perk score for that slot
- Weapons that have access to enhanced perks get a very slight additional modifier to their Perk Score

Step 4: Balancing the Scores
- We now have our 3 pillars which can be combined to give us an overall weapon score in both PVP and PVE
- The next issue was how should these scores be weighted?
        - e.g. for PVE, Weapon Archetype may not be as important as the Perk options on a weapon
- The Weightings for the final score I gave were as follows:
        - PVP: Stat Score 15%, Archetype Score 60%, Perk Score 25%
        - PVE: Stat Score 5%, Archetype Score 25%, Perk Score 70%
- I played around with the balance quite a bit and found some odd results with different weightings.
For example, if stat score had a higher weighting for PVP, stat monsters like Igneous hammer would always come out at number 1, even if they're perk or archetype score were lower than many others

The Outcome
- We can rank weapons based on their overall score, and find out things such as what is the highest scoring sniper rifle in slot 2, or what is the top 5 kinetic submachine guns
- We can rank perks and automatically find the most recommended perks to go for

Limitations
- Some perks have a very high rating, e.g. Snapshot sight. So these are always picked as the higher scoring perks, regardless of weapon type
        - For example, this can be seen on the Blast Battue grenade launcher, where the highest scoring PVP perks are Moving Target, Killing Wind and Snapshot Sights, but there may be better options specifically for grenade launchers that are being missed out.
        - This is relatively rare, so I'm not too worried, and if I added weapon types to the perk survey it would have made an already-long survey much much longer
- Some weapons have oddly high stats in a random stat compared to their archetype counterparts, which influences the results of the stat score. e.g. Crisis Inverted has a high Reload Speed compared to all other Adaptive Hand Cannons
        - To minimise this, importance weightings were given to each individual stat in the calculation of the stat score for PVE and PVP


Overall, I'm very happy with the accuracy, but I'm always willing to take suggestions!