Hopeless newbie question
zudensternen
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Can anyone explain how Hopeless is scored?
As a total novice, playing with 4 colors, I'm getting scores mostly in the 3,000s; sometimes 2,700, sometimes 4,400. I see no pattern at all in how the score of any given game is calculated. It doesn't seem to relate in any obvious way to how many squares remain at the end, or to the difficulty level played, or to the elapsed time. (This can be hard to pin down because my own score and time are almost never on the board at game's end.)
How people get scores of 16,000 or 32.000 is a stone mystery to me.
Comments
@zudensternen Excellent question. I get low scores, too, and can't figure out how to play a better game.
Hmm, got a clue: I tried clicking on the games the day's leaders had played (with scores of 29,000-something). Immediately scored 12,000+ So is that the secret? To play anonymously, repeatedly, until you hit upon a game with a favorable conformation of squares? Then practice that game and finally log in and record a high score?
@zudensternen I had the same problem when I first started playing it, I would clear all the blocks and get squat for a score.
What it does is it gives increasingly large values for larger groups, On the game I was testing it was 16 for a double, 36 for a triple and 64 for a quad. These vaslues vary by how many colors are being used in the game.
Hop in there and experiment. Best of luck.
See my posts in this thread: https://forum.greenfelt.net/discussion/comment/27583#Comment_27583
@zudensternen You will find players on many games that do the log off, log in thing to get practice on the game of the day. On the high scores table below the hopeless game you will find that there are often many games you can try to test how you are doing. (on the 'today' tab) The rest of the top scores were attained on the same game which is why there is no number given. That game is https://greenfelt.net/hopeless?game=1141240194. You might try this game as it has a large number of different solutions that yield relatively high scores. You can also experiment with game numbers. There is a fairly consistent pattern as you increment the numbers. Obviously I've spent WAY too much time messing with this game.
I'm really slow which is what drew me to this game since you can poke around and see what scores you can get.
A while back I was struggling with Hopeless (my favorite) and someone posted to play at the level "3". It's "weighted" to give higher scores. Could be that's why such high scores. I've managed a 29,000+ score - once
. Enjoy this wonderful site!
Thank you, experts all! I just broke 30,000 for the first time (on 1141240194). [ Added later:] And over 32,000 twice; for those every one of the dominant color squares were included.