Rayman 3 scores

[Danone]

Xenon can you post your top 10 hardest combos please?

[Fauch]

I remember seeing some of them on videos. I tried a few of them, but didn't succeed. it looks easy because the videos show exactly what to do, but it still isn't

[sfn42]

Congrats on 800000. I think it's a good decision that you stop now, when you still harbor positive feelings towards the game. I didn't stop early enough and I really dislike R3 for that reason nowadays.

Actually, I particularly enjoyed playing the game between 800k and 830k. It was the time when my achievements felt richer, and I was playing 'professionally' instead of just casually.

I'd actually agree with you there. I had a score of 834000 for a while. That's where I should have stopped, because it was mostly fun before that and just garbage afterwards.

[MandM81]

@ MandM: When you think about it, it's amazing how few points those combos yield when compared to their easier variations. I've only needed to do two of them, yet I'm still almost at 850k.

So true, and the worst of them only give a few hundred extra points. The one thing I've been working on for about a year will yield only that, a few hundred extra points. However, I still think it's great fun to play these insane combos and pull a day or two out of a busy schedule to try to make them work.

I had a score of 834000 for a while. That's where I should have stopped, because it was mostly fun before that and just garbage afterwards.

I'm really sorry to hear you had such a bad experience with the game in the end. I'm not sure I understand why the game should completely change after 834.000 points. As Xenon said, one can get to 850.000 points without struggling with the really annoying combos that must be repeated ad nauseam before succeeding.

[sfn42]

I'm really sorry to hear you had such a bad experience with the game in the end. I'm not sure I understand why the game should completely change after 834.000 points. As Xenon said, one can get to 850.000 points without struggling with the really annoying combos that must be repeated ad nauseam before succeeding.

I never said the game completely changed after 834000, just that I had no fun playing after that and shouldn't have played any more. Some of the levels (CF, LOTLD, TOTL) are always fun but they are maximized at some point. What's left is FC, SBTC, TLS and TBOM, which are highly dependant on chance from a certain point onwards, which is, as I said garbage. I compliment those who went through that torture and maximized these levels for their patience. I tried some of that stuff, had some success but, ultimately, I stopped, which was the right decision but it should have come earlier. Maybe that would have spared us these pointless arguments a couple of years back, as well.

[MandM81]

I think the arguments back then had a lot to do with the frustrations everyone was experiencing in FC, without FC, no real arguments. It was like each had his own agenda and thus kept the cards real close to the chest, resulting in an atmosphere of paranoia, mistrust and misunderstandings. The players were really competitive, which enhanced the paranoia, the mistrust etc. A healthy competition is good but we, or I, perhaps went over the top.

Anyway, it’s not my intention to revive the arguments. I rather came to think about the fun you mentioned and the difficulties in reaching certain scores. I will divide the scores into the following intervals:

700.000 – 750.000 points
750.000 – 800.000 points
800.000 – 825.000 points
825.000 – 850.000 points
850.000 – 859.000 points

Which of the scoring intervals, disregarding the last one, was the hardest for you to go through? And which was the most fun?

For me it was improving my score from 700.000 to 750.000 points. The reason for that was mainly that I had to learn a number of rather difficult tricks and movements to play some combos. These new movements were a big help going from 750.000 to 800.000.

Obviously, going from 855.000 to 859.000 points, which probably will be my maximum, is harder because one has to bring all the annoying, ad nauseam repeating combos in FC, LS and BOM into play, and they must be successful.

The most fun for me to play was going from 750.000 to 850.000 points.

[Dildo_Potter]

Could you say me what is the maximum score for the fairy council and the bog of murk, please ?
And which level is the hardest to get the maximum?

[sfn42]

Your intervals seem a bit arbitrary and don't correspond to my playing experience at all. My most enjoyable phase was between 750000 and 790000. Before and after that it was a bit hit and miss, in so far as I had a lot of (short) breaks and things sometimes went well and sometimes they didn't. 700000-750000 was particularly weird. At one point I improved four levels within a week but the motivation suddenly left me. When I had 805000 I had a phase when nothing worked. I failed even the easiest combos constantly. I thought about deleting my savegame and starting anew or even quitting all together. After I got through that, things went rather smoothly, though (excluding some major hiccups with the Razoff glitch), up to the point I described in my previous post when scoring started to rely almost solely on glitches, gimmicky parts and Matuvus. I always had a ton of patience for conventional combos but for stuff like that I never had any and that lead to more frustration than necessary.

[Danone]

Could you say me what is the maximum score for the fairy council and the bog of murk, please ?

TFC: 48410
BOM: 100899

[MandM81]

sfn: The intervals were chosen subjectively of course, but they do reflect the way I played back then. When I had reached 700.000 I would set a goal reaching 750.000 and so on. It's interesting to see we have the same experiences regarding the first two intervals, 700.000 - 750.000 and 750.000 - 800.000 (790.000). I also seem to recall I lost belief in reaching 750.000 points.

Dildo_Potter (what a handle you got there):

FC: 48.490
BOM: 100.899

The maximum for FC has yet to be found, but the number above is the latest estimate.

The maximum score for BOM could be 101.299 if Razoff can be hit six times at the end of part 6. No-one knows if it can be done, but I have on two occasions hit Razoff five times without him falling off the wrecking ball. One could then argue that it should be possible to make an extra hit. Well, there's something to work on still...

[sfn42]

I don't know if it was the same for you but around 750000 I had the epiphany that I could and would reach 800000. It went smoothly and playing was a real pleasure at that point. Actually, I was too good and that's why I had to make a small break at 790000. I got the maximum in TLOTLD too quickly and then would have had (even attempted) to play TBOM twice in a row and that's always a recipe for disaster, especially when you're still in the process of learning the difficult combos.

I've been wondering about TBOM. Has anyone tried to use the same method that has allowed us to exceed the maximum in TLOTLD there?

[Xenon]

I seem to recall 700-750k to be a fairly boring period. It was a time when I wasn't particularly confident in achieving a world-class score (a pipe dream at the time), but rather playing because I wanted to improve my score and discuss things amongst other scoring players. 750-800k was marginally better. It was a time when I was realising the potential, but still considered some of the more difficult combos to be way out of my league. As I previously mentioned, 800-825k was a good time for me because my achievements felt more substantial. Beyond that, things became monotonous because I grew tired of repeatedly attempting combos and failing at them. I can relate to sfn's point of view on that front.

In other words, my enjoyment for the game can be described as a curve. It started okay, and it ended okay. The fun factor resided in the middle.

[MandM81]

sfn: My confidence was fairly low before I reached 750.000 points. But after overcoming some difficult combos there I did indeed feel good about reaching 800.000 points. And I also remember TBOM being the level I struggled with around 800k. There was the Razoff double glitch and also the wrecking ball tricks in part 6 to deal with. Only a fool does not fear TBOM.

The trick with the green gem in TLOTLD does work in the sense that of the 200 points you get from hitting Razoff on the ball, only a hundred of those points count with regard to the scoring limit. That is, one hundred additional points you get from wearing a Powerup carries over the limit to give you an extra hundred points, which I still haven’t collected by the way. Thus the maximum score is 100.899 rather than 100.799. But the question remains for me to try out the 1500 (3000) point bonus you get from defeating Razoff. It would be cool if the 1500 points are carried over the limit.

Do you remember at your score when you first got the Razoff glitch and the wrecking ball shenanigans in part 6 were successful?

Xenon: I would agree that reaching 800.000 – 825.000 was some achievement, but even though the combos after became somewhat tedious, didn’t you feel some excitement to have passed former champion Jona?

I’ve come to think about the game, about what has been intentional and what has been coincidental. For me, either the game is the most brilliantly put together scoring game ever, or it is unintentionally the most brilliant scoring game ever.

I think Hunchman once mentioned that the developers estimated a maximum score of around 500.000 points. Were they deliberately being vague about the true scoring potential or did they really believe that?

The reality is that one can still find new combos here almost ten years after the release. That’s quite amazing when you think about it.
When one looks at FC, it’s amazing how many of these combos that have been discovered within the last few years. Have they all been thought through by the developers or are they accidentally possible?

Part 3: Are the 3-Matuvu Combo and the fourth Matuvu for 1500 points thought through?
Part 4: Is the Extended Matuvu Combo planned by the developers? And what about the Tribelle for 1.000 points in combo after that, the Vortex runs out exactly 0.5 seconds after you get the Tribelle, coincidence? Is it a coincidence you can collect everything in the room with the Fairy Holes in one big combo? The same goes for the last room.

What about BOM.

Part 1: One can take everything in the last room in one big combo. It has only been found out recently. Plan or coincidence?
Part 2 + 3: Everything can be taken in long combos (except the Boat Combo), plan or coincidence?
Part 5: You can hit Razoff 3 times, plan or coincidence?
Part 6: The wrecking ball trick, plan or coincidence.

And I can go on of course. Are what we call glitches a planned part of the game or are they coincidences? The way they fit so perfectly into the game makes me think they are planned.

And that is actually the motivation for me at the moment. It’s not so much repeating combos, but to look for what has been overlooked.

What are your views, is the game thoroughly planned in every detail, or are we just lucky so many things are coincidentally doable?

[Xenon]

On the contrary, I think there's something very hollow about beating your champions. It's quite difficult to explain, but if I ever surpassed your score I would view the game in a different light, as if there's no reason to compete any longer. It's the same story with Jona. A small part of me feels inadequately positioned, in light of the efforts he put in and the way he developed combos, as you are doing now. That's not to say I'm not proud of my score and happy with my HOF ranking though.

About Ubisoft's intentions, it's something I've pondered as well. R3 is a totally different genre to all of the other games and the score counter was clearly designed to be a fundamental factor in its gameplay. I don't think the developers intentionally placed items in combo hotspots, but I do think they planned out the gameplay very carefully with broad-minded higher scoring players in mind. Not that high scoring given their maximum score estimate, mind you.

I don't even think the developers expected players to exceed 9999 combo points, let alone exceed 100,000 points in a level. They created such a brilliantly formulated system but they never thoroughly tested it themselves. Unless of course, all of the levels were designed so that the player could, in some way, exceed the maximum 99,999 points, meaning there are some serious tricks we've missed in TFC and TLS

On a more serious note, it is interesting to think about the game's mechanics. It's a mind game as much as it is a platformer.

[MandM81]

I think I maybe phrased it wrong, giving it a different meaning than the one I intended. Jona was indeed the true champion when I started playing in the summer of 2005. He had developed some outstanding combos and he was no. 1 in HoF. His score at the time was about 835k points. It was a score I never thought I could come even close back then.

But this score stood for ages while no-one really attempted to challenge it. Jona had stopped playing at the time I started and other players didn’t seem to have the ambition to do anything about it. When I passed 835k I felt quite excited, not because I beat Jona, but because I beat a score that had stood for so many years. It was good for the game as well. And as you know, it did actually revive R3. And since then, almost 25.000 points have been found.

So you’re saying it is mostly by chance the game can deliver a score line near 860k? It’s quite a long way away from their estimate of 500k. But let’s entertain the idea of a maximum below 100k for each level. Don’t you think it’s odd that no-one of their test players had reached 100k in, say, TLOTLD? One should think it was doable for a semi-pro or pro player?

How does the fact that combo-points, bonus points and Powerup points get carried over the limit fit into that theory?

And how does the weird thing about the green gem taken with a Powerup counting nothing when taken as item no. 16 or higher in a combo fit into that theory? Could it be it would have been too easy to reach 100k then? It’s only truly relevant in SBTC part 2 and LS part 1 as far as I remember. And in LS, it’s meaningless to set a limit. So it’s only in SBTC it makes sense, or what?

Do you think the green gem “glitch” is down to the developers trying to fix the scoring system in R3, making it more difficult or, in their minds, impossible to reach 100k?

It’s really hard to see the logic in the way the game is structured. Already in the first area in FC we are introduced to this strange phenomenon. Are we supposed to be able to break the Dwarves with the fists that we get later on and thus collect everything in one big combo, or is that just another convenient, non-intended option we have?

Whatever it is, I’ll buy the idea that the game is a mind game above anything else.

[sfn42]

Intended vs. coincidental is an intriguing mental exercise. I could never find a sufficient answer because there are arguments for both and ultimately it's a mix of both. The main reason against intention to me is still the scoring system in the Lums Quest which gave you the maximum amount at a little less than 500000 points. I tend to think that the developers were quite careful about the mechanics of the game (100000-limit and such) but that gem-placement, enemy-placement etc. is mostly coincidental. They may have considered certain combinations at lower levels of scoring, but at higher levels the dedicated players designed techniques that the developers would have never considered.

Passing jona was a nice accomplishment and it felt good but I had already started accumulating too many negative sentiments towards R3, which dulled a possible feeling of elation.

Also, I cannot necessarily share your view about your passing jona "reviving" the game. You brought a new perspective (a paradigm shift in a way) to the game, which was crucial to its further development but I don't consider the event of your passing jona as significant. It was just one tiny step in a process that started long before and may not have ended until today. Overemphasizing the event of one player overtaking the other can put us into dangerous territory, as it may give the HoF too much credit. We made the same mistake in the past, putting the HoF above the game itself, which led to distrust and animosity amongst us.

[MandM81]

I never knew the Lums Quest, but that and the position of gems and enemies make sense. Then again, many gems are positioned exactly in the right place in order for combos to be combined, and combos that one wouldn’t think of combining right away. Examples of this are found in SBTC part 2 the end of the Circular Arena Combo where the yellow gem at the fireplace (where the Hoodlock were) allows one to take all yellow gems in one combo. And in TOTL part 1, where a yellow gem at the exit of the moving platform room allows you to kill the Hoodlums in the yard after at least twenty yellow gems. And later on, you can kill the Hoodblaster in the yard after the cage with twelve yellow gems. Another three yellow gems are nicely put to keep the combo going. Now you have exactly fifteen (!) yellow gems before killing that Hoodblaster. And how many times are you not able to just collect ten objects before taking a green gem with a Powerup?

Maybe most of the gems and enemies were placed by chance, but don’t you wonder if some gems and enemies have been added later on in order to adjust the scoring options?

What is your view on the glitches? I mean, there are lots of launching glitches that have become an integral part of the game. In many places where there’s a corner or sharp edge, you can often get launched quite high into the air. But then again, there are other corners and edges where this simply doesn’t work. Coincidence, or have the corner/edge glitches been added later on the boost the score in some places?

And were we supposed to be able to hit Razoff three or maybe even four times? It’s necessary in order to reach 99.000 points, so was that feature added later on? You can’t do that with other bosses. Try with Begoniax in BOM part 1. There’s no chance of more than one hit, so it’s not an inherited programming error or anything, it must be deliberate, at least in my view.

About reviving the game, I was trying to be as delicate as I could be. I do not aim to take credit for anything. The thing is, back in 2007, Jona’s score was passed and that meant new combos, of course. The combos that did it for me were an improvement in FC part 4 (the Matuvu for 1.500 in combo) and the first area in CF part 2. In RaymanZone I was asked to make videos of the two parts and I did so. These videos made Jona and also CC come out of retirement. It was at that time Jona came up with the idea of rolling on the Pigs instead of jumping towards the wooden door. So what I meant by saying “reviving” the game was that otherwise retired class players came back to the game. And it was passing Jona’s score with the combos mentioned that brought it on.

Too bad the RaymanZone got hacked so horribly back then. It happened at least twice a year. An important part of Rayman 3 history is lost forever because of that.

[Haruka]

Too bad the RaymanZone got hacked so horribly back then. It happened at least twice a year. An important part of Rayman 3 history is lost forever because of that.

I do remember watching a 999999 score in the HOF of Raymanzone, what a clown the player was.

I think I was around the 150th in the worldwide ranking, but the number was inferior knowing there were stupid fake scores in the HOF.

[sfn42]

Too bad the RaymanZone got hacked so horribly back then. It happened at least twice a year. An important part of Rayman 3 history is lost forever because of that.

I do remember watching a 999999 score in the HOF of Raymanzone, what a clown the player was.

That was Nikra. He was a full-blown troll. He even created a thread on the old RZ entitled "Game Over". Personally, I never cared too much about the cheaters because I knew who the honest players were but that kind of behavior irked me.

The one thing I am truly sad about losing is the old RZ which got hacked in 2004. I had so many good, but also bad memories, as well as my earliest development as a R3 player, archived there and it was all lost one day. The newer RZ never held as many memories to me but it still documented an integral part of the history of R3, which is now stored in our memories, in a fragmented form only.

What is your view on the glitches? I mean, there are lots of launching glitches that have become an integral part of the game. In many places where there’s a corner or sharp edge, you can often get launched quite high into the air. But then again, there are other corners and edges where this simply doesn’t work. Coincidence, or have the corner/edge glitches been added later on the boost the score in some places?

I used to think along the same lines as you - that some of these things are just too weird to be a coincidence or a mere programming error. These days I don't have a real opinion with regards to this issue. The reason is that I know next to nothing about programming and thus I don't know how supposed programming errors such as these come into existence. Maybe someone here has a deeper knowledge about that issue and can enlighten me (and others who don't know either) but I just feel that any opinion I would have on that topic would be unfounded.

With regards to gem placement, I like to give more credit to the players who, imo, managed to bend the scoring system in ways that were never intended by the developers. I agree with you that there are cases where the gem placement seems ideal but there are a lot of other cases where it just isn't. Take the 4th Matuvu in FC part 3 for example. There are nine gems on the ledge, not 10. Sure, it is possible to combo the Matuvu with 10 but that requires an absurd technique that is much harder and took years to develop. We have similar situation in the middle of CF part 2. There are a lot of gems, piggy banks, Hoodlums, Matuvus and Tribelles in that area but they seem haphazardly placed which doesn't allow for a bigger combo. In TOTL and DOTK we have similar problems which, ultimately, reduce the maximum score.
I believe that the gem placement was mostly done in accordance with the landscape. Gems usually appear on marked places (ladders, small ledges, single platforms etc.). On occasion, the developers must have had simple combos in mind (especially with gems near hoodlums) but to me there is nothing in this game that indicates a purposeful placement of scoring items intended at complex combos.

[MandM81]

When I joined RZ in the summer 2005 I would have liked to be able to read about the development of the game from the time the game was released. It would certainly have given me a deeper understanding of the game and of the challenges I would face later on. In the summer 2005 the RZ forum was basically empty after yet another attack had seen all threads deleted.

Also, I never knew the old “cheaters” like Nikra, and wasn’t there one called epona? But then again, I guess I could do without them.

I do like your logic about placing gems and enemies in the game. It’s simple and it makes sense. The fact that more than 40 % of the scoring comes from “bending the rules of the game” or finding shortcuts to more points will then be down to the creativity of the players. That’s an amazing amount of “extra” points and perhaps why the game is still alive.

About the fourth Matuvu in FC part 3, I think there are eight gems on the ledge. But the thing is you can actually fall down and connect with the gems on the floor to make it ten gems before the Matuvu. It requires, as you say, a special technique to get the Matuvu, but it’s doable.

The only place I seem to remember being one gem short is TLS part 2, where there is a secret room with four yellow gems and one green gem. You punch the wall with a semi-charged hit to open it. There are exactly nine items (punching the wall, four crowns and four yellow gems) before the green gem. CC and I have tried rather hard to connect with a crown from a room above, but it can’t be done.

I do agree that the big rooms in DOTK part 2 and TOTL part 2 don’t leave many options for combos. The latter room could have been in another category though if it were possible to fall down and connect with the green gem from the top platform with the Lockjaw after defeating the Hoodstormers.

I do hope the developers will make another game using the same strategy when placing gems and enemies. I’m sure it would last another ten years.