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It has always been our intention that FightMetric be a work-in-progress. From time to time, it becomes necessary to change things, be they detail, rule, or even one of the founding principles. Today, we make our first major revision.

The change in question relates to damage. The system, as originally conceived, had four possibilities in the damage category: None, Light, Moderate, and Heavy. Each of the three damage levels had a certain multiplier associated with it, so the fighter’s StrikeScore would be augmented based on the level of damage he had inflicted. The reason behind the multiplier (as opposed to a static award for damage) was to give greater reward to those who had struck effectively and give less benefit to those that may have scored a lucky elbow, for instance.

The criteria for calling damage light, moderate, and heavy were never all that clear. The general guideline was to look at the number of “things.” So one cut was light, two independent cuts were moderate, etc. But there was a lot of leeway to judge things as the scorer saw fit.

The subjectivity associated with labeling levels of damage (and thereby awarding different effectiveness scores) was the most widely criticized facet of the FightMetric system. Critics argued that you couldn’t rightly call a system objective if this subjective judgment played such a prominent role. After some thought, we are inclined to agree.

From now on, damage is a binary decision; it either is or it isn’t. So no matter how many “things” there are, it all falls under the “Yes damage” category and will have a single multiplier value. The result will be a smaller potential reward to a fighter who causes a bunch of accumulated damage.

This change makes the FightMetric system a little less dynamic, but a lot more objective. That is a sacrifice we are more than happy to make.

Source:Major System Revision