Another suggestion: Killing half the arena and dying to a lucky shot shouldn't put you out of the running. Maybe have a score penalty for dying. Also give the killing player a portion of the victim's points, say 10-25% of them, on top of a flat number; killing a kogan with several kills should be more momentous than killing a random horse. Perhaps the score penalties for death could also be based on the score of the killer, more if the kill err was dozens of points behind but less if you're just another in a series of murders by an awesome player.
I see your point, but I specifically like the way it is. I find there's some sort of twisted, ironic beauty in a character on a kill-streak getting killed randomly. The player has to choose either an offensive or defensive strategy, or something in the middle. In this case, defense worked. Besides strategy, I think the other thing to be factored in this game is the gambling aspect: Is it worth going for something and risking getting hurt, or not getting it and risking falling behind in the end?
It would be, if the answer wasn't obvious: Hide and hope to be the last killed. Let the others kill each other and hope you prevail when it's down to you and one or two others.
That's not fun, if everyone does it, and not doing it puts you at a disadvantage.
Isn't that exactly what Ryan did?
Precisely. He took the boring route "nobody" would because "it's not fun to hide," and thus won in the end.
-snip-
But the whole thing with that is, if everyone does it, one person will just pop out and slowly go about killing someone. PLUS, this is all a game of luck. And BECAUSE it's not fun to hide, nobody will do it. The object of this arena game isn't to kill everyone, it's just to have fun and try to survive. If you don't, oh well, there's always next time.
1. You assume too much. To have fun, someone needs to risk being killed early by going on an offensive streak. It's not a lot more fun if you're the attacker, so there's not that much incentive to do so.
2. If the objective isn't to kill everyone, why are points given for killing? For that matter, if when A (who has killed half the competitors) gets killed by B, who hasn't killed anyone, his points are rendered moot; what is the point of points?
My biggest complaint is that the sort of "strategy" implied earlier wasn't actually promoted. There was one "alliance," and the winner took the boring strategy because he was ignorable while the others weren't. Anyways, if the best of the characters get NO recognition after death, I know what my strategy next round will be...