Well, the time and number of solvers changes constantly. If the puzzle points earned for solving a puzzle changed on a weekly basis, it would reward players with a ranking based on the difficulty of the puzzle they want to solve. And, you can change the minimum and maximum number of points a puzzle can be worth through the function, or change the rate it increases points based on its age. And if a harder puzzle with fewer solvers was actually easier than what it appeared to be, more people would try and succeed to solve them. This would lower the resulting score of the puzzle, and changing the appropriate point totals of players. I donât disagree that itâs complicated, and possibly even impossible to implement, but itâs (or even another similar function based on only the number of solvers) is the most fair implementation for scoring a puzzle.
I think the only issue I have with your method is that the point value doesnât define the difficulty. It rewards players for solving puzzles first, and with higher point values for solving first. When really, even if itâs for the first 5 solvers, I as the first solver shouldnât be getting more points than the other solvers while the puzzle has less than 5 solvers, simply because maybe I solved the puzzle first 4 years ago. However, if all 5 solvers receive the same number of points, then thatâs not a problem.
Ultimately, the goal is to provide a difficulty rating and appropriate reward for solving any puzzle in the database. We can provide rewards for individuals who solve puzzles first, but it doesnât make sense from the perspective of people who donât want every puzzle in the database to be worth 100 points.