You fellas really need to learn look into the deep ocean instead of the shallow end of the pool. You really do not know what you are talking about.
Is that so? Alright, let's take you and Junky as a working example. Regarding this comment:
Yes, I've killed you enough.
I note with interest you don't say: 'I've flown against you enough' or 'seen you flying enough' or 'I've encountered you in the MA'. I'd take what you actually said as evidence of something I've said earlier: 'people who play the score sub-game often use it to imply more than it means'. You forget I've watched several videos of your flying including the one you pulled down when there were comments made about it. A surface inspection:-
Your flying is timid and dictated by relative energy states. I've only seen you attack from advantage and stay at best neutral when co-e or numerically disadvantaged (more often you're erm, what's your term, egressing). Your ACM is shallow. You demonstrate no superior handling of your aircraft. Your knowledge of energy is one dimensional. You tend to extract evidence of your own performance from what are in fact axiomatic scenarios. Your flying is very ordinary. So presumably what's left to you is to look at your results. Score. You aren't a 'top stick', you're nowhere close after how many years of playing? So much for your being at the deep end of the pool.*
Then let's look at Junky, whom I've flown against many times as well as watched videos from. He'll fight from whatever starting position, advantage or disadvantage, energetically inferior or outnumbered. His ACM indicates depth of knowledge and application. His aircraft handling is top notch, including some departure manoeuvres that actually exceed convention (unlike your self-described 'Cobra Roll', which actually took longer to move your boresight vector than a conventional turn. I timed it). His knowledge of energy is two dimensional, and his overall flying is fair to say extraordinary, compared to the unwashed masses. By any metric that means anything he's a 'top stick'.
Yet you've 'killed him enough'. This is the core of this discussion which you seem to deliberately avoid and throw chaff into etcetera. Score and flying ability is often at best loosely coupled and more usually very misleading. I say playing for it usually implies very little in meaningful terms beyond helping people evidence something that isn't really there (some exceptions granted, Bruv119 for example).
I have no faith that anything will change in the scoring department, to the point I'm not even arguing for that. It's pointless. Just let me drop the following thought into the discussion: killing someone (by any means) is an entirely different thing than outflying someone. And every one of us knows when you're encountering a stick who is more skillful than you, usually in the first merge or watching them fight someone else. That takes considerably less time to observe than looking up their score and which might not even encapsulate that.
That's a qualitative element and the scoring system is quantitative by definition. In aces high (as opposed to certain sports for example), one is open to systematic manipulation and the other isn't.
Until you disassemble that observation or alter the scoring system to do it for you, any discussion is going to end in disagreement and people stating their subjective opinions of their experiences of it. In fact that's necessary.
* Not one atom of acerbic sarcasm present in that statement.