Do leaderboards in games matter? If so, how much so?
One of the problems with leaderboards in most games is that people will often find ways to exploit or cheat their way to the top, and except for the cases where they're stupid enough to make it obvious you'd need considerable moderation to ensure that top records are fair (like reviewing replays and/or logs) or the entire thing ends up being not meaningful anyway. For many smaller games I can understand why it could be considered not worth the hassle.
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Games like Toybox Turbo, Tales of Tiny Planet, Shadow Bug, i usually get in the top 20, but in most games the top 5-10 are usually dubious, it's nice to get as high as possible but since people cheat or spend ridiculous amounts of hours on it, i can't be bothered if i don't get higher.
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I have 2 feelings about leaderboards.
I don't care about them plus I hate them.
Let me explain.
I don't care what place I will be in a game. I care to have fun. As long as I have fun leaderboards means nothing.
I also hate leaderboards because there is always a few people that have few highest places and scores like 9,999,999 from cheating.
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I think if the leaderboards weren't see easily cheated then it would be alright to have them, especially for people who care about being top. I've never been interested in trying to get a top score so even with steam leaderboards I'm like wow good for that top person but eh I'm not going to work to get top 100.
The fact most leaderboards you see have been cheated I think it would just be best to not bother. It may motivate a few people when its normal but when you see all the cheaters it turns into annoyance. Its why I prefer seeing friends list versions. Unless you got a cheating friend you will get real scores and that way I wouldn't mind putting a little effort into seeing if I might do good enough to beat out someone else
It's not pc but there's an xbox game that for an achievement you need to get top position on a leaderboard. Now the only way to get top is to cheat your way there with 3 others and its not even a simple cheat. It's a giant task just to secure that top spot. It's very old so its probably null now but at the start I bet it must've been annoying to get that top spot for a measly achievement
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I wanted to get your opinions on leaderboards in games as of late, I've been getting into what some folks call speed running. (I would not say I'm a speed runner.)
Over a good handful of games on Steam I've noticed many inconsistencies between games as well as obvious shortcomings in data recording or "fraud" prevention. Super Meat Boy doesn't record times under 1 second on the global leaderboards... that's a shame that even I was able to manage a 0.92sec on the first world of the first level. How did I know this? It's recorded locally... pretty big mistake on that one. Guts and Glory has tons of characters like SMB and neither of them include the data of the character that the time was recorded with. Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed has ghosts to race against in the Time Attack mode as well as character data per record.... I just wish it and Lovely Planet didn't have so many blatant cheaters with either a.) ghost recording Sonic kart being tested for inconsistent game behaviour before being saved or b.) records in Lovely Planet being checked for reasonable times. (There's some guy named "dan" with "-999999.99999999~" times...)
Perhaps it's no big deal, perhaps some care, either way I think leaderboards are a quick and easy way to motivate a significant portion of a userbase if handled correctly. What do you think about leaderboards? Are you doing well on any?
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