Hi everyone. I really love getting High Scores in games. Now we all know Pac made a thread in 2018 asking what he should do in getting a High Score Site setup or part of SRC. Now this thread isn't really talking about that but i'm just going to tell y'all what I would like a High Score Site to be like.
Now there are a lot Score Based games out there, like for example Galaga, Pac Man, Pin Ball, and Jet Pac. Even some games like Candy Crush and Angry Birds. But there are also lots of other games with a score based system. Some games have scoring based on performance in a level. Some examples are James Bond Agent Under Fire and Sonic Adventure 2 Battle. And some games have specific parts/levels/areas with a scoring system. 1 good example is The Arial Training Level in the Matrix Path of Neo. You get points by attacking enemies and completing rounds. Some attacks give you more points than others. And some games also have mini games or side things like tournaments with scoring systems. A couple examples are the arcade machines at Retroland in Jimmy Neutron Attack of the Twonkies, Verum Rex in Kingdom Hearts 3, and the Arena in CrossCode. Heck, with party type games, like Mario Party for example, depending on the mini game, some mini games in the Mario Party Series could be part of a high score site. Scoring in games in my opinion can be expanded to a lot more different kinds of games with scoring based systems.
Now i'll say real quick, HighScore . com really only have games whose main focus is scores, like Galaga and Donkey Kong. Or at least from what I've seen of the site. I'm sorry if I'm wrong here.
Anyways I'm not saying every single game with a score based system should be accepted onto a High Score site. what i'm really trying to get at is I would like it to have more variety.
What are your guy's thoughts? Also how would y'all like a High Score Site to be?
Implementing highscores on this site would be as simple as:
- Mark as category or subcategory as a high score category
- User has place to input score when submitting (in addition to a time field)
Another way:
- User makes a Score variable
- User can choose to sort the leaderboard by variable instead of by time
Until this is done we'll get leaderboards like this: https://www.speedrun.com/boost_buddies#Highscore https://www.speedrun.com/hc_bfr#Highscore https://www.speedrun.com/2_cars#High_Score https://www.speedrun.com/spike_city#Endless_-_Highscore https://www.speedrun.com/totm#Highscore
@Oxknifer No, no, no. It absolutely is not that simple. What you've described is the bare minimum required for score categories to properly exist at all, but that completely ignores all the problems that would be created by allowing (and even encouraging) high score leaderboards to be created on speedrunning-focused leaderboards. This has been discussed to death so I won't go into too much detail, and I'm sure there's plenty of other stuff I'm not thinking of right now, but off the top of my head here are some major concerns:
• Many speedrun moderators and speedrunners in general simply want nothing to do with scoreboards. Visibility (front page, profiles, etc), leaderboard management, notifications, etc would all need to be considered and reworked with this new functionality in mind.
• If large score communities are serious enough about using these boards, leaderboard organization becomes a major problem. How do you have equal representation of two completely different (and usually incompatible) playstyles in the same place, without reducing focus on speedrunning which is, and will always be, the primary focus of this site?
• Because of the two above, many scoreboards may want to be completely separate from the speedrunning boards, which creates tons organizational issues for the site. Multiple leaderboards for the same game is generally not good, and the secondary Category Extension boards that we currently have are already kinda messy and not handled particularly well IMO.
• Already-very limited development time and resources become split between the needs of both communities, which are likely to conflict at some point.
Just creating barebones score support without considering any of this is a terrible idea. It's not even clear whether scoreboards should be on this site in the first place, and doing so would create a ton of problems on both the score and the speedrun side of things, so honestly, why bother? A definitive site for the high score community would be better for everyone. While that doesn't currently exist, trying to mash support in here just for the sake of doing so is not a solution.
Hey Shiken, thanks for the summary post on this issue. Your counterpoints make a lot of sense.
I see what you are saying, and I agree that high score addition would complicate things. The more I think about it though, resorting by a Score variable would be the least complicated way to handle this change.
Check out column sorting in https://github.com/gregnb/mui-datatables I've used this library on a client application and I'm a fan of the way users can click column headers to sort alphanumerically.
As high scores are still not priority on the site, it makes sense (for now) to autosort every leaderboard by time. However, if the leaderboard doubles as a high score board, a user can feel free to click the score column header to view top scores.
To address your points: Column sorting or a similar solution on this site could allow for highscores to still be submitted as times with score variables, which would not mess up the front page or notifications. Users are already used to seeing the 40th or 112th place run of a game on front page. Submitting a high score would not change this.
On your point of two communities clashing, I'd say that srcom stays committed to prioritizing speedruns. In one way or another, a speedrun is a high score. Arguably, it is the most popular type of high score because it is nearly universal across games (aside from endless run type games).
I cannot make assumptions on how a high score community might grow and whether they would feel the need to ask for equal attention from site or leaderboard mods. Nor can we make assumptions about the need to split a leaderboard.
To sum it up: High score communities do exist and would like to see functionality added to the site to account for their scores. A simple solution like column sorting on a score variable would help these subcommunities. The consequences of this change may be unpredictable and growth in high score subcommunities may occur.
As a final note, I see what site mods go through and I know yall wouldn't enjoy an increase in conflict surrounding high scores. Maybe it will be a hot topic for popular leaderboards. However, until something is done about it, people will continue asking for high score support and the amount of shambly time-into-score leaderboards will increase :)))
If thread subbing was around I wouldn't be responding 18 days later haha