[quote=YUMmy_Bacon5]Do you mean within the last day?😅[/quote]
both, compounding!
[quote=YUMmy_Bacon5]Thanks! But why did you not do this when I suggested it in the Supporter forums? And you definitely saw my suggestion, also make sure to update this on user profiles[/quote]
I did see your feedback, just didn't have time to address it - it got bumped up on the priority list today :)
Hi all, thanks for the feedback, especially to all the Supporters who helped test this while in beta.
We deployed this a little earlier than expected due to performance issues (it uses the new backend which is much more efficient and we've seen a very significant increase in traffic in the last week), so some of the details were a little rough around the edges.
I'm pushing a fix now that improves the UI based on feedback (longer usernames on desktop, variables in parentheses, slim things down on mobile), fixes the issue on series pages (my bad!), and tweaks the algorithm a bit (to show more runs from your games and less from random games, where possible).
For clarity: runs from games you don't follow always had the possibility of showing - no fundamental change there. The new algorithm makes an effort to show as many recent runs from games you follow, then fills in a bit from other games if necessary. It may show more runs overall, which might be why you're noticing the change. Runs from games you follow should be at the top.
We'll likely continue to tweak based on additional feedback, so don't be shy :)
Hi all, thanks for the feedback here! We've released an update to the front page latest runs feature with some nice improvements, especially on mobile.
- Make run list more responsive to setting changes
- Fix "games with no runs" bug
- Show misc category runs
- Fix run dates for very recent runs
- Show run descriptions on hover
- Show game cover images on mobile
- Increase size of text in some areas
- Give more space to usernames
- Tighten padding/margins on mobile
- Mobile viewport improvements
- General UI consistency improvements
There are still some tweaks we can make, but hopefully this addresses most of the big issues. Please keep the feedback coming - I can't promise that we'll address it all exactly as desired, but we are considering it all as we move forward with leaderboard improvements across the site.
@Brionac thanks for bringing this up with a specific example, the screenshots really help to point out the behavior here. I'll explain where we are and what we're doing to resolve this.
Backstory: we're rewriting the algorithm/backend that determines the rank and obsolescence of runs.
TL;DR: the new algorithm fixes bugs in the old algorithm. The user page uses the new algorithm, but the game page leaderboards still use the old algorithm. This will be resolved soon.
More context: for the specific case you raise, what's happening is that your user page shows a run w/ rank 15, but the game leaderboard shows it w/ rank 11. This is caused by a difference in the algorithms in how multiple runs from the same player are ranked based on game settings. You'll notice that the game leaderboard has 4 runs above yours that have no rank: they show a "-". That's because those runs are by players who have other runs with higher placements. As additional context, the game has the "Platforms obsolete each other" setting OFF, which allows for a single user to have multiple runs ranked on different platforms. The old algorithm has separate algorithms for determining "rank" and "obsolescence", which leads to the inconsistency you see on the game leaderboard: a user has multiple runs showing (because they do not obsolete each other - which is correct), but only one gets a rank/placement (which we see as a bug). The new backend algorithm unifies the rank/obsolescence logic and removes this bug: a run can either be ranked or obsolete, but cannot be in this middle state where it's shown but not ranked. Due to the "platforms obsolete each other" setting being off for the game, those runs with a "-" rank now get actual ranks, which pushes down your ranking.
The game moderators can easily change this behavior by enabling the "platforms obsolete each other" setting, which will cause the duplicate runs by those players to be obsoleted/hidden. I know it's never fun to see the rank of one of your runs go up, but we see this as an important step in improving the quality/reliability of the rankings - making sure that every situation has identified, consistent, and properly tested behavior.
This is just one of many inconsistencies we've been working to resolve as we deploy the new algorithm. We're currently hard at work on rewriting the game leaderboards to use the new backend. This will fix a lot of bugs, improve performance, and allow us to make long overdue improvements to the leaderboard UI/UX as well.
Hopefully this helps clarify the situation. Please let us know here if you have any feedback!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
As the yummiest of bacons has shared above, we're hard at work on migrating everything over to the new backend, including but not limited to:
- Game page leaderboards
- User page runs list (already done, but still tweaking/fixing things)
- Home page recent runs list (in beta, still needs some work before release - feedback please!)
- Run pages
- Mod hub
- More
Additionally, it will also mean a rework of the "game management" experience, including improved UI/UX and more options for category, subcategory, variable, and level management. Everything should also generally get noticeably faster, have fewer bugs, some new capabilities, etc. Obviously the scope here is huge, but we've been working behind the scenes for a long time and will be excited to share more details soon!
Again it's a bit more complicated than that - the "Experimental" button drives the choice of VISIBLE backend, but there's more instrumentation/testing happening behind the scenes that we use to measure outcomes and reveal issues. That said, we certainly could have (and probably should have!) exposed that button to Supporters (or even made it the default) before the wide launch. We may do that for game leaderboards if we think it'd be helpful and appropriate (without being disruptive).
I hear you. For what it's worth, it's a bit more complicated than you might see from the outside. Let me elaborate...
The new backend was indeed being tested by supporters (at times), but that's a MUCH smaller audience (many many orders of magnitude), and so the level of testing/feedback we could see was limited. That being said, it did help us find and fix a lot of issues before launch! This is also a major ongoing project - we'll continue to fix and improve things over time.
Ultimately a launch like this is a bit of a judgement call: we felt that we had gotten what we could have from the beta group, had no known defects (only differences: cases where the old code is buggy and the new code fixes it), but did still expect some bugs to be revealed by deploying widely. We launched it, y'all found some bugs, and we're actively fixing them.
I don't enjoy deploying imperfect software, but sometimes its unavoidable (or at least impractical to avoid): SRC is a very old site, it contains a lot of bugs (and erroneous data as a result of very old bugs). We're in the process of updating/fixing all of it. The leaderboard system is a particularly perilous area to make changes. Sometimes it's going to be messy, and sometimes we won't catch all of the issues before launch. I promise you that we're doing our best to make improvements while making the proper tradeoff between "time we spend hunting for edge cases" and "edge cases that manifest to the public and can easily be fixed when revealed".
Thanks for the report, we're deploying a fix for this now.
Hey all, thanks for the feedback and bug reports.
The new user runs list is the first visible feature that uses our new leaderboard backend, a complete rewrite to fix long-standing bugs, remove limitations, improve ranking accuracy, performance, etc. We've been testing it in private for a while, but deploying widely has revealed a few edge cases that we didn't manage to catch - sorry about that!
We're actively deploying fixes for these issues today and tomorrow. Additionally, we're working on tools to help runners/mods identify runs with "bad data" - invalid timer values, mismatched game/run values, orphaned categories/variables/values/etc. Please bear with us as we clean up this space - I promise we're working on it and it will be in much better shape soon!
[quote=Hi]Will there be added different badges based on how many months you have been supporting the site for, or is this gonna be the only badge available?[/quote]
Interesting idea, we'll give it some thought!
Hi all,
First off, thanks for being here with us - we appreciate the support!
I wanted to address the current state of the new user runs display, which is currently toggled on by enabling either the "User Profile Custom Game Ordering" or "User Profile Featured Run" beta features. To put it plainly: we're not happy with the performance (speed) of this feature and are actively working on improving it. It should be much faster by the time these features leave beta, and we appreciate your patience while we work to improve it.
I wanted to mention this specifically for a few reasons:
-
Performance is important! We want your user pages to load as quickly as possible, despite how many games and runs you have. This becomes even more critical as we add more features that allow for customization of your pages. We know the current state is not acceptable and are actively working to improve it.
-
The work here is fairly complex and will take some effort. It basically involves re-writing all of the code used to generate leaderboards on the site - a fairly perilous task given some of the technical debt in this space. The good news is that we're taking a long view and will be able to leverage these efforts for major improvements to leaderboard functionality, including more flexibility with categories, subcategories, variables, and fixing long-standing issues with level runs.
Not all of these improvements will be visible immediately, but we expect to solve many long-standing issues with leaderboards and moderator tools over the coming months.
Thanks for your patience and pardon the dust. We welcome any feedback or suggestions you have, related either to these new beta features or leaderboards/modtools in general.
Hmm, worked for me - new URL: https://www.speedrun.com/obbytrialexe
Hah, good catch. We'll fix it so that's no longer possible - in the mean time I've removed your self-block :)
You can unblock them by navigating to their profile and clicking "Unblock" in the header menu. This definitely isn't a perfect solution and we want to improve block list functionality/visibility - it's on the roadmap, but no ETA.
Hi all,
Just wanted to let you know that we hear your frustrations and agree 100% that the state of comments is unacceptable. I apologize for the pain and frustration that some users and communities are experiencing.
We are making changes in line with your requests along with a few additional safety/moderation features as well. I expect these to go live either Tuesday or Wednesday this week.
Again please accept my apologies, we’ll have things in much better shape soon!