I just read an article on the spin-off "Breach" mode in the latest Deus Ex game.

The article is mostly about the creation of Breach mode and how the team debated the implementation of microtransactions, but one thing that stuck out to me was line about how players would be motivated to play and re-play levels to reach the top of the online leaderboards...

And it got me thinking: Isn't the "Climb the Leaderboards" model of incentivising your players terribly out-dated?

From what I can gather, leaderboards in games originated back when arcade machines were in vogue, and were used as a method of proving your skill to your peers. But they were always local to that machine, or at very least that particular arcade. Thus was a way to foster friendly competition in a local scene.

With the advent of the internet and online games, where everyone's skill is being compared and contrasted on the same scale, I feel like there's far less motivation to "Reach the Top" when the competition has swelled from a few dozen player to millions. What was once a task that required a moderate amount of effort and determination to achieve can now feel like an impossible feat, accessible only to those with an inordinate amount of free time and the mindset to focus all that time on improving their performance on this singular goal. As soon as I contemplate this and it's implications, any motivation to achieve it evaporates.

On top of that, I think most games have simply come up with more appealing ways to incentivise and reward players- When I play through DX, it's because I want see how the different choices I make can influence how the story and encounters plays out, not so that I can have a bigger number attached to my name.

This is also why I was taken aback by how many people reacted positively to the introduction of strike scoring; at no point, before or after the update, did I care about having my performance graded; I just wanted to shoot aliens and move through these neat spaces. Yes, we did have weekly spotlights in the THAB on the best of the best in PoE, but that seems like a poor reward for the effort required.

Anyway, I was just curious to see if I'm in some weird minority on this. What are your thoughts on numerical scoring and leaderboards these days?

Anyway, I was just curious to see if I'm in some weird minority on this. What are your thoughts on numerical scoring and leaderboards these days?

I think they were always a bad idea.

It's so anti immersion to make players play with the intent of making a little number go up, especially when maximizing score often has you play a game in stupid ways. You're playing the game to win a competition that's outside the game… With all that games have to offer nowadays, it's the worst way to hook your players.

If you are in a firefight in PvP, there's a kind of scoring system too isn't there? First one to 200 points wins. The loser dies. That kind of 'hidden' scoring system is far more effective.

Here's a new one:

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2017/03/03/buy-nier-automata-trophies-with-in-game-money/

What do you think about being able to purchase trophies?

Here's a new one:

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2017/03/03/buy-nier-automata-trophies-with-in-game-money/

What do you think about being able to purchase trophies?

-They are only accessible for purchase after your third complete playthrough of the game (you should have most trophies by that point, no?)
-They can only be purchased by using in-game currency, and each one is very pricey.

Sounds like a neat way to spare yourself some frustration, and gives you something else to save up for, so you don't have to play the game in a way that you don't want to.
I knew that I wouldn't ever get the "grind x number of multiplayer matches" Acheevo in Halo Wars, so if I was able to cross off that achievement to "Platinum" the game by a different means, I'd have been all for it.
Aren't achievements and Trophies just another immersion-breaking checklist? Should it really matter how folks finish off their list, as long as they play the game?

Here's a new one:

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2017/03/03/buy-nier-automata-trophies-with-in-game-money/

What do you think about being able to purchase trophies?

-They are only accessible for purchase after your third complete playthrough of the game (you should have most trophies by that point, no?)
-They can only be purchased by using in-game currency, and each one is very pricey.

Sounds like a neat way to spare yourself some frustration, and gives you something else to save up for, so you don't have to play the game in a way that you don't want to.
I knew that I wouldn't ever get the "grind x number of multiplayer matches" Acheevo in Halo Wars, so if I was able to cross off that achievement to "Platinum" the game by a different means, I'd have been all for it.
Aren't achievements and Trophies just another immersion-breaking checklist? Should it really matter how folks finish off their list, as long as they play the game?

I'm not particularly invested in Trophies, but the whole point of them is to mark a particular in-game accomplishment. If you can obtain them through other means, then they serve no purpose at all, no?

- No text -

Here's a new one:

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2017/03/03/buy-nier-automata-trophies-with-in-game-money/

What do you think about being able to purchase trophies?

-They are only accessible for purchase after your third complete playthrough of the game (you should have most trophies by that point, no?)
-They can only be purchased by using in-game currency, and each one is very pricey.

Sounds like a neat way to spare yourself some frustration, and gives you something else to save up for, so you don't have to play the game in a way that you don't want to.
I knew that I wouldn't ever get the "grind x number of multiplayer matches" Acheevo in Halo Wars, so if I was able to cross off that achievement to "Platinum" the game by a different means, I'd have been all for it.

Then you didn't earn the achievement. The whole point of that achievement is to say "I played x multiplayer matches, and here's proof". You're effectively asking for the ability to lie to people.

Anyway, I was just curious to see if I'm in some weird minority on this. What are your thoughts on numerical scoring and leaderboards these days?

I think they were always a bad idea.

It's so anti immersion to make players play with the intent of making a little number go up, especially when maximizing score often has you play a game in stupid ways. You're playing the game to win a competition that's outside the game… With all that games have to offer nowadays, it's the worst way to hook your players.

If you are in a firefight in PvP, there's a kind of scoring system too isn't there? First one to 200 points wins. The loser dies. That kind of 'hidden' scoring system is far more effective.

I sort of see where you're coming from, but it's also a vast oversimplification.

Here's a new one:

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2017/03/03/buy-nier-automata-trophies-with-in-game-money/

What do you think about being able to purchase trophies?

See my answer in my reply to Korny. Regardless of how you feel about achievements, the ability to lie about earning them totally invalidates the system.

Here's a new one:

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2017/03/03/buy-nier-automata-trophies-with-in-game-money/

What do you think about being able to purchase trophies?

-They are only accessible for purchase after your third complete playthrough of the game (you should have most trophies by that point, no?)
-They can only be purchased by using in-game currency, and each one is very pricey.

Sounds like a neat way to spare yourself some frustration, and gives you something else to save up for, so you don't have to play the game in a way that you don't want to.
I knew that I wouldn't ever get the "grind x number of multiplayer matches" Acheevo in Halo Wars, so if I was able to cross off that achievement to "Platinum" the game by a different means, I'd have been all for it.
Aren't achievements and Trophies just another immersion-breaking checklist? Should it really matter how folks finish off their list, as long as they play the game?

I'm not particularly invested in Trophies, but the whole point of them is to mark a particular in-game accomplishment. If you can obtain them through other means, then they serve no purpose at all, no?

Yeah, what's the point of Olympic athletes getting medals? shouldn't they just be happy for knowing they did their best at the sport they love? [/sarcasm]

His point is that if athletes could just go ahead and BUY genuine Olympic medals during the Olympics (and those count towards their country's total), wouldn't that defeat the point of the Olympic medals being a thing?

This is interesting.

I personally think that leaderboards are okay. They encourage players to play in a certain way so as to maximise score, and if you make several leaderboards that are scored on different criteria, you've essentially created new game modes simply through player efforts at optimization.

Let's look at my favorite example of brilliant game design: Kingdom of Loathing.

The leaderboards do some awesome things. First, leaderboards expire. There is no "all-time" leaderboard. After a certain amount of time (2 weeks? A month? I forget), your score drops off of the leaderboard. This means broken runs due to bugs eventually fall off, and it means that you have to show continuous greatness in order to stay on the boards. Second, the leaderboards rotate, and that often includes some... weird... stuff. There's one for "fastest playthough" of course, but then there's occasionally "most hamburgers eaten" or "fastest run as class X" or "largest collection of item Y." Since you don't know what each day's leaderboards will hold, you sometimes log in just to find out you're the tippy top player. Third, the leaderboards are often geared towards new content or new ways of playing old content with new challenge items, modes, or classes. So they'll have "fastest run as the new hotness" or "first to collect 10 of the new item" or "# of runs completed using only new weapon A" sort of things.

It's good stuff.

Then, on a micro level, individual leaderboards also exist, so you can always look back and see your own, personal best times, and you can look at the best times of other players as well. This is independant of the actual leader boards for the day, but offers a nice vector for players to look at and feel good about their own improvement.

Of course, the counter example of leaderboards done frustratingly poorly is also a thing. I recall that the VR Missions for Metal Gear Solid gave you codes at the end that you could punch into a website to put yourself on a leaderboard. And some players spent all of their time hacking the code to let them put in impossible times, and then the whole mode became a leaderboard of fake times, and then everyone was banned and the leaderboards were reset, and then real times that were notably faster than most other times were accused of being fake and a shadow was cast upon the entire process. Which sucked when you figured out a novel way to beat a level, because you knew you were going to be accused of cheating. But I'm not bitter, really. Anyway, those leaderboards were also permanent (minus the one total wipe of cheater times), and they got to a point where all of the top scores were basically perfect runs and every score had an identical (and nearly impossible to achieve) time. Remember when Diablo 3 had an auction house and item drop rates sucked dong because they wanted to limit how available items were on the auction house? This was like the leaderboard equivalent of that. Your "perfect" run through a level had to be done many, many times because the playstation's clock just might be .001 seconds ahead of the screen's refresh rate, causing you not to register on the leaderboards.

Anyway, I think that it's possible to do leaderboards in a fun way that encourages unusual play, but I'm not sure Bungie has the will or creative drive to do that. They know this game is only going to be around until Septembre, right? So why bother making something novel when a basic implementation will probably be fine.

And you know what? It'll probably be fine.