PREFACE:
Recently, I've been examining the way leaderboards are structured compared to other leaderboard systems. CubeCraft leaderboards are, frankly, misleading and unrepresentative of the skill of players. Ranking on leaderboards is determined solely by number of matches won, which leads to a bias towards players who have more time to grind lots of matches and attempt to play short matches against unskilled players rather than encouraging skillful, high-level play in matches to avoid stat erosion.
WHO ARE YOU:
Now, you may be asking yourself, "Who are you to be making these statements?" Currently, I have
* Top 50 in the current solo leaderboards (#43 as of time of writing)
* a 38% win ratio (statistical average is somewhere between 8-12% for solo games depending on map size)
* over 300 hours clocked in Eggwars alone
WHAT IS BROKEN:
As stated, leaderboards currently determine rankings based on matches won. This is problematic because it encourages players to engage in low-quality play, such as:
* Leaving matches when high-level players join
* Leaving matches as soon as their egg breaks, rather than completing the match
* Camping (which despite being against server rules, occurs quite frequently)
* NOTE: I'm not referring to defending an egg. That's fine and should happen. I'm talking about players who ignore their egg and instead attempt to, for example, hide underneath the map in a normally unreachable location so that players are forced to spend obscene amounts of time to safely get to them in order to finish a match.
Additionally, it encourages tactics that, while perfectly valid, are generally very boring or very frustrating to other players, such as:
* Suicide jumping - jumping off a bridge without an egg in order to hit a player (who may or may not have an egg) off, just so they lose gear or lose the match. This is usually a spite technique.
* Bum-rushing - Rushing a player's egg knowing you'll lose your own in the process, just for spite. Often, this will be accompanied by a suicide jump, or sometimes the player will simply disconnect after spiting the neighbor he just bum-rushed. Again, this is usually a spite technique.
* Obsidian Hell - That disgusting lump of obsidian, probably 6 blocks deep or more, that the player next to you just built. Which would be fine, except he hasn't purchased anything except obsidian the entire game. No armor, no sword, no bow...nothing except obsidian. This is just...boring to deal with. There's no challenge in digging through 6 layers of obsidian with some rando punching you every few minutes and then you insta-killing him.
* Bunkering - Refusing to leave your base for any reason. Alternatively, rushing mid as soon as the game starts, then rushing back and breaking your bridge behind you. This is valid if your entire goal is just to survive until the end of the game, but that's not the point... or is it?
Finally, and most importantly, it rewards players with more free time over other players who can't spend all day playing.
Here's an example:
* Player A and Player B are tied for the same spot on the leaderboards.
* Player A plays 5 games, and wins 4 of them. His/her win ratio is 80%.
* Player B plays 25 games, and wins 5 of them. His/her win ratio is 20%.
Because of how the leaderboards currently work, Player B will still overtake Player A for the leaderboard position, despite losing more games (and therefore probably playing worse), simply because he/she had more time to spend playing lots of matches.
WHAT NEEDS CHANGED:
In order to fix the above issues, there are two changes that need to be made.
1. Games display a "mini-leaderboard" at the end of matches that shows not just who won, but who had the most kills/egg kills/final kills. There are other servers which use this model (*cough*rhymes with Lie-pickle*cough*) and it seems to work quite well. Players who play well and lose are still recognized as being "skilled players" at the end of the match, while winning is obviously still the primary goal.
2. Leaderboards should be split into categories and calculated off of unbiased numbers. For example, the best numbers for determining player skill would be:
* Win/Loss Ratio(W/LR)
* Kill/Death Ratio (K/DR) The problem with raw K/DR is that if a player decides to "kill-farm", it can ruin another player's stats while boosting their own. FK/FDR is a much fairer stat.
* Final Kills/Final Deaths Ratio (FK/FDR)
* Final Kills per Game
* Eggs Broken Per Game
CONCLUSION:
With these changes in place, players will be able to compete fairly for the respect of their peers without having to grind through dozens of matches each day to maintain their leaderboard positions.
---
Thank you to the following people for helping with this writeup:
* Eclipse13 for providing input,
* The CubeCraft staff, for developing an awesome game,
* All the top 25 players on the current leaderboard; you guys deserve your positions despite the skewed numbers. I've played most of you in regular matches and clearly the numbers don't always lie.
Recently, I've been examining the way leaderboards are structured compared to other leaderboard systems. CubeCraft leaderboards are, frankly, misleading and unrepresentative of the skill of players. Ranking on leaderboards is determined solely by number of matches won, which leads to a bias towards players who have more time to grind lots of matches and attempt to play short matches against unskilled players rather than encouraging skillful, high-level play in matches to avoid stat erosion.
WHO ARE YOU:
Now, you may be asking yourself, "Who are you to be making these statements?" Currently, I have
* Top 50 in the current solo leaderboards (#43 as of time of writing)
* a 38% win ratio (statistical average is somewhere between 8-12% for solo games depending on map size)
* over 300 hours clocked in Eggwars alone
WHAT IS BROKEN:
As stated, leaderboards currently determine rankings based on matches won. This is problematic because it encourages players to engage in low-quality play, such as:
* Leaving matches when high-level players join
* Leaving matches as soon as their egg breaks, rather than completing the match
* Camping (which despite being against server rules, occurs quite frequently)
* NOTE: I'm not referring to defending an egg. That's fine and should happen. I'm talking about players who ignore their egg and instead attempt to, for example, hide underneath the map in a normally unreachable location so that players are forced to spend obscene amounts of time to safely get to them in order to finish a match.
Additionally, it encourages tactics that, while perfectly valid, are generally very boring or very frustrating to other players, such as:
* Suicide jumping - jumping off a bridge without an egg in order to hit a player (who may or may not have an egg) off, just so they lose gear or lose the match. This is usually a spite technique.
* Bum-rushing - Rushing a player's egg knowing you'll lose your own in the process, just for spite. Often, this will be accompanied by a suicide jump, or sometimes the player will simply disconnect after spiting the neighbor he just bum-rushed. Again, this is usually a spite technique.
* Obsidian Hell - That disgusting lump of obsidian, probably 6 blocks deep or more, that the player next to you just built. Which would be fine, except he hasn't purchased anything except obsidian the entire game. No armor, no sword, no bow...nothing except obsidian. This is just...boring to deal with. There's no challenge in digging through 6 layers of obsidian with some rando punching you every few minutes and then you insta-killing him.
* Bunkering - Refusing to leave your base for any reason. Alternatively, rushing mid as soon as the game starts, then rushing back and breaking your bridge behind you. This is valid if your entire goal is just to survive until the end of the game, but that's not the point... or is it?
Finally, and most importantly, it rewards players with more free time over other players who can't spend all day playing.
Here's an example:
* Player A and Player B are tied for the same spot on the leaderboards.
* Player A plays 5 games, and wins 4 of them. His/her win ratio is 80%.
* Player B plays 25 games, and wins 5 of them. His/her win ratio is 20%.
Because of how the leaderboards currently work, Player B will still overtake Player A for the leaderboard position, despite losing more games (and therefore probably playing worse), simply because he/she had more time to spend playing lots of matches.
WHAT NEEDS CHANGED:
In order to fix the above issues, there are two changes that need to be made.
1. Games display a "mini-leaderboard" at the end of matches that shows not just who won, but who had the most kills/egg kills/final kills. There are other servers which use this model (*cough*rhymes with Lie-pickle*cough*) and it seems to work quite well. Players who play well and lose are still recognized as being "skilled players" at the end of the match, while winning is obviously still the primary goal.
2. Leaderboards should be split into categories and calculated off of unbiased numbers. For example, the best numbers for determining player skill would be:
* Win/Loss Ratio(W/LR)
* Final Kills/Final Deaths Ratio (FK/FDR)
* Final Kills per Game
* Eggs Broken Per Game
CONCLUSION:
With these changes in place, players will be able to compete fairly for the respect of their peers without having to grind through dozens of matches each day to maintain their leaderboard positions.
---
Thank you to the following people for helping with this writeup:
* Eclipse13 for providing input,
* The CubeCraft staff, for developing an awesome game,
* All the top 25 players on the current leaderboard; you guys deserve your positions despite the skewed numbers. I've played most of you in regular matches and clearly the numbers don't always lie.
