Global Leaderboard and New Scoring System

[WindStrike]

As noted in this thread - https://forums.eletd.com/Masters-Mode-t2965.html - I suggest using its scoring system so that the game is not solely based on fruit points, with a few modifications. While it's likely the most of the high scores will be in single-player mode anyway, this would be essential for the next suggestion. Regarding the modifications, the faster you beat the game, you still get more points (the exact amount, we'd have to play around with). More gold = more points. More lives = more points. In that thread, it suggests having a cap on those lives. Quite frankly, while the life tower strategy is very good, it usually doesn't clear waves quickly and it doesn't exactly have that much gold. With both gold and lives, the higher you get on either of them, the less each point of gold/lives will be worth (logarithmic). Additionally, assuming there's a way to track leaks (not lives), at the end of round 60, there's an automatic x1.25 multiplier that will be added to your total score (clean finish bonus... kinda ripping from Audiosurf, lol).

A new scoring system would be needed for a global leaderboard. This is essentially something that tracks the top 10 highest scores for the game. Due to the speed multiplier for beating the game (let's assume that beating wave 60 in exactly 1 hour would have a multiplier of 1), those top fruit scores from doing extreme interest abuse or super long mazes probably wouldn't get the high score, unless you had an infinite score in maze. That said, there should probably be a threshold cap on that time to prevent enough gold for infinite defenses even on very hard. I'd say probably 75 or 80 minutes, might have to test that.

The global leaderboard would give the following statistics. All of these would be readable from bank files:

• Player's name, XP and Level
• Mode completed
• Overall score
• Fruit score and kills
• Time completed (wave 60)
• Total networth (wave 60)
• Total lives (wave 60)
• Total leaks (wave 60)
• Difficulty completed
  • Very Hard multiplier - x1.5
  • Hard multiplier - x1.3
  • Normal multiplier - x1.0
  • Easy and Very Easy will not count
• Version completed
  • It will check for a version of the map in the bank file. If it cannot be found or if it's too old, it will not consider adding to the leaderboard. This is here on the basis of previous versions being potentially far easier due to certain mechanics.

As for how to do a global leaderboard, I figure there's a way for the map to read the bank files when players load the game and then load that into the global leaderboard. It would read to see if it has a higher overall score and then load the rest of the stats for that player's score, giving its proper place. The button to open the global leaderboard would just be something in the top-left or top-right corner that would pop up a new window to show all of the stuff.

Quite frankly, I don't know if Global Leaderboards are actually possible, but I swear I've seen them before, not sure what maps. But in case they ever do become possible, be it future patch or Heart of the Swarm, it would be something nice to add for this game, given that its competitive nature lies within top scores rather than directly in a match (which can apply too, just not on the same level as games like Hero Attack or the standard SC2 game).

[Ayr]

Love the idea Wind. Would give people a purpose outside of beating those you're playing against. Also gives the youngins something to aim for.

As for the balancing aspect of weighting scales, that would just take adjustment with time (game reps, trial&error, etc.). In the end, it would depend on what aspect of the game Kara wants to emphasize: be it speed, interest abuse, fruit killing, etc.

Personally, I would change the current setup to one that allows higher scores to be possible. Make wave N for fruitscore of say 10,000 be impossible (kinda like how the limit is currently set to around 2200). Then essentially just spread out the difficulty (fruit health gain + compounding abilities).

Actually, might have the fruit cycle through abilities first, then random combos of two abilities (if possible), then combos of 3, working up to the max fruit score of 10,000 (or whatever works out math wise). The goal of this is to make the fruit more of a graded challange, rather than a quick death (at it is in non-mazing mode).

Just a thought.

[WindStrike]

One of my issues (personally) with the current fruit setup is how long it can take, namely on maze. When it's non-mazing, you do your micromanagement and it's done within 5 minutes, give or take. Mazing... it can take forever. The micromanagement aspect then becomes a chore instead of a bit of work, and eventually you just go afk, between the lag and how long it's taking for the fruit to spawn an ability combination capable of killing you. For the people that have created the best mazes (cough, VAPOR), it ends up taking longer for the fruit round than the actual game, which is really ridiculous. Unless the current fruit format were to change. I dunno, last time I tried going afk for fruit round, I lagged out and couldn't finish it because it went on too long and just had that much lag. Guess that was a fruit round tangent, but it's relevant enough. Should probably try to finalize that aspect before going for this idea.

Also, even though I'm regarded as the best for it, I'm against interest abuse being one of the deciding factors, which is why I think there should definitely be a good amount of the score based on speed to counteract it. APM, while to an extent should be a necessity (maybe around 100 at best), but this is a tower defense game.

[Falco2112]

... The micromanagement aspect then becomes a chore instead of a bit of work ...

I play TD because I cannot mirco

Nevertheless, the idea of a global leaderboard sounds good.

And a newbee question from me: is there already a region leaderboard of some kind? Because if there is, I can't find it.

[WindStrike]

For EleTD? Nope. Come to think of it, I believe I named it wrong, lol. Ah well, when global play is added, it'll probably make more sense, lol.

I suppose the leaderboard could actually be a large menu. I noticed in one of the forums, there was something for an item interface... could use that for the leaderboard system. It could include more categories like top played, highest wins, not highest XP simply cause that's easily hackable, and various other random stuff.