How do the Challenge Leaderboards work?

[jonesjb]

I'm playing on iOS and I just can't figure this out, there are so many questions...

-When I finish a Challenge I get a leaderboard rank number, is this number unique to just the table, or is there a different rank by: Table x challenge type x difficulty x day?

-Is the number shown for the specific game I just finished, or is it the one for my highest rank ever achieved?

-What is the rank based on, just score? If it's not based on difficulty, I take it that the more difficult matches would yield a higher rank (since a higher score is possible)? How can I get a higher rank?

 

[shutyertrap]

Good questions all, and I have no freakin' clue what the answers are!

My suggestion is to go into the leaderboards, look them up by challenge, and mark down what your scores currently are and for what type of challenge. See if you can beat your own score. If a 24 hour cycle has passed, see if your old score still exists on the leaderboard. If that exact challenge comes back around, see if your score got cleared or not.

 

[jonesjb]

Good questions all, and I have no freakin' clue what the answers are!

My suggestion is to go into the leaderboards, look them up by challenge, and mark down what your scores currently are and for what type of challenge. See if you can beat your own score. If a 24 hour cycle has passed, see if your old score still exists on the leaderboard. If that exact challenge comes back around, see if your score got cleared or not.

It looks like the score is across the table and challenge type, however since Zen has reduced the scores required to complete, it now seems very impossible to top some of the higher scores (since the achievement is reached and the challenge ends).

 

[shutyertrap]

Interesting. Though I can’t imagine anyone was actually going for top of the board while doing a challenge. You’d have to start prepping to go out on a big point drop, goosing your score to the edge before triggering the event, while worrying about challenge timers and such. No thanks!

 

[jonesjb]

Interesting. Though I can’t imagine anyone was actually going for top of the board while doing a challenge. You’d have to start prepping to go out on a big point drop, goosing your score to the edge before triggering the event, while worrying about challenge timers and such. No thanks!

Exactly. I’m hoping Zen can fix this. Or at least change it to like on the PS4 where it keeps running until after you achieve the goal.

 

[jonesjb]

Interesting. Though I can’t imagine anyone was actually going for top of the board while doing a challenge. You’d have to start prepping to go out on a big point drop, goosing your score to the edge before triggering the event, while worrying about challenge timers and such. No thanks!

I got some further information from Zen, which might be worth sharing on your podcast:

- There 7 different leaderboards in total and 4 of them stems from 'Arcade Play' and the others are for 'Survival', '1 Ball' and '5 Minute Challenge'. Also, every table has its own leaderboard.
- Your rank is for the highest ever achieved.
- The rank is based purely on your score. In Arcade Play there are different physics and difficulties that could be enabled and all those variations have their own leaderboards. You could get a higher rank by achieving a higher score.

I then responded with the following...

I'd like to recommend that you explore how the challenge leaderboards are generated:

-It looks like you have lowered the scores required to finished the challenges, this means that it's virtually impossible to increase your place on the leaderboard (since the challenge ends when you pass the required score).

-Only the hard challenges would are relevant for the leaderboard, since the easy and standard has a lower target score.

Challenges are one of the key reasons I come back, so it would be ideal if each play on a challenge has an opportunity of placing on the leaderboard. The way it currently is, it's almost impossible. Great game, just providing feedback that will help.


Zen then thanked me for my insights, and says it makes sense and it's a good point that they will forward onto developers.

 

[shutyertrap]

Good info! Appreciate you making contact and sharing.

 

[MBeeching]

Leaderboard rankings shouldn't apply to Daily Challenges, it would only work if there was an option to continue your current game but that would introduce an annoying interaction and break the reward flow.

It's slightly baffling that these modes aren't available to play as Arcade options (1-ball / 5 minute / survival) .

 

[Kerguelan]

Has anyone else noticed that since the Monster Bash & CFTBL update on iOS, the leaderboards for the challenges are no longer listed for any of the tables, only the four Arcade play variations for each table are listed? Each challenge you play still give you rank on the leaderboard, but there's no way to see the board afterwards.

My suggestion for improving the challenge leaderboards, would be to grade the target score for the easy, medium and hard levels according to how well each player scored on that challange for that table the previous time, instead of giving everyone the same target (that some find too easy even at the hard level, but others find too difficult) every time that challenge comes around for that table. The only variations I see are between the four challenge slots on the menu, with the "Pro level" easy/medium/hard targets being set a bit higher than for the other three challenge slots.

I guess for this to work, it would also be necessary to fix the bug that starts each challenge with the hard target score for the easy reward, before going to medium and back to hard again, assuming you don't buy into a reset before the 24hr timer expires, which does give you any easy one to start with. So each time the round of challenges is completed, increase the target score required at each grade by a percentage. If a player doesn't complete all 3 grades of a challenge keep the target score the same the next time that comes around for that table.

This way the players have a chance to work Up the leaderboard and start to improve the scores they set for the older tables before the challenge targets were reduced. Also the challenge difficulty advances with the experience and skill (or sometimes luck) of the player