Request Some way of showing relative leaderboard position

[Roo]

I'd really like there to be something that shows my relative position on a leaderboard. Right now, aside from viewing the top page or two of high scores for a table, the overall leaderboard is not that useful. For example, I had a good run on AFM the other day, so I went to check where that put me on the leaderboard. I was like 437th. Ok...out of how many? 1,000? 1,000,000?

Ideally, I'd like to see the total number of entries on a given leaderboard along with a percentage for where my score falls - something like "123/10,000 (top 1.2%)". Otherwise, maybe at least have a scroll bar that shows the position you are scrolled to when viewing "my score". Pinball FX 2 does that and it's a lot better than nothing - you can at least tell roughly where your score is.

Along with friend leaderboards (which is a separate topic), this is one of the things I find myself using after awhile to choose which table to play. If there's one where my scores are lagging behind my average, I might make an effort to learn that one better and improve. It's nice to be able to make goals for yourself, like "score in the top 10% on every table."

 

[JPelter]

I'd really like there to be something that shows my relative position on a leaderboard. Right now, aside from viewing the top page or two of high scores for a table, the overall leaderboard is not that useful. For example, I had a good run on AFM the other day, so I went to check where that put me on the leaderboard. I was like 437th. Ok...out of how many? 1,000? 1,000,000?

Ideally, I'd like to see the total number of entries on a given leaderboard along with a percentage for where my score falls - something like "123/10,000 (top 1.2%)". Otherwise, maybe at least have a scroll bar that shows the position you are scrolled to when viewing "my score". Pinball FX 2 does that and it's a lot better than nothing - you can at least tell roughly where your score is.

Along with friend leaderboards (which is a separate topic), this is one of the things I find myself using after awhile to choose which table to play. If there's one where my scores are lagging behind my average, I might make an effort to learn that one better and improve. It's nice to be able to make goals for yourself, like "score in the top 10% on every table."

This is a very good idea. I'd still like friends leaderboards because it removes having to care about bogus scores or just everyone in the world in general. However, giving out more details on your score probably wouldn't be hard to do and would give people interesting information on their performance.

 

[MontanaFrank]

I've always wanted to know the same information.

 

[netizen]

go to the pinballarcade.com website and check the leaderboards there, you can see the total number of scores on each table.

 

[RetroDude]

go to the pinballarcade.com website and check the leaderboards there, you can see the total number of scores on each table.

Only if you want to hit the "next" arrow hundreds (or thousands) of times for each game.
That could be done inside the game itself.

What many people (myself included) want to know is how many scores are posted for each table.
A simple number at the top of the leaderboard for each table would be very helpful.
Having a "xx.xxx% number for each entry would be quite awesome. That way people could see where their score falls.

I'm thinking that the percentage could be based on 100% being the highest score and 0% being the lowest score.
The percentage would be "My score better than xx.xxx% of the other scores in the leaderboard.


Heck, Now I see that by logging in to the vastly improved PinballArcade.com website, I can see my highest scores on all of the tables.

Even if they just put the percentage on this webpage, it would be an improvement.
...and by doing it that way, it wouldn't require changing the programs or require all the approvals that go with releasing patches. It would be totally contained within their own website.

 

[netizen]

Only if you want to hit the "next" arrow hundreds (or thousands) of times for each game.
That could be done inside the game itself.

What many people (myself included) want to know is how many scores are posted for each table.
A simple number at the top of the leaderboard for each table would be very helpful.

Or, seeing as you require other people to post citations, you could simply press the L Arrow 1 Time and be taken to the end of the list instantly to see the maximum number of players on the table that you are looking at.

For example: BS has 28520 positions presently recorded for it, and SS has 29360 ... etc


Why should they provide the percentages though, the number of total players is a floating point, not a set number. Unless FS determines a cutoff for the maximum number of scores for the leaderboards then they can maintain the % position, otherwise what you are asking for is the tournament style scoring, in which case go enter a tournament when they are available if position matters all that much.

 

[JPelter]

...and by doing it that way, it wouldn't require changing the programs or require all the approvals that go with releasing patches. It would be totally contained within their own website.

I'm pretty sure they don't require any approvals to release patches on steam anyway, unless it messes with something in the steam-game interface. The reason I'd still prefer friends leaderboards is that I really don't care even the slightest bit about what my score is vs a bunch of mobile scores which is the vast majority of them I'm sure. Since we're not getting a platform exclusive leaderboard having the friends leaderboard would be the next best thing.

 

[RetroDude]

Or, seeing as you require other people to post citations, you could simply press the L Arrow 1 Time and be taken to the end of the list instantly to see the maximum number of players on the table that you are looking at.

For example: BS has 28520 positions presently recorded for it, and SS has 29360 ... etc

I didn't know that the left arrow would wrap to the bottom of the list. Thank you.

Since that little tidbit of info wasn't on the web page, it would have been helpful to know. If I had known this, it would have totally negated the purpose for my reply as well as for your snippy, but more informative response.

Thank you for the original information and thank you again for your second post that had the rest of what I wanted to know.

Why should they provide the percentages though, the number of total players is a floating point, not a set number. Unless FS determines a cutoff for the maximum number of scores for the leaderboards then they can maintain the % position, otherwise what you are asking for is the tournament style scoring, in which case go enter a tournament when they are available if position matters all that much.

FarSight already has an individual position number for every entry in each table's leader board.
They also know how many entries there are in each leader board.

The calculation to get a percentage number is just a minor change to the database query used to post the table along with an additional variable added to the output script for the web page table.

No cutoff in number of players is needed. No maintaining anything other than the data already present in their current database would be required.


Examples:

You are position 20 on a list of 200.

(20 / 200) * 100 = 10
This would mean that you are in the top 10% of the list.

The alternate percentage value would simply be subtracting the result from 100%.
(1 - (20 / 200) ) * 100 = 90
Position 20 on the list would be better than 90% of the scores on the list.

The only data required that's not currently shown on the leader board web pages is the number of entries recorded for each table.
That's a trivial query if the database is anything remotely normalized.

Something like this:

SELECT COUNT(*) As PlayerCount
FROM tblLeaderBoard
WHERE TableName = {current table}


(Yes, I know that if the leader boards are cached off-line and only repopulated on a certain schedule, the cached view would need to hold either the player count per table or the percentage value per entry. Still not rocket science, nor a complicated change to make.)

 

[RetroDude]

I'm pretty sure they don't require any approvals to release patches on steam anyway, unless it messes with something in the steam-game interface. The reason I'd still prefer friends leaderboards is that I really don't care even the slightest bit about what my score is vs a bunch of mobile scores which is the vast majority of them I'm sure. Since we're not getting a platform exclusive leaderboard having the friends leaderboard would be the next best thing.

I was considering all of the platforms, not just Steam/PC.

Adding additional info to the web page would cover all platforms recording to those leader boards at once, without any of the politics, expense and pain of the patch submission process for some of the other platforms.

Yes, having a working "friends" leader board would be very helpful.
In this case, these are two very different requests,

 

[Roo]

Thanks for the tips about the web site. That's helpful for now. That actually points out how useful this info is to me because some of the tables only have about 15,000 entries while some have over 350,000 (particularly the original 4 console ones - I'm guessing Playstation Plus helped with that). A rank of, say, 12,000 out of 15,000 (top 80%) is not very good. But a rank of 12,000 out of 350,000 (top 3.4%) is!

I'd still like to see something added inside the game, though.

 

[JPelter]

I was considering all of the platforms, not just Steam/PC.

Adding additional info to the web page would cover all platforms recording to those leader boards at once, without any of the politics, expense and pain of the patch submission process for some of the other platforms.

Yes, having a working "friends" leader board would be very helpful.
In this case, these are two very different requests,

Right but doesn't every other platform out there already have a friends leaderboard system?

 

[RetroDude]

Right but doesn't every other platform out there already have a friends leaderboard system?

I came into this thread and posted about the primary topic... some way of showing relative leaderboard positions.

Quite frankly, "friends" leaderboards aren't an issue I'm particularly concerned with, but I did address it.
See the next to last sentence in my post you quoted.

Although the original post does mention friends leaderboards, it also mentions that they are a different topic.
I agree with that idea. Discussion of it really should be in a different thread.

 

[JPelter]

I came into this thread and posted about the primary topic... some way of showing relative leaderboard positions.

Quite frankly, "friends" leaderboards aren't an issue I'm particularly concerned with, but I did address it.
See the next to last sentence in my post you quoted.

Although the original post does mention friends leaderboards, it also mentions that they are a different topic.
I agree with that idea. Discussion of it really should be in a different thread.

And my stance on the topic is that the farsight site leaderboards which PC uses are flawed from the outset due to different platforms behaving differently and because of hacks/glitches in mobile platforms. I agree with showing more info on the leaderboards simply because it's really easy to implement, but the value of any such info is questionable at best.

 

[Termbro]

And my stance on the topic is that the farsight site leaderboards which PC uses are flawed from the outset due to different platforms behaving differently and because of hacks/glitches in mobile platforms. I agree with showing more info on the leaderboards simply because it's really easy to implement, but the value of any such info is questionable at best.

Very well put. Steam leaderboards discussion seeps into different topics simply because it's the most pressing matter for TPA. It's a basic feature that's lacking from the PC port.

 

[RetroDude]

Yet there are still different topics in the forum for a reason, pressing matter to you or not.

If you really wish to discuss the topic of the missing friends leaderboard for PC, wouldn't that be a great topic for a discussion thread, rather than trying to take over an entirely different topic?

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

JPelter appears to believe that adding the information the OP requested is not worthwhile to do until certain other issues with the PC leaderboard are fixed. Considering that this thread is in the PC forum and not the General Discussion forum, I think that discussion of PC leaderboard issues is germane to the original topic.

Ruling on the field is that the post is on-topic. Still first down.

 

[JPelter]

JPelter appears to believe that adding the information the OP requested is not worthwhile to do until certain other issues with the PC leaderboard are fixed. Considering that this thread is in the PC forum and not the General Discussion forum, I think that discussion of PC leaderboard issues is germane to the original topic.

Ruling on the field is that the post is on-topic. Still first down.

I'd just like to note that I do kind of believe it is worthwhile, simply because it's really easy for Farsight to do, and I'm sure a bunch of people would get more enjoyment out of it than I would. I just think it's a complex issue and wanted to clarify my views on why.

 

[RetroDude]

My comments certainly apply to the PC leaderboards.
They also adhered to the topic as set by the originating thread.

That the changes I suggested also work for all of the other platforms is merely a bonus.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

No worries. And for what it's worth (not much), I don't have a problem with this kind of information being added. Only thing I would wonder about it where they would put the extra info on phones and other devices with limited screen space.

 

[RetroDude]

Only thing I would wonder about it where they would put the extra info on phones and other devices with limited screen space.

Which is why the website solution is a good potential option for FarSight to use.

It would provide information that some members are eager to have.
It wouldn't require changes or patches to ANY platform, just to the website.
There's no inherent screen size limitations in a website implementation.

From a software engineer's perspective, it doesn't seem to be a difficult or complicated addition to the current web leader boards.

It also would most likely be different developers maintaining the website and the PC app, so adding this to the website shouldn't be an impediment to adding proper friends leader boards to the Steam release.