Why universal leaderboards are useless

[bavelb]

There's a link floating around(I refuse to proliferate hacking mehtods to leaderboards here) that show how to get unlimited balls on Android on almost all tables.

I hope we get leaderboards for seperate platforms soon. As it is, I'm glad I'm playing on 360.

 

[Kolchak357]

I'd like to see that as well, or maybe just show what system the score was achieved on.

 

[Ryan Routon]

message or email me the link rrouton@farsightstudios.com

 

[bavelb]

PM'd it

10 chars

 

[jaredmorgs]

I think there's some merit to having the master leaderboard reset every three months. On pinball machines, the operator can reset the High Score To Date (HSDT) memory to re-invigorate competition.

For those people who say "I don't want my 15bn BoP score wiped" (for example), I'd say, "If you got it once, you can do it again"

You could also argue that the monthly and weekly leaderboards do this as well. While that's true, there's nothing like seeing your name relatively high on the "master" leaderboard.

 

[Fungi]

I think there's some merit to having the master leaderboard reset every three months. On pinball machines, the operator can reset the High Score To Date (HSDT) memory to re-invigorate competition.

For those people who say "I don't want my 15bn BoP score wiped" (for example), I'd say, "If you got it once, you can do it again"

You could also argue that the monthly and weekly leaderboards do this as well. While that's true, there's nothing like seeing your name relatively high on the "master" leaderboard.

Problem is, if that were to happen, I would no longer care about putting up scores. In the back of my head, I would keep thinking "what's the point, it's just gonna be erased in 3 months anyway" and altogether kill any incentive.

 

[ROTTEN]

There's a link floating around(I refuse to proliferate hacking mehtods to leaderboards here) that show how to get unlimited balls on Android on almost all tables.

If you think that's bad wait until it gets released on PC. You ain't seen nothing yet

Having a leader board for PC will be pointless ....... It will just be a competition on who can hack the highest scores.

 

[Carl Spiby]

Took me like 2 minutes of Googling, unlimited balls? That sucks.

 

[Nik Barbour]

I think there's some merit to having the master leaderboard reset every three months. On pinball machines, the operator can reset the High Score To Date (HSDT) memory to re-invigorate competition.

For those people who say "I don't want my 15bn BoP score wiped" (for example), I'd say, "If you got it once, you can do it again"

You could also argue that the monthly and weekly leaderboards do this as well. While that's true, there's nothing like seeing your name relatively high on the "master" leaderboard.

I'd prefer they didn't reset the leaderboards!
I don't play against the top of the leaderboards on any table due to lack of pinball talent, but I do play against my own Personal Best, and would hate to lose that record of what I've achieved every x months.

 

[Carl Spiby]

I would like the leader boards to be reset personally if the scores cannot be verified.

 

[countcb]

Just split the leaderboards. I'm not interested in all those android highscores on my ps3 and my vita.

Different physics on different devices is reason enough to split the leaderboards in my opinion.

 

[Ryan Routon]

Well, the reset leaderboards is a question for management. I took a look at the link and they are doing is basically hex editing the memory client side, they are not hacking the leaderboard databases. This was a common way to hack pc games in the past. They just look at the memory via a program, look for something to change, and then on the fly modify the memory values illegally. I will look into some kind of fail safe to fix this, thank you for the heads up on this.

 

[bavelb]

M

Well, the reset leaderboards is a question for management. I took a look at the link and they are doing is basically hex editing the memory client side, they are not hacking the leaderboard databases. This was a common way to hack pc games in the past. They just look at the memory via a program, look for something to change, and then on the fly modify the memory values illegally. I will look into some kind of fail safe to fix this, thank you for the heads up on this.

Well I didnt claim the database was compromised, but its certainly polluted with unrealistic scores on those platforms. Maybe there is a way to add some metadata on those scores, like how many balls were used and other relevant stuff, so you can cleanse the leaderboards from future attempts to compromises (after you do a seasonal wipe or something of the sorts).

Again, due to being on 360 Im relatively safe on the matter, and in general dont care much for leaderboards in games. But for pinball I think this is an essential feature and I think people should be able to trust the scores they are competing against are obtained legit.

 

[Ryan Routon]

Completely agree =) Safest way is to have some hardcoded conditional that they can't change variably. Thanks again for bringing this to my attention!

 

[bavelb]

No worries, glad I can be of service.