I've said this from the beginning. All the leaderboard really does (as it stands right now) is to award those who play ROF, and that's it.

You can be "Top Dog" if you fly a million sorties earning 1 point per mission; all while beating the real ace uber pilot who shot down everything, never dies and only gets on once a month.

...what's the point?

I do not (and would advise others to not) place any sort of value in the current leaderboard.

It is a valuable TOOL as far as data collection goes. Some valuable statistics are gathered to be sure! But to base a "leaderboard" based on overall "score" only rewards those who play ROF, not play it well.


Count score like streak, where it starts over after a death, and maybe it will add value...

Remind me to buy you a beer sometime. Well put.

[MF] Gunloon

It's not perfect, but it does, can have, it's uses.

So how does it get modified to better represent the actual skills of virtual pilots ?

It can't simply be based on kill streak, otherwise there would be a glut of flyers with 1 or 2 , which would be totally meaningless,and it might just end up promoting the seeking out of easy kills and servers full of noob's. Certain pilots might even end up avoiding or disconnecting from anything that looks vaguely challenging.

Stat's can be completely ignored as being totally irrelevant, to a certain extent I agree, but I firmly believe that if set up properly they can be a valuable tool for promoting good game play and if they manage to do that they will become more meaningful to all you nay sayers out there.

I do like to look at them if I've just had a particularly hard fight though. I like to see where my opponent ranks, his kill ratio and how long he's been flying on-line. It gives me a marker for how well I'm performing and if I'm improving or not.

As an example I had a couple of one on one's against a chap/chapete from Argentina called "Kim" this morning. I would say (I'm by no means an expert) that his flying was average but his shooting was spot on. Checking the LB I saw that he was positioned at number 67. I could and did get on his tail, but if he got into a solid firing position I was toast, twice he injured me during the merge. His main fault, to my mind was a fondness for head on merges and passes, even though he was a good shot, I was just as likely to bump into him and take him down. He could easily have improved his kill ratio if he had bothered to out manoeuvre me (not overly difficult) and then finished me off with his superior shooting skills.

Also remember "mods on" doesn't count to your stats either. I've long since stopped worrying about the leader board. The stats aren't that accurate. Perhaps if I made RoF my daytime occupation I might move up the leader board. Or even make it on to the top 1000 Which I've dropped off of since the mods on feature arrived.

"It is a valuable TOOL as far as data collection goes."

If I were running the business, I suspect that I'd find the most active players and then send them regular 'offers' to ensure that they bought everthing that I produced. If that isn't the primary purpose of the leaderboard background data - and to monitor sales/usage activity to ascertain the relevance of further development - then I would be mildly surpised.

That's a corporate way of looking at it I suppose...

...but I meant, you can manipulate all that data into something more useful (and more closely resembling) a "leaderboard". I look at the current leaderboard as raw data. But some math wiz could use that data and create something more meaningful. I'm just not that fella.

I think the "score" needs to be based on the "last 100 hours played".

This eliminates three problems:
1. Those who play alot over all of time won't have 2000hours of score.
2. Those who play alot every day won't get a big score like the monthly system.
3. It makes the score match the players current skill level, not historical.

As to what to use for "score", to base it on a kill/death ratio is fine as long as it takes into account difficulty settings and assists.

For example full difficulty settings and no other assistance would be equal to ONE kill. Half difficulty would be 0.5 kill. Kills when 5 other squad members also shot up the plane would be 0.2 kills.

Deaths would be equal to 1 each death no matter what, as a death is a death and you want to avoid that if you can.

This makes it fair to work as a team and fair for BnZ players to help the dogfight by harrassing with bursts from above and get a kill fraction.

It also makes the score more real instead of game-like points it is based on virtual "kills", even with various realism settings they are just scaled.

For those who say remove the leaderboard - that is NOT what this thread is about.

I say drop the leader board for basic MP play and MP will be better.

Keep it for the arcade Flag thing, thats where it belongs.

JMHO.

I agree with Biggles generally, but if we must have them I've thought of a practical use.

How about if, for example a Beginners Server, was able to interrogate a player's stats before they joined, it could then be set up to only allow players with say less than 10 kills. This would keep Beginner's Servers free of poachers.

I've never been on a newbie server myself so I may have just solved a problem that doesn't exist. I'm also not an IT expert so it may well be a non-solution to a non-problem......

Damocles,

Well I'm with you almost 100%. I too see value in the board as it allows players to guage personal progress. Not all online fights are the same. When I defeat "JoeShmo" who just learned to open his radiator yesterday, the kill isn't nearly as meaningful as when I shoot down "Wolf13" (only happened once). Most will say, "Who cares!?" Well I care. I play to improve my grasp of the art of online combat. Also, all the people I play online with universally agree that the leaderboard is a complete waste of space. But these same people take more pride in shooting down the likes of Von Kost, Von Huetz, and Sizzler than they do Smokin' Hole. Why is that? Because they know that those first players are quite good and Smokin' Hole is marginal. But how do they know who's better? Through lots and lots of play. However, those who don't have months of online experience feeling the other players out can come to the board and quickly get some basic information about the opponent they just fought. So I submit that this is useful information regardless of whether or not one feels that the leaderboard is worth the electrons it's displayed with.

One thing I would add to your list (also mentioned by another) is to reset the board to zero from time to time. Recent performance is much more useful than all-time performance. Plus as this game gets older there will be top players on a permanent board who may have died or stopped playing months previously but their simple longevity prevents them being overtaken by current players.