I was thinking about adding built-in leaderboards.
Here are a few ideas I had:
The value of a leaderboard entry should be a number (for a score or for a time)
Leaderboards should have a few settings:
the way it sorts scores (ascending or descending)
if players can have multiple entries in the leaderboards
One should be able to change the entries of their game’s leaderboard (reset full leaderboard or erase single entry)
I’m sure your experience with creating games is rich with feature ideas for leaderboards!
What do you think is a key feature for built-in leaderboards?
As a player, it can be hard to make it to life time leaderboards. It can be more engaging to have monthly (or anything else) leaderboards.
Classic scores with only one value doesn’t allow much in term of game design. I like the idea of a N-dimension score where everyone can find a goal that fit their way of playing.
This is probably advance features, but it can be interesting to save these data even if they are not displayed in the 1st version.
A score done while offline will be saved to be submitted when back online
The players own highscore will be saved to be available offline
The leaderboards when the game was last online (or compiled if it never came online) should be used when offline
Moderation tools beyond deleting entries
shadow banning a user or an IP address (shadow banning is banning but still showing the banned user everything as if they were not banned so that they do not know and create a new account to cheat on)
Set score rules to minimize cheating attempts (for example, if there is a minimum score of 20, then any person submitting something under it will be automatically shadow banned as that is only possible through submitting a score outside of the game’s own code)
Not a key feature but neat to have:
Multiple leaderboards, for example for players in different “leagues” or different score category (for example time lasted and coins collected are different common competitions in a runner game)
A leaderboards website where one can check the current leaderboards in real time, and with a url query String Parameter to be able to show the passed in user’s id’s score and position on the leaderboard
A condition to see if a user just got a place among the X best in the leaderboards (to be able to pop up a congratulation)
A notification when one’s good score has been sniped (surpassed) by someone else
Being able to link one’s own scores to an account that can be shared across devices.