Hello!
We need your help guys/gals…
We’ve got an issue with Velocity Ultra in that the levels are designed in such a way that many people are able to achieve the same score. We’re using points and time to create an ‘Online Score’ for each level, but some levels, such as the Critical Urgency levels, will always result in the same score for each player once they’ve reached a certain level of proficiency.
This means the leaderboard will ultimately suck if we just bung everyone into it with the same score.
So, we’ve come up with the concept of the Elite Lounge for each level.
The idea being that each level has a maximum number of points that can be achieved in that level, and once a player has reached that, they are put into the Elite Lounge for that level.
The Elite Lounge target will be organic though. We won’t set the targets ourselves, that will be up to players to explore the limits of each level, but there will be a limit that will be reached fairly quickly. The way this works is that once you reach the Elite Lounge Target, you will be added to the Elite Lounge, but if you manage to surpass the target, you’ll set a new one, and all the folks that were in the Elite Lounge will be kicked out, and you’ll be in there by yourself… until someone joins you or sets a new target.
This means that once everyone has rinsed the game, they will all be in the Elite Lounge together, holding hands and singing the Velocity theme tune.
We realise this is a bit of a hack, but it’s the best we can come up with to make VU fit with online leader boards.
Actually, we’re doing something a little more by offering an aggregate leaderboard too, which will take all of the scores for each level in the game, add them up, and then put that in a single leaderboard. There should be enough granularity there to ensure that some people do better than others.
How does this all sound?
Your feedback is valuable and much appreciated!
Thanks,
James
19 Comments
anon
Sounds like sound ideas to me.
Graham
Love the Elite lounge idea, should work really well 😀
deurces
Hi,
I think an Elite lounge is bad.
Please don’t add leaderboards to the normal levels but to an endless mode. There should be a ‘Meter/Yard’ counter above on how far you’ve come and how many humans you saved. This way the leaderboards on that game-mode will be more accurate then the one you guys are up to. I already gave feedback about this to you guys when that survey was available to win velocity ultra.
-deurces
Nathan CX Michalik
I’m not completely sure I get it, but if it is what I think it is, it sounds fun. Does it mean there are “tiers” of sort when using the leaderboards? Also, I’m hoping for a medium-difficult plat, but I really hope there aren’t leaderboard trophies 🙁 those pretty much punish players over time.
Lewis Johnson
The aggregate leaderboard sounds like a good idea.
I think the elite lounge is probably over-thinking things, but if it isn’t a huge task to implement you might as well.
Are you sure there aren’t any more organic measurements you can use? Like time? (down to the smallest increment you can get) to break ties on identical scores?
James @ FuturLab
We’re already using time to create the ‘Online Score’ – but even that will eventually result in many people with the same score because boosting through a level all the way through (the way many levels are designed) means you have exactly the same time as someone else.
So we thought, why not just recognise all the elite people by calling them elite 🙂
bombbreath Playstation Network online id:bombbreath
This is the fair plan, Good job. From your Cutomer ambassador to the Playstation Network online id:bombbreath Sony make.belive,
Tugrul Erturk
Increase the number of shootable targets and their points. This way you will have to sacrifice the finishing time in order to shoot them all, or you will just ignore and try to finish to get the speed bonuses for your quick finish. This will result in different finishing points.
James @ FuturLab
Thanks for your suggestion, but that would require changing the game design, not just the level design, which we don’t think is a good idea at this point, sorry.
kenneth BRUTON
A lot of games have it where the scores of similar players are posted, how about a competition within a competition? If your friends are playing, how about getting a point boost for passing their score?
James @ FuturLab
That’s a cool suggestion, but for this game we don’t have enough time to implement it. Perhaps for the futur!
John Steels
what if your score becomes some kind of currency that can be spent during the mission on boost or teleporting or something giving the scores a slightly more organic feel?
James @ FuturLab
Had a similar idea for another game. It’s too late in the day to do something as radical as that for Velocity Ultra. Maybe.. futur… time :p
Andrew Brewer (@andrewbrewer)
Sounds like a great way to solve the problem. Will the aggregate leaderboard also contain an Elite Lounge? Its not very likely that multiple people will get the same top score across all levels, but there is always the slight possibility that it could happen.
Also I was wondering will players have the ability to submit leaderboard scores obtained offline? As the Vita is a portable I play it mostly while commuting back and forth to work where 90% of the time I have no access to Wi-Fi. I am looking forward to climbing the leaderboards in VU but if I cant submit scores that I have obtained offline I will most likely lose interest in them.
Thanks. Really looking forward to getting my hands on Velocity Ultra
James @ FuturLab
Our current plan is to sync all local scores with online scores when the game boots up, and individual level scores at the end of each level. Sound okay?
Andrew Brewer (@andrewbrewer)
Sounds perfect. Too many Vita games fail to do something like that. Thanks for answering my question.
Rafael
I think that’s a pretty good solution to the problem. Can’t wait to play this game!
James @ FuturLab
Thanks for all your comments! 🙂
Giuseppe Maturo
excellent as a solution! seems also very functional.