The part that makes it all so discouraging is the exponential curve towards the top of almost every leaderboard. You could reach the top 100, even the top 50, and still be an order of magnitude behind the leader’s score.

Example: I’m currently 30th for best bidder, score of 225. JayZJay… 2167, and the gap’s probably only growing. The only realistic way I’m ever getting that peen is for JayZJay (along with a bunch of other people) to decide he’s got better things to be doing with his life, and frankly I’m not sure I’d outlast him on that (keeping yourself at the head of a leaderboard is probably a better motivator to continue putting effort in, than what feels like fruitlessly chasing an impossible target)

I don’t know what the solution is, but it happens with every online leaderboard I’ve seen, even in one-off games… although it’s made worse in ongoing games like Fwz – no matter how hard you’ve tried or how well you’ve done, there’s always someone who’s done it 10 times better. When the scores are just there for the sake of scores that’s not so bad, but when there’s a reward for the top spot it leaves a lot of people feeling cheated because they didn’t get their score in before the other guy.

It’s really just an unavoidable part of awarding peens to the one single person on top of a board, when it’s entirely possible for them to stay in an unreachable position at the top, perpetually extending their lead. Other players’ reward for their successes shouldn’t depend on the previous leader getting bored and quitting… you can mitigate it by (for example) awarding peens to more people at the top than the single leader… say the top percentile, but that just moves the line between the haves and the have-nots. Or you can avoid the issue entirely by making it milestone based, but that loses the player-against-player competitive aspect. Or you can retire people after some period, which results in (eventually) everyone getting it.

You can take the edge off the downside of each, maybe combine the 3 to try and get a best of all worlds… maybe hand out small peens for milestones, and a bigger peen for being the leader, with a periodic retirement of the leader (but retention of their score at retirement as a target). But in the end I think peens-for-leaderboards is broken by the number of players wanting to get the peens. However you do it, someone’s going to be ****y (either the hordes of people who can’t get the peen, or the guy on the top who wants the rest to have to beat him for the peen).

@ people who I “didn’t credit” with this idea… it’s not original, and I’ve discussed it several times with several people. Sorry if you feel slighted, it’s not like I’m getting a prize for making this thread.

So, since every possible solution leaves someone bumhurt and ****y, how about we quit whining about it and accept it for being unavoidable when player vs player aspects are introduced?

And for those of you who say “Well it happens cuz there’s a reward for being #1.” you’re stupid, because there’s intrinsically a reward for being #1 at all. That reward = being #1. Even in games where there are leaderboards without rewards attached, such as Runescape, there are people who devote thousands of hours to being at the top of it, for pure achievement and bragging rights.

So removing a peen will only satisfy a couple people, the ones who only want to be better than others aren’t going to have any extra satisfaction until the mechanics are changed, and then the existing leaders will be ****ed.

There is no happy medium, there is no solution, stop talking about it because nothing will happen.

The End.

EDIT: fixed typo

It’s silly to demand she credit this. This has been discussed many times over many different platforms of FW. It’s not her obligation to read every thread that was ever posted about “retirement.” Let’s keep discourse to constructive arguments about the subject.

I’ve always felt and suggested in previous threads that this would be a fair and competitive way to level the playing field. Since this only applies to peens that can still be actively received, people who are looking to stay ahead can still reasonably do so through peens that are never available to players after the initial awarding.