Remove The Awesome Adventure from the Global Leaderboards | Forums

[TheSlimReeper]

OK, I already know that what I am going to say is going to grind everybody's gears who cares about this post but.....I honestly don't understand why it is so upsetting to all elite trials riders that the unicorn tracks affected the leaderboard. Honestly, every single one of you could platinum those tracks in very few tries and ace them as well in a very short time period. I actually like having more score, and I would consider myself a hardcore fan of fusion and the series as a whole, as well as a good trials rider.

All that removing the global leaderboard for unicorn tracks is accomplishing is making more people upset and making the elite few happy. Thats all. At the very least, the trials community should be humbled that the devs are remedying this issue, most companies would have appealed to the majority by leaving the global unicorn scores untouched, but they instead did what was best for their true fans, which may in turn hurt them.

[shakeyclaret]

Simple....its a trials game that should be about motorbikes.
If in a real trials competition the riders were asked to use a horse as it will count towards world standings, there would be an outrage and boycott.
I personally am grateful that rl will remove this

[En0-]

Hello,

When we made the decision of this change, we knew that would frustrate some players. So, I understand your feedback but I want to explain why we still did it.

The global leaderboard aims to provide a solution for players to compete on the game. This means they will have to do again and again the same tracks to grind tenths of seconds, which will give them extra points on the global leaderboard. So, it's not just about unlocking the platinum and this is mainly for competitive players.

The unicorn inclusion was an attempt to give some space for our creative team and to push the craziness of the Trials brand which reflects our team while it will also catch the interest of new players who don't know the game/brand. It's also interesting for us to see how we can balance the hardcore side of the game (competitive trials bike simulation) and the more mainstream side of the game (adventure platformer with over the top craziness).

The control of the unicorn are good. They require a time of adaptation but they fit what we expect (skill based, different from other bikes). However, that was clearly not designed for the core community.

The reason why it was initially included was because by default a track that is in the career mode and is not a FMX track or a skill game will impact the global leaderboard. So it was kind of automatic and we overlooked it. So, now, we want to fix it.

That's challenging for us to balance the expectation of the core community while pleasing the majority but I believe this decision helps this balance.

Best Regards,

Eno

[D2Dahaka]

@Slim You're entitled to your opinion and my gears aren't grinding. Here's my take. The unicorn wasn't designed for speed running (the developers conceded this) and let's also take one look at the game's title...it's called Trials and Trials is about motorcycles overcoming obstacle courses against the clock. ATVs and Unicorns are simply added distractions for a bit of fun and one can still have fun on them without affecting global leaderboards. If more non-Trials like activties that affect global leaderboards are introduced to the game, then the game is diverging from what its title represents and it may as well be called Unicorn simulator at that point.

There's also another reason why this is the right move and it's called e-sports. Trials has great potential in this area and if there's going to be growth in that aspect, then focussed tight gameplay and well designed tracks without glitchy unreliable vehicles/animals is essential. Remedying this isn't just a small matter of appeasing a few people on the forums and if Trials is ever going to be taken seriously in this regard, then it needs to also appeal to the elite.

Appealing to the masses is not going to be an overnight thing. The brand has so much potential and can appeal to the masses in so many ways without neglecting the elite. It could integrate a separate story/episodes mode (even with micro transactions) like Frontiers, Trials as a creation platform made accessible enough could have the appeal of something like LittleBigPlanet...and that's just for starters. Of Course, these ideas aren't grounded in the present reality, but this is the scope the brand has and it can be achieved without sacrificing the "elite".

I appreciated RL are doing their best to grow the brand and widen the game's appeal. I also appreciate that concessions need to be made at present in order to do that, but achieving the right balance is like walking a tightrope and the unicorn leaderboard thing is a slip up and fortunately RL had the grace to find their balance again.

[JoeRegular]

I appreciated RL are doing their best to grow the brand and widen the game's appeal. I also appreciate that concessions need to be made at present in order to do that, but achieving the right balance is like walking a tightrope and the unicorn leaderboard thing is a slip up and fortunately RL had the grace to find their balance again.

This is about as eloquent as most of my ramblings appear to me in my head before I type them out and realise what a bad diplomat I am.
I totally agree about your Esports point and really hope the next Trials game takes that aspect into account. I know some Devs are sick of hearing it but yeah, revamped game engine lessening tyre glitches and Leaderboards with En0 levels of integrity would be things I hope are prioritized.

Not played the Unicorn yet, can take an educated guess how I'll feel about it but will reserve judgement.

[BeardinUSA]

This is about as eloquent as most of my ramblings appear to me in my head before I type them out and realise what a bad diplomat I am.
I totally agree about your Esports point and really hope the next Trials game takes that aspect into account. I know some Devs are sick of hearing it but yeah, revamped game engine lessening tyre glitches and Leaderboards with En0 levels of integrity would be things I hope are prioritized.

Not played the Unicorn yet, can take an educated guess how I'll feel about it but will reserve judgement.

Doubt trials will ever be a esport. While its easily one of the most skill based games out there, the reality is when spectating... it looks really easy and unimpressive. It doesnt lend itself well to an audience.

[Vantier]

Im bored, so ill respond to stuff.

1. Trials could not ever under any circumstance become an esport event because there is no player interaction. Trials Multiplayer is just multiple people playing a single player game at the same time. So unless you consider events like AGDQ and SGDQ, esports events, then no.

2. On the topic of speedrunning, I dont understand what eno and other people mean when they say the unicorn tracks weren't designed for speedrunning. First of all, there are most definitely very intentional speedrunning time savers and lines in the unicorn tracks. And secondly, The only real difference between something that can be considered "designed for speedrunning" and something not designed for speedrunning, is that prefferably the thing that is supposedly designed for speedrunning has the player constantly in control of how fast they are going. You basically have to go out of your way to make something "not designed for speedrunning". One of the most obvious examples of something not being designed for speedrunning is the beginning of Fusion Factory. The beginning section of that track is 5 seconds of dead air, where your input is completely irrelevant in terms of how fast you will finish the track. So unless you are also going to remove that track from scoring, removing the unicorn tracks due to them not being designed for speedrunning is just wrong lol.

3. Ive never understood the obsession with global score to begin with. In my opinion the whole numbering system is overly complicated and pointless, especially when in order to even make sense of it you have to go out of your way to use custom made spread sheets and formulas lol. I would love to hear the explanation from the devs on how they came up with it.

Seems to me like a perfect system would just be to, oh i dont know..........just display the combined track time of every one? Isnt that the whole point of speedrunning? Is to get a faster time? To see who can do the tracks the fastest? So then how does it make sense that after you get done improving a time you go to see how you compare to other speedrunners, and instead of seeing a time difference, you see a score lol?

I can guarantee that leaderboard positions would still be almost identical to what you see now. Except now you would be able to actually comprehend the time/skill difference between players, rather then have a complicated weighted scoring system that only really serves to amaze people who have an obsession with seeing big numbers. Not to mention all the discrepencies and problems people have had in the past with tracks giving the wrong score, or no score at all, and the only way to fix it is to "Recalculate", which is apparently really hard to do and takes a lot of time. As far as i can see the current system is often inconsistent, always incomprehensible, and forever pointless.

EDIT: Just to clarify my suggestion for the leaderboards. You are just adding the total time of all tracks you have played. And that Time is replacing your score on the global leaderboards. If you havent played a track yet then 10 minutes are added to your total time for every track you havent played.

[IBlubbiI]

There is one problem with your idea to replace the scoring system with your overall time.... there are basically 2 completely different speedrunning skillsets in trials, that are both equally hard to master.


The first skillset is required to get good times on easy-medium tracks and consists mostly of sliding, knowing how to land while keeping your speed, getting less air on jumps to save time, get your backtire on the ground as fast as possible in any situation.

The second skillset is mostly used on extreme tracks and consists of knowing how to place your tires to get over an obstacle, knowing the angle your bike has to be in to attempt inclines, landing on inclines and keep going without stopping, general bike knowledge (how does the bike react if you hit anything from a specific angle), and knowing how to bind the obstacles together in one smooth run without having to stop anywhere.


Now, those 2 skillsets are both equally hard to learn and master, but the time, you are going to save on tracks when using them is different.
If you get a perfect run on an easy track, while making perfect use of all the techniques in the first skillset, you are going to save around one sekond on someone else who rides the same track and is not nearly as good as you at using these techniques.
If you get a perfect run on an extreme track, while making perfect use of the techniques in the second skillset, you are going to save around 10 sekonds on someone else who rides the same track and is not nearly as good as you at using these techniques.


Now, both skillsets are equally hard to master, but obviously the second skillset is going to save you alot more time on tracks than the first one.
That means, if your overall-time on tracks would determine your position in the global leaderboards the people that mastered the second skillset and got good runs on the extreme tracks, while still having "bad times" on the easy tracks (compared to people that have mastered the first skillset) would be in the top, while people that focused on the first skillset would be behind those people.
Since both skillsets are equally hard to master, their influence on the global leaderboards should also be equivalent.

That is what the current scoring system does well; it gives alot of score for improving little time on easy tracks and little score for improving lot of time on extremes. It makes both skillsets equivalent.

So, nope replacing the scoring system with your overall time would be a bad idea in my opinion.

[Vantier]

Just to prove my point i spent the last hour getting this information together so you better appreciate it

I took the top 7 riders on PC and got the time information and score information from each of them for the 1st track of the 8 base game events. So this is 1 track from each difficulty in the base game.

And as you can see from the highlighted section at the bottom, by switching from a score based leaderboard, to a time based leaderboard, no ones positions shifts by more than 1 place. And in both cases where positions do shift, it is close enough that it is irrelevant in terms of trying to declare one better then the other.




So once again, my argument is that (as you can see in the above example). Current leaderboard positioning would remain essentially the same, except now you would be able to clearly see what the time difference is in a way that makes sense. Rather then having your position based on some mystery formulas that are based on redlynxs opinion on which track should be worth how many points and for what time.

For all the complicated formulas that go into giving you a global score that "Equalizes the importance of both skill sets", it doesnt seem to actually change anything in the leaderboards when compared strictly to time..........huh weird.

Choice seems pretty clear to me.

[Stego111]

I always thought the point of the scoring system was to allow for different lengths of tracks to be weighted equally.

For example a track that takes 30 seconds for Player 1 and 35 seconds for Player 2. The difference is 5 seconds.
If we double that to 1 minute for Player 1 and 1:10 for player 2, we can see that the longer the track, the more important it would be to a time based leaderboard.