Hey there,
I tried bringing this up on the TM Discord, but some people suggested that I should take this to the forums for visibility.
There's been a problem brewing lately in the local leaderboards of some regions (particularly Asia + Africa) where the local leaderboards are overrun by people who aren't from the region they said they were from. A group of people from the Asian community (including me) has starting to notice this pattern as of last week:
I've come to call this trend "leaderboard sniping", and I have my thoughts as to why this is bad.
Why is this bad?
I've explained this crudely during my livestream yesterday, but I'll also drop more thoughts down here:
In the older games (TMNF, TM2), people changing their regions all the time wasn't a big problem, since the leaderboards were there, but weren't an integral part of the game. But since TM2020's leaderboards are real-time and persistent, it's starting to be used by some people as a measure of skill. And the fact that people can still change their regions as they like, with no repercussions, feel unfair and disrespectful to people who actually are from said region.
In my personal experience, local leaderboards make it easier to notice people from your region who are as good as you are, or maybe even better, and I've matched up with a bunch of people from my local community that way. It also motivates each other to push themselves to be better, which is the main point of the game after all.
But unfortunately, since the leaderboards are overrun by people outside of the region, some players didn't get the recognition they deserved for their respective region. This may cause some players to drop lower than the rank they're supposed to be in. Even if their skill level doesn't match the outsiders, they still deserve their name to be in their rightful place.
I'm not alone here as well. I've compiled some thoughts from some people in my region:
Gamingboy2508, #3 Asia (#1 Indonesia)
LoneOcelot, #170 Asia (#7 Thailand)
Why do people change their countries anyway?
Based on some questions I threw around on the TM Discord, they boil down to a couple reasons:
Having family roots in said countries
This is by far the only valid reason I found. Sure, it's fine if you feel like changing your countries in support of your family roots.
Privacy reasons
Some people just don't want to share their country of origin to other people. Which I understand, and it makes sense for non-public personalities, but if you're a professional player in the global stage (e.g. an OGL player), I don't feel like I could sympathise with this reasoning.
Liking a certain country's flag/skin
This is one of the reasons that I can't agree with. In previous games, we can alleviate this with being able to select other countries' skins in the profile menu, but unfortunately in TM2020, that feature is reserved exclusively for Club members (since these skins are only available in clubs). But it still feels wrong for people not in your region to be in there.
What should be done?
There were some suggestions made in the TM Discord, but the one that sticks out is to make it so countries/regions are locked in, and you can only change it after a period of time (e.g. 1 year). I'm also open for suggestions for anyone who has it, feel free to post your thoughts on this thread.
Thanks.
Yeah I agree, seasonal sounds like a better duration. As long as everyone's locked into the region's leaderboard for as long as the campaign lasts, I'm also down for it.Originally Posted by Phlarx Go to original post