Comments on: Comparing Notes In Spelunky’s Unique Daily Adventures

By: Spelunky HD | Matty on Games

Spelunky HD | Matty on Games — Mon, 12 Aug 2013 10:31:23 +0000

[…] Arguably this makes buying upgrades a risk/reward scenario in terms of leaderboard placing but, as others have pointed out, it means that if you get killed just before entering a shop you’ll score much lower than if […]

By: Spelunky Explorers’ Club, by Tom Francis

Spelunky Explorers’ Club, by Tom Francis — Sun, 11 Aug 2013 16:27:36 +0000

[…] playing Spelunky’s new Daily Challenge mode every day, as is Eurogamer’s Tom Bramwell, and so far we’re both uploading videos of […]

By: James

James — Sat, 10 Aug 2013 23:15:49 +0000

I made almost the exact same mistake as you and injured myself by falling from the first floor of 1-1. Only I totally suck at the game, so I then went on to die before reaching the level exit.

By: Some guy

Some guy — Sat, 10 Aug 2013 21:51:25 +0000

With a private high-score board I could definitely see progress as being a valid metric to rate one another by, but for a public one it would be meaningless because all the highest scores would just say 5-4 anyway.

By: Some guy

Some guy — Sat, 10 Aug 2013 21:48:52 +0000

You’re right that progress should be the most important metric for success, but the people with the highest scores are always going to be the ones who get the farthest because the game rewards you heavily (50k for olmec, and over 200k for yama if you get all the gems). But that’s only really relevant for a global high-scores board, because very few people are at that level (I know I’m not even close), so maybe something like a private board for just your friends would be good because then you could actually be competitive with each other instead of some random guy who posted a 2 mil+ gold run.

By: Luringen

Luringen — Sat, 10 Aug 2013 21:39:27 +0000

Another solution to the scoring problem would be listing all the money you have had, not subtracting what you have used in shops. This would fix the suicide/not shopping problem as well as encouraging exploring and taking risks for extra gold and gems.

By: Pentadact

Pentadact — Sat, 10 Aug 2013 21:35:27 +0000

My suggestion still uses gold, people who get to hell having stolen from shopkeepers still outrank those who got there buying items. But if they fall short of hell, they don’t outrank someone who made it there with a bit less cash.

By: Some guy

Some guy — Sat, 10 Aug 2013 21:20:43 +0000

The reason gold is such a useful metric is because it truly separates the skilled from the rest. There are multiple tiers of spelunky players: those who buy items from the shops, those who can consistently beat hell buying items, those who can consistently beat hell killing shopkeepers, and those who can ghost. Each of these things is much harder than the one before it, and has a significantly increase score that goes along with it. That’s why michaelalfox had a score of over 1.1 million while most of the other people who played the game early were at less than a fifth of that. I will admit that there is a level of luck to it (how good the shopkeepers’ items are, how many vaults you can ghost, how often kali appears, etc.) , but that’s only at a very high level and, for the most part, score rewards skill in spelunky, which is exactly how it should be.

By: Micael

Micael — Sat, 10 Aug 2013 21:20:14 +0000

I find single score leaderboards to be somewhat of a bad idea, for starters you might end like spelunky not tracking something that is that relevant to classify how good someone is, then you run into the problem of you telling most of your players that they are well very bad, adding to that it also excludes a lot of the players, since it is basically made for those that can/want to compete in those top tiers.

OFC some players will enjoy it, others will just compete with themselves and so on, but all in all I don’t believe it’s a very good system.
A far better system can be found in SpaceChem, which classifies a bunch of different things, and tells you how you stack up with the average on each one, giving a much greater sense o accomplishment to the player, since maybe he took a lot longer than most people per level, but he may have spent a lot less items on them, and so on.

By: Corduroy Turtle

Corduroy Turtle — Sat, 10 Aug 2013 20:56:32 +0000

“If I engage with the scoring system, then once I’ve gathered loads of treasure and find an awesome shop full of the most exciting items in the game, the smart move is to just kill myself on some spikes and stop playing – ending with a vast sum of money. The tools I could buy do aid survival, which in turn could lead to more profits, but giving the extreme unpredictability of Spelunky, numerically speaking it’s not worth the risk.”

You’re ignoring two other options: Don’t buy anything, or steal from the shop. Sure, it’s a massive risk but isn’t risk/reward what Spelunky is all about?

I agree with you somewhat on the leaderboards, but basing it on progress first would encourage everyone to just make a beeline for the exit. Perhaps two separate leaderboards for the Daily Challenge would be a better solution.