Introducing points system (EXP) and cross platform leaderboards

[edwiitos]

I enjoy the site as how it is now but if RA does change then two leaderboards would be fair for both sides instead of alienating the softcore players like RA did with there rule changes.

 

[Givos]

I love your EXP System and how it makes games comparable across all platforms.

But there are still possibilities to look for „spam games“ and try to get EXP pretty fast and easy:
Games that have only a few achievements and one or two that are really hard to get.

„Kitten Rampage“ is a good example: It has 12 Achievements and 2 that are unter 1%. But the first 6 Achievements are unlocked by 70% of the players, and will give you over 600 EXP easily. In games like "Halo Master Chief Collection" you would need to unlock around 60 achievements to get these EXP.

Wouldn’t it be a better idea to calculate the overall EXP a game has not just on the rarest achievement, but on the average unlock rate of all achievements of the game? I have the feeling that this way the EXP a game could give would be a little bit more balanced.

Also the values wouldn’t go into the extremes, because a game that has an average unlock rate of all achievements with unter 1% doesn’t make sense. So the Squareroot wouldn’t be needed anymore.

My Idea would be instead of using
(sqrt(100 / UNLOCK_PERCENTAGE) - 1) * 1000 + 50

Something like this:
(100/(Total Achievements Earned/(Players Tracked*AchievementsGameHas)*100)-1) * 1000 + 50
Or easier written:
(100 / Average Unlock percentage) - 1) * 1000 + 50

I’ve calculated this formula in a spreadsheet for several games and sure, it changes the EXP numbers quite a bit, but it seems to significantly reduce the number of these „easy EXP Achievements“ I mentioned first.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1I-b41yi8MSDnwXl7KTf-o3v2_sv-D03w6FDIV0-7j1Y/edit?usp=sharing

Also the real Spam Games are still worthless.
I also have a feeling that games with a massive amount of hard to get achievements would be uplifted a bit in comparison to „normal“ games, even if their overall EXP would be lower.
And also Cross Platform Titles come a little bit closer together, because the average achievement unlock rate cross platform is closer together than the difference between the rarest achievements. (see Red Dead Redemption 2 and Elden Ring for Example)

I don’t want to sound like I could do anything better. I just have put some thoughts into this and wanted to let you know. Maybe I've overseen something obvious.

Keep up the good work! Like your site!

 

[yendihunt]

I love your EXP System and how it makes games comparable across all platforms.

But there are still possibilities to look for „spam games“ and try to get EXP pretty fast and easy:
Games that have only a few achievements and one or two that are really hard to get.

„Kitten Rampage“ is a good example: It has 12 Achievements and 2 that are unter 1%. But the first 6 Achievements are unlocked by 70% of the players, and will give you over 600 EXP easily. In games like "Halo Master Chief Collection" you would need to unlock around 60 achievements to get these EXP.

Wouldn’t it be a better idea to calculate the overall EXP a game has not just on the rarest achievement, but on the average unlock rate of all achievements of the game? I have the feeling that this way the EXP a game could give would be a little bit more balanced.

Also the values wouldn’t go into the extremes, because a game that has an average unlock rate of all achievements with unter 1% doesn’t make sense. So the Squareroot wouldn’t be needed anymore.

My Idea would be instead of using
(sqrt(100 / UNLOCK_PERCENTAGE) - 1) * 1000 + 50

Something like this:
(100/(Total Achievements Earned/(Players Tracked*AchievementsGameHas)*100)-1) * 1000 + 50
Or easier written:
(100 / Average Unlock percentage) - 1) * 1000 + 50

I’ve calculated this formula in a spreadsheet for several games and sure, it changes the EXP numbers quite a bit, but it seems to significantly reduce the number of these „easy EXP Achievements“ I mentioned first.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1I-b41yi8MSDnwXl7KTf-o3v2_sv-D03w6FDIV0-7j1Y/edit?usp=sharing

Also the real Spam Games are still worthless.
I also have a feeling that games with a massive amount of hard to get achievements would be uplifted a bit in comparison to „normal“ games, even if their overall EXP would be lower.
And also Cross Platform Titles come a little bit closer together, because the average achievement unlock rate cross platform is closer together than the difference between the rarest achievements. (see Red Dead Redemption 2 and Elden Ring for Example)

I don’t want to sound like I could do anything better. I just have put some thoughts into this and wanted to let you know. Maybe I've overseen something obvious.

Keep up the good work! Like your site!

I agree with a rework, not so much with the formula. Players should not be penalized for playing "obscure" games in comparison to AAA mainstream when it comes to exp. That just reverses the current problem we have where hard achievements in less popular games are worthless. The current formula definitely needs some tweaking, but I think popularity of game shouldn't factor too much into it.

 

[TomWheeler]

I'm not sure if this was mentioned or if this is even easily possible, but it would be nice of the EXP of each achievement calculated their score using the same achievements across all games from each platform where it exists when each same-titled game has the same achievements. That way the rarity value isn't skewed based on its platform ownership/attempts.

I'm just using this game as an example since I just bought it on GOG and noticed the EXP value of it compared to the other games.

View attachment 10639

+8784!
That's the ammound of EXP I don't get for playing Train Valley 2 on GOG. Would be very, very nice if someone could give this at least a liiiiittle fix.

 

[freeGidna]

+8784!
That's the ammound of EXP I don't get for playing Train Valley 2 on GOG. Would be very, very nice if someone could give this at least a liiiiittle fix.
View attachment 12814

You are so funny. Read carefully what the EXP system is. There are only four people in the gog version, in steam 3600. To put it simply, if there were 10,000 people in the gog version and only you passed / received the most achievements, then the EXP level would be much higher (up to 49,999 EXP per game) .

 

[TomWheeler]

There are only four people in the gog version, in steam 3600. To put it simply, if there were 10,000 people in the gog version and only you passed / received the most achievements, then the EXP level would be much higher (up to 49,999 EXP per game) .

Oh yeah, the situation is like Steam is the Woolworth where capitalism addicts take any toy from a sale, play with it twice and then throw it back in the corner to get the next doll. GOG is the gourmet á la Games Workshop among the stores, I have no choice but to compete with the nerds who crack any puzzle, no matter how complicated, half asleep. 😭

 

[MrBaynie]

I think the number of players should be cross platform to avoid these kind of problem. You add up all the players from all the platform to calculate the percentage.

Exophase already has the different versions of a game linked in the game info tab of each game.

The problem with that is that there are some exceptions, where games have different achievements based on the platform (GTA4 doesn't have multiplayer achievements on steam ; OG Final Fantasy 7 has different sets between steam, ps4 and retro), but users could notify that.

 

[x3sphere]

In this case, it's mainly due to a lower sample size. When we have enough players tracked for a particular game, the EXP usually comes in pretty close between platforms. With GOG we have a very low number of tracked players compared to other services.

For games with a low player count, maybe the rarity values could be pulled from GOG itself instead of relying on our database, and we could calculate the EXP off that. My guess is the EXP would come in closer to the other platforms then.

I'm hesitant atm on applying EXP equally across platforms. A lot of multi platforms games have slight differences, so yes we would have to manually exclude these. Plus, there's situations where one platform will get DLC achievements/trophies earlier than the other (though this is less common nowadays). I'm not necessarily against implementing it, but it's something we would have to test thoroughly - not as simple as it seems.

 

[Vervaticus]

Would be awesome if all the players from retroachievements could be transferred over to exophase so that the exp points are more accurate