An alternative for point calculation

[EntropicLqd]

It's a well known fact that if you wish to get the most benefit from your solo ladder points then you should focus completely on the white (and maybe green) tracks. The easier tracks have the most official times and points are calculated based upon the number of people who are slower than you.

Because of this there's no incentive to set official times on the harder tracks (especially with the 5 minute delay between official times - don't get me started).

Having thought about this I think a better way of calculating solo ladder points would be to use a geometric or power curve between the bronze time and the current official world record time. If someone sets a time slower than bronze they get 0. Since you have to have achieved at least a gold medal in order to set an official time this doesn't seem so unreasonable.

In essence the maximum number of points per track would be fixed at an arbitrary value (e.g. 8,000). Equalling the bronze time would net you a single point and equalling the world record would net you the maximum number of points.

Using some sort of power or geometric curve would allow you to reflect the fact that the fastest times are tough to get as the number of points difference between times increases as you tend towards the world record. A simple linear mapping could be used but it would reward players less for achieving the faster (and therefore much harder) times (but would be simpler to calculate as the world record improves).

The alternative would be to keep the calculation as it is, but treat all players without an official time as having a DNF or very large time. That way, the few people to actually bother to set a time on the black tracks would get large numbers of points as a reward for their efforts.

I can't see it ever changing but I do think tying the number of points available on a track to the number of people that could be bothered to set a time rather than the total number of people that 'could' set a time simply pushes people to work on a few tracks rather than play them all.

[edk]

You can submit your replays to TMX, there's a leaderboard there as well. And there is the manialink called Solomode which has it's normalized skill point calculation. With these and the Nadeo standard, you get three different leaderboard calculations.

[Chevron]

If I were the one to decide what formula for points calculation to use, I would use this one: constant divided by your position. In this formula the difference in points increases for better positions and it also encourages players to play on “unpopular” tracks.
E. g.: Track A has 1000 driven positions and track B has 20 driven positions. It would be easier to get points on track B because you could end up 21st at worst.

I hope it's understandable.