Upgrade Leaderboard to manage large number of participants

[nopara73]

source: https://blog.upsidelearning.com/2020/09/09/the-overly-abused-and-rarely-understood-world-of-leaderboards/

Relative Leaderboards

This design [Basic Leaderboards] has a slight drawback, it’s just that if you’re the person at position 173, you might feel like competing with the best just impossible and you might lose the motivation to continue working towards being in the standings. So we have a slight variation called the relative leaderboard that addresses those moments when the number of people are too many and climbing over them seems a herculean or even an impossible task.

The relative leaderboards only showcase the participants and their scores near you or relative to a variable so that you don’t feel totally lost and start hunting for meaning and purpose of life after witnessing and assessing your position. It’s a simple hack that doesn’t overwhelm the players.

Both options are great tactical options; however, their lack of depth doesn’t make them versatile and purposeful.

[nopara73]

Tiered Leaderboard

I think a tiered leaderboard is just a better version of a relative leaderboard.

The more we get into the types of leaderboards the more complex the leaderboards get. Tiered leaderboards essentially are a better way to manage a large number of participants. The participants usually have to earn their way to the top tier by scoring desired goals. The basic tiered leaderboard is a linear journey towards the top tiers, where the top tiers can be never ending or could have a finite end. Tiered leaderboards can be supported with ranking and one key variable. I haven’t seen a lot of examples of a linear journey where the only way to go is towards the top of the tier.

However, on the other hand I have two interesting examples on the Promotion & Relegation Variation. Duolingo and FUT (FIFA Ultimate Team). Duolingo has multiple leagues that you can get promoted/relegated to depending on your score for the week. FUT has divisions and sub-tiers within the division that you can be a part of. The subdivisions of tiered league are also possible if you want to limit/control the number of players per league/division/tier.

The weekly scores determine the status of promotion/relegation. However, that can be customized depending on the context/purpose.

[nopara73]

Quant Leaderboards/Multi-Variable/Multivariate Leaderboards

IDK if this makes sense, it's quite difficult for people to comprehend. Although later on this could add great depth to the sport.

This is where the leaderboards start getting interesting. With the amount of data we’re generating daily, there is another way in which the motivators of a leaderboard can be triggered – it’s through the Quant/Multi-Variable/Multivariate Leaderboards. I’ll explain this with an example of football, since it’s something that is close to me.

This looks like a normal table with some match stats, but if you look at it from the point of view of a leaderboard, this style of leaderboards will start making sense to you. This table shows the goal opportunities created by Everton & Southampton, two premier league football clubs in their league encounter.

Here the main variable is xG – goal opportunities, which is listed under total. However, you can see the breakdown of that variable into two halves, like how the sport is played. The team xG & players xG is mentioned as well.

Multi-Variable/Multivariate Leaderboards will have multiple data points that make a key variable tick. It could be an index of sorts, but leaderboards will have coefficient-based calculations that will add dynamism that is sorely missing in the basic and tiered versions.

The depth that is offered in these leaderboards will be full of insights. It might get difficult to read at first, but once you get a hang of it, this will explode.

You could also add a time-based variation to these and evaluate variables on a granular level.