>>9176901Crunching the playerbase isn't the goal. The leaderboard right now represents nothing but Degree of Autism over Time. If you're not high on the leaderboard, it's because you're not trading autistically enough or haven't been playing long enough, or a combination of the two. As long as nobody outmatches cypher
's ThinkPad in autism and playtime, he will remain at the top of the leaderboard. Frankly, that's how it should be. That's how it is with MOST leaderboards. You're not going to change such a deeply inherent operation of a mechanic just by wanting to change it, especially when there's no real reason for it to change.
The goal should not be "let new players compete on the level of old players and jump into the Top 10/20/50/100". That will sort itself over time. The goal (or at least one goal) should be to engage new players so that they WANT to do that THEMSELVES.
Literally all game design is manipulation and trickery and provocation in some form, at least in the denotative sense of those words. You are trying to use numbers and autism to invoke a desired emotional response in the player. If you think about things from that perspective, ideas on how to improve a game should be easier to come to.
>What does this make the player feel>What SHOULD this make the player feel>Why are these answers matching/not matching 