Player rankings. Each player is ranked based on the high scores they have achieved. Players who have not registered any high scores will not be ranked. Rankings are done for a single level set (e.g. Homelands).
A top score gains 1000 points, second 800 points, third 500, forth 400, fifth 300, sixth 250, seventh 200, eigth 150, ninth 120, tenth 100, eleventh 90, and 12th through 99th 89 down to 1 (table).
The table also provides a link to the players home page, outlines the number of points the player had a day, week and month ago (or similar) by moving the mouse over the number of points, and the country they represent. The brackets around the country of representation mean it was determined by the server or manually based on where the user was playing from. You can change your country of representation by editing your details (see menu in the 'Player' section). Page options The navigation at the top of the page allows the number of ranked players to be limited, the game mode to alternate beween teamwork and singles, a graph to be generated from the rankings over time, and the ranking to be requested at a particular point in time.
It also allows moving forwards and backwards in time by a month, week, day or six hour interval. The ranking histories and graphs are all accurate to 6 hours. The history rankings may be missing if the server encountered an error at the time and may change as outlined below. See the help and notes on the graph page for future information.
Colours The colours depict movement in the rankings. If your player is coloured blue it's a good thing, red is bad. The darker the colours the heavier the movement, although it can deceptive since the weighting is relative to the number of points so players that are just entering the rankings will typically be very blue since they've come from 0 ranking points. This is weighted over short, medium and long term, hence a small gain may be very dark they day it occurs but quickly fade into insignificants.
Improving ranking Obviously you'll need to get high scores or improve your score to get a higher ranking. For players that are lowly ranked (outside the top 50 or 100) the best way to improve your ranking quickly is to get a top 10 score (since you get way more points for this). For players that are very highly ranked (top 30) you'll either need to get a lot of consistent top 10 scores or target players ranked above you. While a number one score is great since it's clearly the best, number two scores offer almost as many points. Consequently losing your number one score will not hurt as much as being pushed down to third. With this in mind, if someone ranked above you is second and you are below them in a level beating their score will gain you points and cost them 300 points, in the extreme case a relative gain of 1300 points! Of course it works the same for eveyone. Good luck in your targetting and level mastering!
A caveat to the above is with Jungle. Since these levels are so hard completing the level set is a great way to improve rankings. The more levels you have scores in the better you'll probably be ranked. Currently (late 2004) only two players have passed level 42, so once you get past level 42 you are guarenteed 500 points just for getting through a level (which is not easy, ask HARDIE!) This also applies for Forest and possibly Mountains.
A second way is to choose a level set that better suits your skills. If you're good at chaotic levels and find them fun Fruity is the way to go.
History and retrospective ranking At any point in time the ranking reflects the scores that have been received by the server. So, people playing offline may have a higher ranking than is depicted on this page. Similarly the 'ranking at a requested point in time' and the graphs will typically reflect the ranking from the servers point of view at that time.
Having said that the ranking histories are regenerated from time to time. On regeneration the ranking is based on the 'real time' when the game was played. Consequently the regeneration makes the graphs smoother and removed sudden jumps in ranking points that occur when players check tickets in. This will only affect the games of players who play offline, but may mean on 'count back' a player had a different rank. In extreme cases it may mean that a player never made the top ten despite appearing to have at the time.
A further consideration is the shared ranking points. In the past players were awarded points based on position without the pooling (outlined above). As a result while at one stage (in Homelands) asarkila was ranked clear number one, the retrospective ranking indicates the sharing of points deemed a ranking of two (in August 1998). While on this topic it should be noted that DREAM would 'probably' be clearly number one if fractional time units had been added before they were.
If this help is confusing or erroneous mail wilamristar.com.au. Please use your browser navigation or the menu to continue.
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