Rankings

BETA

THPSPOINT rankings are designed to measure player performance across the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series. Every score submitted to the site is translated into ranking points, which accumulate for each player and combine into overall standings within games and across the entire franchise. The rankings are split into two categories - Points and Tags - each calculated independently. These ranking categories aggregate all leaderboards relating to given playstyle.

The main challenge of creating a fair ranking system is that comparing the scores across different maps is genuinely difficult. Scores of the same magnitude can mean something completely different depending on the map, leaderboard and game. In one game the exact same number can be considered simultaneously an absolutely incredible effort on one level and a very mediocre one on another. It's obvious that some maps have a much higher scoring ceiling than others, but that perceived ceiling might be very deceptive when you factor in that new strategies that alter the metagame are still being discovered. As a consequence, raw numeric score values alone are not sufficient to fairly compare player performance between maps and games.

As it's pretty much impossible to definitively and objectively say which maps and games are the hardest to score on, or whether a given score is pushing the limits of what's possible on a level, the THPSPOINT ranking system instead looks at the context around each score. Rather than judging players purely on world records, leaderboard positions or the average of their scores, the system awards ranking points based on several factors that weigh every score relative to other scores done on a given map and leaderboard.

Naturally, the ranking system can evaluate performance basing only on the scores submitted to THPSPOINT. Players who don't have their all scores submitted to the site might suffer from lower ranking positions.

It's worth noting that no ranking system is perfect and this one is no exception. Because ranking points are always calculated relative to the performance of all players rather than any objective measure of difficulty, there may be situations where scores are not ranked as fairly as they should be. This can be particularly apparent on maps or games with very few submissions, where there simply isn't enough competition for the system to accurately judge performance. The more players compete on a map or in a game, the more accurate and fair the rankings become.

The ranking system is currently in it's early phase. It might turn out that some components need to be changed or tweaked in the future.

Currently all scores count toward the rankings. The only exceptions are:

• Scores done on maps in extra categories (e.g. THPSPRO maps in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4)
• Scores not matching a minimal set threshold relative to the average of leaderboard's world records.

Franchise-wide ranking features only the players that have their scores submitted in at least 2 different THPS games. If a player has contributed to multiple leaderboards within one game (e.g. Points (PC) and Points (Console)), only the category with their best performance is taken into account.

The ranking system ranks every individual score relative to other scores on a given map and leaderboard. Each score is first evaluated using a set of core factors that determine its quality, which is then adjusted by several modifiers and results in Performance Value - PV for short. The performance value later undergoes normalization which transforms it into ranking points.

The weighting of the factors and modifiers differ between Points and Tags rankings, but the general idea and formula for calculations remain exactly the same.

You can see how everyone's top five scores have been ranked by clicking or hovering over their ranking points.

1. Core factors

The first step of creating the rankings is evaluating the base value of every score. This is done using four fundamental factors.

1.1 Holding the world record

To promote chasing world records more than anything else, the very best efforts on each map and in each leaderboard benefit from an exclusive bonus. There are two recognized world record types on THPSPOINT:

• Map world record

  The Map WR - the highest score on a given map - is rewarded based on how dominant the record is. If it is significantly higher than the next highest score, it receives a much larger bonus than a WR beating the next score only by a small margin - the bigger the gap, the more extraordinary the record is considered to be.

• Leaderboard world record

  The leaderboard WR - the best score across all maps in a leaderboard - is additionally boosted. Although seemingly more prestigious, this reward will not necessarily be worth more than the Map WR reward, because this one does not scale depending on how close the next best score is.

  It's worth emphasizing that scores being the leaderboard WRs will always also be the map WRs and so both bonuses are applied to them. The only case the bonuses are not applied at all is when there are less than 2 ranked scores on a map.

1.2 Proximity to the map WR

This factor weights how close a score is to the map's world record and awards the points accordingly. A world record always receives the maximum value, while scores further away receive proportionally less. This reflects the idea that comparing scores with the best performance on a map is the most meaningful measure of what the score is worth.

1.3 Proximity to the average map WR

To fairly reward all standout performances within a game, regardless of whether they hold the map WR status themselves, scores are also awarded based on how they compare to the average of all map world records within the same leaderboard. The reward grows according to the distance from that average - the scores visibly exceeding it benefit the most (up to a set limit), while those far below it are awarded proportionally less.

1.4 Comparison to the average map score

This factor measures how a score compares to the average score on a given map. This factor is aimed at recognizing solid players who are consistently able to outperform the average, but still aren't quite matching the very best scores in the leaderboards. It plays a smaller role compared to the other factors and is capped at a certain value, so that the elite scores don't benefit from beating the average too much.

2. Modifiers

After the score has been evaluated, the sum of the values produced by the core factors is additionally scaled up or down by the modifiers listed below. After this scaling, the performance value of a score is set.

2.1 Map popularity

The points awarded for scores are scaled relative to map popularity. The popularity is weighted in relation to the average score count on all maps in a given leaderboard. Simply put - a great score on a map where a hundred players compete is considered more prestigious than a similar score on a map where only a handful have submitted their attempts.

The motivation for this is that naturally some maps attract more players than others, which makes the competition fiercer and the achievement of scoring well on them more meaningful. Futhermore, with a wider score sample, the possibilities for a given level are most likely more thoroughly explored and the system can be more sure about rewarding players scoring on it.

The popularity scale only gives a moderate boost so that the scores on less popular maps are still fairly recognized. This modifier will have only a very small effect in leaderboards where the scores are evenly spread out between all maps.

2.2 Score magnitude

To establish what is realistically achievable on a map within a given leaderboard, and how the score compares to it, the system considers the scale of a score relative to the world records relevant to it. This might sound similar to the proximity factors explained earlier, but the purpose here is different. Rather than looking at the raw point gap separating a performance from the top scores, this modifier focuses purely on its order of magnitude to adjust the previously granted reward.

To capture this fairly, the system uses a logarithmic comparison rather than a linear one. In practice, this means that as scores grow larger into the millions and billions, the variance between them becomes heavily compressed. For instance, the difference between a 1 billion and a 3 billion point combo matters significantly less here than the gap between a 10 million and a 100 million point combo. The math simply rewards the achievement of reaching the higher orders of magnitude. This scaling is executed through the following steps.

Scores in both Points and Tags rankings are first scaled according to how they compare with their map's world record. While this gives a good sense of what's achievable on that specific map, it doesn't necessarily reflect what should be considered impressive across the entire game. To account for this, the magnitude of the average map world record across the leaderboard is also factored in, giving a clearer picture of what counts as elite or mediocre within the whole leaderboard. For the Points rankings, these two comparisons are sufficient to determine where the bar is set for an elite performance, since points can scale infinitely without a fixed cap. However, the "Tag" scores are always limited by a set ceiling that can vary dramatically between maps, so one extra step is required.

For example - in a game where on some maps best efforts reach up to 200 tags, a score of 30 tags can not be considered impressive even if it reaches the maximum tag count on a particular map. Such a score would receive the highest possible reward for the map WR proximity factor and potentially a solid reward for average leaderboard WR proximity factor, but this still doesn't mean it should be considered a great performance. This is why every Tag score is additionally compared against the highest score in the entire leaderboard, to accurately measure how that performance holds up on a game-wide scale.

2.3. Leaderboard weights

Produced performance value is also sometimes additionally adjusted to account for significant differences in gameplay or category design between the games and leaderboards. The goal is to ensure that scores achieved in different leaderboards remain reasonably comparable when combined into a single series ranking.

The most prominent examples of this are the leaderboards for THPSHD and THPS5 scores which are greatly clamped down - these games are simply impossible to be compared with other games because of how broken they are. Another example is Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, which features separate Points (No Special Tricks) leaderboards. This leaderboard is treated as an additional challenge category rather than a direct equivalent of the "canon" Points leaderboards and therefore contributes substantially less toward the rankings. You can check how much scores in a given leaderboard contribute to rankings on that leaderboard's Rules page - vast majority of leaderboards contribute their full value toward the rankings points.

3. Normalization

The final step in the ranking points calculation process is the normalization, which takes place after the performance value for all the scores has been established. It's main purpose is making player performances comparable across different games and leaderboards. Whereas two previously mentioned steps are enough for creating standings within one leaderboard, this one is absolutely crucial for creating fair cross-game series ranking. Finally, this is where performance value is being transformed into final ranking points.

The biggest issue addressed by normalization is highly varied map count in different games. Since a player can submit only one score per map on each leaderboard, games with higher map count naturally produce more opporunities for players to showcase their efforts. To prevent RP farming on these games, which could disrupt the series rankings, normalization step adjusts the performance value relative to the number of levels in a game. This is the main cause for why the scores in games with more maps produce less RP.

Normalization also weighs each game by how active it is. Games with more overall activity contribute more to the series ranking than less popular ones. This is the same principle as the map popularity modifier described earlier, but applied at a more global scale. The more popular the game is, the more competition it produces and is deemed more prestigious and fairly ranked.

The last step in the normalization process is used to promote most active players and accounts for how much of a game a player has actually competed in. A player who has submitted scores on most levels of a game is additionally rewarded in comparison to a player who has only played a handful. This is why two scores on the same map with very similar performance values can end up with somewhat different ranking points - the player with broader game coverage will likely come out on top. Futhermore, high map coverage in a large game is rewarded even higher to recognize the effort put in, but the boost is rather slight so it never overshadows an equally dominant performance in a smaller game.

Outside of the ranking points gained for each score, players can also be rewarded by additional bonuses.

Game mastery

Players are awarded a game mastery bonus which reflects how consistently they score near the world record across all maps in a leaderboard. The bonus grows with both the quality and breadth of a player's performance - scoring close to the world record on every map is rewarded significantly more than having only one standout performance. You can think of it as an accumulated proximity to the map WR factor across the entire leaderboard.

More active and higher weighted leaderboards produce bigger bonus than others.

Series mastery

While game mastery rewards the most well-rounded players within a single game, the series mastery bonus is designed to recognize the most consistently top-performing players across multiple games. It applies only to the series-wide ranking.

The bonus is calculated by comparing how each player ranks relative to the best player in every game they have competed in - the closer a player is to the top in each game, the higher their mastery score. The bonus is also relative to the total number of games in the franchise, not just the ones the player has competed in. This means that being one of the top players in many games is rewarded higher than being unmatched at only one and below-average at others.

Participation bonus

Players who have competed in more than 2 games receive a bonus of 10 ranking points for every additional game beyond that threshold. Submitting scores in 4 different games gives 10 RP, 5 games gives 20 RP, and so on.

More scores, more points

You can't lose points by submitting. Every score contributes to your ranking points, so essentially you are missing out on free ranking points for every map you haven't submitted a score on yet. Obviously, higher scores are worth more points than average ones, but either way a higher map coverage within a game is recognized, and that alone can boost your ranking points and your game mastery bonus.

Consistency

A single exceptional score will only take you so far. While standout performances are heavily rewarded, the ranking system also values consistency across multiple maps. As a result, players with solid but not necessarily the very best results throughout a game will often rank above players who only have one or two outstanding scores.

Chasing world records

The single biggest source of ranking points is scoring close to or above the world record on a map. If you believe getting close to a map world record is within your reach, that map is often worth targeting. Even getting close without beating the record can yield a solid influx of ranking points.

Holding a WR is always extra rewarded, but not all world records are worth the same amount. Try looking for world records not pushing the limits of what's possible on a level. A dominant world record is considered the most valuable achievement in the system and is worth much more than one that barely beats the 2nd place.

Targeting other players

Because ranking points are calculated relative to other scores on the leaderboard, your performance can directly affect how other players are ranked. If you are chasing a specific player in the standings, focus on maps where they have their strongest results. This can be especially effective when targeting world record holders - if a player benefits from a large bonus due to a dominant world record, reducing the gap to that score can lower their bonus and ranking points even if you do not take the record yourself.

Playing across more games

When climbing the series-wide ranking remember that competing across more games grows the participation and series mastery bonuses. The participation bonus rewards every game you compete in beyond the minimum threshold of 2 games. The series mastery bonus grows significantly the more games you have competed in and can be particularly rewarding if you are performing well in some of them. If you are close to another player in the franchise standings, submitting even a single score in an additional game can help you surpass them.

Performance Value represents the raw weight of a score - a direct measurement of how impressive an effort is. Think of it as the answer to "how good is this score on this map and leaderboard, relative to all the other scores in the same scope?". PV is calculated by applying the core factors and modifiers in relation to the competition, as described here.

Two scores with similar PV are considered equally impressive, regardless of the raw in-game scores or the map they have been done on. For example, if many players have achieved a 2 billion point combo on Map A, the PV for those scores might not be as high as the PV for the only 1 billion point score on Map B where everyone else is struggling to reach even a few hundred million.

It's worth noting that because Performance Value is calculated relative to the competition, it becomes increasingly accurate as the number of players competing on a map and leaderboard grows.