Why I don't look at leaderboards

I try to avoid looking at leaderboards because there's always so many scores at the top that could only be possible by cheating, and how can anyone take a competition seriously or argue that games can be like sports if every competitor isn't willing to play by the rules  (and if the ones who don't are not punished in any way)?

In fact, Gamers are SO accepting of cheating that instead of shaming people for abusing game exploits and urging the developers to fix them, they just accept those exploits as "the new meta of high-level play" and celebrate the cheaters as "the most skilled players".

Occasionally that results in a game evolving in a good way  (For example, the iconic "skiing" feature of Tribes games was originally just a physics exploit)  but usually it just ruins everything the developers did to make the game balanced in the first place, and makes the game completely unapproachable to newer players who are suddenly expected to know and utilize exploits they're unlikely to learn about on their own.

cybernettr said:

Why compete against people you don't even know? Why not just compete against yourself?

Couldn't agree more. Besides, there's no point looking if your name isn't there.

Well, i like the friends leaderboards - i'm having great fun chasing people in The Climb at the moment.  As CrashFu says, the world leaderboards are just ruined by cheating - if they weren't, i'd like them too.

i only look/am interested if i am somewhere near the top

danknugz said:

i only look/am interested if i am somewhere near the top

And how do you know if you are somewhere near the top?

Do you look?

And if you are not somewhere near the top after looking, do you unlook?

 :*