The quality of life in Brighter Shores continues to be the main focus for the MMORPG’s most recent patches, as this week has seen two more patches go live that target its leaderboards and map movement to (ideally) make things nicer in the early access sandbox.
The earlier patch has made it so that players no longer need to opt-in to the leaderboards feature in order to be ranked, meaning everyone in-game should now have a “true rank.” Those who aren’t interested in having their usernames slapped on a big ol’ list for all to see (and in the interest of complying with various countries’ privacy laws) can still choose to be an anonymous player, while doing so hides player level from everyone and stops those players from seeing the leaderboards to begin with.
Worth noting is that apparently “top players” in the game pitched a fit over this move because we can’t have nice things.
“I am rather disappointed that we put considerable work into improving the leaderboards for the top players (who are the only ones really affected by anonymous players) and in response they just complained and boycotted the leaderboards even more!” lead dev Andrew Gower tweeted. “Makes me feel we totally wasted out time trying to improve the leaderboards for them, certainly won’t make that mistake again. We will focus on improving the game for everyone else instead.”
In his follow-up, he says, “Just to be clear when I say “I wont make that mistake again’ I just mean I wont prioritise making further changes to the leaderboards, not that I am going to ignore any players”
In the most recent patch, map movement was the focus, restricting the maximum distance players can click to move on the map to a circle instead of to a number of rooms. Lead dev Andrew Gower explains that this is to make it easier for players to know how far away they can click around on the map to maneuver. Both patches also come with a few bug fixes, so make sure to read up for those specifics.
I am rather disappointed that we put considerable work into improving the leaderboards for the top players (who are the only ones really affected by anonymous players) and in response they just complained and boycotted the leaderboards even more! Makes me feel we totally wasted…
— Andrew Gower (@AndrewCGower) January 15, 2025
