Volund's Top 81 FRHD Track Makers

I don't think there can be a completely unbiased way to score trackmakers, because trackmaking is a creative process. Just looking at metrics, we have features, dailies, likes, subs, plays, and completions. Those are all what I think are relevant, and none of those are all-encompassing even when put together. Look at baseball, it's been around for almost 200 years and there is still no definitive way to evaluate who is the best player. Like baseball MVPs, we can vote on who we think the best players are, but that isn't a perfect system.

I do think it would be very cool to see what kinds of scoring systems could be thought up.

 

yeah that makes sense, do yk if anyone has a full list of all the campaign tracks btw, it would be hella annoying to have to go through and filter them all out

 

i think looking at ratios is definitely the best way like comparing total likes/subs to total tracks or plays. that would get rid of the bias from the game falling off and get rid quantity over quality authors. should include a few others aspects tho since quantity is still important and consistency too. also features

eg.
pro_legend_rider: 2826 subs, 6.25 subs / track
the_risen_skyrider: 308 subs, 14.7 subs / track

industrial (2022): 77 likes, 10.4 likes / 1000 plays
industrial II (2026): 57 likes, 14.3 likes / 1000 plays

 

I think we should just go by feature quantity.

 

Moneyball

 

cough cough malishya

 

cough cough me

 

Statistically, if u use the number of tracks uploaded as a metric to even out the number of likes per month, max007 comes out on top with a total number of a little over 8,000 weighted likes with the weighting based off freeriders least popular month and most popular month (316 uploaded vs 19,216)

 

this is only possible if you dont view frhd tracks as art, which i think most ppl at the feat level do. like pawflix said, you probably could come to some sort of quantitative formula for it but i cant imagine it not having crazy outliers which would make it unserious. in saying all this, i would be interested to see something like it developed, even if only as a novelty or another perspective on trackmaking!

just spitballing off the top of my head:
dailies are completely irrelevant as tracks are just chosen at random by mods and has no relation to player skill, likes is very flawed (activity levels, type of track you make catering to/not catering to trends, trending algorithm changes, hot section not existing, subs not existing etc are all variables which would be very difficult to control for), feat quantity is ok but again lots of variables (feat changes making features harder/easier to attain, eli is a big outlier just himself), kb is irrelevant especially post-1.1 editor, interactions..? (comments/likes and dislikes/ghosts/plays?), accolades..? (frhd awards, track contests, campaign etc)
ratio of x to y sounds like the best approach off the top of my head but again youd have outliers/problems methodologically. some players (me) refuse to upload unless it's a "good" track, which was not the norm for quite a while and many still (mr..a, shep) just uploaded whenever they made something they thought was cool. so youd have to be careful not to unduly punish players for actively playing the game versus carefully uploading only good stuff (i remember char talking about this years ago with regards to goofyinc). and ofc now ppl can mass delete tracks, so for example FTR's profile is just his good tracks

i imagine there's enough data out there to derive *something*, but idk what necessarily. trackmaking is messy because it ultimately is an art form, even the kids drawing a troll face in 2007 and triple t in 2026. i think quantifying it best would require a player survey across discord, the forums and the db to help normalise results from db data, but with activity so dead itd still be skewed to forum players (ie the most intense players with likely similar opinions, as per the poll above). imo i think the top 10 trackmakers ever on frhd are pretty much objective, even if ppl disagree on where to place them, but after that it's a lot messier. and lowkey, with how little feats there have been this year and the game at its lowest ever, these lists are kinda meaningless now in that they dont drive activity/motivation/passion etc like they did a few years ago

edit
this honestly is a really interesting topic the more i think on it. like i think back to forlorn, tremulant and crypt, if they had the 1.1 editor could they have made as many equally-dense tracks as what malishya has? how much should the 1.1 editor and other editor tools influence how we judge trackmakers in the past?

 

i think its really quite interesting as well, I've given it a lot of thought and while quantifying the best art might not be easily possible, finding the highest-rated artists is as simple as taking the list i have already and filtering out all the campaign tracks.

 

Imagine being so autistic you're a statistical outlier.

fudge y'all.

Good post though btw volund