[qqwref]

As far as ethics goes, it's only something to consider if everyone agrees something is unethical. The whole reason for not doing unethical things is that other people will look at them, notice they're unethical, and think less of you for it. But in the case of grandtotal, nobody seems to agree with stargroup. Practically every big community-driven video game has it in some form, and when most people notice it's not a part of KBO, they will be disappointed, not glad. I do understand the personal reasons for not wanting that statistic there, but that's all they are, personal reasons. If your goal is to make a successful game, that conflict is just something that will have to be dealt with. You may not like it, but if it's how the world works, you just have to accept it.

About the difference between weekly/monthly totals and grandtotals, I think a short-term total encourages short-term play (such as whoring the game for a few days), but doesn't encourage long-term play, which you absolutely need to get good at a rhythm game like this. Especially at the very start, there are only a few easy files you can comfortably play, so you end up doing them over and over again (and not even getting very good scores on them), which can get frustrating. It's a lot easier to play some other game with no learning curve - how about a nice shooter or tower defense or puzzle game? - so you need something that a low-level player can work towards and be proud of, something that won't go away in a month and render their work worthless. You want a reason someone will come back and keep playing the next week, even though there are no new songs and they haven't noticeably improved. And ideally it's something that will develop the player's skills as they work on it. Grandtotal does all of that, and it's easy and familiar.

tl;dr: You might be unhappy with grandtotal in the game, but nobody else is. Not having it hurts new casual players, and a periodic grandtotal doesn't completely fill the gap.


And hey, if you want submissions, sorry, but I can't help you there. I suck too hard at stepping.