Hunt: Showdown The Best Tool for Rankings and Match History

This article was originally written to go over the amazing utility that was provided by HuntPlayers.com and what it does for Hunt: Showdown. Sadly, a recent update may make this application no longer able to function. I have decided to quickly finish this post and show what HuntPlayers was capable of just the same. Please read the article, determine if you think this app is worth saving, and voice your concern to Crytek in the comments on the below Reddit thread:

Is match details removed from attributes.xml file?
byu/berkuse inHuntShowdown

Hunt’s Need for HuntPlayers

Hunt: Showdown does not have a leaderboard, and sadly does not have the means to track your match history. For someone looking to track progress or improvements in their gameplay, a tool like this is essential. Additionally, looking up other players you may be about to play with or have recently played against allows you to get a better feel for your team/competition. With Hunt not having this feature built-in, HuntPlayers.com enters.

What Is HuntPlayers.com?

HuntPlayers lets you track your matches simply and clearly. It does this by reading and parsing a local file generated by Hunt at the end of every match. This file is essentially an XML version of the match history that you can view post-match.

This match history on a surface value allows you to see how you have improved/failed. HuntPlayers allows you to see who you have had multiple run-ins with, and/or played with. I have found the utility provided with this can go well beyond tracking your W/L rates.

By uploading and viewing your match history, you can get a feel for your play style. This information also provides a lot of data that is useful for viewing the profiles of other players as well.

An Improvement for Playing Hunt: Showdown

While we can view some information about a player by checking out their profile in Hunt, it is unfortunately very limited. What we are limited to is only a handful of details.

Seeing a player’s KDA and other various details is indeed helpful, however, it does not give you a true feel for their play style, match history, etc. Additionally, a player’s Steam profile can be viewed which only gives us (in some cases) their number of hours played, or if they have a VAC ban from a different game. Essentially we can take very little away from what we are given by Hunt: Showdown and Steam alone.

Making Hunt: Showdown More Trackable

HuntPlayers adds the addition of a top player leaderboard, sorted by MMR. This lets the top players get to see who is on top. Additionally, all players’ profiles can be viewed to show their match history in full (if they or someone else in the match has submitted the match data)

Is it Safe?

The only file that was needed for HuntPlayers.com to function was the attributes.xml, and this can be uploaded after the match with a simple drag/drop form.

While there is also a desktop application, it is not required to use HuntPlayers.com. This does allow people to cherry-pick only their best matches, however, because of the way Hunt stores its MMR values, only a few missing matches do not affect much for the dataset.

Logging in through Steam is not required, however does help so that you can view your stats more easily. You can, if fearful, still anonymously submit the files needed by the website.

Other Uses Extending Hunt: Showdown

Aside from being a leaderboard, HuntPlayers information offers a lot of utility to Hunt: Showdown that is sadly absent. This increased level of transparency about the hunters you play with/against can be very handy.

Checking Out Smurfs

One of the additional benefits of having increased transparency in match history is that we can determine a player’s skill level. I had gone up against a rather suspicious 2-star player who wiped the server, so I decided to look them up.

We can use HuntPlayers to determine if someone was just not able to handle playing against players of their skill level and felt the need to smurf instead. This is something that would be otherwise impossible without a tool like HuntPlayers.

Helping to Verify Speedruns

I recently got back into speedrunning, and speedrunning Hunt: Showdown in general. I wanted a means to help prove my runs and their times. The match history showing the times at which the extract happens is a perfect way to verify a speedrun like this: Two World Records in One Speedrun

Being able to link the match data can easily help protect against people faking/cheating speed runs.

What I Would Like to See

For HuntPlayers.com to function, Crytek needs to bring back support for it and other match trackers. At the top of the article, you can see the Reddit post made by its creator on this issue. There are however a few additions I would like to see if Crytek cannot do this, or changes that would be helpful to the community.

Built into Hunt: Showdown

Having features similar to or even expanding on the functions of HuntPlayers would be exciting for sure. There is a lot of versatility provided by these types of match tracking programs as you can see. I have only touched on some of the many uses and functionality that HuntPlayers provides.

Hunt: Showdown Providing An API

Hunt could easily provide an API for this functionality. This would allow for many more tools to arise that increase the functionality of Hunt’s match history. The added level of transparency could help catch cheaters, help flag smurfs, and let players improve and track their MMR.

An Ability to Opt Out

The ability to opt out of tracking from BOTH parties would be nice. This could be something that players can configure on their own HuntPlayers account as well as in the Hunt client. Having a toggle box in Hunt that shows their usernames in the attributes.xml would be a simple work-through for this. Additionally, HuntPlayers could anonymously obscure usernames with simply a user ID for those who want to opt out.

Source code

I would never run the HuntPlayers desktop application as it stands. The reason is that I don’t trust anyone, especially with software that I can easily avoid using by simply dragging and dropping a file onto a website. If HuntPlayers were to open a git and put the code on it, I think a lot more players would be comfortable running and using it. It could also help future-proof the application were it to become picked up by the anti-cheat software.

What Do You Think?

Do you think that applications like HuntPlayers are useful? If you agree that any of the utility this program provides is beneficial to the Hunt: Showdown community, please let Crytek know. Be sure to post your thoughts on the matter via Twitter and use the Reddit post mentioned above.