I'm developing a casual Android game in which the player's success can very easily be represented by a number (I'm not more specific because I'm interested in the topic in general).

Although I myself am not a highscore person at all, I was thinking of implementing a highscore for that game, but I see at least 2 problems in the classical leaderboard approach:

• very soon the highscore will be dominated by hardcore players, leaving no chance for beginners, who are then frustrated. This is very severe especially in casual games.

• there is no direct reward for being a loyal player who plays the game over and over again

My current idea is to "reset" the highscore every 24 hours (for example) and each day nominate the "player of the day" who then gets a "star". Then there would be some kind of meta-highscore of players with the most stars.

That way even beginners might have a chance to be "player of the day" once and continued or repeated play is rewarded much more.

The idea is still very rough and there are many problems in the details and the technical implementation but I have a feeling it is a step in the right direction.

Do you have creative and new ideas on how to implement highscores?

Which games are doing this well / what types of highscores do you find most engaging?