The tutorial is too wordy with too much of an attempt at questionable humor which makes it difficult to get real information. I did the "full" version and didn't really understand how the game worked since there was too much irrelevant information to pay attention to, took me a few games to fully understand how to properly play it. On my first run of playing it "properly", I ranked into the top 10, which gives me the impression that many other people don't understand how to score well.
So far the general consensus is that most players aren't even viewing the tutorial. This results in a complete misunderstanding of the Break Limit mechanic. I've actually got an update all wrapped up the addresses this among other issues, namely difficulty. I didn't expect anyone from this forum to have any difficulties playing the game, but the average user is having a horrible time surviving, even on novice. The update makes novice much easier, and does a bunch of polish things.
It's too difficult to scroll through the high score list, you need some sort of page up/down, since doing it one by one is really annoying and it's too easy to move to a different ranking.
Done. I'll add trigger scrolling by 10 entries to the update patch tonight. Your not the only one to mention that.
It seems like you get enhancements to your ship as you keep playing through the game, which makes it unfair for ranking purposes.
The enhancements are minor, and were meant to add a mild sense of progression to the game for when you don't quite finish a run. The bonuses top out at +45% starting weapon damage and a mild boost to shields and shield regen. The bonuses really only come into play on Master difficulty. On Novice though, for example the default weapon power will kill most things in one shot anyhow. All of my high scores on the game (Xalterax) were set with a very low rank progression. The bulk of the scores on the table will be reflective of around rank 8-10, after which ranks come pretty slowly.
Ultimately bigger guns don't make up for skills here, but they do help a little - I'll concede that. Despite that fact the game's score tables seem pretty evenly balanced, and should see more activity once Novice allows a softer learning curve for new users so that they keep trying / actually buy the thing.
I myself am planning to go back to RPGs, and let the Doucette's have this arena to themselves. Shooters don't sell all that well on the service, probably because a ton of really bad ones have already marred the reputation.
Thanks though!