I really don't think leaderboards are possible in a game like this.
Imagine trying to keep the record times for each and every car of each and every user (not to mention the ghost replays that each ghost would come with ala GT5 Prologue). Keep in mind that there are 1031 cars in the game, and well over 5.5 million GT5 users. That's 5,670,500,000 lap times (and possible ghost replays) to store on a server at worst case scenario, which to me would be extremely difficult if not impossible for PD to store and update all at once.
Another good reason why there shouldn't be leaderboards in GT5 is that each and every one of these cars is tuneable, from aero kits to engine upgrade and weight reduction. This would make it impossible for stock versions of cars to hit the top of the leaderboards, which defeats one good purpose of leaderboards: to compare the performances of real-life cars. You would have to fully tune your car to the highest possible level of performance if you would even want to hit the top, say, 60% of the leaderboard results.
Last but not least, the wear and tear system in GT5 is broken. Cars in GT5 will have inconsistent engine and chassis wear as they are used. It has been proven
multiple times in these forums that horsepower losses are permanent and cannot be undone, even with the engine overhauls. Even in arcade mode, your car will still gain wear and tear (see
here for evidence). This means that if you were to hit the top of the leaderboard, your car would need to be at the right engine wear level (in other words, the break-in period) at the right lap, and at the right time. Should you want to beat that lap record, you would probably have to buy the exact same car all over again (yes, that can include the 20-million credit X2010), fully tune it, drive it until it hits its break-in period, and then try to beat the time within that tiny period of engine break-in.
goes offline they will begin to implement the Leaderboards.Hopefully before we get the DLC there will be a patch for leaderboards. đź‘Ť
