It would be nice if leaderboards worked out the average between a players score and the amount a player has played overall and gave the combined score, making it fairer for the people who have jobs and lives.
On a side note, i hope Mario Kart does something similar but has a worldwide fastest times board. Obviously 8 player online fun too.

Just means less D/Cs tbh. Leaderboards on the most part = whining, arguments and disconnecting.

If you really want to play competitively SmashWorldForums is the place for you, but you better be bloody good.

does anyone understand percentages?

All the time in the world wont make your %'s any higher , unless you are playing at a really high level . Raw stats are pointless (as they are a measure of who has the most time), but comparing Wins v Losses, Kills v Deaths, K v D w/each weapon, W v L w/each character, Disconnect % are valid stats that a TOP NOTCH online game will keep and rank publicly. They measure your level of play and how much time you have spent in the game. A TOP NOTCH online game will also have a way of dealing with high disconnect % players, ie negative consequences and public consequences. Nintendo just plays it safe and kiddy when it comes to onlne play; they dont even try to make a TOP NOTCH online game.

If people are that obsessed with becoming better, they'll just play and figure out their own stats.
I might do this, I might not, I'm not terribly worried about it, as long as their system for matching up similar skill levels is good enough that I can get a decent challenge while i play

 Nope, they don't.  Get over it, it'll still be an awesome game, and the online portion is a plus.

Ugh.  Why should online only be considered a "plus" on the Wii?  I wish Nintendo would catch up to everyone else in this category. 

Calling All Cars needs stats, too.  It's just fun to know your record at least. 

It does.. it replaces them with AI as soon as they are disconnected so that the player who is there to have fun, can continue to do so...

@OP: This is very old news, and it was debated when it was new news, my position stands at "why didn't they just create a nonranked mode and a ranked mode" so that people could just choose how they wanted to play.. i'm surprised nobody brought that up (or maybe i missed it)

oh man if Calling All Cars only had stats!! Maybe people would still be playing it online. Would have taken that game from a 7.5 to a 9 in my book! I wish MK2 online had more detailed stats, like a breakdown of W/L for each character.

It amazes me how conservative Nintendo is when it comes to online. It's only a "plus" to diehard nintendo fanboys, serious gamers see the lack of online stats for the console's AAA multiplayer combat game as totally lame.

I see absolutely no point with leader boards, although personal stats and voice chat with friends would be nice. I'm still cautiously optimistic that they will either be announced before the game is released, or added later with a patch of some sort.

And there it is.  I'm so tired of this nonsense coming from people who think they're better than everyone else.  Apparently, having played games for the last 24 years, since I was old enough to hold a controller, makes me a casual gamer whose ideas of what is fun should be considered meaningless, because I'm not "serious" enough to demand online stat tracking from Nintendo.