The Problem with Perikles

[Jared1999]

Idk man, but the quote “I don't think anyone should question whether or not someone is cheating, because everyone has the right to express themselves.” is probably one of the worst take I’ve ever heard in my entire life.

[andsuchisdeath]

Idk man, but the quote “I don't think anyone should question whether or not someone is cheating, because everyone has the right to express themselves.” is probably one of the worst take I’ve ever heard in my entire life.

I'm just like, expressing myself.

What's the problem?

[Lethe]

What I don't get about this is what possesses someone to record crap like the Bakraid or Ketsui runs and go "yeah this looks good I'll upload that". Some of these look like very unlikely flail clears but those ones are just totally stupid. Surely if you're gonna cheat you want to use it as an assist and not blatantly disrespect the entire game. Is it just that cheaters in general aren't very smart, egomaniacs etc? The Todd Rogers comparison is right on point, same deal with him. Bizarre.

[maximo310]

Edit: In all seriousness, I'm kind of curious how high the success rate is for your approach for the boss in 51:16, that corridor in 55:28 & the boss around 1:04:45 in your Gradius V run.

[copy-paster]

Haha the second one will be me tbh. One of my next 1cc task gonna be Gradius V Easy mode clear.

[M.Knight]

edusword : Thank you very much for taking the time to answer some of our questions and provide explanations.

I am definitely willing to admit that some of the analyses I have done could have been inherently biased due to an initial premise of potentially cheated runs that makes the brain look for what it wants to find rather than properly checking what's on display there. I can clearly be guilty of this, and some others too. In Shikigami no Shiro 2 for example, I may have focused on the spots where some strategies seemed questionnable or suboptimal, but clearly haven't paid attention to the shikigami placement and routes related to it that can show your knowledge of the game.

I also agree that Neptunia Shooter is a rather easy clear. Even if you don't use the weapon that was practically designed for specific sections you can still survive even if it's a bit harder. I kinda found it odd that you tackled the last pattern this way at first but if you did only play it a bit on and off without really remembering the pattern it can make sense. A wrong anticipation against one boss fight is in no way a proof of cheating.

I am not so sure about Bakraid. While I am not an expert on the game myself, I don't buy the brother story. It kinda seems "my grandma died/ my dog ate the homework"-tier justification to me. But I could be absolutely wrong about this. The thing is that even if it was true I don't think this explanation covers the dodgy dodges people have mentioned. Wanting to play a challenge-run for the thrill of it is perfectly fine on its own, but others have found the run itself to be suspicious, and that should be addressed I think. Some other players have mentionned the lack of C-button use too, was it part of the challenge as well?

One another thing I would like to have an explanation for is why did you make you Steam profile private right after people have mentionned it here? While it may just be a total coincidence, the timing makes it appear very suspicious (even if it could also be bias from our part), as if you were trying to hide evidence of wrongdoing. Even if your run is honest, this hiding does you no favors and I don't think the explanations you provided for the game account for this specific thing. Please correct me if I'm wrong as I don't recall making my own Steam profile private and don't know its exact effects, but not wanting to be bothered by connections and notifications isn't related to making the Steam profile page private, especially if said private mode activation was done after the runs, and not before it in order to ensure the best playing conditions with no notifications and whatnot.

Besides, you haven't given explanations for games that looked a lot more suspicious than most of the (admittedly flawed) examples I have provided. Especially Gradius 5 (but also some parts of Dangun). It would be nice to have your point of view on the specific Gradius 5 boss fights linked earlier in the thread.

-----

CyberAngel and blossom : Please don't misunderstand the grievances in the thread. Forget about the 4chan video compilation entirely. It's shit, everybody knows it's shit, nobody is using that as absolute proof because it's shit. I get the feeling the complaints you have would be legitimate if the arguments of the other posters were those from the video, but it's not. I have trouble seeing where you are coming from, and as a result your depiction of the events looks exaggerated to me. The drive-by shitposting here doesn't help, I agree, but remember that your own posts fuel it too.

Lucky dodges are perfectly fine. We all had them. Even the superplayers. The issue happens when said lucky dodges occur much more often than anyone else, and when said dodges occur frequently in a single run. Winning the lottery dozens of times in a row if you prefer. Not impossible, but very unlikely, and quite odd. And if you are as good as edusword apparently is, you want to minimize the amount of times where risky dodges and thus potentially lucky ones occur. But having consistent amounts of lucky dodges do no longer make them "lucky" dodges.

Not following "The Route" is not a proof of cheating. It's not like you must follow The Route or you instantly are a cheater. To my knowledge, what was expressed in this thread as to regards with routes is on specific games (such as Tatsujin-Oh) where not having a proper strategy makes life much much harder for you. Like being first at tic-tac-toe and not starting in the middle. Not necessarily impossible, but after playing the game a few times you usually pick up on it and maximize your chances. If I recall, there was a Tatsujin-Oh save state linked earlier where you can try the infamous section. I recommend giving it a shot and analyze the results you can get by following strategies or not. Maybe this can give you some additional perspective on why the players for this specific game are really recommending people to have a strategy to make this part easier. Remember that despite being about dodging bullets, shmups are also majorly about not dodging bullets.

And last thing is the movement itself. Very rapid direction changes that seem too fast for a human being, hence the "TAS-tier" moniker for the gradius 5 run. Flailing very quickly is not theoretically impossible, but if you perform such actions at normal speed the most likely scenario is running into a bullet or obstacle. If you combine the super twitchy movement with the multiple lucky dodges, it adds up.

It really is a combination of all these factors that make people here suspicious, not just a single one-off dodge that happenened to be lucky or one unplanned fight that still went well.

[Despatche]

(Yes, I know I was supposed to post the Gradius threads like a week ago. I won't even apologize for it anymore, I'm just lazy.)

I have tried my best to stay out of this thread, but I wanted to comment on the following:

@pegboy Not talking about Gradius V in particular, but simply how these guys are so quick to scrutinize anything outside of the norm. There is no room for creativity or self-expression in this genre, because if you make any attempt, you're called into question -- even if you're playing the game with an absolutely legitimate method and not building a tool-assisted run, they'll ask why you're deviating from The Route.

Most of these games are way too hard and/or scoring is far too precise to allow for much variance; a lot of choices in strategy are "can I do this consistently or not?". Speedrunning is the same: there is almost always a single current best possible path until someone finds an even better one, and the vast majority of choice is in player ability. You are free to demonstrate exceptions to this rule, but I promise you they will be hard to find without just plain cheating.

This comparison is especially important because:

How people react to narrow dodges in games:

Speedrun community: "Sheesh, this guy is good. Gotta train harder and see if I can integrate his strategies into my runs."
Touhou community: "Wow, good one! Gonna add it to the next Lucky Dodges Compilation video!"
Shmup community: "YOU CHEATER ALL YOUR ACHIEVEMENTS MUST BE ERASED FROM ALL HISTORY"

There have been a number of upsetting reveals in speedrunning. Splicing (often with better runs) is a big problem, and (surprise) submitting tool-assisted runs as human-played runs is another. The only controversy there has been in the reveals themselves and the people behind them, not anything relating to the methodology. Those people get banned from submitting anything anywhere and typically lose their fanbases for good. Indeed, speedrunners are usually big enough to have large fanbases, and typically aren't complete nobodies on the internet, so it's particularly brutal when a reveal happens.

Maybe you'd find that just as harsh, I don't know.

[InFireX]

As far as CCWI goes, you could also potentially test this Fraps slowdown exploit with the GOG version?

As far as I've seen the GOG version, Fraps still worked, but I didn't do anything with it because I assumed the test replay wouldn't be compatible with the Steam version.

Shmup community: "YOU CHEATER ALL YOUR ACHIEVEMENTS MUST BE ERASED FROM ALL HISTORY"

NTSC-J, who made this thread, and the players were civil as far as I've seen the thread in the past, while you and several other people got overly emotional. Here's one stellar example:

[Udderdude]

Holy shit, this drama. Delicious falsificare, must eat.

[chum]

How people react to narrow dodges in games:

Speedrun community: "Sheesh, this guy is good. Gotta train harder and see if I can integrate his strategies into my runs."
Touhou community: "Wow, good one! Gonna add it to the next Lucky Dodges Compilation video!"
Shmup community: "YOU CHEATER ALL YOUR ACHIEVEMENTS MUST BE ERASED FROM ALL HISTORY"

Misinformed argument; people aren't reacting to narrow dodges but to Tool assisted input through slowed down gameplay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiB9vHLdZOU#t=15m15s - Timestamp 15:15-15:19
If you aren't experienced enough just to tell by the ships movement, there is also an input display on the left side of the game. Human hands aren't capable of this. In the other videos, we can rely on watching the ship instead of the input display, but the input display here should make it easier for people who can't detect TAS by watching the ship.
It's a bit tiring to have to say this again and again, so I'm actually not directing this at either you or Blossom, since both of you are what I consider to be brick walls. Rather, this reply is meant for whoever is reading the thread and hasn't already picked up on what's actually going on, who might get confused by your and blossom's strawmen. The less people that cling to these silly strawmen that it's about "the wrong routes" the better.

The way Touhou community responds to slowed down gameplay, which we have found time and time again, isn't to put it in a lucky dodges compilation video. It's to make fun of them and stream their funny replays or leave sarcastic comments on their videos, or even turning them into a meme.

It can be harder to detect slowed down gameplay in speedruns for some titles since movement may not be as cut and dry as in shmups, but I assure you they don't want that kind of cheating either.

[Kiwi]

There is no room for creativity or self-expression in this genre, because if you make any attempt, you're called into question

Having absolutely no idea what the hell you are doing and always magically surviving is not creativity or self-expression, unless you are trying to express that you are a complete moron in a creative way.

Do you guys just look at this (https://youtu.be/gcRt5nJKNmc?t=901) and go "woooaaaaah this replay is just oozing with creativity and self expression, absolutely beautiful!"? If so can you please stay out of these discussions, thanks.

I had an aneurysm at 16:50

[copy-paster]

The raging of dislikes in Mr. Edusword videos are rising. Would this be a sign for channel deletion?

[Vludi]

He is trying to validate himself with handcam and marp inps now, too bad that doesn't retroactively validates previous BS replays.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

The Gradius V footage in question frankly strikes me as way more suspect even compared to anything that came up in the Perikles debacle. Even if someone used an arcade stick and not the stock PS2 controller, or in this case probably a keyboard via emulator, it's really difficult to imagine making those kinds of movements in a live run, and the run is a no-miss run of an already exceptionally difficult and lengthy game. It's one thing to have a lucky bullshit dodge through a cloud of bullets you oops'd your way through in a bullet hell shmup with a tiny hitbox, but it's quite another to have a sustained minute's worth of insanity against a boss that frankly doesn't require it. Those movements are way too rapid to be believably human; anyone trying to flail inputs at that speed would not have that precision or control whatsoever. And, even if they were capable of insane reflexes and input speed, why do the boss in such a risky way? It's totally unnecessary go from the bottom to the top of the screen between its legs, even if you're trying to speedkill, as demonstrated here.

I had an aneurysm at 16:50

Yeah... that channel's pretty infamous. Also check out their Giga Wing run. The death at 24:13 is against one of the single easiest attacks in the game (seriously, just move in a counter-clockwise circle around the outside of the screen to misdirect the shots). Assuming you realized you screwed the attack up by forgetting what to do there, if you have 1 extra life and 2 bombs at that point. A player of sufficient skill would just toss a bomb to escape instead of just smacking into the wall of bullets to try and escape. It's not footage that's realistic for someone who's also claiming to be at the level where they can get an Ura 2-All of Ketsui.

[Lethe]

Because I don't think it's been explicitly mentioned yet: just like with Perikles, if edusword wants to defend himself he can always stream casual gameplay of one of the games he's already mastered, or if that's too much of an imposition maybe even something like uploading some (unedited) practice videos. Expert players will have no trouble telling whether he's legit or not, even if he doesn't perform especially well in the moment.
So, you still have an opportunity to prove everyone here wrong. But you seem to be taking the other option, which is cutting your losses. If that gets you back into playing legitimately, then good for you - it's just kinda sad that this situation happened in the first place.

check out their Giga Wing run.

Okay, now I know that this has to be a joke channel. The video description is hilarious. I feel bad about ranting about the Ketsui run now. Nobody willfully plays games like this, right? Right?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

That Giga Wing run is so much worse than I imagined now that I watch it more. So much stuff in the black ship/The Stranger TLB fight alone is blatant. No use of reflect or bombs for many difficult attacks like The Stranger's opening attack AND makes some of the most idiotic dodges I've seen including not wide dodging an easily aimed, predictable tight spread, and instead going THROUGH the spread with tiny hitbox magic. Watch from 25:49 at half speed. And then the final pattern, barely touching reflect at all, and not bombing whatsoever, instead opting to play insanely risky for no apparent reason.

Also his Espgaluda run is pretty obviously faked. He doesn't know how to misdirect one of the stage 4 midboss's patterns which can be memorized and can't be bothered to use bombs or kakusei to protect himself because he knows he can just cheat through it (at 12:38).

[CyberAngel]

NTSC-J, who made this thread, and the players were civil as far as I've seen the thread in the past, while you and several other people got overly emotional. Here's one stellar example:

Let me remind you, once again, that someone made a tombstone and eulogy for the original thread target. Yet you - and pretty much every other "civil" person here, for that matter - are not so keen on calling out them and other shitposters.

Well, seems like you're okay with your community turning into a toxic asshole-infested bog, then. Fine. You've won. I give up. Someone can notify whoever's in charge that I'm okay with my account banned or deleted so that I don't even have a chance to set foot here again. I don't even care if that happens or not since none of you are worth any more of my time. My only parting words will be expressing hope for you to finally learn some self-reflection. Tall order since good number wankers are usually bad psychologists, but that'll help you in your life way more than being good at videogames and mobbing those you don't like. Cheers.

[trap15]

Thank god.

[Pearl]

[chum]

shitposting is a sign of health
cheating isnät

[Nameschonvergeben]

shitposting is a sign of health

Could you elaborate on that?

[chum]

if people can't joke around then community is unhealthy
just my opinion

[Plasmo]

Because I don't think it's been explicitly mentioned yet: just like with Perikles, if edusword wants to defend himself he can always stream casual gameplay of one of the games he's already mastered, or if that's too much of an imposition maybe even something like uploading some (unedited) practice videos. Expert players will have no trouble telling whether he's legit or not, even if he doesn't perform especially well in the moment.
So, you still have an opportunity to prove everyone here wrong. But you seem to be taking the other option, which is cutting your losses. If that gets you back into playing legitimately, then good for you - it's just kinda sad that this situation happened in the first place.

It hasn't been explicitly mentioned because this is actually not the case. Perikles and edusword are two very different cases. With Perikles we are still left in the dark for the vast majority of his runs and even the most suspicious ones could theoretically be real. If we really want to be straight up as objective as possible, we can't call him a cheater based on the videos that were up on his channel. There is no 100% damning evidence, no smoking gun. I can very much sympathize with an agnostic stance towards this.

A discussion of Perikles' legitimacy made a lot of sense and if he would've proven himself in one way or the other, he would've been able to convince the majority of this forum (not all maybe!) and redeem himself. He decided to go a different route.

However, edusword is a cheater period. If he now starts to record his new runs with handcam (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66x0_yxw4fE), this doesn't prove anything. This is also the reason why his post was so incredibly unhelpful. This is not a question anymore whether he has cheated or not. He has cheated. The only relevant question is: how many of his runs are cheated? His MARP stuff is most likely fine but is everything thereafter cheated or not? We don't know and he doesn't tell us.

He could've used the opportunity to admit it, tell us about the cheated runs (mark them as TAS / slowdown use whatever on youtube) and move on. The forum would've most likely forgiven him and would've applauded his honesty. At least this is definitely the case for me.

He also decided to go a different route.

[Licorice]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiB9vHLdZOU#t=15m15s - Timestamp 15:15-15:19
If you aren't experienced enough just to tell by the ships movement, there is also an input display on the left side of the game. Human hands aren't capable of this. In the other videos, we can rely on watching the ship instead of the input display, but the input display here should make it easier for people who can't detect TAS by watching the ship.

Psyvariar (no roll button) is all about quick stick wiggling.

See here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wqDymTHJrI

There's no handcam or input display so I guess maybe it's not as fast. I am not experienced enough to tell. Just thought it might be an interesting comparison.

[Kiwi]

NTSC-J, who made this thread, and the players were civil as far as I've seen the thread in the past, while you and several other people got overly emotional. Here's one stellar example:

Let me remind you, once again, that someone made a tombstone and eulogy for the original thread target. Yet you - and pretty much every other "civil" person here, for that matter - are not so keen on calling out them and other shitposters.

Well, seems like you're okay with your community turning into a toxic asshole-infested bog, then. Fine. You've won. I give up. Someone can notify whoever's in charge that I'm okay with my account banned or deleted so that I don't even have a chance to set foot here again. I don't even care if that happens or not since none of you are worth any more of my time. My only parting words will be expressing hope for you to finally learn some self-reflection. Tall order since good number wankers are usually bad psychologists, but that'll help you in your life way more than being good at videogames and mobbing those you don't like. Cheers.

[Despatche]

Someone can notify whoever's in charge that I'm okay with my account banned or deleted so that I don't even have a chance to set foot here again. I don't even care if that happens or not since none of you are worth any more of my time.

This is completely unnecessary. Keep playing doujin games, at least.

[chum]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiB9vHLdZOU#t=15m15s - Timestamp 15:15-15:19
If you aren't experienced enough just to tell by the ships movement, there is also an input display on the left side of the game. Human hands aren't capable of this. In the other videos, we can rely on watching the ship instead of the input display, but the input display here should make it easier for people who can't detect TAS by watching the ship.

Psyvariar (no roll button) is all about quick stick wiggling.

See here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wqDymTHJrI

There's no handcam or input display so I guess maybe it's not as fast. I am not experienced enough to tell. Just thought it might be an interesting comparison.

edusword's moves aren't wriggling, he's tapping different directions very rapidly, each seemingly with the purpose to adjust his ship. same deal as the walkers in Gradius V etc. It's very quick and mechanical and not the kinds of moves you get from wiggling or even just tapping everything randomly. Clear sign of the original play being slower.

[Kiwi]

https://twitter.com/lenculeentongs/stat ... 0971098113

Great. Now people are saying we call out others for cheating if they simply use a different route. I hate this.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

It's true that Perikles' videos were questioned because some of the routing in the runs of the particularly high level, demanding games (Tatsujin Ou and Same! Same! Same!) was seen as suspect by players familiar with the games. Whether you agreed with the analysis of Perikles' videos or not, that was a totally different situation and it's a complete strawman argument to refer to that as if it were relevant in defense of Yace. The accusations against Yace have far more concrete evidence of suspicious behaviour in the footage itself with all the splices that take place (in addition to the questionable gameplay criticisms levelled at his Sengoku Aces run). Same goes for the accusations against Edusword, the stuff that's raising eyebrows is far more blatant. edit: Apparently this bit where he moves through the wall may be legitimately doable with at least 2 shields left and max/near max speed? The stage 7 boss battle is still highly suspect of course, as I'm sure other parts of the run are.

Even if you think Yace is not a cheater and accept the explanations he gave for why they were spliced (he has a bad machine, was bad at recording, had to record runs in chunks, etc) you have to admit the heavily spliced submissions are unprofessional and not acceptable as evidence for the purposes for score verification. He's a nice enough guy the few times I've chatted with him and I want to give him the benefit of the doubt in thinking it's truly some combination of him having a bad hardware setup and being terrible at video editing, but the discovery of the rewinding score thing and the very unusual timing and frequency of the skips are admittedly too suspect not to raise some questions. Yace is a popular figure in the French shmup community so I suppose it's understandable for people seeing this accusation for the first time to have difficulty coming to grips with it. As pointed out earlier in this thread the people vouching for his skill aren't proof that all his runs are necessarily legitimate either; you can be a good player but still submit cheated runs.

edit: Well, shit. Unfortunately, Yace has apparently died. Went out for a hike, never returned home, he must've slipped and fallen because he was later found at the bottom of a cliff. Really fucking sucks for his family, not to mention for him as well as the shmup community. :(

[Udderdude]

Should point out that excessive luck and risk-taking deep into a run is one of the telltale signs that good ol' Birry was cheating in his DK submissions.