The Problem with Perikles

[Xyga]

They came here to do this while all the drama actually concerns social media communities, not really shmups forums, so why do they chicken out now ?

Let us be entertained to the bitter end of it.

[chum]

No one's on a witch hunt, and yet we have a thread title of "The Problem with Perikles"...

Because there is a problem with Perikles... A witchhunt by definition is looking for issues, repeatedly, without good reasoning. Here there are no end of reasons, that you've chosen to conveniently ignore evidenced by your hilariously poor misrepresentation of the discussion. If you are not capable of understanding discussion you should just keep out and let the adults talk. I mean I can't even imagine how you could seriously believe that it boils down to some kind of frame copy bullshit.

It is healthier to let the discussion happen and that people listen to each others arguments instead of obfuscating it with bullshit.

[mycophobia]

flailing thru that whole section at the beginning of stage 5 in tatsujin ou at max speed with no bombs is indeed kind of unbelievable. but I like Perikles and his posts and I hope he's not a cheater. all he would have to do to put most people's doubts to rest is just stream some shit some time i think. a total lack of willingness to respond to any accusations would be kinda suspicious though.

[Xyga]

You're right, but the accusers not posting their proof material is equally fucked up.

We're waiting...

EDIT: tbh I have the capture, I know the prosecution's argument, and I can tell it's no different from what's been already said; that his performance is too good to be true, and they'll demonstrate that period.

That can be totally valid if there's enough occurences and quantity to support the argument.

While the possibility of a genius at super-fast ascerting and dodging is not 0%, something like that has to be demo'd to be validated.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

So it's just not possible that maybe someone doesn't suck off Cave and Touhou like the rest of you?

Are you trying to seduce me?

you should just keep out and let the adults talk

I agree. You can stop talking now.

[blossom]

Let the adults talk, you say, then where is your definitive proof? What has Perikles done that we couldn't also cherry pick from replays of your own?

[chum]

You're right, but the accusators not posting their proof material is equally fucked up.

We're waiting...

That's the thing there is no proof. If someone thinks that video in the OP is proof or whatever, they're out of their minds. There is only "suspicious gameplay" in his videos, or "suspicious behaviour". On the other hand, there is also a lot in favor of Perikles being the real deal, such as his frankly rather accurate STG difficulty list, his writeups, and his lack of obvious Tool usage (which should make his movements look even twitchier).

If I knew anything about Einhänder I could maybe say something based on his cam video of that but maybe someone else could. At a glance it doesn't really look like the same player is playing though, but I don't really care enough to go all detective or whatever.

Let the words flow, let the people talk, hopefully Perikles shows up and clears it all up, seems simple enough.

If anyone wants to know the details as to why I'm doubting his Same Same Same replay then there is a lot to go through and it would probably be better to make a video which seems really excessive and I'd rather not do shit like that if it's all just gonna be a misunderstanding where Perikles is just really good at flailing and doesn't route. It would be silly and I'd rather someone more confident do stuff like that because I honestly have NO idea what's up with Perikles lol.

[chum]

Let the adults talk, you say, then where is your definitive proof? What has Perikles done that we couldn't also cherry pick from replays of your own?

See? You should stay out because you have no idea what you're even reading.

[chum]

Seems like a lot of people on this forum have trouble with reading comprehension, I'll withdraw because I'm not getting understood at all no matter much I try to make it easy to understand
oh nvm another deleted post, whats going on here? whatever...

[Squire Grooktook]

I will state again: reviewing the highlighted clips I see nothing out of the ordinary, and my own experience with his write-ups and routes in other games is that they are as helpful and insightful as one would expect from someone who methodically fiended on a game for a week to a month.

Maybe his Same Same Same replay is weird. I dunno, I don't play that game. But the overwhelming evidence I see from the rest of his library is in my view decisive that he is innocent and that these claims are unsubstantiated.

Unrelated, but feels worth sharing:
I was accused of cheating once and submitted a video of a 1cc afterwards. It didn't have anything unreasonable in it. I was told it wasn't enough due to the bad quality (couldn't do better back then). Many months later, I would hear second-hand that it was actually my unusual routing that made it suspicious. Interesting, eh? (I'm also gonna pull a Perikles and gracefully refuse to go into details. Whole thing's just ugly to me.)

Suffice to say that I haven't had the urge to post scores or play competitively in general since then.

This is honestly my greatest fear.

We're going to lose one of the nicest, more informative, and most dedicated posters here because some discord gang decided some routes looked strange.

Thanks Obama

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

Nah Chum, you're just being confusing. I had to do a triple take to realize that you're basically just calling us bad.

I don't understand why you're attacking people who agree with you or nitpicking terminology, but you do you.

Maybe try to explain things clearer so people don't misunderstand your posts in the future.

As of now, I'm curious about the aforementioned proof, or Per's own response (if any).

[Xyga]

This is honestly my greatest fear.

We're going to lose one of the nicest, more informative, and most dedicated posters here because some discord gang decided some routes looked strange.

Well he can come back even guilty as fuck for all I care, welcome to the valley of the lepers, but at this point I doubt he will.

[BIL]

flailing thru that whole section at the beginning of stage 5 in tatsujin ou at max speed with no bombs is indeed kind of unbelievable.

Nitpick (apologies, my love of Maury is hard to contain): This is possibly my own semi-competence talking, but it doesn't look like flailing to me, any more than the Gun.Smoke dodge does. As there, it seems he's in a world of shit and making informed use of what's at hand. Macro-dodging laterally wherever he can to offset his gigantic, twitchy ship. There's a fairly consistent pendulum motion throughout, obviously modulating larger or smaller depending on whether he's targeting the large red ships. A master player would surely never find himself in such circumstances, but these are amateur 1CCs pocked with deaths, not INH Presents: The Screaming Skull Tatsujin Ou.

[EDIT: I was curious as to why he ended up in said world of shit, so I went looking for a 2-ALL nomiss. I appreciate this will be stating the obvious to anyone familiar with this game, just posting some context for those of us who aren't.

Comparing to this one, it seems Perikles wasn't aggressive enough with the large red ships. He speedkills the first two and their accompanying zako formations more or less identically to the 2-ALL. He then misses the third speedkill, which lets the zako behind it live long enough to shoot, which snowballs into each subsequent red ship and their zako firing on him.

Much like Gun.Smoke, this looks like he fucked up the safe strategy and had to suffer the consequences. Unlike the 2-ALL, he has no bombs to fall back on, I'm assuming due to similarly sub-optimal performance earlier. Shortly after, he messes up the misdirecting of a large blue ship and dies.

These look to me like the natural consequences of a capable amateur mishandling a rabidly unforgiving game - not an inexplicable World of Longplays TASflail.]

His unceremonious death shortly after, as his ship's gangly neck gets taken off in a late lateral dodge, suggests to me either [1] his luck ran out or [2] he deliberately ate a bullet right in his fucking face, after an Oscar-worthy portrayal of "learned STG amateur under siege," to throw observers off the trail.

I know the counterargument here focuses on quantity rather than quality, that he puts out too many of these admirable, if slightly dog-eared runs to be real, and wow how does he find the time, but at that point we're truly in Maury territory and I'll retire to the sidelines.

For deleted post chap, pls repost. YOU CAN'T BE SCURRED BRO (■｀W´■)

[Squire Grooktook]

While we're at it, let me respond to a few other questionable takes:

2. Why the strange dodges?
Players that are newer to these games tend to think that reflexes are the biggest factor to top-level play, when, as most seasoned players will probably agree, coming up with a strong route is paramount to success, and most twitch dodging is likely the result of a lack of planning, particularly so with older games (i.e., the kind Perikles spends the bulk of his time with).

This is a piece of bullshit I've been fighting against for a long time.

Some games have rng patterns that require reaction. Some games have luckshit patterns (forgotten worlds final boss, who can be either a cakewalk or an undodgeable wall of bullshit depending on how the rng is feeling that day). Sometimes a fucker just wants his 1-all shitclear before the weekend is over so he just flails his way through stage 5 for 8 hours straight till he hits it.

Not every game and every run is aimed towards clean precise surgical superplay.

If anything, the wonky routes sync up with his story perfectly: He's going for fast, scrubby, brute force shit clears and as a result flubbing and flailing here and there rather than routing and executing like a champ.

Also it's quite weird to me that someone can beat stuff like Tatsujin Ou in 6 days but not be able to 1-ALL most Cave games or whatever but I dunno. Especially since the replays show he can dodge.

He cleared Dodonpachi II Bee Storm for that tournament ages ago (I was there). Might not be a great bullet hell but it's a bullet hell, and it's significantly more draining a clear than a 1-all of DDP.

Having talked to him numerous times, the impression I always got is that it's not that he can't play bullet hell, but rather that he simply has no interest in playing them whatsoever and it's just his polite way of saying "no thank you, I don't like those games" (I was the same for a very long time, I liked my chunky hitboxes and oldschool gimmicks. Bullet hell was an acquired taste). I have no doubt he could 1-ALL ddp in a day if he wanted.

[Shepardus]

I have no doubt he could 1-ALL ddp in a day if he wanted.

He's mentioned that he has in fact cleared the first loop of DDP, as well as DonPachi (which he also notes took him two credits to 1-ALL). They, along with some other CAVE games, are included on his classic arcade shooter difficulty ranking, which he's written are only games he himself has cleared on a single credit.

[blossom]

In my woeful ignorance this may be a poor counter argument for one reason or another, but I was thinking about this whole situation a bit and reminded of his Gekirindan replay, a game notorious for its lack of difficulty compared to other arcade shooters. Why, then, isn't his score much higher? If he were cheating, why not go for the gold? Or would the rebuttal here be that his play is intentionally less than perfect to make the cheating "less obvious"?

[Sumez]

Wow this thread finally turned sour.

Could we maybe try to be a bit more constructive and outline:

Precisely what would be the most direct and least cumbersome way for Perikles to prove right now that he hasn't been cheating?

Is his ability to play shmups well at all on trial here, or is it just those few runs? Because those runs already happened, and I don't really see any way anyone could possibly be convinced at this point to change their mind about what they've already seen.
Is this thread even worth going on about without Perikles himself participating?

[Xyga]

Is this thread even worth going on about without Perikles himself participating?

Indeed.

- No compelling-enough proofs posted by the accusers, just supsicious material.
- The accused not around/silent.

Therefore no irrefutable charges, no defense at all, there is no trial actually.

Goes without saying that this is a trash thread, because like in the real world out there; everything has to go down in scandal and burn in nasty flames.

[Sumez]

Eh if people have been raising questions about the legitimacy of these runs, it's a thread worth having. I appreciate seeing this rather than a bunch of people talking behind Perikles' back as it's been up unitl now.

[copy-paster]

He had to get hrough per each checkpoint to finish last two stages of Same3, which I'm pretty sure not something TAS player or cheater would do that. That TatOu dodge is much like luck-based because well it sometimes happens to me too.

[Shepardus]

Is this thread even worth going on about without Perikles himself participating?

Even if he did participate, I doubt there's much he could offer that would convince people one way or another. The only thing I can think of that would dispel suspicion is a live demonstration, and as you've said there are plenty of legitimate reasons why someone would be hesitant to do that. Even that might not convince people about existing runs if that's what they're concerned about.

[Xyga]

Sure analyzing the videos is the only thing left that's worth doing in this thread (as he defo won't come back).
So far we've seen eyebrow-raising stuff, raising quite high even. Okay.

The problem with this whole deal is that apparently it's not necessarily impossible gameplay either.
The eventuality of reaching such level of play, or just 'making it through', so quickly, is not impossible either for someone with exceptional focus and dexterity, no life, and using savestates like crazy to nail a 1cc or a high score in a fraction of the time that it should normally take.

Don't tell me you guys have never seen noobs to the genre make insane progress in an extremely short amount of time, it's the power of replays and savestates, EDIT: plus there's tons of ST/HS info here for anyone to read, so you can literally cut through months and years of learning the traditional '1 coin loner' way if you use all those 'weapons', and that's not cheating.
Players like that began multiplying around the time superplays were becoming popular with a more casual crowd and the number of videos/channels increased almost exponentially.

The other problem is that no matter how the accusers try to sugar-coat it, it is really their attempt at bringing him down by convincing everyone against him, "winning the masses" (quoting), so it IS an actual witch hunt, and for one I have proof of this since I have the discord capture.

If Perikles cheated it is disturbing, and it's wrong, yes, but what's equally disturbing is those people who fled this forum years ago and since then barely if at all shared its daily life with us here, now coming out of their discord/twatter only to play inquisitors, here I mean, seriously that's nasty.

I think we've said it enough the material Perikles shared here wasn't shit and actually useful, you don't have to agree with every of his opinions on games, but he dug out a lot of interesting stuff on retro games, compiled and wrote about, many of us don't care too much if he cheated a bit, mildly, or a lot to achieve whatever he's realized in that aspect.

I get that the real problem is with score boards, and mostly bothering the discord/twatter dwellers, well let me ask;

- Do you really have to make use of this forum's plebe to settle this, trying to build a mob-against-one to weigh enough justification to ban him from your score boards, which is what you ultimately want and could do without that ?

Perikles may lose his hero-player status and remain tainted, but that doesn't mean he'll be ostracized by everyone here, the ones who want to properly ban-burn him at the stake are you, discord/twatter antisocial private clubbers, and it is nasty of you to pretend that this isn't your goal.

[kitten]

i don't often venture out of my little home in off-topic where i mostly contribute to scrolling action commentary, but i kind of felt like dropping my two cents in on this one since i've ranted about people assembling fake plays in there quite a few times. never anyone on this forum, mind you, but people doing faked plays of action games are incredibly prolific on youtube and drive me up a fucking wall. there's one guy i'm fairly certain even faked his death. these people invoke a serious ire in me, and if i catch a whiff i usually feel like studying their play until i'm certain. it's a bad habit and something i try to avoid, but something i definitely dip into doing too often.

perikles' clear list, both shooter & non-shooter, is frankly overwhelming and definitely something that immediately warranted a suspicion in me. it was something i'd never seen before in both size and ability to immediately move onto something new. i dream of being able to play with that much gusto. i've topped a couple of his stg high scores (pce forgotten worlds and final blaster - there may be another i've forgotten, i gave up on caring about high scores pretty early on this forum and it was never a big interest to begin with, action games are more my forte) and feel like i could top more with practice, but i don't think i could ever match his pacing or enthusiasm. this awe at his sheer endurance is what fueled my skepticism of his legitimacy for a while.

however, each time i played something he'd played and compared scores, i never once found the score to be suspicious! even when it was something he was basically trailblazing on the forum (much of the pce shooter library, which i've gone fairly hard in on the last couple of years), he always stopped at a point that felt completely reasonable for someone of his history of dedication. never did it feel he took things so far that it would seem as if he was a player abusing tools to just generate a loftily high score. likewise, never did it feel as if the score was suspiciously low for someone with a high level of skill and consistent dedication, either. never once did his scores feel inauthentic in a single game i played to compare to his. to add to this, when he posts screenshots of his clears on action games, they tend to have a sensible number of stock remaining or a consistency in what he manages to nomiss versus what he gets a 1cc on. they make sense, they build a player profile. i've never discovered a cheater who would be able to so consistently hew this close to totally resembling a completely authentic player over so many games i'd cleared for myself and could compare to.

i feel given how few people have contributed scores to some of these pc engine games and how frequently he's the first to post his score that my testimony has to mean something, here. the dude's very clearly played those games to the point of knowing what a sensibly commendable high score is. that's a level of dedication it doesn't make sense to throw at something unless you're legitimate at your attempts to go at it. no matter what paranoid angle i came at things with (does he supplement with tool assist? does he just doggedly learn a game to imitate proper play as some kind of weird self-assurance he's accumulated enough experience and can move on? is he an advanced robot sent from an alien race to infiltrate our culture through... really polite and informed posts?), he's always very consistently shown through insightful commentary and breadth of knowledge to be someone who profoundly loves what he's playing in a way that i feel matches the sheer enthusiasm of the best posters on here.

sorry to again fall back more on action games than shooters, but i think most people with scrolling action enthusiasm (myself included - and i'm no slouch on my clear list) will vouch for BIL as the most stalwart and dedicated poster on the forum w/r/t to the genre. he's a skillful player with a wide breadth of knowledge who consistently gives incredibly transparent insight into his play behavior, history, and even weaknesses. when he plays something, he often gives daily updates on his growth, discoveries, and how much fun he's having with a given game. he's like the poster child for completely honest play on here and has helped a lot of people through many different games. i have never for a moment suspected BIL of cheating, and a huge reason why is because he always knows what he's talking about and has extremely relatable processes. though perikles does not post with the frequency or extreme transparency of BIL, when he offers commentary, he does so with the same kind of obvious knowledge and enthusiasm and helpfulness. he's also asked for strategies when playing something and updated clears or progress with sensible time frames.

i genuinely cannot imagine faking these kind of interactions or the degree of sheer labor it would take to falsify these time frames. if he were lying, the amount of work in the lying is so extreme and for such little benefit that even if we believe the off chance he's doing it, i don't understand why anyone would care outside of insecure paranoia. i had some, it's okay to admit to it - you see someone do that well and you shrivel a little on the inside and think they can't possibly be that much more dedicated - but even if perikles joins the thread and admits to cheating five minutes after making this post, it doesn't invalidate what an incredibly valuable member of this community he has been nor the nearly innumerable of times he's helped people with his knowledge. the benefit of the doubt to give him here is so fucking minuscule compared to his contributions that i think asking for a live performance or even physical meet-up is fucking disrespectful.

i feel like this thread is kind of insidious. people defending him are basically acting like character witnesses for a guy who has done nothing but be useful. when he's surpassed, he's often enthusiastic to see and learn from the other player and has never demonstrated a desire for admiration - what motivation could we possibly establish for someone so courteous to cheat? he's been a class act and positive force on the forum. this thread is comparable to some twitter callout bullshit and doesn't belong here, it's fucking gross.

[Lags]

This thread is about his legitimate abilities at stgs, not his personal character, his motivations or psychology. It's totally appropriate for a community that records scores, strategies and replays to have a self-check system in order to maintain integrity.

"But there's no gain in cheating, why would he do such a thing?" is an irrelevant point and already presumes too much.
Many of us are puzzled at what we see in terms of technique from a player who has tons of experience and massive quantities of scores & clears.
The players who raise these concerns want their doubts dispelled and it's up to Perikles to respond and help us all out. It's fairly simple.

Stop forcing the witch-hunt meme, it serves no good. It's not like these threads appear often and haphazardly.

[Xyga]

This thread is about his legitimate abilities at stgs, not his personal character, his motivations or psychology. It's totally appropriate for a community that records scores, strategies and replays to have a self-check system in order to maintain integrity.

"But there's no gain in cheating, why would he do such a thing?" is an irrelevant point and already presumes too much.
Many of us are puzzled at what we see in terms of technique from a player who has tons of experience and massive quantities of scores & clears.
The players who raise these concerns want their doubts dispelled and it's up to Perikles to respond and help us all out. It's fairly simple.

Stop forcing the witch-hunt meme, it serves no good. It's not like these threads appear often and haphazardly.

Again, the 'community' you are talking about is no longer this place, all those who considered themselves superior players putting score, player performance and purity above everything else, left for twitter/discord/irc years ago and only visit here to update HS threads or complain, because for them this place isn't worth visiting for more than that anymore, too many stinking casuals.

So I'm asking again; why did they wait so many years, agreeing between them in private that they doubt Perikles and planning to burn him, then come here today to recruit jury members to pass the judgement and pronounce the sentence in their place, because they didn't have the fucking balls to do in his face all this time ?
(Or maybe not the confidence? could that even be considering their superiority?)

That's so petty, on the level of social media callout bullshit indeed, manipulative, fucking gross.

For dolling up their tight-knit elite private community utopia they filter tightly, but for evacuating the shit out the sluice gates are wide open...in our direction.

[kitten]

Stop forcing the witch-hunt meme, it serves no good. It's not like these threads appear often and haphazardly.

to reiterate what grook has said -

This is honestly my greatest fear.

We're going to lose one of the nicest, more informative, and most dedicated posters here because some discord gang decided some routes looked strange.

Thanks Obama

i mean, come on... the thread title, the opening post suggesting that he needs to perform live to prove himself, the pressing until he cracks and just asks for all his scores to be removed, bringing up his expansive vocabulary and criticizing typos in his final and stressed out pm, the comparison of him to prolific doom cheaters and examination of his psychology being similar - i don't know what to call if this not a witch hunt. he's been one of the pillars of the community and to my knowledge never been a fame chaser with his scores, so i'm sure the sudden & intense scrutiny caused an understandably upset reaction. his entire play history has been sweepingly called into question and that's enough to drive the spotlight onto him in a really ugly way.

this isn't todd rogers and we aren't a bunch of cronies crying out about perikles' human element, his character has been called into question and it's reasonable to defend it. beyond that, several people have chimed in that his play seems reasonable even in the footage alleged to be more egregious. i'm sure there's at least some legitimacy to the concern over a few videos but i feel this should be something calling the scoring verification into question rather than going directly for one of our best posters' throats.

[donluca]

Is this thread even worth going on about without Perikles himself participating?

Even if he did participate, I doubt there's much he could offer that would convince people one way or another.

We're all different an behave in different ways, but let me tell you that if I did even 1/10th of what he did and saw a thread like this popping up with my name I'd be on fire and literally reply in the first few posts with at least some insight and even a live video, because I'd hate seeing something like this to be said about a contribution I've made and I'm passionate about.

Plus, that fantastic feeling of putting people on blast (no pun intended) and show them how wrong they were.

Maybe he's just not checking the boards as of now, but if he's looked at this and didn't chime in... well, I don't want to say that's suspicious, but I don't see why you wouldn't spend 5 minutes giving just a very basic explanation (ie: I got very lucky there, I was distracted when I died, I practiced using lots of save states and watching replays, etc...).
I feel like that would be more than enough already instead of just being silent.

Of course, a live stream would be great and put the last nail in the coffin.

EDIT: or even just a live commentary of one of his own videos, I feel like that would be perfectly acceptable.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

It's because there is no such thing as a good response to a call-out like this.

By spawning a thread like this (or interest in general, really), you paint a target on someone and immediately invalidate their submissions by a degree. In this case the person is Perikles.

Suppose he comes over here - what could he possibly say to dispel the accusations? What could he possibly do?

Even if he does live demonstrations, it proves nothing for old runs. Even if he explains his methods, they'll still be called bullshit.

That's the power of putting a target on someone, and the power is pretty much doubled in cases where actual proof can't ever be gotten (indeed, not even INP files are real proof for this. Where "proof" lies becomes a matter of how much trust you have in the person! It's easy to realize that if there is none, the "hunt" could go on forever!)

Xyga has touched close the reality of situations like this before, and there's a good reason for it:

The people who actually make and support threads like this are either motivated by malice or just stupid.

To elaborate: If your goals were to simply get proof, the last thing you'd want to do is make it public. In this specific case, it shouldn't have ever left DMs. if you were told no, you should've accepted it instead of pulling this shit.

The fact that this shit has, in fact, been pulled means one of two things about the creators: They're either selfish and don't give a single fuck about the subject (Perikles in this case), or the whole affair was always about fucking him up, and not about getting proof.

Either case doesn't paint a nice picture.

(It feels almost unnatural for me to post things this cold. Here's some chill music to compensate.)

[Plasmo]

[see next page]

[Lags]

It's because there is no such thing as a good response to a call-out like this.

By spawning a thread like this (or interest in general, really), you paint a target on someone and immediately invalidate their submissions by a degree. In this case the person is Perikles.

Suppose he comes over here - what could he possibly say to dispel the accusations? What could he possibly do?

Even if he does live demonstrations, it proves nothing for old runs. Even if he explains his methods, they'll still be called bullshit.

This mentality would simply allow people to cheat freely on this forum unless they were blatantly obvious and goofy about it.
A live stream showing a high-level of competence would be sufficient, for example: 2-alling a difficult shmup or clearing TatsOu is what most people would be satisfied with, from what I've heard.