The Problem with Perikles

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mycophobia
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by mycophobia »

Agreed
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Jeneki »

If we go the way of videos/inputs/whatever, some of us will need a faq on setting things up. I has the dumb when it comes to this sort of thing. Or if I just want to track my personal scores, there are places like Restart Syndrome.

No comment on Perikles stuff as I am not involved enough to have an opinion.
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Shepardus
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Shepardus »

Vludi wrote:Also, I don't have a lot of experience with most of those games, let alone the harder ones, so I guess the best thing you can do here is let the most experienced players in some of those games to tell if they see something suspicious, if there are people that care enough about stuff like Argus or Battlantis that is lol.
For what it's worth, I skimmed through his Parodius and TwinBee videos and nothing really stood out to me except for some dodges in the (ultimately doomed) second loop attempt in Parodius Da! (39:29 and 40:41). Taken in isolation, it'd be reasonable to suspect those dodges were done with some sort of slowdown, but in context it's harder not to just write it off as a fluke. At this point in the replay he had already gotten the clear, and he died pretty soon afterwards anyway, so these dodges didn't gain him much of anything. He was already off-pattern by this point, having missed part of the final boss milk and gone into the second loop with no saved powerup, so I wouldn't have expected him to have a more solid route for this. And the game already slows down so much on its own that adding any additional slowdown would seem like overkill, at least for the first loop.

Also, I want to believe that if Perikles were willing to cheat then he'd have a Parodius Da! 2-ALL by now. :P
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Licorice
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Licorice »

CStarFlare wrote: This thread was made in response to specific concerns which people felt were legitimate and needed to be resolved. If you or anyone else has one of those about another player, go ahead and do the same thing: state your concern and request additional support to help dismiss them. If the player in question fails to do so in a reasonable timeframe, then score deletion should be on the table.
In athletics every athlete is subject to a drug test, not just those accused by their peers.

EDIT: I should expand on this. You could go down the route of only investigating scores raised as suspect by a plurality of other top players, but I don't think this creates a nice competetive culture. It introduces significant bias in the results too. Scores from people with better social skills will get a free pass when IMO these aren't the skills that should matter.
CStarFlare wrote: You're (at least) the second person to make reference to this thread being the work of outsiders as if this were important. Even if this were true, it doesn't matter - if your scores can't stand up to scrutiny applied in good faith, there's something wrong. If some no name Japanese player made a callout video about Jaimers' 600M+ DDP run, that would be completely fine and I would expect Jaimers to not blow it off.
I am not sure where I indicated that this thread is the work of outsiders. I reread my post and couldn't see myself saying that explicitly, but maybe I somehow implied it.

Anyway I don't think that. I am obviously the outsider here. The people raising concerns seem to be well known old timers.
mycophobia wrote:I already made a big ol post at the top of page 7 about this but in short, Perikles has given several high level players reason to believe something fishy is going on, and it's not just an out-of-the-blue thing either. Perikles's situation is different from other top-level players whose replays look relatively ordinary, or otherwise have some kind of corroboration for their purported skill. This thread isn't about just randomly accusing a player because he has high scores, it's because he has lots of high scores achieved in short amounts of time with replays attached that look weird to some high level players. It's a pretty reasonable cause for suspicion.
Is that true though? Is every other top player's score beyond suspect, at least for the same reasons Perikles' scores are suspect? i.e. no improbable dodges, all reproducible safe strategies, produced on stream or otherwise in front of an audience?

If so then I guess everything is OK.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by CStarFlare »

Licorice wrote:In athletics every athlete is subject to a drug test, not just those accused by their peers.

EDIT: I should expand on this. You could go down the route of only investigating scores raised as suspect by a plurality of other top players, but I don't think this creates a nice competetive culture. It introduces significant bias in the results too. Scores from people with better social skills will get a free pass when IMO these aren't the skills that should matter.
I would argue that the providing of videos or INP files is the "drug test" and all top players do generally provide these. Anyone is free to review the results and sound the alarm if there's something that needs explanation. Of course, every test has the potential for false positives which is why one asks followup questions rather than jumping to the conclusion.

Anyone can raise suspicions (either individually or as a group) regardless of their skill level and be heard, but top players are generally given a lot of credibility as have more experience and context around what is actually possible at high levels vs what is simply silly.
I am not sure where I indicated that this thread is the work of outsiders. I reread my post and couldn't see myself saying that explicitly, but maybe I somehow implied it.

Anyway I don't think that. I am obviously the outsider here. The people raising concerns seem to be well known old timers.
It was in reference to the line "links to compilations of videos of foul play in other gaming communities." I read this as referencing the video compiling Perikles' dodges in the OP which has apparently been circulating off site, but on reflection I expect you were referring to the DOOM video instead. My bad.
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NTSC-J
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by NTSC-J »

Plasmo wrote:1) Deadline
I'm in support of this. Given his posting history, it may take 2-3 weeks for him to log in again and find this topic. His absence is in no way suspicious but I feel that this forum has to move on at one point and has to take the necessary consequences. If he returns in half a year and suddenly has all the proofs we can put the scores back up. Not a big deal.
I'm even totally fine with extending the deadline for hearing back from him from January 1 to something like two months, especially since it's the holiday season and people are busy around this time. If he's willing to do a live stream or submit external recordings of one of the harder games people have doubts about like Same!, then I'm also willing to give him as much time as he needs (within reason) to get it all set up.
2) Removal of scores
Which scores are to be removed and which ones can stay - this is an ethical dilemma. I'm in strong support of having all of his scores removed. The nature with slow motion (and this theory looks like the most natural solution) is that you can detect it more easily with hectic games. For easier or slower ones, there is no reliable way you could ever tell. I don't trust cheaters at all and if we as a community decide that he is one, then I would like to see the full consequences of these claims. I'm quite sure that many of his console stuff is legit. He posted videos with external camera equipment for very few of them and I'm convinced that he he's a good player in general. However, do we really want to have these scores (even when they are legit!) up here when other scores of him are treated as fakes? In the end, it would be completely arbitrary to decide which scores we take down and which ones we would classify as legit. This is also how recent cheating scandals in other communities were handled (Rogers, Mitchell).
I also think that all of the scores would need to removed, unfortunately, for the reasons you describe. We'll never be 100% certain that any of these posted runs were faked in some way, but if he's unwilling to make any effort to provide stronger proof, I think they eventually need to be removed.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Shepardus »

NTSC-J wrote:
2) Removal of scores
Which scores are to be removed and which ones can stay - this is an ethical dilemma. I'm in strong support of having all of his scores removed. The nature with slow motion (and this theory looks like the most natural solution) is that you can detect it more easily with hectic games. For easier or slower ones, there is no reliable way you could ever tell. I don't trust cheaters at all and if we as a community decide that he is one, then I would like to see the full consequences of these claims. I'm quite sure that many of his console stuff is legit. He posted videos with external camera equipment for very few of them and I'm convinced that he he's a good player in general. However, do we really want to have these scores (even when they are legit!) up here when other scores of him are treated as fakes? In the end, it would be completely arbitrary to decide which scores we take down and which ones we would classify as legit. This is also how recent cheating scandals in other communities were handled (Rogers, Mitchell).
I also think that all of the scores would need to removed, unfortunately, for the reasons you describe. We'll never be 100% certain that any of these posted runs were faked in some way, but if he's unwilling to make any effort to provide stronger proof, I think they eventually need to be removed.
That should be up to individual thread owners to decide (including you for the Hall of Records thread, CSF for RestartSyndrome, etc.). Aside from the logistical reality that they're the ones who can actually implement any change, each high score thread has operated as a sort of small sub-community with thread owners being responsible for administrative decisions, and we should be able to trust them to make sound decisions for the threads they own.

But if you're asking about the Hall of Records thread specifically, my opinion is to add notes where appropriate, as you've previously done for some scores like the community score listed for Terra Cresta.
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Bananamatic
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Bananamatic »

Licorice wrote:Is that true though? Is every other top player's score beyond suspect, at least for the same reasons Perikles' scores are suspect? i.e. no improbable dodges, all reproducible safe strategies, produced on stream or otherwise in front of an audience?

If so then I guess everything is OK.
Good players would know how to cheat and get away with it

If I wanted to fake 700m in DDP (which I could savestate in an evening and make it look 100% believable) I would engage with the community, share my routes and explain them, practice on stream to make them look believable and make sure I'm semi-consistent at everything so the run makes sense (compared to some 1 in 30k fluke) and most importantly fake gradual progress - don't go from 600m to 700m, slowly add it up over months/years, make mistakes on purpose, etc.

Jaimers' 638m ddp run could very well be fake because it would be incredibly easy to fake and most importantly he has the skill and knowledge of what is and what isn't believable (and his history with the game adds up with the results), so we have no real way of proving it in this case and it gets a pass

W.C making some crazy dodges here and there would make sense because he demonstrated the capability to do so on Stunfest on an arcade machine
Perikles making them in a game with massive hitboxes doesn't because he avoids dodging heavy games, his difficulty rankings sometimes make no sense and he refuses to show any live proof that he's capable of replicating it
blossom wrote:Assuming Perikles didn't cheat, I feel like I would never want to play for score again, considering my style of play is one where I prefer to do as much as possible on my own without studying replays - my route would come under scrutiny because I didn't follow the most well-known methods. Either way, if Perikles did or did not cheat, it's depressing to me for different reasons.
If you create your own routes, you decide on a strategy because it works consistently, makes sense, is explainable and makes the game look easy (in other words, the very opposite of suspicious) and if something unbelievable does happen, you would be surprised it happened and pointed it out immediately in the video description/stream chat/whatever

It would come under scrutiny if you had a strategy that works out once in a blue moon and can barely be called a strategy, went ahead with it anyways, somehow made it work in several runs, never explained what you were trying to do and didn't say anything once people point it out on top of that, you're worried about nothing here
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by PerishedFraud ឵឵ »

You're coming up with theories about something you don't know enough about again. (And you're thinking of the most dishonorable scenario possible to boot)

Fine if we're talking about the pyramids, mind you.

But we're talking about a person who will respond eventually. Why would you present him in the worst possible way before he even says anything?

It's ew.
Last edited by PerishedFraud ឵឵ on Mon Dec 02, 2019 10:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

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Bloody
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Bloody »

i saw a many videos from Perikles and i saw to many stupid death for a so a "good" Player.A player on this Skilllevel , have more concentration.Look at Beestorm , in Stage 6 he dies at a one Bullet.He dodge not he let the ship fly alone-Makes he a coffeebreak or what?and i saw his Gradius 2 video and i don t know, he dies and come back in every loop with no problems.He had too many 1 ccs in some hardest shmups in a short time.What i not understand is the fact you can t meet him.What is a the problem to play by a meeting in germany.i can drive to him and we play some titels :-)
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by 6t8k »

^ Hi Bloody :)

About the silly deaths, yes, I got that impression too sometimes.

If you want to see an example of that, and want to pick up anything from the Gradius INP, then maybe watch the 5 deaths that occur between ~15:07 and 16:55. It's quite hilarious actually. :lol:
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by mycophobia »

Licorice wrote:
mycophobia wrote:I already made a big ol post at the top of page 7 about this but in short, Perikles has given several high level players reason to believe something fishy is going on, and it's not just an out-of-the-blue thing either. Perikles's situation is different from other top-level players whose replays look relatively ordinary, or otherwise have some kind of corroboration for their purported skill. This thread isn't about just randomly accusing a player because he has high scores, it's because he has lots of high scores achieved in short amounts of time with replays attached that look weird to some high level players. It's a pretty reasonable cause for suspicion.
Is that true though? Is every other top player's score beyond suspect, at least for the same reasons Perikles' scores are suspect? i.e. no improbable dodges, all reproducible safe strategies, produced on stream or otherwise in front of an audience?

If so then I guess everything is OK.
We can only do so much to prevent cheating in videogames on online leaderboards. If someone cheats undetected, then by definition, we won't detect it (edit: er, I guess, we haven't detected it), and it would be silly to accuse players of cheating if we don't have any good reason to. But on the whole I'd like to believe that if someone is cheating then that will show through in some way, and of course the bolder the claim the more scrutiny applied. Simple as that; nothing is perfect.
Last edited by mycophobia on Mon Dec 02, 2019 5:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Xyga
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Xyga »

Mmh...do suspicious deaths, mean he was playing at 150% speed ? Image
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Shepardus
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Shepardus »

Bloody wrote:i saw a many videos from Perikles and i saw to many stupid death for a so a "good" Player.A player on this Skilllevel , have more concentration.Look at Beestorm , in Stage 6 he dies at a one Bullet.He dodge not he let the ship fly alone-Makes he a coffeebreak or what?and i saw his Gradius 2 video and i don t know, he dies and come back in every loop with no problems.He had too many 1 ccs in some hardest shmups in a short time.What i not understand is the fact you can t meet him.What is a the problem to play by a meeting in germany.i can drive to him and we play some titels :-)
Are silly deaths supposed to be suspicious too now? He even talks about these deaths in the video description.
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Bloody
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Bloody »

Alibi Deaths to make the replays honest or credible...
but i can said only for my person.Perikles scores are not exists not for me not all.i have to much consens what is no fake, what is fake.im sure he cleared much console consolestgs or Arcadestgs without cheating but not all?i only speak what i think about this.i can say everthing to deaths in videos ,but it is truth?
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Mark_MSX »

Wow! Ballsy post my dude. I'm sure it wasn't easy to make. The line between all the whispers people have about this matter (and there have been ALOT, I nearly included them in the Shmup Cheating episode) and actually being the person to initiate the conversation in public is a tough step to make, so huge props for doing that. I'm just glad it wasn't me ha, I've had my share of controversial threads. X-D

Anyway, I definitely agree with what Banana had to say about finding hard evidence of cheating can really come down to cloak and dagger and that, outside of live demonstrations, it's pretty much impossible to tell if a run is legit or not. The more knowledgeable the player is, the harder it will become to detect. So if the only metric we use to determine if a player has cheated or not is an obviously smoking gun, then it's unlikely any cheater will ever be caught or called out. Unless the cheating is so stupid and blatant (like the WOLP DDP A-S run) that it's comical.

So I'm not sure what standard the shmup scene is comfortable with, but my own would be that if the run is peer reviewed, and a number of established players do find concerning elements (which has definitely happened in this case), then there should be some reasonable follow up from the player to explain the situation and provide a convincing explanation, or provide additional evidence of some sort.I say "established players" so we avoid the Twin Galaxies situation of a bunch of scrubs calling out Pearl's Garegga run, when they don't know what they are talking about ha.

Icon did bring up the question of why Perikles would be inclined to cheat in the first place, given how nobody really cares about the genre and because many of the games he plays are obscure, even for shmups. My armchair psychology guess would be that it probably has to do with his Youtube channel and the addictive nature of uploading youtube videos. it's a bit of a tangent to this topic, but I think Youtube has created an ecosystem where people with even slightly popular channels feel a massive pressure to upload, or else start losing views and such. I wouldn't be surprised if Perikles started out mostly legit, and slowly started implementing cheat methods to keep up with being able to upload more and more clears. Anyway that's just pure speculation, but my point is that, even though it seems like there are no external reasons why a player would cheat, there are still internal factors that could motivate a player to do so.

In terms of what should be done if it is determined that he cheated on some of his runs, I'm with Plasmo on the idea of removing all of his scores and runs. The reason why isn't because I think the guy should be punished into oblivion or anything, it's just that, since it is so difficult to detect cheating in the first place, there really is no clear way to establish which runs are cheated and which are ones that are not. If we only remove the scores that have obvious cheating, we're basically saying "cheating is fine, as long as it isn't obvious and we can't catch you."

We can't have a merit based system of trusting people's scores, but then also allow known cheaters to have scores as well. It's either everyone's runs are scrutinized based on evidence (which is not possible), or known cheaters have to be removed.

These are my thoughts on the matter anyway. I don't want a situation where we become like the speedrunning community and are just constantly at each other's throats and creating cheating drama as personal vendettas, but I also think turning a blind eye to cheating because it's an uncomfortable topic devalues what the legit players are putting into the genre -- which is a F*** load of time and effort. If he did cheat, Perikles probably won't care that much. He's already got his Youtube views. I'm guessing you guys probably won't hear from him. If he does respond, I'm curious to see how this unfolds.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Bananamatic »

Perikles wrote:As someone who has no outstanding reflexes or motor skill I sorely needed to get an idea how to dodge bullets in general. Like several novices I started out frantically moving all over the screen instead of resorting to fewer, but methodical manoeuvers.
He's either ridiculously underestimating himself or he has no idea what god tier reflexes look like (for example the OP clip compilation), being this unaware of where you stand with so many clears and so much experience is another suspicious thing
I don't think he should be punished or anything though, I just find it interesting to discuss
Mark_MSX wrote:Anyway that's just pure speculation, but my point is that, even though it seems like there are no external reasons why a player would cheat, there are still internal factors that could motivate a player to do so.
There was a lot of confirmed cheating in STGTs with absolutely nothing on the line because the same team would win anyways
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Arino »

Nothing has changed. Can't trust those Germans.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Lyv »

Plasmo wrote:But here's my challenge to you: Try to use Perikles' routes and learn Same Same Same this way!

People are playing the game for Calice Cup at the moment, so this challenge is open to all of you! Try to approach it as unbiased as possible and give it a try. Then tell us about your experience here!
Coincidentally, that's kinda what I did for the Cup, because Perikles' replay was the first one I found.
I only learned the first four stages NMNB since it was enough to get a decent score (and I don't like the game that much). Took me a few days, and most of the attempts were me cursing at the pea-shooter and slow-as-shit ship in the first stage.
I'm not really sure what it's supposed to prove...the routes for these stages (arguably not the hardest) are solid. I watched the rest of his replay, and it's pretty much what I would have expected. He obviously has a very good knowledge of the game (enemy patterns, how to get through each section, boss speedkills...). His routes are not very precise, but I guess his huge experience with old-school shmups got him used to sniper tanks and the rest of the bullshit. Some dodges in the last stages are ballsy, but nothing unrealistic or suspicious imo.
So yeah, as Squire said, Perikles does shitclears of old-school games. And he's very, very good at it.

When he says he's good at memorizing and bad at execution, that's probably true in his eyes. Iirc he hasn't made extensive use of savestates for most games he played. I would guess to him, memorizing means learning the stage layout and a general route through it. He's good at memo because he rarely got caught by random shit he forgot. The replay is coherent with someone who would have learned the game with moderate save-state use. The general strategy of keeping a huge stock of bombs and bombing liberally in the last stages is bread-and-butter for shitclears.
I don't think it's impossible to clear even very hard games while not having a thoroughly detailed route. Yace 2-all'd Dragon Blaze with a similar strategy and playstyle (from what I've seen). Hell, even when I watch BOS's replays, I think he's winging it way too much and getting away with it because he's just really good. He mostly uses save states in a "stage select" way, from his admission. I find a lot of similarities with Perikles.

In my opinion there is absolutely no reason to remove his scores, but whatever.
Maybe I'm just naive or dumb. I don't really care.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Xyga »

^ +1 for yace being a good example of very good player who doesn't give a crap about conventions nor how other people play, because he's insanely swift and gets through like that. Not that he doesn't learn games but he's certainly got an advantage over most ppl. I've seen him play even IRL and it's like he's several times more reactive than average, or if you want he's lagless.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by copy-paster »

BOS/yace is great indeed.

Also I don't find Perikles's Same3 1P run is suspicious or weird at all. Most bosses were done by speedkill and he mostly U-shaping/hoarding bullets.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by CyberAngel »

Mark_MSX wrote:So if the only metric we use to determine if a player has cheated or not is an obviously smoking gun, then it's unlikely any cheater will ever be caught or called out. Unless the cheating is so stupid and blatant (like the WOLP DDP A-S run) that it's comical.
Please explain how removing all contributions, which other players have found useful in the past, based on some other players' dislike of route/strats/lack thereof in TWO of them is any better than that.

Really, the longer this thread runs the more baffling it looks. Actions need to be taken on clear-cut cases, and this is questionable at best. If this is supposed to lead to some community decision then, by a quick and rough estimate, those saying Perikles and his runs are fine already outnumber accusers 2-to-1, despite all the evidence and arguments. Dragging on and trying to limit people's participation only make this case smell more and more rotten.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Shepardus »

I think it's worth considering different "standards of verification" for the Hall of Records thread and the high score threads themselves.

I consider the high score threads to be a relatively laid-back, casual place for sharing, and of all the problems I have with the subforum, integrity of the rankings is not one of them. Yes, removing all of Perikles' scores is the only way to be absolutely sure none of his accepted scores are illegitimate, but that comes at the cost of removing many potentially valuable contributions to the community and fostering an attitude of distrust. This may be worth it if 100% verifiable accuracy of the score threads is the top priority, but frankly I think it's a mistake to assume that it is. For the most hardcore first-or-nothing leaderboard chasers, maybe it is, but for the rest of us, is it really the end of the world if there's a questionable score here and there? I'm not worried about a couple cheated scores sending a message that cheating is okay and opening the floodgates to more cheating. The situation would not be any different than it is now, and we've been getting along just fine in that regard. Or maybe we haven't, and all the scores I've congratulated people for are actually fake. Even if they are, I'm happy to see people sharing about these games at all.

At the same time, I can see that the STG Hall of Records thread is a somewhat different situation, and I think holding that thread to a higher standard and requiring additional verification for scores to be listed there is not unreasonable. In that case, then yes, Perikles' scores would be removed from that thread or at least supplemented with a note; I would add that such a policy should be applied more broadly across the thread to the best of our ability. I think this could coexist with the more lax individual score threads without a problem.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Bananamatic »

You're not ever getting a clear cut case unless the cheater is incredibly incompetent and doesn't know a thing about shmups or doing dumb stuff like LUY with daioh power ups

It's like with sikraiken, I'm 95% sure he was legit (his scores weren't really all that incredible, just better than most back then) but his behavior was suspicious as fuck with refusing to provide anything and not caring one bit if it is suspicious or not, can you really blame people for thinking he's not legit? Pretty much every player who achieves hard stuff on an easy to cheat on platform yet always has convenient excuses for not providing further proof faces some scrutiny, that's just how it works
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by ArrogantBastard »

Lol, so many posts that reeks of "His gameplay is dodgy, buuuuuuuutttttt he's a valuable member!" as if making a plea for the majority to kind of look the other way.

I've busted several cheaters when I used to maintain high scores thread, and I kind of find it ironic that this thread exists after OP got upset at me and demanded that I remove his score submission because the "argument was fucking stupid," for refusing to budge from my position when jeremycarrier submitted a dodgy DDP screenshot with his score.

A lot of you guys are being autistic as hell and focusing on some small details, when his behavior and reaction are the most suspicious here. His behavior says a lot about himself.

Edit: I am more or less amused because topics on cheating in our community is ripe for drama because everyone is divided on this, and / or already have their minds made up on this matter.
Last edited by ArrogantBastard on Tue Dec 03, 2019 3:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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BareKnuckleRoo
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Like Banana says, you're only going to see a "clear-cut" example of cheating in a run being passed off as legitimate if the person is incompetent. The more significant the runs being posted, the higher the standard of evidence needed to validate it. It doesn't matter how many people voice support for him or against him in terms of sheer numbers; what matters ultimately is the evidence. Several of the people who think his runs look like they could very reasonably be legitimate acknowledge that there is still a very troubling chance that they're actually faked, and are aware analysis of just the videos is insufficient to definitively authenticate them unless we find did something really bizarre like cheated in the INP for his relatively low scoring 2-loop Gradius run, only to post a 20-loop clear later. Nobody's ever seen him play a live run and thus nobody can vouch for his skill level.

I've tried to play devil's advocate for him and give him the benefit of the doubt in the hopes that he would eventually show up and he'd say something to defend himself. But no matter how much you like the guy, you gotta admit it is pretty sketchy for him not to acknowledge the sheer accomplishment of his plethora of 1CCs by recognizing they're very significant and thus other players are really interested in seeing him do some live runs.

I don't know much about Same! Same! Same! other than it's ridiculously hard on a whole other level compared to many arcade shmups. That Tatsujin Ou video looks believable in the sense that I played that section myself and I was flailing through it and having to make some similarly insane dodges when I let things get out of hand. So, on the one hand, I can see someone squeezing by on raw reflexes and a LOT of luck in that section. But there's also the very real chance if you're going for a clear of the first loop you'd probably have to play this spot enough that you'd come up with a more foolproof way to do it, and if you did have to make those insane dodges your success rate of getting through without dying would likely be super low. And the rest of Tatsujin Ou is just as insanely hard and demanding in terms of strategy and positioning. It's not a modest clear by any means!

Whether or not you think on the surface that his dodges and routing looks legitimate or not, we only have Youtube videos as evidence and some of the clears he's getting are insanely difficult to do. I think the questions he's receiving as well as requests for live play demonstration would generally be understandable and taken as a compliment by a legitimately high-level player. Going based off the limited information we have regarding his response to requests for additional evidence or live play demonstrations, his suspicious behaviour raises a lot of red flags, and sadly it follows a similar pattern as other cheaters who were called out or caught.
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Dumple
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Dumple »

This is a hard thread to read. I've learned the routes for a lot of the games I've cleared by watching Perikles's videos. I don't like thinking that some of his playthroughs may not be legit. I also don't like thinking about him having to read through all this drama assuming they are legit. And I also don't like not knowing one way or the other!

One thing that bothers me is that I'm not sure how much I can trust my judgment (or anyone's judgment) about whether a run is a TAS just by looking at it. (Not talking about TAS videos that do really over-the-top impossible-for-a-human tricks, just runs with several dodges that look either incredibly difficult or lucky) I get that some people see a dodgy dodge and feel sure it's not legit, but how do you know and how sure can you be? Once you're primed to see something (like evidence of a TAS) I could imagine "finding" it even if it's not there, like when people heard hidden backwards messages in rock music during the Satanic panic.

If I took several legit runs, and several tool-assisted runs done with slow-mo and rewinding, and showed them all to someone without letting them know which was which, how accurately could they identify the TASes? Assume the tool-assisted runs are done by pretty good players, who know the game well but couldn't manage a clear without the cheats. And assume the judge is an expert who knows the game really well. (Any playthrough of the first part of Tengai stage 5 probably looks like a TAS to someone new to the game...)

If we did that "Pepsi Challenge" experiment and someone immediately flagged all the tool-assisted runs correctly, I'd feel more confident trusting their judgment on whether the next run they see is tool-assisted...or just very skilled and/or lucky.
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BareKnuckleRoo
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Dumple wrote:I get that some people see a dodgy dodge and feel sure it's not legit, but how do you know and how sure can you be? Once you're primed to see something (like evidence of a TAS) I could imagine "finding" it even if it's not there, like when people heard hidden backwards messages in rock music during the Satanic panic.
This is a very legitimate concern, and it's exactly why we shouldn't just rely on individual examinations of the run to determine if it's legitimate or not. If all we have is video, then at best all we can do is make a judgement on whether or not it's suspicious, based on if there are people who have seen them play and can vouch for their skill level. We are fortunate enough that recording equipment as well as streaming websites are very common and easily accessible nowadays, and I think generally speaking seeing some live runs over a stream would be more than sufficient to clear any suspicions nowadays as you'd learn a lot about a player from seeing their mistakes as well as their successes and be able to assess their skill level pretty quickly (as inserting a recording of a fake run in between multiple normal playthroughs is much easier to spot on a live stream).

If you were really worried about fakery you could even ask them to play something relatively unknown blind such as an obscure doujin shmup and be able to assess their raw reaction time and such based on that.
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Lags
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Lags »

NTSC-J wrote: I did bring the accusations up to Perikles when asking for his INPs, expecting that he'd be eager to prove his innocence considering how much work he's put into all of this, including his frequent requests to me via PM to update the Hall of Records with each new score he posted. Unfortunately, his reply, while polite, was mostly disinterest in providing any evidence and a request to just quietly remove every score. When pressed further, his next and final response was uncharacteristically typo-riddled and somewhat hostile (and eerily reminiscent of the bit about typical cheater responses at the end of the DOOM video, although still not insulting to me or anyone here), and he said he would not try to explain himself and did not wish to discuss the issue further.
I wanted to quote this so people keep it in mind.
He posts many scores and wants them presented & updated regularly.
He posts many essays and giant replies over very tiny details.
Yet he'd rather have all his scores deleted than substantiate them with inp files or streams or any other means of verification?
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