The Problem with Perikles

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Bananamatic
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Bananamatic »

Dumple wrote:slow-mo
Easily, you perceive the game differently, the movement and decision making at full speed makes no sense
Dumple wrote:rewinding
Depends on how believable your routes and execution are without it
Dumple wrote:couldn't manage a clear without the cheats
If you can't even theoretically clear without the cheats then you have no chance in hell of making a believable TAS
It's questionable because he's clearly a competent player but some of his claims don't add up with his gameplay

How many people would question Jaimers if he outright refused to stream, provide inps, do any live plays and coincidentally played all the hard games on an emulator while claiming he can't dodge and that he has slow reflexes? I sure as hell would
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Lags »

Bananamatic wrote:........
Stop not playing shmups.
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pegboy
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by pegboy »

Unfortunately I have to agree, this is the most damning part of this entire mess. Deleting or losing all his .inp files just seems inconceivable to me, especially with how thorough he was with tracking his scores, writing articles, posting videos, creating difficulty lists, maintaining and updating leaderboards, etc. It just doesn't make any fucking sense at all.

I never assumed he was cheating when he posted all those runs, but one can only assume he was doing something fishy based on the behaviour that followed.
Treeface wrote:
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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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by BulletMagnet »

Moved to High Score subforum at OP's request
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by BrainΦΠΦTemple »

this sucks if it's true. his clears were a motivator for me to get off my ass and immediately hop right back on it to clear shmups 'n stuff
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Imhotep »

The impression I get is that part of his scores are legit, part of them are fake. I'd therefore remove all his scores unless he's able to provide evidence.

I've witnessed several video game cheater dramas over the years and this one fits the pattern. Passionate / dedicated / talented and well respected player starts to fake tough achievements; I can only speculate about the reasons, it might be a combination of lack of time / patience / interest and self induced pressure / pressure to "entertain" a community. Improbable luck and apparent lack of knowledge about basic safe strats are common signs of a cheated, rushed playthrough, I'd trust the knowledgeable and proven players about these cases.

The pointed out cheater reacts with accomplished ignorance and utter indifference, then disappears.

I think under these circumstances it's reasonable to ask for some kind of evidence.
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Xyga
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Xyga »

Last time I'll post in this thread since it's in the HS forum now, only to say; why not give entries a reliability score/rank ?

S for played IRL in front of an audience
A+ for live-streamed with a view on the hands/controls
A for live streamed
B ...etc

Whatever, just an idea.
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Gus
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Gus »

Sweet, I can post in here now.

I think the idea of having adding a "verified" tag for scores played on stream or live would be a great one. That's the standard that's good enough for speedrunners, so there's no reason it shouldn't be good enough for us. The thing with treating a replay as the gold standard for verification seems an antiquated idea compared to speedrunning, and it's exactly what started this whole mess with many suspecting a prominent player of cheating but ultimately being unable to prove it. Streams aren't totally impossible to cheat, but it's definitely an extra layer of prevention and further disincentivizes cheating if the expectation is that you'll be streaming hundreds of hours of failed attempts before getting The Run.

The benefits of this also seem immense even beyond mere score verification. In speedrunning, the leaderboards serve a far more important purpose than just telling you who has the record. They're hubs for the community where people can advertise their streams, discover new players, and generally enrich their experience with the game. Here, where typing up some random score and maybe attaching a screenshot is the only standard for verification, you can't really have that. All that's left is players jacking each off to big numbers. Videos are better, but still a far cry from being able to see players as they grind out runs in real time and interact with them. Instead of fostering a closer-knit community as the speedrunning leaderboards do, the leaderboards on here just seem to foster elitism and tribalism. People going on in here about scoring "credentials" is a good example of that and why I haven't submitted a shmup score in years. What should determine Perikles's guilt is the educated opinion of people who've played the games he runs, not who has the most impressive scores.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Plasmo »

This topic is now where it belongs.

The deadline has been set to end of January. I will post an update here mid-January about the exact details how this case will be handled.

In the meantime keep posting your opinions here. They will all be heard.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by copy-paster »

Pretty sure some scoreboards has unverified score and placed on separate table. Great idea
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by PerishedFraud ឵឵ »

Plasmo wrote:In the meantime keep posting your opinions here. They will all be heard.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by PAPER/ARTILLERY »

Just a thought on all this, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but don't many shmups have online leaderboards and often the ability to view replays generated from the gameplay itself?

I don't know how cheat-proof all of these are, and I gather from reading this thread that Perikles doesn't care for bullet hell ie: modern shmups. But if there are any of his scores & replays on say the Xbox 360 leaderboards or Steam, and those are believed to be cheat-proof, could those not be considered proof of ability? I don't know if it's easy to hack around these things, so it may be moot. Just a thought.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Online replays are not cheat-proof sadly. There is a well known run of Mushihimesama Futari Black Label in God Mode that is a Spiritual Larsa (no-miss) 1cc that is known to be cheated, as well as a Saidaioujou clear of Inbachi that is suspected to be cheated, both of which are Xbox 360 clears. The Mushihimesama Futari run in question was so blatantly cheated that there was little question at the time the score and video were first posted, aside from trying to figure out how they cheated. The movements are so blatantly tool-assisted that it is the rare example of an incompetently made tool-assisted run being passed off as the real thing. When called out, they ran off without giving an admission or definitive answer but we're 99% sure about the method used, as it is easily reproducible and one that doesn't require external tools/hardware on the console.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by pegboy »

Isn't it just cheating with pause buffering? ex: turbo pause button to induce artificial slowdown? I'm sure that Inbachi clear is fake as well, the final pattern of Inbachi is impossible.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by PAPER/ARTILLERY »

BareKnuckleRoo wrote:Online replays are not cheat-proof sadly. There is a well known run of Mushihimesama Futari Black Label in God Mode that is a Spiritual Larsa (no-miss) 1cc that is known to be cheated, as well as a Saidaioujou clear of Inbachi that is suspected to be cheated
Okay no worries, just out of curiosity – what qualified these as 'cheated' and (hopefully without giving ideas to others) what is the suspected method for doing it? If you'd rather not say then that's fine, just intriguied.

Edit: Actually this is made quite clear in Roo's post, apologies
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Gus
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Gus »

People have even found ways to cheat in live settings during e-sports competitions. There is truly no cheat-proof verification method. If someone is hell-bent on cheating, they will do it. Best to find a balance between a method that makes it hard to cheat while still being something that most people could follow with little difficulty, and I think streaming hits that sweet spot pretty well.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by it290 »

Lots of people want to play without having to stream their run. I don't think that should be a burden of proof since it's completely extraneous to the experience of playing the games themselves.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Gus »

If people want to play without streaming that's totally fine. The streaming proposal only applies to the suggestion for making a distinction between verified/unverified runs. I don't think streaming is too much to ask as that's already standard practice in the speedrunning community, as mentioned already.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by CyberAngel »

Not everyone has a 100-gigabit fiberglass connection, you know. I personally have experience of being stuck with upload speed too low for streaming at a sufficient bitrate but fast enough to upload videos within reasonable timeframe. If someone approached me with such a request back then I'd also tell them where to stick it.

Also, last I checked speedrun leaderboards accept videos no problem. Streaming is widespread but never a requirement, even for first place submissions.
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Gus
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Gus »

I've streamed runs (with a facecam!) from China on a shitty connection with a laptop and 15$ capture device. No one said anything about streaming in good quality.

I don't have the energy to go to speedrun.com and look at how many records were done on stream, but I'm sure if someone did that for the popular games they'd find the vast majority were played on stream. I'm personally not aware of any current top time in a game I follow that was done off-stream. Even in the ultra-niche game I've run(Distance), streaming your runs is generally expected if you're near WR time. Whether or not it's "required" per se is largely irrelevant. If you agree it's standard practice (as your wording seems to imply), that's proof enough that it's not an unrealistic verification method.

If people disagree on streaming, what alternative do you propose? Arcadia-style "live runs in front of people only" shuts far, far more people out than streaming would. In the other direction, plenty of posts in here and, arguably, this topic's existence as a whole have demonstrated why treating a video alone as proof is far from optimal.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Lags »

How about a verified status? You gain it by live streaming or filming yourself clear or score something. Like Pazzys' vids where you see the keyboard, his hands and even hear the input sounds?

Streaming or filming each attempt in order to attain that big score record is a big hassle for normie players. But doing it once or twice to gain a verified status would be okay. But I think providing inp files and replays would still be important for record integrity on top of that.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Mantrox »

A verified status with some rules attached would be a simple and straightforward way of doing it.

If you want to get the verified badge, either:
- Do it in a live setting\public event.
- Stream\Record your setup and yourself (hand cam).

A simple smartphone nowadays can stream to youtube in a tolerable quality even on slower connections. If you don't like the exposure, stream privately to youtube. All your runs will be archived, and you can release the footage whenever you like.

Everything else stays unverified.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by CyberAngel »

Gus wrote:I've streamed runs (with a facecam!) from China on a shitty connection with a laptop and 15$ capture device. No one said anything about streaming in good quality.
Try recording a shmup at 500 kbit/s and then say it's good enough to be evidence for anything at all.
Gus wrote:In the other direction, plenty of posts in here and, arguably, this topic's existence as a whole have demonstrated why treating a video alone as proof is far from optimal.
All it managed to demonstrate is that some renown players are willing to conspire behind curtains while ignoring all concerns raised by everyone else. And everyone else is too easily distracted by all the "maybe"s and irrelevant questions.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Mantrox »

CyberAngel wrote:
Gus wrote:I've streamed runs (with a facecam!) from China on a shitty connection with a laptop and 15$ capture device. No one said anything about streaming in good quality.
Try recording a shmup at 500 kbit/s and then say it's good enough to be evidence for anything at all.
Gus wrote:In the other direction, plenty of posts in here and, arguably, this topic's existence as a whole have demonstrated why treating a video alone as proof is far from optimal.
All it managed to demonstrate is that some renown players are willing to conspire behind curtains while ignoring all concerns raised by everyone else. And everyone else is too easily distracted by all the "maybe"s and irrelevant questions.
If the intent is to improve the scoreboard and have the information in it have some validity; introducing stricter rules in order to have a verified score shouldn't be a problem.

Nobody is preventing you from playing, but if you want to compete, some rules have to be observed.
There's always gonna be a player somewhere that can't stream or record because of X, Y and Z; as there are athletes that can't compete because of any number of reasons.

As time passes, standards of evidence change because there are new ways to circumvent those standards. Why would anyone want the shmup scene to be stagnant in this regard is beyond me.

In the case of Perikles, and any other suspicious gameplay on any other game where the evidence is borderline at best, the responsability rests on said player to help validate his performance. The fact that he flat out refused to do so in any capacity, is the proof.

So, moving forward, i think that a stricter set of rules should be observed in order to get your score verified. Otherwise you can still see how you stack up on the unverified section.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

I don't think the intent of this thread was to demand this place turn into Twin Galaxies or MARP and demand verification for literally every single run, even the relatively low-scoring or non-clearing runs that absolutely nobody would remotely bother to suspect. Requiring that all scoreboards split scores by "verified/unverified" adds a discouraging element that will make it difficult for casual players to participate. Streaming equipment such as capture devices and cameras can be expensive to setup especially if you play on PCB as well as console since you may need different capture setups for each. If we really want to add a "verified/unverified" tag to scores, sure, whatever, but it's fixing a problem that doesn't exist in my opinion. It can also be a pain in the ass to make sure you're streaming prior to every single run, especially if you have to resort to a camera phone to do it of course. Naturally, if you know you're at the level where you're posting massive scores edging towards a world record, you'll probably already be trying to record the runs for posterity because you know claiming such a score has a far higher burden of proof!

There's frankly no reason to assume the average player posting scores in cheating, and the people who really care about scoring are only going to be concerned with whether the top-tier scores are actually legitimate or not. In many cases, the player is known and has been seen streaming/playing live at some point and thus their skill level can be vouched for when they post subsequent scores. The only time anyone suspects a score as cheated is in a very unusual circumstance, such as an unknown player suddenly appearing and posting near world-record scores.

Perikles' situation is an unusual one. He is not an average player. He's posted several massively difficult clears in what is a relatively short span of time, with nobody having seen any "in progress" runs of his progression in learning a game, or having seen him stream or play in-person. He is a player who is posting many runs, several of which of an extremely high difficulty, so he's received a request for a live demonstration just to settle any suspicions. His response, or lack thereof, raises serious questions about the validity of those runs in question. I think there's still a decent chance his skill is legitimate, and he's just an unusual player in terms of being able to learn the games rapidly, but his responses we know of, and otherwise continued silence are making it seriously difficult to maintain faith in him.

For the most part, this sort of situation isn't a regular occurrence and there's no real reason to suddenly demand the entire forum's scoreboard section changes how it operates so that literally every single run that's posted be treated as "suspicious unless proven innocent" and generally the serious players who've raised doubts about Perikles have not started demanding this for the scoreboard section as a whole because they recognize it's pretty easy to judge if scores are reputable or not based on a player's reputation (in terms of if they've ever been seen playing live). And now that I think about it, I can't think of a single time there've been any suspicions about a player's skill level or the legitimacy of their runs where seeing them play on a stream hasn't immediately cleared them of any suspicion. It seems like for the rare case where player skill could be in doubt that's a pretty reasonable bar to set for validation to assess a player's skill is in line with their reported clears or recordings.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Gus »

Lags wrote:How about a verified status? You gain it by live streaming or filming yourself clear or score something. Like Pazzys' vids where you see the keyboard, his hands and even hear the input sounds?

Streaming or filming each attempt in order to attain that big score record is a big hassle for normie players. But doing it once or twice to gain a verified status would be okay. But I think providing inp files and replays would still be important for record integrity on top of that.
Pazzy is a bizarre case. He was completely capable of streaming and did do so several times, but he had this weird aversion to doing serious run attempts on stream, blaming nerves or something to that effect. He didn't seem very open to discussing it with me and quit talking to me after I joked about the possibility of scoring runs being cheated due to his aversion to playing on stream. I can't prove it, but I feel the thing with him uploading runs with a hand-cam might have been a jab at me by attempting to remove any lingering doubt about his legitimacy without having to stream.

I'd argue the mindset of any streaming just being an added hassle to verify your score is a huge problem in the community. I've seen nothing like Pazzy's case, or any complaints at all about what a huge hassle streaming is in the speedrunning community. People actually seem enjoy the whole verification process for what I talked about above with how streaming serves to bring the community together. I've even seen cheese(SM64 120 star WR holder) talk on-stream about how he wouldn't be running the game at all if he didn't have the opportunity to stream it and interact with chat while doing so.

The verification status thing seems a good compromise to me. It wouldn't really address the doomsday scenario Banana outlined of a prominent player streaming some practice and then splicing together a WR tier score, but it's still far better than no verification at all and I could see it easing attitudes towards streaming. If no one likes the idea of streaming every run, I can get behind something like that.
BareKnuckleRoo wrote:I don't think the intent of this thread was to demand this place turn into Twin Galaxies or MARP and demand verification for literally every single run, even the relatively low-scoring or non-clearing runs that absolutely nobody would remotely bother to suspect. Requiring that all scoreboards split scores by "verified/unverified" adds a discouraging element that will make it difficult for casual players to participate. Streaming equipment such as capture devices and cameras can be expensive to setup especially if you play on PCB as well as console since you may need different capture setups for each. If we really want to add a "verified/unverified" tag to scores, sure, whatever, but it's fixing a problem that doesn't exist in my opinion. It can also be a pain in the ass to make sure you're streaming prior to every single run, especially if you have to resort to a camera phone to do it of course. Naturally, if you know you're at the level where you're posting massive scores edging towards a world record, you'll probably already be trying to record the runs for posterity because you know claiming such a score has a far higher burden of proof!

There's frankly no reason to assume the average player posting scores in cheating, and the people who really care about scoring are only going to be concerned with whether the top-tier scores are actually legitimate or not. In many cases, the player is known and has been seen streaming/playing live at some point and thus their skill level can be vouched for when they post subsequent scores. The only time anyone suspects a score as cheated is in a very unusual circumstance, such as an unknown player suddenly appearing and posting near world-record scores.

Perikles' situation is an unusual one. He is not an average player. He's posted several massively difficult clears in what is a relatively short span of time, with nobody having seen any "in progress" runs of his progression in learning a game, or having seen him stream or play in-person. He is a player who is posting many runs, several of which of an extremely high difficulty, so he's received a request for a live demonstration just to settle any suspicions. His response, or lack thereof, raises serious questions about the validity of those runs in question. I think there's still a decent chance his skill is legitimate, and he's just an unusual player in terms of being able to learn the games rapidly, but his responses we know of, and otherwise continued silence are making it seriously difficult to maintain faith in him.

For the most part, this sort of situation isn't a regular occurrence and there's no real reason to suddenly demand the entire forum's scoreboard section changes how it operates so that literally every single run that's posted be treated as "suspicious unless proven innocent" and generally the serious players who've raised doubts about Perikles have not started demanding this for the scoreboard section as a whole because they recognize it's pretty easy to judge if scores are reputable or not based on a player's reputation (in terms of if they've ever been seen playing live). And now that I think about it, I can't think of a single time there've been any suspicions about a player's skill level or the legitimacy of their runs where seeing them play on a stream hasn't immediately cleared them of any suspicion. It seems like for the rare case where player skill could be in doubt that's a pretty reasonable bar to set for validation to assess a player's skill is in line with their reported clears or recordings.
No matter how you slice it, this situation is going to leave a huge impact on the community. Assuming Perikles doesn't respond before the deadline, you're looking at all the people running scoreboards having to decide what to do with the hundreds of scores from the most prolific poster in the history of this board, who might have been cheating the whole time during his 5 year run here. People have cheated in speedgames, but how many cheaters have managed to work their way into such a prominent spot of their community and left this much lingering doubt and debate in their wake?

To even have a situation like this happen in the first place seems indicative of a huge problem in how we verify scores and a strong argument in favor of a formalized verification system. As you allude to, such a system already somewhat exists as most people posting exceptional scores generally are expected to provide video evidence for such. The proposals for a verification system essentially only serve to refine and formalize something that already vaguely exists. I don't think having players get the equipment to stream would be a big leap from having them get the equipment to record videos. It also should be noted that none of these issues apply to the majority of players here, who mostly play PC/MAME/PS4, where streaming boils down to nothing more than configuring an app and hitting the "stream" button.

Perikles is not an average case, but he's not a one-off either, as the somewhat similar case of Sikraiken demonstrates. These are two extremely prominent players who have exhibited behavior that the current system of verifying is not equipped to deal with. It's obviously terrible if they're cheats and have been able to get away with it for as long as they have, but it seems even worse if they're legitimate and some of the earlier theories in this thread prove true of them being offended by being asked to provide proof under the auspices of cheating accusations. Far from carrying the assumptions that every score is cheated, I'd argue a verification system would ease up any stigma that might exist around asking for evidence by turning it into standard procedure rather than an implied cheating accusation.

I don't think casual shmup players would or should care about whether or not their score has a "verified" tag next to it. FWIW, though, the leaderboards on speedrun.com have a more stringent system than anything proposed so far of every submission requiring personal review by a moderator well-versed in the game before being added to the leaderboards, but it works great and speedrunners actually seem to enjoy and take pride in the whole process that goes with verifying their runs. I'm not saying such a system should be adopted here or that it would even be viable to do so, but it does show how a community can operate fine while maintaining strict standards for verification. Far from just existing to catch cheaters, the verification system of speedrunning also serves to ease any anxieties that might exist about the legitimacy of the boards(which some people expressed in this thread as a result of the Perikles situation), give people an opportunity to pre-emptively shutdown any doubts that might exist, and also encourage streaming behavior that's healthy for the community regardless of the verification aspect that goes with it.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Mantrox »

Gus wrote:snip.
I agree.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by blossom »

When combined with the secrecy and elitism of Japanese arcades, this idea of strict verification for western players is too much of a double standard for me. Everyone should play by the same rules. I feel like if any kind of verification process were implemented, that's one more nail into the coffin of an already niche genre. What incentive would new players have to start playing a genre where only those with a reputation would be acknowledged? You say only serious players would be affected by verification, however there's always that middle ground of players who do wish their scores to a personal limit instead of grinding for a world record. Speedrun.com accepts every time, why should shmups be treated differently?
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Gus wrote:No matter how you slice it, this situation is going to leave a huge impact on the community.
Yeah, no matter what the result is, this situation is going to have a lasting impact and lingering trust issues.
Gus wrote:It also should be noted that none of these issues apply to the majority of players here, who mostly play PC/MAME/PS4, where streaming boils down to nothing more than configuring an app and hitting the "stream" button.
Good point, a lot of consoles are starting to natively support streaming options, and if there's a PCB player who doesn't have the equipment to record and can't figure out how to do it with a phone camera, MAME can be used to stream a lot of games nowadays. I still can't quite get behind the idea some have suggested of mandating rigorous validation for every single run that's posted in order... but I can see it not being too onerous if someone is happy with posting unverified scores as they work their way up a scoreboard and then does a stream to record a verified score eventually. Like, where the expectation is that if you're going to post something that's a top 10 run or something that's an extremely hard clear, you're prepared to back it up at that level.

Having a verified/unverified column indicating the status of each score isn't too far off though from what a lot of scoreboards already do where the scores can be put in a column with "proof" links where provided such as:

R=&Game_Name.
R=#&Name&Score&Stage&Version/Details&Proof R=[b]1[/b]&person 1&8 zillion billion&stage 0.345&xbox infinity -1&[url=http://www.youtube.com]Video[/url] R=[b]2[/b]&person 2&the letter g&stage 42&xbox infinity -1 R=[b]3[/b]&person 3&the square root of purple&stage π&xbox infinity -1&[url=http://www.youtube.com]Video[/url]


I'd be okay with mandating that a verification status is marked beside each submission as a compromise, and possibly for mandating that top new scores submitted be verified (I'm undecided on this, leaning more towards no; I don't think it's necessary that games with relatively small/inactive scoreboards require the same kind of rigorous verification that the extremely active and popular games do, but I can see the arguments in favour of being consistent) but I'm still definitely not onboard with splitting scores into separate tables based on verification status either, for reasons I've previously outlined including it simply being a pain to manage. There's also the caveat that a photo should suffice in a situation where the run was played live with multiple reputable witnesses but was unrecorded such as at a meet, in an arcade, etc, and those witnesses can vouch for the score being legitimate.
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maximo310
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by maximo310 »

Personally, I'd just go with keeping a unified table and just adding a mark for video submissions. I usually go the route of working offline on a game first, then posting a vid w/ a submission when I feel that its good enough ( a stream link is fine too as a submission, but I don't think its absolutely necessary to have as a requirement).
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