Overall XP Leaderboard

[TKzip]

I noticed that the #1 ranked score on the XP leaderboard is 68001320 at Level 14. My rank is #2 with 188190 - Level 15. Here's a screenshot:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=260092220

I'm assmuing the only way this could be is if someone hacked the leaderboard. Okay, I understand that score hacking is hard to prevent (to discern a valid score from a ♥♥♥♥♥ one), but aren't the levels by definition associated with the total XP? If that's the case, then it's impossible to have that score at Level 14, and you could easily reject that from the XP Leaderboard.

By the way, how many "XP Levels" are there? Based on the progress bar, it's look to be about 25. It seems there should be some acheivement associated with reaching the top level. Just some thoughts...

[SeonR]

Yeah, it looks like the leaderboad has been hacked. I just removed the entry, thanks for letting me know.

We actually stopped trying to prevent hacking as after investing many weeks trying various ways of preventing it/obscuring data, but dedicated people still found ways to hack, so though we never removed the obstructions, we now just try to clear the hacked data when we see it (or when players let us know).

In our latest game in early access - Fight The Dragon - we added all of these obscured data types to prevent people from doing memory hacks to give themselves more HP/Gold etc (we were really proud of ourselves) and within 2 days from launching, there were already memory hackers available to bypass them :(

Right now there are 25 levels, but we are not sure we will stop there, so we thought a leaderboard for top spot for everyone to see was better than an achievement that only you can see :-)

[TKzip]

Just another observation about the Player Profile and global rankings... It seems the "MP Games Played" area has a small bug. In the screenshot above it shows I am ranked #2, then below it indicates "rank #14 has played 150 MP games". I believe this is supposed to show the next rank above me (#1). I don't think it's a coincidence that the rank above me for "Unique Levels Played" is also 14. These values seems to be tracking together (and my updated profile/stats support that). I would venture to guess that the code is using the same variable for both values.

Again, not a big deal... I don't really care that much if it never gets fixed. I just thought I'd point it out in case you'd prefer to clean these types of things up.

[SeonR]

Oh, nice find. Fixed :-)

[TKzip]

I can't expect you to clear a hacked score every time I see one (the Overall XP score is currently 999999, Level 5), but couldn't you put a simple "sanity check" in place for this particular ranking? If the score reported is greater than the score needed to advance beyond the Level that user is at, reject it. It's impossible to have a score that high at Level 5. If the score was legit, they would have to be at Level 25.

[SeonR]

Yeah, we can add something on the server side. I'll add it to our list :-)

[TKzip]

Now I feel guilty for adding to your workload. :-)

[TKzip]

I'm guessing the "server filter" for the Overall XP reporting hasn't been implemented yet, because my high (at level 20) was just bumped to #2 overnight by a score of 999999 (at only level 13). I've been working hard to keep my top spot... I just don't understand how anyone gets fulfillment out of a falsified, unearned score. I like the sense of accomplishment! :-)

[SeonR]

Escrito originalmente por TKzip:

I'm guessing the "server filter" for the Overall XP reporting hasn't been implemented yet, because my high (at level 20) was just bumped to #2 overnight by a score of 999999 (at only level 13). I've been working hard to keep my top spot... I just don't understand how anyone gets fulfillment out of a falsified, unearned score. I like the sense of accomplishment! :-)

Yeah, it's still on my list to get to, sorry.

[TKzip]

It seems there are only 23 levels, functionally speaking. I just reached it and now at the completion of each game, I'm stuck, as there is no "exit" option; I had to kill the game. Here's a screenshot of a recent game that resulted in my total XP exceeding 999999, which indicated I went from Level 23 to 143. :-)

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=284057504

Here's a screenshot of my current rankings and the overall XP leaderboard (taken AFTER the above game). As you can see, any XP accumulated after reaching Level 23 is not counted:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=284059062

I guess it's time to retire from CM2 and move on...at least until a fix comes out. :-) I know you're up to your neck in Fight the Dragon now, so don't make this a priority on my account. The worst part of this issue is that I can't play back-to-back games without terminating the app, but I'll survive.

[SeonR]

Well, at least we know it;s not someone hacking the game, but instead getting to the level cap and the XP is breaking the game!

Now we have something to fix ;)

[TKzip]

True in my case, but the earlier scores of 999999 were definitely hacks because the user's Level was reported as 13 or 14. If someone had legitimately reached that score their Level, as I've found out, would have to be at least 23.

Escrito originalmente por SeonR:

Well, at least we know it;s not someone hacking the game, but instead getting to the level cap and the XP is breaking the game!

Now we have something to fix ;)

[SeonR]

Yup, we are aware of that too.

So Level 23 is that max level cap. We just had some bad code that failed to recognise that :(

Being fixed now, thanks for pointing that out.

[TKzip]

BTW, just in case this matters (I'd rather point it out before you put out an update than later), the number of Unique Levels Played and MP Games Played values are still incrementing in their respective category "headers", but not in the rankings that show the top 5. See my Player Profile screen shot above. My Unique Levels Played is 1423 while my ranking just below it shows 1422. I have since played a few more games and the one value continues to increment while the other does not (same applies to MP Games Played). They're obviously not "normalized" in the DB (i.e., same value being stored in 2 separate locations). You probably have a good reason for this so I'm not criticizing, just providing detailed feedback. Hopefully, this is the last I'll say of the issue and wait patiently...whenver you get around to it. I really need more practice with FtD anyway. :-)