Leaderboard cheats already?

[Flith]

Wow...this was a problem in DG1.
Why bother with leaderboards if they are so easy to hack with fake scores.

[chillgreg]

Travathian původně napsal:

chillgreg původně napsal:

We can debate it till the cows come home.

The true fact of the matter is that integrity is not a priority at HPE.

It is likely the leaderboards will never be clean.

That horse bolted a long time ago...

You don't even own the game and yet you whine and cry like a little girl.

As others have said, there is no fool proof way of making a system that can't be cheated without using draconian DRM. Therefore, only fools are going to complain about this, while the rest take it for what it is, and just compare scores of people on our friends list. Every minute they spend trying to appease crybabies like you is a minute they aren't spending on more content in the game that is actually useful for everyone.

Travathian původně napsal:

chillgreg původně napsal:

We can debate it till the cows come home.

The true fact of the matter is that integrity is not a priority at HPE.

It is likely the leaderboards will never be clean.

That horse bolted a long time ago...

You don't even own the game and yet you whine and cry like a little girl.

As others have said, there is no fool proof way of making a system that can't be cheated without using draconian DRM. Therefore, only fools are going to complain about this, while the rest take it for what it is, and just compare scores of people on our friends list. Every minute they spend trying to appease crybabies like you is a minute they aren't spending on more content in the game that is actually useful for everyone.

I own it on the Xbox One. Open your eyes sonny.

In my experience here and on other non-gaming forums, the BIGGEST TROLLS are those that throw around the overused and frankly rather pathetic "crybaby", "whining" "fools" etc.

You sir are an A-Grade troll.

Feedback is what drives developers to improve. It gives US, the gamers, better games, more enjoyment, and better value for money.

If you have trouble grasping these basic concepts and arguing the actual point in question, all you have done is waste your own time and embarrass yourself.

Think for more than 2 seconds and have another try.

[chillgreg]

PrimeSonic původně napsal:

Travathian původně napsal:

You don't even own the game and yet you whine and cry like a little girl.

As others have said, there is no fool proof way of making a system that can't be cheated without using draconian DRM. Therefore, only fools are going to complain about this, while the rest take it for what it is, and just compare scores of people on our friends list. Every minute they spend trying to appease crybabies like you is a minute they aren't spending on more content in the game that is actually useful for everyone.

He has the game on Xbox One.

He's still whining.

Surprised you lowered yourself to petty insults Prime. Have a better day tomorrow friend :p

[Travathian]

chillgreg původně napsal:

Feedback is what drives developers to improve. It gives US, the gamers, better games, more enjoyment, and better value for money.

Feedback huh? How are any of your posts constructive feedback? Lets look at them:

chillgreg původně napsal:

It's easy to fix, Hidden Path are too lazy, same as DG1...

chillgreg původně napsal:

@Kaboom no offence but that's pretty piss-poor. Dodgy leaderboards and cheats were the bane of DG1 and should be a priority, not an afterthought

chillgreg původně napsal:

The true fact of the matter is that integrity is not a priority at HPE.

Classic, a troll calling someone else a troll. You have provided exactly nothing to this discussion other than vitriol, ignorance, and a piss-poor attitude. Oh, and how is it up on that soap box?

If you have trouble grasping these basic concepts and arguing the actual point in question, all you have done is waste your own time and embarrass yourself.

I actually addressed points on how what you and others are asking for is not feasible. You have utterly failed to counter those points. Based on your posts, you have lead me to believe you are ignorant of how software is developed, networking, DRM, client/server communication and a wealth of other topics, and thus aren't even capable of intelligently arguing this issue. Yet you some how have the nerve to claim you have a solution, but you just aren't able to explain it . . .

chillgreg původně napsal:

I (am pretty sure) I know how. Explaining it is another story.

lol, wut?

Think for more than 2 seconds and have another try.

Kettle, meet pot. Please go to the Xbox forums with the other console kiddies.

[Icicle]

What Travathian and PrimeSonic said.

Usually I'd expand on my remarks on page 1 and get a bit more technical, but the more toxic the thread gets, the less I want to. I find it difficult to even post this much in such a negative thread again.

The leaderbord-cheating is a difficult issue to fix - not easy, as you say, greg. And if you aren't even willing to argue that point (as you apparently have other ideas there, but just state it, without backing it up), your ad-hominems will only earn you either scorn or silence.

[Enemyvirus]

Its just a shame that a issue that plauged the first game has appeared on the new version, Its not a big issue for me to be honest but it was always nice to compare your score against the community. There was a sanitised version of the leaderboards in DG1 where somebody calculated the maximum posible score that could be gained and then removed scores that were obviously gained by neferious means.

As its been stated by various folks on the post, its very difficult to create a cheat free leaderboard, so we can hope that something may happen in the future.

I'm still enjoying the game and will hopefully put in the same number of hours I did with the original.

[Cool Dude]

This definitely makes me sad.. I'd like to think I'm pretty good at the game, but it's disappointing to see that I can't have a real comparrison to legitimate players. What a let down.
Oh well.. Probably won't play much after getting all the achieves with nothing else to aim for.

[Tman]

There are thousands and thousands of legitimate players. The cheaters only take up the top 0-50 or so spots, depending upon level & type (for some reason they seem to be more interested in the "elite" levels, as they seem to congregate more there.

Try to get top-100 in all the maps. I guarantee you that there are many legitimate players in top-100 of every map & type.

[Shark@tak]

Here's a thought , High scores from the Custom Maps ? you can play the map , share screenshots (prove it) with your friends who also got it from dg2freemaps.com :)

[Alcator]

18 years ago, a game company called ALTAR INTERACTIVE made a logical puzzle game, "Fish Fillets". And since the game was really really hard, they even made a competition: Whoever solves the entire game first wins a computer. To ensure no-one can cheat, they did not incorporate the solution into the game - instead, they made the "savegame" file to be a recording of all player moves (it was a 2D game where two fish with different abilities moved objects around, trying to achieve something). So, when a player claimed "I solved it", they would merely submit the "recording" of their solution, and the creators could replay them on their own system, which would evaluate if all moves were valid.

The first solver submitted a solution consisting of 79.000 steps; validation of the solution took 7 minutes (their validator software was fast-running the steps).
================
The reason why I'm listing it here is because this COULD work for DG-style game, and, unlike other methods of anti-cheat protection, it would not evolve into the above mentioned "arms-race": If anyone wanting to claim that they scored 1 Gazzillion points would have to submit a "high-score file" (which could be as uncomplicated as clicking a button "Submit score for verification", and then waiting for 500 KBs of data to be transmitted), then there would be nothing to hack or cheat: HPE would simply automatically validate the contents of the file (which could be a recording of mouse-clicks/tower-related actions). Since the game is deterministic, this should be possible.

The validator would simply validate any super-high-score files (let's say any score which is above 95% of the current top score), so that it doesn't have to validate every single high-score, just those which would make sense to hack.

And if, by any chance, some hacker manages to actually program a BOT that solves a level without human input, then KUDOS I SAY! :-)

[R2d2-fr]

I Agree with Alcator : it is the best solution.
Moreover, ban cheaters gamekey + disable steam account for a while :D

[Icicle]

Alcator's solution is the only one suggested sofar that can actually be made to work.

It is still more complicated to do for a game like DG (where exact input times matter) than for example a turn-based game, but it could be made to work.

Not sure it is worth the (big) effort. Still, kudos for coming up with a workable solution.

[Alcator]

r2d2tm původně napsal:

I Agree with Alcator : it is the best solution.
Moreover, ban cheaters gamekey + disable steam account for a while :D

While I understand cheaters are annoying, they do serve an important function in our overly-computerized society - they show us areas where our infrastructure is lacking in security. If we punish cheaters too harshly, we will drive them into secrecy, where they are more likely to wait and prepare to "strike". Trust me, you wouldn't want to be the Prime Minister having to explain to an enraged nation that after you've spent millions on the preparation of electronic election system, you can throw the results out the window, because there was a huge security hole and anyone could have rigged the elections by "disabling cookies" or some such. It is much better when in the world of gaming, the concepts of IT security can be tested and improved, before being deployed into serious real-life things.

[[dse]Circlestrafe]

Kaboom původně napsal:

Our first priority is to take care of bugs that are affecting people's ability to play. Once we have most of those resolved, we'll then work on creating tools that will help us manage the leaderboards. It might take some time, but it's on our list!

Why not just get rid of leaderboards? They are POINTLESS.

[Tower_Mazer]

Fake scores on Steam leaderboards always do and until they (Steam) can do something about it always will have this issue. We know it and developers know it. However it's up to the developer (HPE) that has to take care of it on their end. If we conclude most fake scores are from peeps just wanting a super easy run through the game then I'd conclude they probably wouldn't take the time calculate a way to get a competitive score on a leaderboard or even multiple ones. If HPE could plan a tagging/flagging system that would detect obvious fake scores and or cheater id's. This could simply be used to remove a name from leaderboard display to changing the color or adding a prefix to a user id or score. They did a great job on the game otherwise.

[Zitrax]

Icicle původně napsal:

Alcator's solution is the only one suggested sofar that can actually be made to work.

To be fair DifferentThanThis said close to the same thing.