The cheating problem in Saliens

[βird]

As it stands, there are a ton of people using scripts to cheat in the game. A lot of them coming from the sub-reddit /r/saliens, and their steam group that was recently made.
And it shows because a group that was made like 3 days ago is on the top ranked groups. They are using scripts to play the game, and it isn't fair to regular people.
As it stands, they are winning all of the Steam games, maximizing their levels, and getting easy badges, items, and steam cards they can sell on the market for money.
My question is why is Valve allowing people to cheat? This is even worse than the 2015 monster clickr game, because in this you're not just winning a ranked badge. On top of leveling up a badge for free, you're winning cards and items you can sell, and having a way higher chance of winning free games while the honest players recieve nothing.
This is incredibly unfair and if your going to have events where you give away free stuff to cheaters, you may as well not have an event at all.

[Freddy]

i feel i dont have a chance against the script people.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Messaggio originale di Il Neromiele:

Messaggio originale di Quint the Slacking Angel:

What "big picture" is there to comprehend, other than noting that some people want games, some people want badge levels, some people want to have a good time, and it's in Valve's interest to try to please everyone at least to some extent?


And they certainly learned from how much of a mess that experience was.

Also that was 6.5 years ago. 2011 winter sale.

you said it yourself, valve's interest is to try to please everyone, even scripters.
but you aren't a scripter and you lack this point of view.

Gee, you aren't me, so I wonder why how you are able to have my point of view, then.

In case you can't read, I've already mentioned that some people like to optimize things.

[Niele]

Messaggio originale di Quint the Slacking Angel:

Messaggio originale di Il Neromiele:

you said it yourself, valve's interest is to try to please everyone, even scripters.
but you aren't a scripter and you lack this point of view.

Gee, you aren't me, so I wonder why how you are able to have my point of view, then.

In case you can't read, I've already mentioned that some people like to optimize things.

i had your point of view form reading the discussion. you still lack the vision of the whole with your answer.
you failed the moment you said you reached lvl 8 with no script. ask yourself why.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Messaggio originale di Il Neromiele:

Messaggio originale di Quint the Slacking Angel:

Gee, you aren't me, so I wonder why how you are able to have my point of view, then.

In case you can't read, I've already mentioned that some people like to optimize things.

i had your point of view form reading the discussion. you still lack the vision of the whole with your answer.
you failed the moment you said you reached lvl 8 with no script. ask yourself why.

Since you think I'm so dumb, why don't you spell your point out explicitly, rather than making vague claims about how I "lack the vision of the whole".

Or maybe you don't actually have a point, since you've had multiple chances to explain it already, but you can't do anything but make vague claims against me.

[Anonymate]

Playing optimally results in an average of around 62k/hour (could be higher, if there were always hard zones available, but there aren't). I got this number after 24 hours of scripting, and of course it might slightly vary for different days. Playing optimally 24 hours / day, for 13 days (duration of the event) results in 19.3M exp. Highest level currently is 15 (7.2M exp) and nobody got to rank 5 yet. Of course, when (and if) boss zones appear we will be able to get more exp. Still, I doubt this game was made to be completed without the use of scripts. All the evidences point against it.

Scripters (aka "cheaters") don't care whether other people script or not, but love the fact the game was made to accommodate scripters. As for non-scripters, most of them either don't care or don't care enough to complain. Then there are a few (very few) that think this is a big enough of a problem to come to the discussions complain.

So, all I see is a minority that didn't like the way Valve made the event trying to force the majority to see it the same way and make them accept the game must be played the way they want it to be played.

... And nobody is going to change anybody's minds.

[Niele]

Messaggio originale di Quint the Slacking Angel:

Messaggio originale di Il Neromiele:

i had your point of view form reading the discussion. you still lack the vision of the whole with your answer.
you failed the moment you said you reached lvl 8 with no script. ask yourself why.

Since you think I'm so dumb, why don't you spell your point out explicitly, rather than making vague claims about how I "lack the vision of the whole".

Or maybe you don't actually have a point, since you've had multiple chances to explain it already, but you can't do anything but make vague claims against me.

sorry to hear you think i think you are dumb. i just think you didn't focus enough to comprehend the whole point about this saliens game. never said you are dumb.
here is a hint of my point.
i enjoyed the game till lvl 6. then it became boring. then i tried an autoclicker on trigger and i enjoyed the game a little more having a laser beam instead of a crappy turret. then it became boring. then i tried various script i found on the page of the various groups. some requires tampermonkey, some some simply edit on the console of the browser, and then there is the script of the steam database group that is a lot interesting, because it tells you a lot of statistics, like expected time to reach the next level, the amount of player on every planet, the best planet to farm, ecc. this script carried me to lvl 9 while i was doing something else.
i just enjoyed all the aspect of the game from the beginning to the work of the community that doesn't complain . you? you just saw only 1 part of the game.
and this is the first step to see the big picture. take the second yourself young man/woman helicopter.

no hard feelings

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Messaggio originale di Il Neromiele:

Messaggio originale di Quint the Slacking Angel:

Since you think I'm so dumb, why don't you spell your point out explicitly, rather than making vague claims about how I "lack the vision of the whole".

Or maybe you don't actually have a point, since you've had multiple chances to explain it already, but you can't do anything but make vague claims against me.

sorry to hear you think i think you are dumb. i just think you didn't focus enough to comprehend the whole point about this saliens game. never said you are dumb.
here is a hint of my point.
i enjoyed the game till lvl 6. then it became boring. then i tried an autoclicker on trigger and i enjoyed the game a little more having a laser beam instead of a crappy turret. then it became boring. then i tried various script i found on the page of the various groups. some requires tampermonkey, some some simply edit on the console of the browser, and then there is the script of the steam database group that is a lot interesting, because it tells you a lot of statistics, like expected time to reach the next level, the amount of player on every planet, the best planet to farm, ecc. this script carried me to lvl 9 while i was doing something else.
i just enjoyed all the aspect of the game from the beginning to the work of the community that doesn't complain . you? you just saw only 1 part of the game.
and this is the first step to see the big picture. take the second yourself young man/woman helicopter.

no hard feelings :golden:

I asked you to explain your "vision of the whole", and instead you just told me your story. Good for you, you enjoyed the game. I guess your "vision of the whole", then, is that you enjoyed the game.

And so what exactly does that mean for the conversation? What even is your point? You enjoyed the game so other people shouldn't critique it?

[OLDMAN🎅]

Messaggio originale di Quint the Slacking Angel:

Messaggio originale di Sgt William DK:

It just seems impossible to rank up to level 8 without a script.
I just don't want to do anything unless i'm 100% sure it is legal.

Salien level 8? I've gotten there already and I haven't used a script.

Just takes a lot of clicking and time.

hard to do win you get errors

[dont add me]

Messaggio originale di Quint the Slacking Angel:

Salien level 8? I've gotten there already and I haven't used a script.

Yeah, it's not too hard. It just takes time. The morning after the first day, I woke up with pain in my hand from all the clicking. So I went with a different strategy. I realized that you still get points as long as your base is active, and that killing the monsters only helps keep the base running by preventing them from damaging it and forcing it to go offline. So I just joined a tile and did nothing. You still earn points. It's just not as much as you'd get if you kill the monsters.

You get around 1000 points by doing absolutely nothing on the hard tiles. Sometimes it is a little less, sometimes a little more. This way you can still earn points without cheating and without risking a repetetive strain injury in your hand. You can also rely completely on your special abilities and just aim them with the mouse, without clicking. You get a little more points that way.

I'm now level 8, but it took a long time. I'm currently around 50,000 points away from level 9. That's supposed to be the level to unlock the rank 3 badge for 100 xp. After that, I'm going to stop playing except to get mysterious cards. I'll probably also play against the boss monster when it gets added, just to see what it's like. Beyond that, I just don't think it's worth playing. It's barely worth going to the trouble for the level 3 badge as it is.

[Niele]

Messaggio originale di Quint the Slacking Angel:

I asked you to explain your "vision of the whole", and instead you just told me your story.

give a man a fish... i bet you know the rest.

Messaggio originale di Quint the Slacking Angel:

Good for you, you enjoyed the game. I guess your "vision of the whole", then, is that you enjoyed the game.

wrong. btw enjoying is misleading, it's not that masterpiece this flash game. i enjoyed "the big picture" around this game after trying as many aspects as i could.

Messaggio originale di Quint the Slacking Angel:

And so what exactly does that mean for the conversation? What even is your point? You enjoyed the game so other people shouldn't critique it?

nope. jut your random not thought assumption
my point? you lack the vision of the game as a whole despite you understand the context.

sorry i'm not your average internet dude that tries to make you eat a spoon filled with my convictions. take the spoon yourself if you want to understand the vision as a whole.
btw i hope you are not trying to get to lvl 9 by mouse only. it's not healty, physically and mentally

[76561198140939387]

I don't really see what the problem is. I was tired of having my time wasted needing to click through a bunch of games that I didn't really care about, and then needing to convince friends and family to do the same. Instead, I just need to get their token, and I can get all of us running without any time wasted.
Look, if you want to play this game normally, that's fine, but you're, at best, losing a few minutes or hours worth of time between idling on different planets, which is what raises your odds (in theory) of being selected to win a game, but you still have the chance regardless.
It only takes 3 games on any difficulty to earn cards for trading, so that part is easily obtainable, in fact, low difficulty can be beaten easily with only the laser, and medium with only the laser and level 1 powerup. Hard mode seems to be getting harder, to the point that even with all the powerups and rapid autofiring, you still have to play carefully or risk getting swarmed.
Because of this ease of medium and low difficulties as well as the incredibly pitiful payout, no one REALLY wants to grind out the low levels, which means that without the scripters, there would probably be only 1 planet conquered thus far, meaning NO ONE would have a decent chance to actually get any games.
The only thing scripters can achieve that a regular player can't is getting an incredibly high level, which... doesn't really have any particular benefits beyond maybe some Profile XP, which will do what? Let them display an extra game bar in their profile? Big whoop. As far as bragging rights go, anyone who sees that trophy is eventually going to realize it's earned through a script, which means you're more likely to get "game cred" for a lower level badge in that field, or whatever semblance of cred you might get from manually clicking on 3 different aliens for days on end.
So "cheaters" aren't taking any tangible semblance of opportunity from you, and if anything, they are creating greater opportunities for you to benefit from.
What ARE you complaining about? That Steam didn't cater to your specific playstyle? No matter what they do, anything they come up with will be a huge grind. Anything based on skill would be guaranteed to have 6 different asians who have sacrificed their life to playing flash games wind up winning everything, and if it was grinding with no ability to automate, it would just encourage people to waste their lives for a .0001% chance at winning a $10 game they might not even play. Why would you want that?

Messaggio originale di Toast:

You get around 1000 points by doing absolutely nothing on the hard tiles. Sometimes it is a little less, sometimes a little more. This way you can still earn points without cheating and without risking a repetetive strain injury in your hand. You can also rely completely on your special abilities and just aim them with the mouse, without clicking. You get a little more points that way.

Wow, even before I was using scripts, i used macros to autofire left click and 1 as long as left click was held. Forget about the strain to the body, why should I burn out the clicker on a $50+ gaming mouse over a miniscule chance to win a free game and some steam XP?

[MA☝Omgwtfbbqstfu™]

wear out your mouse, waste your time playing a pointless clicker. Its not cheating, its basic common sense, because otherwise the game would be socially irresponsible, which is far worse.
Just think of each as a riddle, a social and technical programming contest. So far no ones figured out the worm hole theory of this years challenge, if there is one at all.

[OLDMAN🎅]

Cheating in online games ,

Cheating in online games is defined as the action of pretending to comply with the rules of the game, while secretly subverting them to gain an unfair advantage over an opponent.[1] Depending on the game, different activities constitute cheating and it is either a matter of game policy or consensus opinion as to whether a particular activity is considered to be cheating.

Cheating reportedly exists in most multiplayer online games, but it is difficult to measure.[2] The Internet and darknets can provide players with the methodology necessary to cheat in online games, sometimes in return for a price.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Messaggio originale di Il Neromiele:

give a man a fish... i bet you know the rest.

nope. jut your random not thought assumption
my point? you lack the vision of the game as a whole despite you understand the context.

sorry i'm not your average internet dude that tries to make you eat a spoon filled with my convictions. take the spoon yourself if you want to understand the vision as a whole.

FYI, you may think you sound real smart, but by writing just a bunch of faux-philosophical snipes and condescending commentary, you just sound pretentious and unmeaningful.

Messaggio originale di Il Neromiele:

btw i hope you are not trying to get to lvl 9 by mouse only. it's not healty, physically and mentally :ss2heart:

Oh, no, you don't have to worry for my sake. I found a better way to do that.

It doesn't even involves scripts either!

[Start_Running]

Messaggio originale di OLD*MAN:

Cheating in online games ,

Cheating in online games is defined as the action of pretending to comply with the rules of the game, while secretly subverting them to gain an unfair advantage over an opponent.[1] Depending on the game, different activities constitute cheating and it is either a matter of game policy or consensus opinion as to whether a particular activity is considered to be cheating.

Cheating reportedly exists in most multiplayer online games, but it is difficult to measure.[2] The Internet and darknets can provide players with the methodology necessary to cheat in online games, sometimes in return for a price.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Spo if it provides no actual tangible advantage....can it be called cheating?