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« on: June 03, 2015, 02:07:26 PM »
Hello everyone I just wanted to make some remarks about the current challenges that are going on, because I made them to have fun and watch everyone else enjoy themselves, but there are things that I feel are just taking away from the spirit of the competition and really make me more flustered than entertained.
There have been concerns over some of the times and/or deaths on the leaderboards, some to a point of scrutinizing in a very in-depth and large scale.
I understand everyone's concern, and I do hate when people cheat especially if it's something as trivial as a game contest with no real rewards other than personal triumph that you can show to others. I appreciate that there are concerns, but going through people's times at an exhaustive scale truly isn't healthy, especially when with these things it comes down to suspicions and we can't definitely say if someone is cheating or not. Believe me I've been an admin for No Heroes for 5 years now and sometimes throughout it I'd get into serious-mode and really get in-depth on anyone on the BOLO list (be on the lookout) to get something, and it wasn't good for my state of mind to focus on moderating so much. When everything revolves around something so negative it gets inside your head.
I appreciate the scrutiny and the look at individual times, and I keep the more questionable-to-definitive ones unapproved (there are actually 39 submissions I have sitting unapproved right now because they can't be verified or I'm in contact with people regarding them). I've been personally approving each and every one of the submissions, and keep in mind there are around 1300 submissions so far, so if I happen to miss something in one of them it's a very small percentage that I simply made a mistake on.
With all of this in mind I'll repeat what I've said to others:
I can honestly only go by the images I receive. I looked closely at some of the submissions people have issues on and there doesn't seem to be any evidence of photoshopping the time or the top bar anywhere, so I can't definitively say for certain on them. I you want to look at an example of someone with a legitimate and verified time that seems out of place look at Yoyo's time for Sunspike: it beats the hell out of everyone else's times and deaths and myself and 200 others watched him do it live.
As far as concerns over variable deaths or times that may not make too much sense even when comparing them to their other games they've played, just keep in mind this is a LONG challenge that people play over months. Sometimes we have on days sometimes we have off days. Hell I somehow beat Venus in 30 minutes including that final plane-to-corner 2nd try, but an easier game like Uhuhu II I went back to and got hung up on one of the jumps for 15 minutes alone making my death count low but my time high, or Showdown where I kept hitting a spike near the spawn point over and over again rapidly making my death count high but my time was lower in comparison.
Also personally I'm newer to fangames so my skill has gone up considerably since even when I first started playing the K2 challenge, and replaying games and getting a MUCH better time/death makes some of the worse ones seem shitty in comparison. For example I just went back to Uhuhu 1 because I didn't have a screenshot of the finished game with the times (only the stream screen cap), and the last save that took me 30+ minutes to beat during the challenge I just finished 3rd try in under a minute because now I have that much of a better understanding of the aligns and the frames of jump heights.
Also something else I've accidentally done that resulted in high times with lower deaths, I've walked away from games thinking I've paused them then came back to it and that made my time go up, and I was too lazy to go back and play through the whole game again just to get a better time or just didn't enjoy the game enough to want to go through it again.
These are just a few plausible scenarios that I myself have done. I'm not trying to defend someone that may be cheating, or vilifying those who aren't, but it's hard to say outright if someone's cheating without any evidence, and that's the hard part. Of course I don't want anyone cheating but it's a hard thing to catch.
I don't condone it, and I know it would feel like a drag on the challenge if so, but I can't verify legitimacy without hard proof which I know is something hard to obtain in this case, but suspicions especially on such a large scale like this just creates more agitation than good and that isn't good for anyone's health. This is a video game challenge with no real rewards other than personal triumph, so if you've accomplished something, great! You set your mind on it and you know you've risen to the challenge and can feel good about that. If others have to cheat to do that, just know they don't have that feeling for themselves and that's only hurting them, because if they did it then that's only cheating themselves in something that comes down to virtual points on a virtual leaderboard.
But those of you who have put your mind forth to kick ass in these challenges just focus on what you've accomplished so far, because in something like this that requires determination and patience for many, many months to complete, seeing your own progress is the real reward.
Game on.
-Mike
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