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On Why Scoring Sucks And Those Who Defend It Are Aspies

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Unread postby icycalm » 11 May 2013 15:06

http://www.dinofarmgames.com/how-scores ... -887240362

Bo Banducci wrote:"The crux of Herp Derp's argument is that, if an "experience" is rewarding in and of itself, there is no need for intrinsic motivators of any kind."

That is not what Herp is saying.

He is saying that there are more exciting goals to pursue than increasing a number at the bottom of your screen. For instance: which is funner, killing a boss because you know its going to make your score go up, or beating a boss because you want the magic, glowing sword he is wielding? The latter, obviously. There is ALWAYS something much, much cooler than a score increase that you could be rewarding your player with. All those intrinsic motivators you listed, like cutscenes and endings, are examples.

Herp's argument comes from Alex Kierkegaard's essay "Why Scoring Sucks and Those Who Defend it Are Aspies" (lol): http://imgur.com/a/q6BUr#0

To be fair, the score becomes meaningful when you compare it to someone else's. It's fun to beat someone else's score. But here we have the same problem: it's even FUNNER to have a shinier sword, or a bigger gun, etc etc than someone else. So even when you're looking at it competitively, there's just no reason to use score for your metric.

I'll admit that score does a good job of accounting for minute differences between performances. You can beat the other guy by 1 point because you did just slightly better. But it's still going to be more enjoyable for both players if you can represent that slightly better performance in a more interesting way. Fighting games do a good job of this because they allow for that razor-thin margin of victory, but you get to KO the other dude instead of just get a slightly higher number. And that's the point: fighting games could play exactly the same if each hit just incremented a score, but its COOLER to see people fighting and killing each other!

I agree with Keith that scoring in video games sucks, and he has found some ways to improve it. But scoring is inherently flawed because 1) it is boring compared to many other rewards and 2) (and for this point you should read the essay) it only has meaning OUTSIDE the game, when it is compared with other people's score. So by focusing on your score you are drawn out of the game world.

Icycalm, if you read this, I hope I have done you justice. Praise be your name.


Yep, that's a good summary of some of the points I am making. Now you need to combine it with an understanding of the fact that versus games are inherently inferior, but I haven't published that essay (and the relevant reviews) yet.
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Unread postby icycalm » 05 Dec 2013 14:57

https://twitter.com/shubn/status/405418734879129600

shubn wrote:The face of #speedrunning. #aspie #aspies #aspieism #autism pic.twitter.com/vyW0i71Amj

BaBWMP4CQAAjqEJ.jpg_large.jpeg


Sparkster wrote:@shubn It's like Scoring, but maybe even worse?


shubn wrote:@UraSparkster Probably slightly worse... but then plague is probably slightly worse than cholera.


Yeah, I agree there. At least scoring doesn't make the game look like a Benny Hill skit. I can watch the occasional superplay, but I still haven't managed to bear more than a few seconds of a speedrun.
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Unread postby zinger » 28 Jan 2014 22:40

http://www.icetfinallevel.com/episodes/2013/10/19/episode-1-bob-odenkirk-and-the-birthday-boys

Ice-T wrote:[...] That's when it gets nerdy to me. When you know, there's certain points in the game when it gets nerdy, like okay, you're playin Xbox and you're playin Call of Duty and you're worried about your kill/death ratio... You know "oh my, my kill/death ratio". [...] Yeah you know, I mean yo... It's bad enough tryin to get a girl if she knows you're a gamer, if you walk up to a girl and say "yo baby, huh, my kill/death ratio is..." [laughs] You might as well put on some Crocs. [...]
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Unread postby icycalm » 19 Aug 2014 15:41

http://www.learntocounter.com/forums/in ... pic=7327.0

Surth wrote:
468372.jpeg
468372.jpeg (43.53 KiB) Viewed 80033 times


What does it say about the mentality that Blizzard sees in its players that you can "optimally" play the game without sound or textures? ESPOOOOOOOORTS.
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Unread postby icycalm » 30 Dec 2014 04:58

'Smurfing' on the ladder... very un sporting!
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/smur ... ing.66861/

This thread is full of posts by me. A highlight:

I wrote:The funny thing -- which is at the same time more than a little tragic -- is that both your and cdrkf's actions are motivated by the same basic feeling: your obsession with your rank. You smurf to avoid dropping down in rank, and cdrkf resents your smurfing because it causes him to drop down in rank. But neither of you can see this, and empathize with one another. Empathy and psychology have no place on the ladder, and especially its highest part: all that matters is rank.


The entire thread is worth reading. (At least until the last current post, #58. It may well turn to shit later on.)
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Unread postby icycalm » 31 Dec 2014 22:42

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/smur ... st-1050167

I wrote:In all honesty, I don't think that the smurfers are doing this on purpose, to hurt anybody. First off, it is obvious that they are obsessed about rank far more than anyone else is, and that's precisely why they are smurfing -- in order to safeguard their rank. But more importantly, and more generally, I believe that the top "competitive" gamers, in all games, tend to include a disproportionate number of people who suffer from a neurodevelopmental disorder which is characterized by "impaired social interaction, verbal and non-verbal communication, and restricted and repetitive behavior". In short, it makes people obsessed with numbers and it makes them unable to empathize with the feelings of others. I am not going to name this disorder, because people will accuse me of ad hominem. I am not trying to insult anybody: this is simply what I have personally deduced after 20+ years in the videogame community. Many others agree with me, and one day there will even be studies about this. But at any rate it neatly explains the behavior of the smurfers, and also their incapacity to understand why the other players object to this behavior.

In view of the above, I believe it may be a good idea to be lenient towards them, since they simply can't help doing what they are doing. If their behavior is indeed a result of this disorder, banning smurfing is going to hurt them far more than it will help those who are hurt by smurfing.

And on that note, I will stop posting in this thread. I am even starting to regret some of my aggressive comments here, considering what the real problem at the bottom of all this might be.
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Unread postby icycalm » 02 Jan 2015 18:33

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/smur ... st-1050795

I wrote:Since we are off-topic already I'll say that, if I don't get banned (despite me asking to lol, which I've never done before!) this will be the first large online community that hasn't expelled me. Which ties neatly into my theory that the kind of people who like the most complex games are the best kinds of people. Still not good enough for my tastes! But the best nonetheless.
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Unread postby icycalm » 11 May 2015 23:04

Speedrunning in a nutshell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b56N17d4WnM

RWhiteGoose wrote:Everyone who speedruns is degenerate and getting world records is the only way they can feel good about themselves.


RWhiteGoose wrote:The only reason we speedrun is because we are too pathetic to accomplish anything else decent in life.


http://www.learntocounter.com/forums/in ... 3#msg81633

ray wrote:40 hours? Sleep deprivation really does bring out the honesty.


Also,

Nietzsche wrote:Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach honesty.
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Unread postby icycalm » 09 Jun 2015 22:08

I like the way he puts it in the bolded part. Lots of people copy my word choices and expressions, but very few are able to choose from them appropriately for each situation, never mind reshape them and remix them well, like this guy can.

https://archive.moe/v/thread/297579060/#297582229

Anonymous wrote:>>297581784
>are you complaining about playing an action game more than once?

Yes, is there a problem anon? I don't have the time to play a fucking videogame over and over like an autist. There are many other videogames I could be playing and things I could be doing.

Want me to learn your fucking shit? Then make the game hard enough so that in order to beat it I'd have to completely master the combat. Simple. Otherwise, fuck your stupid dripfeeding faggotry for aspie imbeciles.


https://archive.moe/v/thread/297579060/#297582480

Anonymous wrote:>>297582229

>Yes, is there a problem anon? I don't have the time to play a fucking videogame over and over like an autist.

Oh, hi Icycalm, how are you doing today?


https://archive.moe/v/thread/297579060/#297583848

Anonymous wrote:>>297583525
Playing the same game over and over again means you are hardcore at playing that game. But not when it comes to all vidya.

In fact by your definition, since you only play ONE game out of the myriad, you are a casual videogame player, but a hardcore DMC3 player.

Unfortunately for you, this isn't /dmc3g/, so you are a casual, faggot.
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Unread postby Helios » 12 Feb 2017 23:54

I think the reason speedrunning produces so much more sickness than any other scoring method is because the score is measured by how much it erases the original game. With this scoring system the less of the game that is actually played the better. The community finds all sorts of bugs, glitches, and tricks that skip or shorten the game. Not only does the community actively work to find these methods of erasing the game but they also measure a game's worth by its potential to be annihilated.

If you want to get on the scoreboard why would you play something like Contra where the difference in time between one no-death run and another is only a few seconds? It would be very difficult to defeat an old record since there is going to be very little room for improvement. Plus being just a few seconds faster doesn't look very impressive on the charts anyway.

If you play Ocarina of Time you could be hours ahead of other players if you discover a new glitch! Which is exactly what happened to that particular game, more and more glitches were found which kept the scoreboard competitive. With each glitch added more of Link's adventure got erased until he was just teleporting through walls to skip the whole thing. I'm told he doesn't even fight Gannon anymore, he just does a glitch that makes the credits roll. That counts as winning. I think Ocarina is the most popular game in speedrunning, by a very large margin too. In general it seems the more of the game that gets erased in the speedrun the more popular it is, not only for the player but for the spectators.

I can't find the video but I remember there was one with an arch-autist theorizing that in Paper Mario it might be possible to trick the game into going into the credits right at the title screen, so that he could 'beat' the game without even having to play it. So this would be the final conclusion of speedrunning: erasing the game entirety and leaving only the scoreboard.
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Unread postby icycalm » 13 Feb 2017 07:18

After some thought, I decided that the most effective way to handle this, in order to reach the maximum number of people, is to add a note at the end of the essay with your post. This will happen first in the online version of the essay that I plan to post on the frontpage soon, and then when the book gets a second edition, it will get the note too.

The note will basically read:

Some more thoughts on speedrunning from Insomnia member Helios, posted in the forum on Feb 12, 2017:

"I think the reason speedrunning produces so much more sickness than any other scoring method", etc. etc.


Is that okay with you?
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Unread postby Helios » 14 Feb 2017 00:46

Yes, it's ok. Could you please add my first and last name too? Being part of one of your books is a huge level of happiness!!
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Unread postby icycalm » 14 Feb 2017 21:18

Yeah, that's even better, though in that case I might omit the username. We'll see how it looks on the page when it goes online.
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Unread postby icycalm » 04 May 2017 14:26

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1368679

mindsale wrote:Naughty Dog, Lose the Speedrunning

When BluePoint (wonderfully) remastered the Uncharted trilogy, I found it curious that they had added a series of speedrunning accomplishments.

When Uncharted 4 launched with a silver speedrunning trophy as well, I began to worry that it's becoming part of Naughty Dog's design philosophy, at least toward achievements.

I really hope they don't include any more, specifically in The Last of Us Part II.

ND creates the most atmospheric, well-written, well-acted software available. To encourage players to skip through emptionally-charged scenes and context-sensitive environments robs a player of that immersion and world building, and lessens a title's impact every playthrough thereafter having already experienced content with nothing but a time trial on their mind.

This is the last company that should be trying to have players appreciate less of their content.

I appreciate that speedruns are a Meta-construct where something other than narrative tension motivates a player and inspires fear and anxiety, and I understand that speedrunning communities are flourishing with all the content streaming services that currently abound. Still I beg of you Naughty Dog, ditch the style altogether. Leave speedrunning emphasis to the sequel to The Order and duller, less-inspaired software. You're better than this.

Is this how you feel about speedrunning? Can you think of games that implemented speedrunning achievements well? Did you like the recent Naughty Dog speedrunning achievements? Should they back away from the mechanic, or will it persist into The Last of Us Part II having no trophies other than speedrunning-related ones?
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Unread postby icycalm » 18 May 2017 14:51

HAHAHAHAHA IKEDA HAS "NO INTEREST IN SCORING" TROLOLOL

Tsuneki Ikeda wrote:To be honest, I’m actually more of a survival player myself. That’s why we made the chaining more lenient compared with Donpachi, so that players like me with no interest in scoring could be able to enjoy it too.


http://shmuplations.com/dodonpachi2/

http://victorygamecenter.com/forum/view ... 1431#p1095
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Unread postby icycalm » 22 May 2017 05:31

tXLknaW.png
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Found this in a NeoGAF thread about TW101, so I assume he posted it in reference to that game. If anyone can provide some context, let me know. I can't imagine he is dissing scoring when his games are so heavily into it. Then again, given Ikeda's astonishing comment above, I guess anything's possible.
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Unread postby icycalm » 03 Jun 2017 01:28

From Discord:

I wrote:I just came up with an argument against calling games sports I've never heard before
There is of course the dictionary argument I have been touting forever, but the new one is more convicing
Basically, doctors often tell people to take up a sport, because it's good for their health
"So, like Counter-Strike?"
That's how you can see that sports and "eSports" are two entirely different things and thus should not share a word between them
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Unread postby icycalm » 02 Oct 2017 05:08

Everything you should NOT do when playing shooting games, or any type of games really:

GD: How to practice shooting games
https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.p ... 53#p560153

Their advice sounds exactly like what Recap means by "dissecting [the game] like a corpse" in this post:

http://postback.geedorah.com/foros/view ... 619#p23619

Recap wrote:As a final note, I'd love that you indeed fully banned the continue feature for once, it'll serve for no non-sense ranking purposes (practicing would mean playing the game for everybody, not dissecting it like a corpse)
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Unread postby Discord BOT » 14 Mar 2019 23:08

CULT|Saf
https://thehardtimes.net/harddrive/new- ... ew-meters/

The Hard Times wrote:New Edition of Fighting Game Adds 4 New Characters, 7 New Meters
A new entry in the BlazBlue fighting game series will introduce four new characters and a record-breaking seven new meters to the game.
Image


(satire)

CULT|icycalm
It does highlight the problem I have talked about somewhere of trying to cram more complexity into a genre than it can contain
I think I talked about this in the theory thread on my scoring essay
What happens in such cases is that the additional complexity over the genre's limit appears as aesthetic absurdity
Which of course is yet more proof that the graphics/"gameplay" dichotomy is infantile bullshit
Originally posted in the Insomnia Discord.

Insomnia Discord bot powered by proprietary next gen next level neural networked quantum learning self aware AI developed by Cult Games.
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Unread postby icycalm » 29 Nov 2019 06:46

I loved reading this thread just now: https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=65608

NTSC-J wrote:The Problem with Perikles

If you've been on these forums the past few years, you've no doubt seen the impressive handiwork of Perikles. The most prolific poster in this site's history, Perikles has laid waste to many a shmup, with over a hundred top-ranked scores in our high score forum. At the same time, he's contributed 1CC difficulty rankings, while also no doubt challenging the vocabulary of anyone who's read his posts. He's also helped out with the Hall of Records thread and has been very gracious and polite through the many correspondences I've had with him.

However, not too long ago, a short video started circulating, pointing out some rather dodgy dodges from some of his replays. Over the years, there have been rumblings about Perikles, and while I've always given every player here the benefit of the doubt and would prefer to follow EOJ's philosophy, Perikles's scores have such a presence here and the evidence in this case was enough that looking into the matter is justified and probably long overdue.

And while I'm sure most of you think that being the curator of the Hall of Records means a life of fast cars and faster women, it also means that sometimes I have to ask the hard questions. While I'm still not entirely convinced either way, I'd like to present the following points to consider in regard to the legitimacy of Perikles's scores that have been proposed to me by others as well as what I've discovered on my own.

1. Is it reasonable to clear so many games so quickly?
Probably the most noteworthy thing about Perikles's scores and clears is how quickly he achieves them. In some cases, it's not a tall order (scrubby Batsugun Special clear), but others are remarkably fast (three days for 1-ALL Hacha Mecha Fighter, six days for 1-ALL Tatsujin Ou, etc.). Some games he returns to, and it's hard to know exactly how long he spends on each game, but the clears come fast and they come often, even though many of these games require a lot of planning, which leads to the next point…

2. Why the strange dodges?
Players that are newer to these games tend to think that reflexes are the biggest factor to top-level play, when, as most seasoned players will probably agree, coming up with a strong route is paramount to success, and most twitch dodging is likely the result of a lack of planning, particularly so with older games (i.e., the kind Perikles spends the bulk of his time with). Perikles himself has noted that he's good at memorization and bad at execution, when the opposite seems to be apparent in many of his runs, which often demonstrate some very ballsy, yet unnecessary, maneuvers. Indeed, it's the kind of thing you'd expect of a player that hadn't spent a ton of time with a game, but that usually doesn't lead to fast clears or top scores, hundreds of times, week after week.

3. Are these replays legit?
The short clip posted above highlights some suspicious dodges. Of those, the most noteworthy is probably the Tatsujin Ou clip. It's true he had no bombs and had to do his best in that moment, but dodges that tight, at that speed, are extraordinarily difficult in a game with a hitbox of that size. You might pull that off in a run after hundreds of attempts, but probably not within your first few days with the game.

Others to watch:
Same! Same! Same!
Daioh
Raiden II
Daisenpu (particularly this boss)
Batsugun Special (particularly this dodge)

4. How do you fake a replay?
There are probably a few ways one could cheat using emulators, such as save state abuse. Another way would be playing the game at a slower speed (say, 50%), recording an INP, then replaying the INP at full speed and recording with OBS, etc. Fortunately, this can be verified by looking at the INP, and as luck would have it, Perikles has said that he does sometimes record the INP first and then record the footage later.
I messaged Perikles to ask for some of the INPs for the games mentioned above. He said he didn't have them. I asked for any INP, of the hundreds he's recorded over the years. He said they're all gone after getting a new computer. It's not a crime to delete INPs, but this struck me as especially odd given the care and fastidious nature of his posting, from his diction to his formatting to his generally thorough nature. Plus, INPs are so tiny, I don't know why you wouldn't keep your best ones around just as back-ups; I still have all of mine, some even older than Moglar.*
He then mentioned to me that he used to have a Gradius INP up on Restart Syndrome, but unfortunately, it was gone now because he posted a higher score with a video, which he said caused it to override the old one and its attached INP. I used the Wayback Machine to confirm, and yes, at one time there was an INP uploaded that is now gone. However, Restart Syndrome doesn't work like that—all scores are archived—simply click the date of a score and it'll bring you to a record of every score that user has posted for that game along with any pics, videos, or INPs. Curiously, when I checked his Gradius history, the old score and INP were gone. This means that he would have had to have manually deleted the score and INP.
*Note: Perikles first told me that he didn't have the INPs anymore because he's "been using a new computer for a while now, not having transferred any of the emulators," which sounds like the INPs are still on the old computer, then he said in a later message that he didn't keep the files, so I'm not sure if they were deleted or he just hasn't felt like moving them.

5. Why not just meet other local players and prove it?
According to some other players that live near Perikles, their requests to meet up with him and play a few credits have been politely declined.

I don't want to make it seem like this is an open-and-shut case and that Perikles should be run out of town, but all of these factors combined I think warrant consideration and should be shared with the other members here so that you can judge for yourselves. I'd also urge everyone to check out this video regarding past cases of cheating in DOOM and see how it reflects a number of the issues mentioned here, particularly regarding player movement.

Of course, 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.

Ultimately, we likely will never know if Perikles did in fact manipulate his scores in any way without a confession. If the general consensus here is that he did, I think it would be best to no longer accept his scores, but if he is the real deal like I hope he is, I would be grateful if he would change his mind and provide more solid proof of his scores so that players who doubted him can be reassured that he is as skilled as we were led to believe.


It's very rare to find old gaming sites that are still alive, and even rarer to find any passion left in them, so I was glad to see some fires still burning bright at Shmups. It reminds me of the good old days when new games were still coming out and that place was alive. Now all they have is the occasional shill post by some "indie" rubbish dev, and I guess falsificare threads like this. Good times.

Also, Perikles is a Greek name. If this guy's Greek, take it from me, he's cheating.
Last edited by icycalm on 29 Nov 2019 20:57, edited 1 time in total.
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Unread postby icycalm » 29 Nov 2019 14:57

Loved reading this response too: https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.p ... 3#p1389143

kitten wrote:i don't often venture out of my little home in off-topic where i mostly contribute to scrolling action commentary, but i kind of felt like dropping my two cents in on this one since i've ranted about people assembling fake plays in there quite a few times. never anyone on this forum, mind you, but people doing faked plays of action games are incredibly prolific on youtube and drive me up a fucking wall. there's one guy i'm fairly certain even faked his death. these people invoke a serious ire in me, and if i catch a whiff i usually feel like studying their play until i'm certain. it's a bad habit and something i try to avoid, but something i definitely dip into doing too often.

perikles' clear list, both shooter & non-shooter, is frankly overwhelming and definitely something that immediately warranted a suspicion in me. it was something i'd never seen before in both size and ability to immediately move onto something new. i dream of being able to play with that much gusto. i've topped a couple of his stg high scores (pce forgotten worlds and final blaster - there may be another i've forgotten, i gave up on caring about high scores pretty early on this forum and it was never a big interest to begin with, action games are more my forte) and feel like i could top more with practice, but i don't think i could ever match his pacing or enthusiasm. this awe at his sheer endurance is what fueled my skepticism of his legitimacy for a while.

however, each time i played something he'd played and compared scores, i never once found the score to be suspicious! even when it was something he was basically trailblazing on the forum (much of the pce shooter library, which i've gone fairly hard in on the last couple of years), he always stopped at a point that felt completely reasonable for someone of his history of dedication. never did it feel he took things so far that it would seem as if he was a player abusing tools to just generate a loftily high score. likewise, never did it feel as if the score was suspiciously low for someone with a high level of skill and consistent dedication, either. never once did his scores feel inauthentic in a single game i played to compare to his. to add to this, when he posts screenshots of his clears on action games, they tend to have a sensible number of stock remaining or a consistency in what he manages to nomiss versus what he gets a 1cc on. they make sense, they build a player profile. i've never discovered a cheater who would be able to so consistently hew this close to totally resembling a completely authentic player over so many games i'd cleared for myself and could compare to.

i feel given how few people have contributed scores to some of these pc engine games and how frequently he's the first to post his score that my testimony has to mean something, here. the dude's very clearly played those games to the point of knowing what a sensibly commendable high score is. that's a level of dedication it doesn't make sense to throw at something unless you're legitimate at your attempts to go at it. no matter what paranoid angle i came at things with (does he supplement with tool assist? does he just doggedly learn a game to imitate proper play as some kind of weird self-assurance he's accumulated enough experience and can move on? is he an advanced robot sent from an alien race to infiltrate our culture through... really polite and informed posts?), he's always very consistently shown through insightful commentary and breadth of knowledge to be someone who profoundly loves what he's playing in a way that i feel matches the sheer enthusiasm of the best posters on here.

sorry to again fall back more on action games than shooters, but i think most people with scrolling action enthusiasm (myself included - and i'm no slouch on my clear list) will vouch for BIL as the most stalwart and dedicated poster on the forum w/r/t to the genre. he's a skillful player with a wide breadth of knowledge who consistently gives incredibly transparent insight into his play behavior, history, and even weaknesses. when he plays something, he often gives daily updates on his growth, discoveries, and how much fun he's having with a given game. he's like the poster child for completely honest play on here and has helped a lot of people through many different games. i have never for a moment suspected BIL of cheating, and a huge reason why is because he always knows what he's talking about and has extremely relatable processes. though perikles does not post with the frequency or extreme transparency of BIL, when he offers commentary, he does so with the same kind of obvious knowledge and enthusiasm and helpfulness. he's also asked for strategies when playing something and updated clears or progress with sensible time frames.

i genuinely cannot imagine faking these kind of interactions or the degree of sheer labor it would take to falsify these time frames. if he were lying, the amount of work in the lying is so extreme and for such little benefit that even if we believe the off chance he's doing it, i don't understand why anyone would care outside of insecure paranoia. i had some, it's okay to admit to it - you see someone do that well and you shrivel a little on the inside and think they can't possibly be that much more dedicated - but even if perikles joins the thread and admits to cheating five minutes after making this post, it doesn't invalidate what an incredibly valuable member of this community he has been nor the nearly innumerable of times he's helped people with his knowledge. the benefit of the doubt to give him here is so fucking minuscule compared to his contributions that i think asking for a live performance or even physical meet-up is fucking disrespectful.

i feel like this thread is kind of insidious. people defending him are basically acting like character witnesses for a guy who has done nothing but be useful. when he's surpassed, he's often enthusiastic to see and learn from the other player and has never demonstrated a desire for admiration - what motivation could we possibly establish for someone so courteous to cheat? he's been a class act and positive force on the forum. this thread is comparable to some twitter callout bullshit and doesn't belong here, it's fucking gross.


Will look up this guy's posts now, he's intriguing. He must be a new guy because I never heard of him before this. Well, new by my standards. I've had an account there since 2005 (banned since 2007 or something).
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Unread postby icycalm » 30 Nov 2019 00:45

lol I see why they're upset: https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=38524

NTSC-J wrote:Top 10 Community Score Holders

(format: player name - number of Community records currently held)

Code: Select all
1. Perikles - 88
2. iconoclast - 19
3. saucykobold - 18
4. Gemant - 15
5. sikraiken - 14
6. NTSC-J - 12
7. Kollision - 11
8. Erppo - 10
   Maximo - 10
   Project A-ko - 10


Perikles no densetsu.
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Unread postby icycalm » 30 Nov 2019 09:40

lol fantastic reply: https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.p ... 0#p1389310

Bananamatic wrote:gaming attracts weird people (including you and me and most of this thread, let's not deny it) and the sad part is that weird people often can't tolerate different kinds of weird either and internet gives you the opportunity to fully satisfy your weirdo needs, sometimes at the cost of denying others theirs

1) Plasmo who is super serious about record keeping and rules
2) Perikles who is super serious about playing crappy old games but refuses to provide any more concrete proof of his skill for some reason
3) Iconoclast who generally agrees with 1) but would rather not argue because he'd rather watch his japanese idols
4) Jaimers who is incredibly serious about the technical details but doesn't really care about online leaderboards because they lose all personal value once you're #1 in everything
5) A bunch of people who think 1) is too serious or doesn't have enough proof (despite not understanding the issues in the replays in the first place) and that nothing should be done about 2), directly denying the intense interest of 1)
6) Some people who think that gaming should be a safe space, that this is character assassination and we shouldn't scare 2) off even at the cost of not having or ignoring rules which directly undermines 1)'s goal, this group also doesn't really have the credentials to tell what replay looks fake and what doesn't

none of the people here are bad, it's just that their weirdness is opposed to one another and no one who is actively participating wants to give an inch because they're too firm in their beliefs

the monhun board on gamefaqs is another good example, there's the speedrunner who despises the "plebs", you have the people who hate speedrunners for being "too serious", you have the people who think everyone should run dps skills only because it's for serious players and anything else is a crutch, then others argue that a dead hunter can't dps and everyone gets mad

any "nerd" community improve a ton if all the spergs realized that everyone is there to sperg out in their own way and were a little more tolerant of that


You might say, "but icy he proposes tolerance and you're intolerant". Yeah, I am intolerant when I lay down the theory of art for the sake of all mankind, but I couldn't give less of a fuck about what every little nerd does in the privacy of his own home. And when he tries to project his little hang-ups as rules for all mankind, yeah, someone has to step in and shut him down. At that point he's just asking for it.

Also, I'd like to correct something in his post. It's not that "gaming attracts weird people", as he says. It's SPECIALIST COMMUNITIES that attract weird people. The people who play COD, or some Total Recall-type experience in the future, are normal people. But yeah, the kind of person who ONLY plays 30-year-old games is certifiably weird as fuck (indeed, as I'll be explaining soon, probably suffers from some traumatic event in his past), and they have a forum-full of them over there. And remember, they BANNED ME 12 fucking years ago, BECAUSE I AM NORMAL. So not only do they systematically attract weirdoes, but they actively exclude normal people!

More here:

On Nerd Psychology and The Ultimate Goal of Videogames
https://www.patreon.com/posts/19482928

"Connoisseurs, or people who believe that they are, give a deliberate and decisive view on spectacles, group together and divide themselves into opposed parties, each of which, with concerns neither for the public nor for justice, admires a certain poem or a certain piece of music, and scorns every other one. They are equally harmful because of how heated they are in defense of their prejudices as well as in their opposition to the opposed faction and their cabal; they discourage poets and musicians with a thousand contradictions, and slow the progress of sciences and arts by taking away opportunities for fruitful emulation and by narrowing the number of excellent masters for each person, according to his genre and genius, to model very good works on."

—Jean de La Bruyère
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Unread postby icycalm » 01 Dec 2019 13:55

Plot thickens: https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.p ... 8#p1389488

Herr Schatten wrote:While I can understand the concerns of the score players about the legitimacy of submissions, I feel they completely miss the perspective of a player who doesn't primarily play for score, possibly because it's too far removed from their own approach. I feel that this perspective is underrepresented in this thread so far, so maybe I can share some insight in that. There's been a lot of talk based on the assumption that Perikles actively aims for high scores. I'm not convinced that's the case.

I don't know Perikles personally, but from his posts he comes across as someone who enjoys quickly clearing games and be done with them. This is pretty much how I approch most shmups as well, except that it takes Perikles days to clear one while it takes me months. If the clear is his main goal, a good score is simply a by-product of achieving the goal, not a goal in itself.

I occasionally post scores in the relevant high score threads if I feel they are up to scratch, but it's an afterthought and I usually don't pursue them any further. Thus, I have zero interest in optimizing my routes after I got the clear, and someone seeing me play would probably call them unothodox. In fact, it's likely that I don't touch a game again anytime soon after I feel I'm done with it, especially so if the clear included several luck-based dodges I'm unlikely to reproduce. For anyone who enjoys dissecting a game to squeeze out the last bit of score this may sound completely unreasonable, but at that point I'd rather move on to something else than practice further to make my success more consistent.

Now, there are only two games where I have competitive scores at all: Trizeal and Radirgy. As chance would have it, one of my scores is actually 'verified'. I submitted my Trizeal highscore from the DC version via the generated code to Triangle Service for their competition and placed within the top ten, as the highest non-japanese player. However, I surpassed my own score on the PS2 version a while later, and I have zero proof that this one's legitimate. Worse yet, I have lost the VM unit with my DC score on it, so I couldn't even reproduce the proof that did exist at one point. For my Radirgy score I never had a 'proof' in any meaningful sense ever.

Following this debate, I fired up both games for the first time in years. I was appaled by how badly I did. I struggled to keep up my ABS in Radirgy even in stage 1, and I could't even make it through the rotating turrets section in Trizeal. The muscle memory that carried me through these sections on autopilot is simply gone. If someone approached me today, asking me to verify those scores by making a live demonstration, I couldn't do it. You'd see me struggling and decide that I had to be some sort of impostor or cheater. It would take me at least a couple of weeks to regain the knowledge of the games to play them at a level that may or may not convince the accuser that I'm the real deal. Frankly, I wouldn't care to do it. I would politely decline and say: "I don't care enough, remove my scores if you think you must." Of course that would make me all the more suspicious...

I can't say if Perikles is in the same boat, but I got the impression he probably is, so neither is his reaction to NTSC-J's request as weird as it may seem, nor is asking for proof via live demonstration of a game he probably hasn't touched in years as reasonable as it might appear at first glance.
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