[LIKELY BAD NEWS] ...some new exploit we aren't aware of? (Metro Park A+)

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

I was doing some A+ Speed Laps on Metro Park to get the hang of doing A+ races (the only thing I can do reliably this time around because I lost my multiplayer progress again, and because nobody will join me in my Crossplay Zone Battle lobbies) and also to get the hang of the AG Systems Speed, and I saw the most peculiar thing on the global scoreboards; two recently-added laptimes of 11.10 seconds and ~17 seconds (I'll doublecheck the usernames later), both using the AG Systems Prototype. I quickly switched ships and started exploring the track for any possible glitch shortcut, but found none (I even turned around and tried racing the otherway, which once again reminded me of how awesome it would have been to be able to race the tracks backwards.)

Do we have a new exploit to defend our well-earned scores against, or are those two guys just really d*** good? Or worse, have they found a way to hack the game? (We may need to report their PSN IDs to Sony if that turns out to be the case.)

[Mietepiet]

I don't know for 2048, since I've never played it. But in HD/Fury there are many glitch shortcuts known. The reason is mainly because the creators never had in mind that they needed to make respawning points, since it "was" never likely a ship would reach at those points.

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

I think we have a problem nonetheless, because there is at least one glitch shortcut that I can't find and that could endanger any chance of beating the global records fairly, and we've nobody to remove the scores or fix the exploits.

[Mietepiet]

That's a pity, and that's why everbody is using Connavar's site for HD/Fury rankings.

[vincoof]

I know it’s a negative point of view, but I tend not to give any credit to the global scoreboards. Many of the games out there are just screwed up by cheaters or hackers (or both). In the end I compare my records with my friends’ records, which suits me very well since it’s the main reason why I’ve put my scores online anyway.

[Mitchemous]

Amaroq, you should add me on psn, I can never find anyone to zone battle with!

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

That was a little off-topic, but yeah I have the same problem.

[Darkdrium777]

Well I am very disappointed to read this, after all the barrels of **** I overturned on the forums because I kept finding such things in HD Fury. Oh well, too late once again.

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

Okay, so here are the times, now that I double checked:
1. CASever - 11.10 Seconds - AG-Systems Prototype
2. Airrionsmith - 17.10 Seconds - AG Systems Prototype

Versus

3. piano_practice - 33.22 Seconds - AG Systems Speed
189. Vatz-the-Fox (me) - 35.91 Seconds - FEISAR Prototype

As you can see, there is a very big difference here. It is quite worrying.

[vincoof]

It’s worrying as long as you expect:
- the scoreboards to have no cheaters nor 'h4x0rz',
- the game to be designed for competition.
…which are both points I don’t take for granted.

Well, I’d give credit to the second point if SL hadn’t died (read as: if Sony hadn’t killed the studio) because they could fix some unwanted issues like heavy shortcuts.

[Darkdrium777]

they could fix some unwanted issues like heavy shortcuts.They said they couldn't do it for HD Fury, so I really doubt they would've for 2048. Most likely they'd just manually delete times.

[vincoof]

Yeah but how do they tag a record as invalid so that it has to be deleted? With the example from this thread, all "legit" scores seem to go from 33.22 to 35.91, so obviously they would delete the 11.10 and 17.10 scores. But what makes you think that 33.22 is legit anyway? I mean, maybe the best legit one is e.g. 33.40 but someone "cheated" to go slightly below so that people think it’s acceptable, but it isn’t more acceptable than the 11.10 score imho.

On the other hand, I remember those days at the beginning of WOZ (or even the W3PA) where people could come up with a score that seemed impossible (Jabberjaw was very good at this). Every now and then people claimed it was a fake score, but it wasn’t. The player was just so freaking good that he blew up all known scores to date. Eventually a few months/years later people would come up with the same scores or even better ones, proving that it *was* possible.

In the end, it’s very though to claim what’s a legit score and what’s not. Not to mention the different point of views of what’s a legit score (like people accepting best lap times based on having luck with too much Turbo weapons, etc.).

[Cipher]

just to defend piano_practice here guys, 33.22 is a legit time, he's a great friend of mine and has many awesome records in 2048, he's not someone who'd go about cheating.
He shared his nearchallenge speed lap with me to prove it and i can confirm there's no funky business going on, not that i really doubed that...
the other 2 times are obviously exploits ;)

Cipher

[Darkdrium777]

vincoof: you're right, you couldn't do it if people made sure to make the time look more legit, which is why preventing the issue in the first place was so key. The way someone that good would prove their time is legit is to record themselves achieving a similar time. A cheater couldn't do it (most likely). Still, it's not 100%, which is why this news personally disappoints me very much. Especially so when you think all that is needed to prevent it is a simple cube polygon marking the inaccessible area.

[vincoof]

I agree but you’re missing a point. How do you judge that something is “legit” in the first place? I don’t know, maybe the developers wanted people to experiment weird shortcuts. I for one don’t like them but pride aside my point of view isn’t better than anyone else’s.

I’ve seen recently an in-depth explanation of F-Zero GX World Records (which shares a lot of similarities with WO, especially shortcuts from flying) and while I couldn’t stop saying "flying like this doesn’t make any sense", I had to agree that people wanted to compete with these exploits, and they don’t deserve less honor for doing this. The only problem IMHO is that we have the same record table for all kinds of gameplay. We should have at least 3: regular, shortcuts, and TAS.

[JFthebestJan]

...We should have at least 3: regular, shortcuts, and TAS.

there isn't any emulator available for ps3 on pc, so there's no need for a TAS leaderboard. ;)

[vincoof]

Well, WO2048 doesn’t run on a PS3 but I don’t know of a PSVita emulator either (at least not yet) so you’ve got a point. ;)
I was talking about scoreboards in general. What’s more, I’m pretty sure we’ll have a Vita emulator one day or another.

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

Slightly-Off-Topic: The idea of a Vita emulator means we could theoretically have Vita romhacking. And with that, we might theoretically be able to find a way to host /our own/ multiplayer lobbies like in HD/Fury. Just a theoretical idea in the event somebody does make a Vita emulator, and I do not under any circumstances condone the hacking of games for personal gain.

---

But all of that aside, I guess we should just try finding more glitch-shortcuts on Metro Park?

[vincoof]

But all of that aside, I guess we should just try finding more glitch-shortcuts on Metro Park?
I’d say it’s up to you to decide whether you’re interested in looking for these shortcuts or not. If you let scoreboards drive your own decision, well, so be it. Maybe I’m “too old for this sh!t” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q37xJtuQ24w) but I kinda turned the page of racing against scoreboards that look impossible to me.