Hi Guys,

I'm back from a 3 month holiday and wanted to open a discussion about my challenge "the best player in the world (V1)"

It is currently the most popular map ever in the history of Tropico and I believe it is time that we released a version 2.

I'd like to hear any intelligent comments and recommendations to improve the balance.

Also, from the developers or any mod experts, we need to know how to disable cheating. Clearly the ability to enter cheat codes in this online challenge has ruined it. Please if it is possible to disable cheats let me know.

Look forward to your comments!

JugglerX

Using cheats is not a problem for challenge scores since they don't get submitted when you activate them. The real "problem" are user created mods that we have no control over.

(04-01-2012 10:27 AM)Timo Wrote:  Using cheats is not a problem for challenge scores since they don't get submitted when you activate them. The real "problem" are user created mods that we have no control over.

And even if these could be resolved (at least in terms of balance/whatever), it can't block 3rd-party tools being used to abuse memory allocations.

The question is do we really want to close the game to an extend where both modding and cheating is impossible or do we understand that people want to have that option and can look past some people using mods to boost their score (which are usually easily identifiable as being non-legit)?

Hi Timo,

Quote:Using cheats is not a problem for challenge scores since they don't get submitted when you activate them. The real "problem" are user created mods that we have no control over.

If you use cheats in an online challenge, you can still submit your highscore. This is obvious since most of the top scores in the "best player in the world challenge" are like 21 million. It's pretty difficult to achieve a legitimate score of over 400,000. So clearly people are cheating and the scores are being saved...

Since the point of my challenge is to establish the best player in the world based on highscore, the ability to cheat ruins it. What other purpose does a "highscore" system hold other then to establish who is the winner?

Quote:The question is do we really want to close the game to an extend where both modding and cheating is impossible or do we understand that people want to have that option and can look past some people using mods to boost their score (which are usually easily identifiable as being non-legit)?

I understand what your saying. If people enjoy using cheat codes to play then that's fine. Normally this applies to single player only.

I think it would be reasonable to have the option of disabling cheating in online challenges. By default, cheating could be left on. But if for some reason you decided your challenge should be free of cheating it could be toggled off in the settings.

Also i disagree that it is always easy to spot cheating. I'd say it's pretty hard to break 400,000 in my challenge without cheating but i can't say it's impossible. What if someone got 430,000 highscore and became the #1 player? People might debate weather they cheated or not. What if someone cheated only once in their game? They just gave themselves a little $100,000 boost at the start?

At highly competitive levels, the possibility of cheating must be completely removed.

I'm not saying Tropico is highly competitive. I'm not forcing people to be competitive. But i think it's obvious from the number of plays this challenge has received that Tropico players long for a competitive, definitive hall of fame.

Ever since I played Tropico 1, I've longed for a real hall of fame. The reason we play multiplayer games is to compete. So let's make a cheat free way to compete!

Cheers

Rob

I have asked for this to be looked into in the past aswell juggler.

What we want is a hall of fame for competitive gamers not using cheats/mods.
I havn`t played a challenge since I found out about the cheaters, it killed it for me.

RE - Scores (which are usually easily identifiable as being non-legit)?

how do you tell ?? am I missing something? .

Maybe they should show cheaters scores in red or something.
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If you can find a way to detect cheaters, systematically, I'm sure they'd at least look into it.

I, for one, can't name a single game that doesn't have cheaters. Defense Grid: The Awakening took quite a while for people to unravel, but now someone has worked it out, the world knows, and it has cheaters.

Anyway, as for the map, I honestly haven't played it. In part to do with my having access to the scoring algorithm, and angling for an awesome score on a map designed specifically for it, with that knowledge, would be pretty boring.

EDIT: Added the below...

(04-01-2012 12:10 PM)JugglerX Wrote:  Hi Timo,

Quote:Using cheats is not a problem for challenge scores since they don't get submitted when you activate them. The real "problem" are user created mods that we have no control over.

If you use cheats in an online challenge, you can still submit your highscore. This is obvious since most of the top scores in the "best player in the world challenge" are like 21 million. It's pretty difficult to achieve a legitimate score of over 400,000. So clearly people are cheating and the scores are being saved...

Since the point of my challenge is to establish the best player in the world based on highscore, the ability to cheat ruins it. What other purpose does a "highscore" system hold other then to establish who is the winner?

Timo is pointing out that using built-in cheats triggers a mechanism which blocks score uploads. Third party tools (none of which I'll name here) can happily hook into Tropico 3 and Tropico 4 alike. I'm grateful they can, because similar technologies were needed to do early testing -- though I could find other ways to do this.

(04-01-2012 11:38 AM)Timo Wrote:  The question is do we really want to close the game to an extend where both modding and cheating is impossible or do we understand that people want to have that option and can look past some people using mods to boost their score (which are usually easily identifiable as being non-legit)?

Unless Kalypso ship a console, I'm not sure a full lockdown is possible without a signed Windows Driver protecting their games at a seriously low level.

Hi Swixel,

Based on the highscores for this challenge it seems like 100's of people are using 3rd party tools to cheat then.

I thought these people were using in game cheat codes (because cheat codes are more accessible and the cheating is clearly so wide spread)

I understand it's difficult to stop 3rd party programs.

Rob

(04-01-2012 07:12 PM)Swixel Wrote:  I, for one, can't name a single game that doesn't have cheaters. Defense Grid: The Awakening took quite a while for people to unravel, but now someone has worked it out, the world knows, and it has cheaters.

Defense Grid: The Awakening is a GREAT game. I love that game. Too bad they don't have a Map Editor or Grinder mode on ALL the maps.

In regards to cheating - if there's a way to remove cheaters from the scoring I am all for it. If it's something that takes too long to do or takes time away from developing an expansion, then I'm neutral on it. It would just be nice to look at scores and know that the truly deserving people are in the #1, #2, etc. positions. It can be frustrating to be the #1 person only to be on the third page of scoring because the first two are filled with names and scores of people who cheated.

Trees to open up logging as a viable uneducated work area, and perhaps a touch of creativity in the landscape? Perhaps some beaches and rocks somewhere?

For the "Best Player in the World" challenge. what would make it better I think is to move the starting buildings to the centre of the map allowing the player then to more easily define how he want the island to grow..

There is too much oil.... perhaps go to 2-3 large deposits on each side of the map

Same with mineral deposits, spread around a bit more in clusters.

I dont see the problem with no trees as I usually early on place a horticultural station set to reforestation then leave it to propogate the trees which it does quite quickly

Rocks etc only would serve to restrict the options open to the player, which In my mind defeats the object of this particular challenge