(An attempt at) The top 40 TPA players from leaderboard scores

[Itchy]

@ Relaxation & Erik & Tann

Thank you for your comments.

Next observations as soon as possible, in particular on the CSV file.

 

[Locksley]

I'm going to withhold passing judgment on that, since I have no experience personally with analog nudging. As invitro says, you can do a lot more small nudges with analog control.<snip>

I can nudge constantly with an analog stick - the frame moves allot but the actual nudge is very small.

I feel the nudging system needs to be revised but it is hard to come up with an solution for our 'abuse' of the nudging. If it where a real table it would stand on wheels because I am sliding the table all over the place in TPA...

 

[relaxation]

On HH, even the slightiest nudges (two or three in a row) lead to an inevitable tilt. And a strong nudge juste after a tiny nudge lead also to a tilt.

However, constant nudging is possible (but still extremely hard) on some tables (PS3), as it requires to be very careful with the "table shaking sound" and the controller rumble feature (the controller rumbles slightly stronger with a strong nudge).

Seems like it(PS3), I don't believe that would have been a tilt warning on the PC platform.. any xbox players care to chime in?

 

[Mark Miwurdz]

Seems like it(PS3), I don't believe that would have been a tilt warning on the PC platform.. any xbox players care to chime in?

I find the Xbox One and PS4 to be the same nudging wise. You might have seen my vids. You see how I make use of light and heavy nudging.

Nudging to that extent would have me tilting loads. There's something iffy about this.

 

[vikingerik]

Whether or not the nudging is legit, he IS skillful, at any rate. The Haunted House video in particular is better than I manage myself in keeping the ball on the lower playfield. He knows how to use TPA's railroads, he knows the table rules, and he knows how to use the nudging, in whatever quantity. He looks to be at least a top 10 player on his own merits even aside from any other questions. The only open question is whether it's all skill or something shady that makes the difference between top-10 and top-3 with me and Tarek.

 

[Tarek Oberdieck]

Whether or not the nudging is legit, he IS skillful, at any rate. The Haunted House video in particular is better than I manage myself in keeping the ball on the lower playfield. He knows how to use TPA's railroads, he knows the table rules, and he knows how to use the nudging, in whatever quantity. He looks to be at least a top 10 player on his own merits even aside from any other questions. The only open question is whether it's all skill or something shady that makes the difference between top-10 and top-3 with me and Tarek.

I agree, the HH video looks skillfull and realistic for me, the nudging seems very dangerous but can be possible.

I've no doubt about most of the new scores. Many tables are very easy for good players and I see no problem to get them with a lot of time.

Five scores are real challenges: Flight 2000 29M, Dracula 112B, Class of 1812 396M, Monster Bash 99B, Goin Nuts 41M (Flight 2000, Goin Nuts and Dracula already beaten).

For Class of 1812 I would say ok, 100M more than the next player can be done with a good game.

Really impressive (or unbelievable?) is the Monster Bash 99B score. I've played this one only a few times and stay far away from your 41B together with all other top ten players. It's a very hard table (at least in TPA). Dizzers gamplay during the last minutes looks good but not so good that I am convinced in this case.

Can you answer me two ROM specific questions? Does the Monsters of Rock Bonus max out at 10M as seen in the video? Is there a rollover after (I guess) 255 Mosh Pits? Dizzer has about 180 shown in the video.

 

[Voof]

I have to believe he is legit as any good game I've done(typically I stop once I get bored or just play sloppy after an hour or two), the score is about where he gets. All it takes is to knuckle down and play a very long session at that point to get a top 10. He has the dedication to do so it appears.

 

[vikingerik]

Really impressive (or unbelievable?) is the Monster Bash 99B score. I've played this one only a few times and stay far away from your 41B together with all other top ten players. It's a very hard table (at least in TPA). Dizzers gamplay during the last minutes looks good but not so good that I am convinced in this case.

I'm not sure I believe my own 41B. I've never come close to that again either.

I was thinking the same thing, his gameplay on MB looked good but not 99B good. He wasn't carefully shooting, he was flailing during the multiballs and losing balls that a good player shouldn't. But then again, we can't judge the whole game based on those few minutes. I do the same thing at the end of long games, lose focus and start playing carelessly, when my score has already reached #1 so it doesn't matter.

Can you answer me two ROM specific questions? Does the Monsters of Rock Bonus max out at 10M as seen in the video? Is there a rollover after (I guess) 255 Mosh Pits? Dizzer has about 180 shown in the video.

1) Yes. It starts at 4M and increases by 1M per Monsters of Rock, so it reaches the 10M max on your 7th trip to the wizard mode. 2) I don't know, I never got near 255 Mosh Pits.

 

[Tarek Oberdieck]

1) Yes. It starts at 4M and increases by 1M per Monsters of Rock, so it reaches the 10M max on your 7th trip to the wizard mode.

The video display a 2,3B monsters of rock champion after the game. He got 1,5B instrument bonus in the last shown round. This must be a game with at least 30 monsters of rock modes. Hard to imagine...

 

[vikingerik]

The MOR champion value includes the instrument bonus for starting MOR. That's 5M * the number of instruments you've collected throughout the entire game, with no cap. I think I had it over 255 instruments myself. Eventually this exceeds the value you get during MOR itself.

I had 18 MOR in the 41B game, so yes, I could imagine 30 by someone who can nudge away from the outlanes better than me. I am sure Dizzer played the entire game to reach 99B, that wasn't a cheat. The only question is whether the nudging to do it was legitimate.

 

[Mark Miwurdz]

What platform is he using?

 

[Pinballwiz45b]

Truth be told, if the nudging is found to be too exploitative (like on Zen but different), they are going to have to crank down the nudging as well as make the tilt bob more sensitive.

 

[Mark Miwurdz]

Truth be told, if the nudging is found to be too exploitative (like on Zen but different), they are going to have to crank down the nudging as well as make the tilt bob more sensitive.

How can you exploit nudging on Zen?

 

[relaxation]

How can you exploit nudging on Zen?

The, "exploit", unintended behavoir was a double strength nudge when up and sideways were combined, aka 'diagonal nudge', was only corrected after someone showcased it, it had been talked about but words didn't express the results.. it was in the game since launch and discussed on the net for months, in some non-english speaking areas for years.

Same could probably be said about how unrealistic the nudges are in TPA (only on the pc platform? I dont have personal experience with other platforms)

Zen reset** the leaderboards in response to "the exploit" but I don't know if Farsight would, they didn't have to* for physics 3.0 since it was an additive update
*Some tables don't have the same shots available now though

**they're archived so you can still access them but can't do much with em.

 

[Voof]

That would explain what happened to my zen pinball scores! Thanks for that info relaxtion, was curious if they had done that.

 

[relaxation]

The other thing is Zen doesn't implement a tilt-bob system so those who can keep under a certain analog stick distance wont ever get a tilt warning.. but their tilt warnings are only temporary so nothing really exploitive there. However their diagonal math is wack, 50% up&sideways will get you a warning.

But if you can do the same on TPA, you'll also likely never get a tilt warning. I was using a 90% strength nudge input there.

 

[invitro]

FS should give you officially the permission to handle the bogus/hacked scores on the TPA website.

Thanks for the kind words but I don't think I'm up to doing this officially as I'm doing a pretty shoddy job.

To answer your original question, here are the scores that I am currently blocking that are currently on the web leaderboards, that I'm "individually" blocking, meaning I'm not blocking these because I think they're a hacker:

               |                        |                | RANK ON    | #TIMES IN
TABLE          | USERNAME               |          SCORE | 2015-11-14 | FS CSV & NOTES
BigShot        | q-145e31b3-US-en       |     63,038,530 | #2         | 1 (16,273,030 on Gorgar)
BigShot        | hamjin                 |     60,715,750 | #3         | 0 [BigShot is only ranked score]
BigShot        | pete28cy               |      1,045,120 | #9         | 1 (1,000,085 on CentPark)
BlackKnight    | Brazzle                |     56,689,420 | #13        | 3 (267,501,330 on BigShot, 215,340 on CentPark, 511,892,980 on BK2K)
CentralPark    | RixarOOga              |         37,669 | #2         | 1 (24,085,590 on ElDor)
DrDude         | pete28cy               |    200,360,130 | #6         | (see above)
Fnhouse        | mousear                |    999,999,999 | #26        | 0 [FH is only ranked score]
Genie          | pete28cy               |      9,968,535 | #4         | (see above)
GoinNuts       | pete28cy               |      6,616,050 | #97        | (see above)
Gorgar         | Josef                  |      9,702,690 | #5         | 1 (12,264,435,650 on CC) [next-highest rank is #961 on PotO a year ago]
SafeCracker    | Ginjuraga              |     17,187,810 | #2         | 1 (823,533,690 on JY)

I just decided to unblock two such scores:

Cyclone        | Beamerboy              |    112,281,060 | #1         | 0
HauntedHouse   | mscscsc                |     17,649,330 | #2         | 0

There are many highly-ranked scores that are on the web leaderboard that I'm blocking because I think the person who made them is a hacker. I won't try to list those now, since my list of hackers is in my previous post, although I may need to add links to the Farsight player high-score page later, to make it easier to inspect their scores.

There are a few (?) scores that have been deleted from the web leaderboards by Farsight, but aren't in their CSV file. Maybe these were deleted before the CSV file started happening, although three Safe Cracker scores (that were mentioned a few months back in this thread) fall into this category. I haven't listed those in this post.

My next hacker/glitch task is to go through scores that have been made or are mentioned in this thread in the last couple of months, and to get back to looking at scores with improbable numeric values. I think I'm about to get caught up on this topic .

 

[Tarek Oberdieck]

For the Beamerboy Cyclone score I personally would say no when I take a look at his other scores. Some are not bad but these tables are much easier than Cyclone. Same goes for the mscscsc Haunted House. But don't ask me. It's always reading tea leaves...

 

[krazysteve1958]

If I'm reading Itchy's post from 11/10 correctly, Dizzer accomplished these scores in one day. Even assuming the smallest amount of sleep in a 24 hour period, taking into consideration the amount of time just to get a general "feel" for any given table and the amount of time required simply to score these totals, I don't think it's mathematically possible to achieve this. A person would have to have these breakthrough games the very first time they played it, and that's simply inconceivable six times in a row. Additionally, regardless of anyone's love or enthusiasm for any given table, everyone's level of skill tapers off at some point after endless playing. I don't know what the deal is, but I for one don't recognize any of these scores. Some of the scores are seemingly credible, however, it looks like he got a little carried away on Monster Bash. Sorry, but Dizzer is the Barry Bonds of pinball, big asterisk*.

Oct 8 Centaur #22 (41M) previous PB 11M #225
Oct 8 Goin Nuts (3) #4 (20,7M) previous PB 19M Oct 1
Oct 8 Gorgar #21 (3,3M) previous PB 1,5M #202
Oct 8 Harley D. (3) #13 (1,49B) previous PB 1,44B Oct 6
Oct 8 High Speed (2) #29 (47M) previous PB 25M #99
Oct 8 Teed Off (2) #4 (19M) previous PB 8,4M #39

If he wants my endorsement, post a full video of a measly 50 billion on Monster Bash. This should be child's play for so great a talent.

 

[Tann]

To answer your original question, here are the scores that I am currently blocking that are currently on the web leaderboards, that I'm "individually" blocking, meaning I'm not blocking these because I think they're a hacker:

               |                        |                | RANK ON    | #TIMES IN
TABLE          | USERNAME               |          SCORE | 2015-11-14 | FS CSV & NOTES
BigShot        | q-145e31b3-US-en       |     63,038,530 | #2         | 1 (16,273,030 on Gorgar)
BigShot        | hamjin                 |     60,715,750 | #3         | 0 [BigShot is only ranked score]
BigShot        | pete28cy               |      1,045,120 | #9         | 1 (1,000,085 on CentPark)
BlackKnight    | Brazzle                |     56,689,420 | #13        | 3 (267,501,330 on BigShot, 215,340 on CentPark, 511,892,980 on BK2K)
CentralPark    | RixarOOga              |         37,669 | #2         | 1 (24,085,590 on ElDor)
DrDude         | pete28cy               |    200,360,130 | #6         | (see above)
Fnhouse        | mousear                |    999,999,999 | #26        | 0 [FH is only ranked score]
Genie          | pete28cy               |      9,968,535 | #4         | (see above)
GoinNuts       | pete28cy               |      6,616,050 | #97        | (see above)
Gorgar         | Josef                  |      9,702,690 | #5         | 1 (12,264,435,650 on CC) [next-highest rank is #961 on PotO a year ago]
SafeCracker    | Ginjuraga              |     17,187,810 | #2         | 1 (823,533,690 on JY)

I just decided to unblock two such scores:

Cyclone        | Beamerboy              |    112,281,060 | #1         | 0
HauntedHouse   | mscscsc                |     17,649,330 | #2         | 0

Thanks for the list.

From your previous post, I built a list including the obvious glitched scores and usual hackers, that FS hasn't deleted yet:

#TPA_MasterData_November-15-2015 
#Hacked/Bogus scores in Top 30 not deleted yet by FS

Theatre Of Magic
----------------------------------
1,CODERGB,82995004340,psn,"Theatre Of Magic",2015-8-6
----------------------------------

Black Hole
----------------------------------
2,Lupo23,194051470,ios,"Black Hole",2015-5-21
4,Rob,132478230,android,"Black Hole",2015-5-21
6,Ender,90003520,android,"Black Hole",2015-5-21
21,"The Pinbug Arcade",21734010,ios,"Black Hole",2015-6-9
----------------------------------

Ripley's Believe It Or Not
----------------------------------
13,----,10003832740,android,"Ripleys Believe It Or Not",2012-2-24
----------------------------------

Funhouse
----------------------------------
26,mousear,999999999,android,FunHouse,2015-5-21
----------------------------------

Gorgar
----------------------------------
1,Lupo23,34797820,ios,Gorgar,2015-6-23
3,Rob,14251050,android,Gorgar,2015-6-23
5,Josef,9702690,osx,Gorgar,2015-8-19
8,"Gerhold Reif",5475310,osx,Gorgar,2015-8-14
9,ThePinbugArcade,4986220,ios,Gorgar,2015-6-23
----------------------------------

Black Knight
----------------------------------
2,Lupo23,235654140,ios,"Black Knight",2015-6-9
3,Rob,235027720,android,"Black Knight",2015-6-9
4,"The Pinbug Arcade",156931200,ios,"Black Knight",2015-6-9
13,Brazzle,56689420,osx,"Black Knight",2015-8-23
----------------------------------

Big Shot
----------------------------------
1,Lupo23,87703451,ios,"Big Shot",2015-6-9
2,q-145e31b3-US-en,63038530,psn,"Big Shot",2015-6-9
3,hamjin,60715750,android,"Big Shot",2015-6-9
4,Rob,15251410,android,"Big Shot",2015-6-9
9,pete28cy,1045120,ios,"Big Shot",2015-8-13
----------------------------------

Twilight Zone
----------------------------------
1,nuclearkevin,287104538320,psn,"Twilight Zone",2015-8-24
7,"The Pinbug Arcade",118656362850,ios,"Twilight Zone",2015-6-8
----------------------------------

Genie
----------------------------------
2,Rob,17639850,android,Genie,2015-5-20
4,pete28cy,9968535,ios,Genie,2015-8-14
20,"The Pinbug Arcade",4762060,ios,Genie,2015-6-2
----------------------------------

Dr. Dude
----------------------------------
6,pete28cy,200360130,ios,"Dr. Dude",2015-8-15
----------------------------------

Firepower
----------------------------------
6,"The Pinbug Arcade",5151350,ios,Firepower,2015-5-20
8,ThePinbugArcade,5091220,ios,Firepower,2015-5-20
10,Ender,4972130,android,Firepower,2015-5-20
----------------------------------

Space Shuttle
----------------------------------
19,"The Pinbug Arcade",15556070,ios,"Space Shuttle",2015-4-3
----------------------------------

Central Park
----------------------------------
1,Lupo23,211080,ios,"Central Park",2014-2-10
2,RixarOOga,37669,pc,"Central Park",2015-6-8
6,"The Pinbug Arcade",12412,ios,"Central Park",2015-6-6
30,ThePinbugArcade,8204,ios,"Central Park",2015-6-6
----------------------------------

Tee'd Off
----------------------------------
1,HUFMUF,91139885780,psn,"Teed Off",2014-1-25
----------------------------------

Victory
----------------------------------
9,Lupo23,391360000,ios,Victory,2015-5-8
----------------------------------

The only difference is that I didn't include Ginjuraga, as he has a couple of legit scores (#38 and #51 on TAF and RS), so maybe...