How some people can achieve such ridiculous scores?

[netizen]

If players are using an older version of TPA, for what ever reason, then the score cross posting bug could be in play for some of the questionable scores.

Alternatively, the cross posting bug could've migrated to another platform from mobile, or, as is being discussed, there are people doing the dirt and posting artificially created scores.

 

[Mark W**a]

I'm not even sure it's possible to have actually accumulated 73 billion on Victory in the time since the table was released.

BTW, Mark Wyda, while we're talking about hacking, that just happened to be your post number 1337.

Haha, glad I wasn't the only person who noticed

I just noticed Big Shot as well. Any comment on the legitimacy of that one?

 

[Deltaechoe]

Rob's scores are obviously not legit on big shot which pulls all his other scores into question

 

[invitro]

There's definitely still some bogus scores on the leaderboards. Scores made up of consecutive digits or that just happen to be slightly above a legitimate high score are good examples of semi-obvious hacks.

For my player-ranking posts, I eliminate scores from players who I feel certain have hacked scores. I have only six such players, covering when I started grabbing scores in February, to the last time I checked, a week ago:

my @HACKERS = ('Rob', 'FailSight', 'The Pinbug Arcade', 'NukaCola', 'Fritz Hutterer', '-SVB-');

And Farsight may have removed one or more of these from the leaderboards (I'm too lazy to check right now).

As always, if anyone notes hacking by anyone else, I'm very interested in finding out.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

I personally find it best not to call too much attention to these guys though. Attention is what they want, and discussions like these feeds them.

Such a disaster happened in Mario Kart Wii, for instance: When Nintendo made an announcement that they're doing a crackdown, the hackers started showing up en masse. As the days went on, it got worse and worse to where the hackers were outnumbering the normal players. Nintendo soon realized it was dealing with a hydra, and after it ended the crackdown, the hackers mostly vanished.

 

[ER777]

For my player-ranking posts, I eliminate scores from players who I feel certain have hacked scores. I have only six such players, covering when I started grabbing scores in February, to the last time I checked, a week ago:

my @HACKERS = ('Rob', 'FailSight', 'The Pinbug Arcade', 'NukaCola', 'Fritz Hutterer', '-SVB-');

And Farsight may have removed one or more of these from the leaderboards (I'm too lazy to check right now).

As always, if anyone notes hacking by anyone else, I'm very interested in finding out.

That's a good policy. I would recommend taking a look at Ender as well.

 

[Kratos3]

I wish I had those kinds of skills. In a good game I complete royal madness once.

+1

I generally go for trophies/specific goals. However, having only recently started adding friends, I do find myself trying to top those leaderboards. The overall leaderboards are just not attainable for me yet.

 

[Pinetwig]

For my player-ranking posts, I eliminate scores from players who I feel certain have hacked scores. I have only six such players, covering when I started grabbing scores in February, to the last time I checked, a week ago:

my @HACKERS = ('Rob', 'FailSight', 'The Pinbug Arcade', 'NukaCola', 'Fritz Hutterer', '-SVB-');

And Farsight may have removed one or more of these from the leaderboards (I'm too lazy to check right now).

As always, if anyone notes hacking by anyone else, I'm very interested in finding out.

www.vpforums.org (1st on ST:TNG with twice the points as 2nd?)
q-145e31b3-US-
hamjin
Lupo23
redflame2013
B.C (33M on HH)
Erkic (51M on Gorgar)
mousear (999.999.999 on FH)

 

[vikingerik]

The STTNG score is believable. The Borg Multiball jackpot makes for absurdly inflating scores. 1900 billion actually isn't that much more than 900 billion. You can get the jackpot to 2 billion and score 100B on a good Borg Multiball.

999M on Funhouse is also believable, since I've done it myself. Exactly 999,999,999 however is automatically illegit because the last digit isn't zero.

33M on Haunted House isn't outside the realm of possibility, thanks to a certain railroad-physics exploit, but is doubtful.

51M on Gorgar could be done on an older version with the safe eject hole kickout, but otherwise makes me very suspicious, I've never found a reliable way to grind points on a railroad on the current version.

 

[Pinetwig]

Haven't seen any other scores by B.C or Ercik which makes it even more suspicious. redflame2013 has a few even scores like 500.000 that is pretty impossible. vpforums by the nick alone makes me question the scores.

ZenFTW is another.

 

[jaredmorgs]

I wonder if they achieve such a high score by simply hacking into TPA and changing their numbers on the leaderboard? It could be a thought.

Sadly, this is the case on Android and iOS. There are apps you can use to do this (y'know, if you're a douche). I know FarSight does their best to keep obvious hacker scores out.

My opinion is that FarSight need to secure their servers better. Or use services like Google Play Games or iOS Game Center that require secure communication.

The problem is that these services are not cross-platform, which is a requirement that was revealed a while back.

 

[hawk]

I find it strange that people enjoy cheating to get a high score on the leader board.

It always was a problem in every multiplayer game I played. Crysis, Battlefield and more.

 

[netizen]

My opinion is that FarSight need to secure their servers better. Or use services like Google Play Games or iOS Game Center that require secure communication.

Yeah, cause iOS Game Centre is known for it's hack proofness, and ease of interaction with app devs in removing hacked/artificially created scores.

There is no 100% stop gap other than air gapping the system and locking it in an old disused file cabinet, inside of a lavatory in the basement protected by a "Beware of Jaguar" sign and the removal of both the stairs and the lights.

But that isn't very useful for the end user, is it.

The best system is one that purges on a regular basis and has a semblance of security but isn;t so entrancing that it is a target. Are digital pinball score really that important in the long run. FS could always set up monthly.quarterly/yearly archives in plain text of the top 100/1000/10000 whatever scores and post em.

Even the professional pinballl leagues haven't maintained their "boards" this long.

 

[brakel]

Sadly, this is the case on Android and iOS. There are apps you can use to do this (y'know, if you're a douche). I know FarSight does their best to keep obvious hacker scores out.

My opinion is that FarSight need to secure their servers better. Or use services like Google Play Games or iOS Game Center that require secure communication.

The problem is that these services are not cross-platform, which is a requirement that was revealed a while back.

I don't understand why this is a requirement. It seems like most players don't want cross platform leader boards.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

I find it strange that people enjoy cheating to get a high score on the leader board.

It always was a problem in every multiplayer game I played. Crysis, Battlefield and more.

What's so strange about it? The people who cheat to win are those who want to win at any cost. They don't see much worth in playing by the rules when they derive just as much satisfaction when they win through breaking the rules.

The people who transparently cheat to win are those who are desperate to prove themselves superior to someone else. It's very much like bullying in the schoolyard in that those bullies want to feel like they're worth something. Same with people who play online games and use hacks, glitches, or bugs to achieve victory, at least in cases where they're clearly not allowed.

 

[jaredmorgs]

Yeah, cause iOS Game Centre is known for it's hack proofness, and ease of interaction with app devs in removing hacked/artificially created scores.

There is no 100% stop gap other than air gapping the system and locking it in an old disused file cabinet, inside of a lavatory in the basement protected by a "Beware of Jaguar" sign and the removal of both the stairs and the lights.

But that isn't very useful for the end user, is it.

The best system is one that purges on a regular basis and has a semblance of security but isn;t so entrancing that it is a target. Are digital pinball score really that important in the long run. FS could always set up monthly.quarterly/yearly archives in plain text of the top 100/1000/10000 whatever scores and post em.

Even the professional pinballl leagues haven't maintained their "boards" this long.

I'll paraphrase through the sarc, as its getting little thick of late. ;-)

Game Center is not as secure and hack proof as you suggest, jaredmorgs ;-)

The only 100% way of preventing hackers from messing with scores is to firewall the heck out of the server, to the point where it's usefulness is nullified.

Purging leaderboards regularly would make hacking less attractive because evidence would be removed.

===============

For the record, I think you're onto something. Would take minimal effort for FarSight, and make the leaderboards behave a bit like the leaderboard on a stand-alone pinball (resetting every n games).

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Well, that comes down to whether or not it's worth the effort. It isn't cost-effective or effort-effective to have someone ther 24/7 to remove any suspicious scores, for one, and I'm pretty sure there'll be at least one immature jerk who will put up bogus records, then when he or she sees they're being taken down in minutes, will put them back up, only even more bogus, and will continue doing this all day.

People who cheat in games, as I mentioned, are doing it for the attention, whether that means attention from the victims of those they're cheating against or attention from the people who purge fake leaderboard entries.

 

[Mark W**a]

I'm first place in Black Rose!

No hacks were used

 

[PitchBlank]

On and off I've been wondering whether there's some sort of secret internal cheat mode that automatically rigs your first game to be awesome. The purpose being that users who try a new table pack before they buy get a much more hopeful impression of a new table and how nice it'll be to them.

When Junk Yard was released for iOS, I went for it right away and stopped to buy the table when it hit the score limit for free games, then I started playing again. I'd never played JY in real life so this was my first encounter with it. After a while I started wondering if it was some sort of easy game for kids or whatever, because the game went on for like an hour and a half and I got to the Bob/Outer Space level six times and I still had four extra balls to go. The damn balls just wouldn't drain no matter what I did, except when I flat out let go of the flippers and just let them drain. I didn't nudge once through the entire game. By the end I was getting low battery alerts on the iPad so I pretty much let the game die prematurely. By then I was at 328 million which gave me 1000 hall of fame points on Game Center.

All this would probably be perfectly normal for a good player who can keep going for hours, except I'm not that guy, I'm average at best. My aim leaves a lot to be desired, I have absolutely no hang of nudging, cradling multiple balls or any of the usual tricks. I'm lucky if I get to the wizard mode once; 6 times in a row is unheard of. My best HoF scores are 890 (98 billion) on AFM ('Rule the Universe' x2) and 866 (4.3 million) on Black Hole, but that's after hundreds if not thousands of attempts. On some games like Dr Dude or Genie I can't even get past 100 HoF points.

And indeed, every subsequent attempt on Junk Yard has been crap. Now it's suddenly behaving normally, which in my case means the outlanes are gobbling down those balls like starved hyenas. I managed 90 million once, but that's light years from the 328M I got on that first game. If that game wasn't secretly rigged then I don't know what the heck happened... except I was drunk. Never played TPA drunk before.

 

[Mark W**a]

On and off I've been wondering whether there's some sort of secret internal cheat mode that automatically rigs your first game to be awesome. The purpose being that users who try a new table pack before they buy get a much more hopeful impression of a new table and how nice it'll be to them.

When Junk Yard was released for iOS, I went for it right away and stopped to buy the table when it hit the score limit for free games, then I started playing again. I'd never played JY in real life so this was my first encounter with it. After a while I started wondering if it was some sort of easy game for kids or whatever, because the game went on for like an hour and a half and I got to the Bob/Outer Space level six times and I still had four extra balls to go. The damn balls just wouldn't drain no matter what I did, except when I flat out let go of the flippers and just let them drain. I didn't nudge once through the entire game. By the end I was getting low battery alerts on the iPad so I pretty much let the game die prematurely. By then I was at 328 million which gave me 1000 hall of fame points on Game Center.

All this would probably be perfectly normal for a good player who can keep going for hours, except I'm not that guy, I'm average at best. My aim leaves a lot to be desired, I have absolutely no hang of nudging, cradling multiple balls or any of the usual tricks. I'm lucky if I get to the wizard mode once; 6 times in a row is unheard of. My best HoF scores are 890 (98 billion) on AFM ('Rule the Universe' x2) and 866 (4.3 million) on Black Hole, but that's after hundreds if not thousands of attempts. On some games like Dr Dude or Genie I can't even get past 100 HoF points.

And indeed, every subsequent attempt on Junk Yard has been crap. Now it's suddenly behaving normally, which in my case means the outlanes are gobbling down those balls like starved hyenas. I managed 90 million once, but that's light years from the 328M I got on that first game. If that game wasn't secretly rigged then I don't know what the heck happened... except I was drunk. Never played TPA drunk before.

That's normal. It's because you weren't thinking about it, you were just playing and letting your mind take over.

It happens to me too, my first game on a new table is really good because I have no idea what I'm doing. Then once I know what to go for I won't do as well until I start mastering it.

These late 90s boards were designed to be easier on players. That said they are kinda tough for some reason for me! This, Champion Pub, and Who Dunnit really gobble balls out the outlanes for me, and I can't understand why as everyone says they are "easy". Yet I'm like 3rd place on "hard" tables like AFM and Fish Tales lol.