Ladder Enforcmenet -- Investigating some Irregularities

by **Drakona** » Sun Jul 12, 2015 9:58 pm

It has come to the attention of the ladder staff that something is going wrong in AOD_Hi's ladder matches. He takes half damage from fusion bolts; instead of the usual 30 from an uncharged shot, he takes 15.

See the following demos:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3fmlb7dg1yw11 ... h.dem?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rjcoq3xb545bh ... l.dem?dl=0

It isn't one shot; it's every time he's hit by fusion.

To state the completely obvious, that's cheating. Nor is there a bug I know of that could explain this; to the best of my understanding, this behavior isn't possible in stock D1.

I hasten to add that we think it's more likely that this results from some sort of misconfiguration than that it's an intentional hack. You'd have to be a special kind of idiot to post a demo with that sort of thing going on.

But that doesn't make the results fair.

I've notified AOD_Hi of the problem and asked him to send me a copy of his Descent directory, to see if we can determine what went wrong and when. In the mean time, he has been suspended from all but practice matches until we can get the situation sorted out, make sure he's playing on a clean copy of the game, and determine a fair resolution.

Sit tight. We'll keep you posted.

by **Sirius** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 12:59 am

Someone mix up their D1 and D2 HAMs?

(I don't think it'd be that easy, that said...)

by **AOD_Hi** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 7:50 am

Hello All,

I'd just like to make the following statement.

This morning I was emailed and informed about this investigation. I am doing everything I can to help support this and understand how and why such a thing could happen, and only to me. Integrity is something I consider extremely important, so to hear that I have been unintentionally cheating my opponents for presumably the last 12months or so was very disturbing. To say the least it has been a very distracted day. Now that I have come home and seen the replays (my own) and confirmed for myself, its no easier.

When it comes to gaming and sports I am a very competitive person, however much more important than that is honour. The few hours I have between after work and bed dont match up at all with the majority of players so I often play Warcraft 3 ladder matches. Unfortunately Blizzard no longer cares for regulating the ladder and cheaters and hackers are not too uncommon, there is nothing i detest more. I cant understand why anyone would both to cheat in a game that is played for fun.

It is very frustrating that I must clear my name to you all for an action I have no understanding how it could occur. I frequently record my games, and upload often without request - I dont think this is something id do if I had been intentionally hiding this. Let alone claim the fusion trophy!

I now apologise to all my opponents, as its impossible to deduct what the result would be in fair conditions. I already have the challenge of being a high latency player in a different time zone, now I will have undergo scrutiny of players questioning my legitimacy. Most aggravating of all is that ALL of these factors I have absolutely no control over. I dont want to be a lagger, I dont want to want to be not online when everyone else is. And I definitely didnt ask to take less fusion damage than everyone else. Due to my work hours, time difference and latency it is very difficult for me to amass games and experience unlike many other players. As such all my games, wins and losses were very important, hard fought memories. Now I myself cannot even know what my true level is. It is very difficult to stay motivated towards a game that you put in honest, good natured fighting spirit and get the most undesirable of results.

Either way I dont see any other choice than all my matches becoming invalid. Once my descent files are corrected, I will continue to look for games - replay past performances to find out the true score.

Sorry if this is not my most mature or positive of post, but honestly thats just how it is at the moment.

AOD_Hi (Braden)

by **AOD_Hi** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 8:19 am

Special mention to Morfod & Roncli. As they both dont seem to know there is four other primary weapons, I think this impacted them the most.

I hope we can both play again under corrected conditions.

by **roncli** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 9:38 am

On the contrary, that was a great post.

I think any one of us would be rather devastated to learn that the game is not performing the way it should. From me personally, I certainly do not question your integrity as a player, and it seems that the general consensus is that something got messed up with your installation somehow. I'm hoping that we can figure out exactly WHAT happened so that this kind of thing can be prevented for others.

I watched the replay from our last game, and saw just how badly I was playing, and that was half the reason I was so upset. The other half was the perception that you were dropping a lot of my packets, but after seeing the demo I understand what was happening.

For me, Fuzed is a fusion level. Other levels I might try to use it less because it seems less effective, but in there you can expect lots of fusion from me.

Once this is resolved, I hope I can get a rematch (and play a little better!). Also, if you're interested in doing any testing with what you have, I'll switch over to my hosting network and we can see exactly what's busted.

by **melvin** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 11:01 am

I'd like to send in my file to investigate why I'm taking double damage from fusion :/

by **Drakona** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 11:09 am

AOD_Hi has been quick to provide me with the files I needed to analyze the problem.

His DESCENT.PIG file has the fusion damage value halved. No other multiplayer weapons are affected. A couple of single player weapons have different values in his version of the game, though: the Level 7 boss does double damage, and the level 27 boss does something like 70% extra damage, depending on the difficulty. Additionally, the file is using the old shareware format, which was completely changed when the game was released.

That makes it technically very unlikely that we're looking at an intentional hack, by AOD_Hi or anyone else. Changing the file format over to the shareware version would involve an insane amount of work, and carefully importing all the assets for the full version into a shareware file wouldn't be particularly easier. Neither of those efforts make sense as a way to cover up a cheat. The only way such a file coming into existence seems likely to me is if Parallax did a full release at some point before they changed the file format . . . and apparently before they had finalized certain weapon damage values.

I had never heard of such a thing, especially one with the fusion value being wrong. I have no idea where it comes from. What's more, AOD_Hi says it was part of the definitive collection, so we're looking at something going wrong with some releases of that version of the game, like some files being the wrong version in house or something. Bizarre. Possibly valuable to a collector.

At any rate, it all looks to me like it's just some bizarre release version. Not an intentional hack.

Going forward, AOD_Hi -- If you get a new (and clean!) DESCENT.HOG and DESCENT.PIG, like from GOG or another player or something, you should be good to go. I don't see any other problems.

We do have to figure out the fairest thing to do with your past matches.

The suggestion I have from private dicsussion with the ladder staff is to at least flag any fusion-heavy games and any games you won that were close enough where this might have made the difference (like, three kills or so?) as practice, remove the associated stats & awards.

We can also flag them all as practice. That's what you asked for, and probably what I would want in those shoes . . . I worry a little about that being unfair to people with hard-won victories against you, but I can certainly appreciate the logic in treating the entire set as tainted, and as I look at the list of matches and try to figure out what might have been affected . . . I kind of think that approach makes the most sense.

Maybe we can let stand any matches that absolutely didn't involve fusion? Were there any of those?

We'll figure it out. This is a terrible situation, and you're handling it well. We'll get you back in the thick of things in no time.

by **Sirius** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 11:39 am

Is it possible somebody fiddled around with them for single-player purposes? I'm not sure how AOD_Hi would have wound up with that .PIG if so, but... yeah, you're right, it's probably more likely we have a major screw-up from Interplay/Parallax on one of the less-common release versions.

Still, easy enough to fix. Except for the bit that he has the Fusion trophy while taking half damage. Yikes

by **Jediluke** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 4:51 pm

AOD_Hi, you have the full support of the ladder staff and likely of the entire community. Your integrity is intact and we view this instance as an unfortunate set of events that must be dealt with in the fairest way possible.

I personally don't see why all matches would need to be marked as practice. I would assume only the fusion heavy levels or vs fusion heavy opponents where they lost.

by **Ryguy** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 4:54 pm

Does he have the original disc? I'd be interested to see what the values are in the .PIG on the original disc.