Mortal Kombat 3 moderators may be abusing their power
5 years ago
United States

@Liv is absolutely right. A determined cheater using homebrew emulation is capable of producing fakes that are impossible to disprove.

Canada

[quote="PresJPolk"]If you can't find how it was cheated then it's not blatantly fake is it?[/quote]

See my above example: [quote="ShikenNuggets"]if a brand new user with no reputation and no runs submits a new world record in a very optimized/contested game that barely meets the proof standards, you just know that run isn't real[/quote]

To put that in more real-world terms, lets say some random person comes out of nowhere and submits a 4:53 on Super Mario Bros Any%. This person has never had any interaction with the SMB community (or the speedrunning community at large), has no means of communication, has no other speedruns in any game, their run video has no microphone or facecam and is the absolute lowest quality that's able to be accepted onto those leaderboards.

Is that time humanly possible? Perhaps (I don't actually know, for the sake of this example we'll say it is). Did that person actually achieve that run? Hell no. Even if the moderators can't definitively identify what cheating method was used, they will almost certainly reject that run on reasonable suspicion, and they'd be well within their rights to do so.

Edited by the author 5 years ago

@ShikenNuggets If a person comes outta nowhere and submits a wr run, you have to accept it until the proof is provided. yeah, it probably IS cheated, but since you can't prove that it's illegitimate, accept it

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Bulgaria

"Have to accept it"? Why? According to who? I'm sure as hell not doing that. It's not gonna get instantly rejected, but It isn't getting verified either. This ain't a democracy, community will discuss the situation and the runner will have to make their case.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
ShikenNuggets and MASH like this

either accept it, or discuss with community, yes. but you can't outright reject it

United States

Yeeeeah... No. The whole innocent until proven guilty stance is great for courts of law, but not here. You can and should be able to reject or delay the approval of a suspect run pending a skill check or more detailed analysis, especially when the runner has no prior history with the game.

Otherwise it's unfair to the other runners, and the community.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
ShikenNuggets likes this
United States

If you can't prove it's cheated, publish it, and let the community find the proof.

Putting everything on the mods is how you get a Todd Rogers situation.

United States

Assuming new runners are cheaters discourages them from joining the community. The amount of time someone has spent around a community speedrunning a specific game doesn't make them less likely to cheat. It's not unfair to treat each run equally no matter the source, in fact it's the most fair thing to do.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Bulgaria

Nobody is talking about assuming new runners are cheaters, we are talking about runs that have suspicious gameplay. Only then do traits like emulation, behavior and being new to the community become contributing factors to how much we can or cannot trust someone outright. At the end of the day there is a buildup of trust and respect, so if we say everything is treated equally then we are just lying. That doesn't mean that people should get free passes or less scrutiny for being known.

[quote=PresJPolk] If you can't prove it's cheated, publish it, and let the community find the proof. Putting everything on the mods is how you get a Todd Rogers situation. [/quote]

I don't know why we are we talking as if the verifier is locked in a room without contact to the outside world, communication with the community is obviously extremely important and not jsut the mod team. You contradict yourself, the Dragster situation was exactly "letting the community figure it out", cause that is what happened eventually. Most games have small communities and will never get the amount of public attention for something to just happen out of nowhere from the "community", that is why an active investigation needs to occur. I don't find it acceptable for a run like that to just be slapped on the board with a verified sign on it, that even sounds ridiculous.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Krayzar, MASH and 2 others like this
United States

Maybe I misread the thread, but the initial discussion was about assuming runs were too good with the only evidence being the runner was new to the community. That sounds an awful lot like assuming new runners are cheaters.

Bulgaria

No, it doesn't. This is a very particular scenario that is atypical of usual new runners.

Canada

[quote=ZenicReverie]assuming runs were too good with the only evidence being the runner was new to the community[/quote]

@ZenicReverie If you're referring to one of my examples, there were a lot more red flags than just the runner being new (but even then, new people tend to not get world records in highly contested games as their first submitted run). If you're referring to my response to the OP that prompted this whole line of discussion, that had nothing to do with the person being new or anything like that (the runs in question weren't from a new player).

[quote=PressJPolk]Putting everything on the mods is how you get a Todd Rogers situation[/quote]

Why the fuck do people keep mentioning Todd Rogers here.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
MASH likes this
United States

The example given at the start of the thread. While not a new player to the game, I read it as a new player to the SRC board. Maybe that's not the case.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Germany

Rejecting a run due to suspicion and branding someone as a cheater are two different things. You don't get "innocent until proven guilty" when you are not accused of anything. Many people who had runs rejected initially eventually gained credibility.

Picante and Krayzar like this
United States

Rejecting a run for being too good implies you think it's cheated. Why else would you reject it?

Many people who had runs rejected never came back. <-- look, I can do it too.

Valhalla

You're really over simplifying this. Rejecting a run for being too good is dumb. There's multiple factors at play. I've stated dozens of times that anybody can cheat a run well enough to never be caught across multiple games. So yeah, if someone pops up out of no where posting top times or even WRs, only run on emulator, never stream, etc. I'm going to question it rather than blindly accept it.

Hako, Krayzar and 4 others like this
Texas, USA

I feel that as a moderator in the Fighting Game speedrun community (Fatal Fury Special), I feel that I should weigh in on the matter. There is a number of different reasons why a run is rejected outright. Lying on whether or not that you are using an emulator is certainly cause to reject a run outright, which I suspect is the case here. Not using the default round timer is certainly another (or have the run relegated to a catch-all category). I'm not sure what method that method that moderators are using to verify the runs in the game, but the run being rejected is most certainly not the end of the line. Someone mentioned the SMB community. They require runners that submit times below a certain threshold provide the input file that was recording your button inputs in the run in question. It MIGHT help the runner's case if they provide such a file.

Brazil

Just getting real quick into this situation, that's not the first time that MK moderators actions came to be questioned, i also had some grievances against their decisions and rule changes, as i had opened a thread several weeks ago where i called out the site admins and tried to explain the situation that was similar to this one, but everything just ended by itself, with no apparent solution since other people are also complaining about the same thing i was at the time. For in-depth information about this case, i'll leave a Pastebin file that contains the text of a Discord PM i've sent to Pac at the time that all happened, he couldn't do anything about it, but i don't blame him, i actually thank him for having the time to at least reply the message:

https://pastebin.com/jBMXZQjV

Note: The file is 100% intact with not a single word changed and the MK Forum Thread linked on the Pastebin file is no longer available since the moderators erased it, but may be accessible to the admins.

Brazil

Thanks for adressing your side of the story Outworld, but here i'll point out some stuff i disagree.

"The entire community was given the chance to have input into this situation for over 14 days on a forum posted in the MK speedrun forums. It got no replies."

My message was the last one posted there and i suggested to have some admin consulting for that kind of decision, seeing how tough it would be, you guys didn't even gave me a feedback with your thoughts about it, just deleted the thread and that's that.

"We also encouraged runners to be patient as we made changes & carefully took into consideration each individual runner & his/her circumstances Some left anyway."

Nope, things went bad top to bottom and you guys knew it, most of the runners left the community because of the new ruleset, i'm not saying it was 100% negative, it wasn't, i actually agree with the addition of more legitimacy methods, but the ruleset elaboration could've been better and the final result less stricted to many runners.

"At no point was one of us acting alone. So to pin this directly on one moderator is just not cricket."

Well, you were taking all the public actions, leaderboard changes and thoughts, besides TheKombatKing that got into this overall situation, maybe just twice and then left. I think most people here didn't get it yet, but this whole situation is not just about MK3 but the entire MK franchise (Except MK X), all this time i was gathering some info about your moderation that i'll talk about later.

"Now considering that the closest thing the mod team has to a legit time before the new rule set was applied that was not taken into suspicion was one of my own runs, they're the times that remained & yes i do see how that could look really shady to some but i have made more of an effort to legitimise my runs than any runner the mod team can name. Live input display included."

Your record there is like anybody elses record, the game with a timer and that's it, i would be more than happy to have you putting your proofs on the table and show that your record is indeed legit, it's easy to say "the mod team can name" once the best decision regarding the rules is made for everyone inside the team, they will always agree with you no matter what happens.

"Ask yourself. Should we have deleted all the existing runs & started fresh? How many runners would we have seen leave the boards then? We had to stop somewhere. It was the most logical decision."

If you are willing to make things fair for everyone then yes, at the time none of anyones runs met those exact requirements, the rules are the rules, it also applies to you even if you are a mod. It was pretty easy to reject my records on MK Trilogy due to a ruleset update several months ago, why wouldn't be now? This is what disencourage people, the fact that the rules affected some records but not all of them and those records that remained there didn't followed 100% of the ruleset.

"I will point out the runs that were chosen to be rejected had been submitted by runners that we as moderators contacted and encouraged to further legitimise."

I'll ask you to show any proofs about your statement, that you had in fact contacted those runners, and it's not just one or two, at the time was nearly dozens of runners submitting runs, so please do it.

"the runners pushed us to a limit as WR times were being submitted daily by runners that were brand new to the scene with absolutely no evidence of prior practice, communication with the community etc."

That's simply not true, two of the most affected runners were 'BySpeed', he is a National Champion of UMK3 and arguably the best competitive player in the world, and the other was 'ParallaxMKChille', which has more hours playing MK than all of us combined, both have been dedicating themselves on MK over nearly a decade and both grinded +3 hours every single day and submitted multiple records played on livestream, it was in fact a top tier competition there and if you don't believe me, just check their social media, it has years of content.

Now i'll be pointing out some weird things that happened during 2018 that regards Outworld's behavior:

  1. The runner 'HeatGaming' getting banned from MK Leaderboards for no apparent reason (https://imgur.com/tG1AQ7m).

  2. The attempt of preventing me from submitting future records to the leaderboard (https://imgur.com/x7ghA6j) and yes, i did a 30 minute long video to my people about this situation and as mentioned in the printscreen, i had allegedly made 'personal attacks' to Outworld, which i didn't. So if this is not an attempt of censorship over me then i don't know what it is.

  3. A sudden leaderboard change of Mortal Kombat Armageddon, that had my 1st place record splited from the rest with no explanation whatsoever, since the apparent reason for this was to have a subcategory between platforms, why Xbox and PS2 doesn't have their own? I'm feeling this was just to get me out of play.

  4. Accusing other runners of making use of TAS by mentioning them as "TAS Warriors", clearly referencing BySpeed and Parallax, with not a single proof of it (https://imgur.com/tG1AQ7m).

  5. I had a tutorial for Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks any% that i posted on the Guides Section of the game's leaderboard, hours after i realised it was not there and no one has the power to delete content of other people but the moderators themselves, and i know that TheKombatKing wouldn't do something like that. Even my wish of teaching speedrun is being denied.

  6. The refusal of approving my runs (MK Deception and MK Gold, i even had to post a forum thread requiring the verification) as they were left pending for weeks, while you were almost daily active here aproving other peoples runs, but left the job to TheKombatKing with mine ones, now i ask you, if you are going to moderate a leaderboard where you don't even bother to verify runs, what you are doing there then?

To conclude, i'm not here to just complain about everything, i would love to offer a plethora of suggestions in order to make the ruleset better for everyone, but i'm pretty sure i would not be heard just like i wasn't heard back in the day. I guess we can all agree that something is wrong with the MK mod team decisions, that's my leave.

Thank You!

Edited by the author 5 years ago