announcements

Update: This win is TARNISHED (see details).

Congrats to Storm of Memories [150] for leading <Lusitania> to victory in the October 2024 clan competition and securing a 2nd George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Lusitania>	Storm of Memories [150]		17,477,342	(x21.87)
2		<Mount Wario>	Mr Poo [200]		2,587,222	(x3.67)
3		<Apex>	Gpof [100]		2,432,225	(x2.81)
4		<Taekwondo>	TkD00 [100]		1,040,692	(x1.17)
5		<Msps 02>	msp00 [125]		1,028,217	(x1.15)
6		<House of Batiatus>	Seppius [162]		1,025,871	(x1.15)
7		<The Third Way>	The Third Way [55]		1,005,600	(x9.75)
8		<Endone>	Endone21 [100]		1,004,800	(x1.13)
9		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		990,287	(x1.22)
10		<The North>	Oxyk [78]		978,066	(x1.15)

Also see:

• October 2024 clan rankings
• October 2024 bot rankings

Absolutely insane record breaking month from Mara, gz on the new monthly energy record!

Grats :)

ty guys <3 it was very hard mission to do :p

Congratulations to mara for a new monthly record and to all Lusitanians that got top 10, the first time the same clan get them all!

🔥 🔥 🔥

Only got all top 10 spots because you were trying to force nos to not score. Anyways gratz on the win and the record for all those who dumped to mara.

Cope!

Congrats Mount Warrio for beating Apex

Are your conspiracies ever right George? Don't be salty. No one helped Mara last month, and Judgement did a big ~100k+ push in the last few hours trying to get top 10, including using HA, we just did more :p

Gratz guys some insane achievements, all top 10s is made much more possible when you are the only clan really playing but still cool all the same. Mount Wario finishing above us shows how much we care, but at least we won the tourney with 80 less bots which was funny!

Gratz Mara 6.3 mil after scoring 4 mil the month before is pretty miraculous to say the least with no upraping also!

No one tried to force me not to score. They only asked why I was scoring. To which I replied because it's what I do. Don't make an attempt to create something that was never the case. And it was literally a single person (in this instance hyp) that I had that exchange with.

Furthermore, I think the individual scoring on this bot on the last day was just making it entertaining, there was zero malice in his actions. Just good old fashioned fun.

Only got all top 10 spots because you were trying to force nos to not score.

Even more ironic since they ONLY got all Top 10 spots BECAUSE I scored...

🧂

Can't speak for anyone else... but after first few days, I was pretty obviously only getting energy when you did and almost certainly woulda decided I didn't care about initial plan of finishing in top 10 (when I assumed a competing month).

So... I basically spent most of month only collecting energy because of you...

Congrats on breaking the monthly energy record hats off to a crazy good performance.

Damn

I take that back I guess my record stands rip autoclicker scum

Wait what?! I thought mara is very popular name in Croatia and he talks a lot on discord meaning it definitely wasn't the already banned mara on hall of shame according to most Lus members, which was an instant red flag for us and why we rejected him.

More months ruined by cheaters, sad.

Lol just like everyone thought indeed ^^ Mara,mara :)

Dude was doing way too much. If you are going to cheat at least be smart about it.

He did like 15m in 3 months in a row, come on..

It's always a good day when a cheater gets caught, nice catch thanks :)

Personally I think clan wins should be revoked on months when a cheater is involved, regardless of whether their personal score was greater than the difference between 1st-2nd since if Lusitania had their autoclicker running as hard as it was from the start of the month that can influence a rival clans decision to score. Whether it's given to 2nd place or not I don't know but it doesn't seem right to me.

Not sure if Ender has said anything about this before but be interesting to hear.

It's a tough one, because of how long it takes to verify and ban someone for cheating, and you can't expect anyone to know if anyone else is cheating or not.
The biggest penalty I think it would be reasonable to expect is an asterisk next to the victory, and I am not even sure that would be fair.

Not gonna lie, after Nikac/Dakovo and a bunch of other Croatians got caught cheating for years in Bots2 it makes me think they're all cheaters lol.

Ofc we suspected that mara was cheating when he did 6M after a 4M month... He was saying that he was very tired by the end of the 4M month, and then he breaks the monthly record the next month?

Something wasn't right, and in the last weeks we saw several evidences of cheating from his part and we sent them to Ender.

I'm really happy that he was finally caught and the result couldn't be better: finally there's competition again! Let's enjoy these last days of scoring and good luck to Apex, we will do our best to win!

Tha's funny because all I saw was a lot of defending him because Mara is a common name in Croatia, and he talks a lot on discord and this was only a few weeks back nothing sus about playtime etc. Not really a surprise is it, you recruit a banned cheater and he cheats.

We will try our best, kinda hard after the AC gave you such a good start but good luck everyone! :D

I mean, that's nice to get him caught and make the game more even-stevens but if I may ask, why didn't you just kick him? I mean, sure, he'd probably join another clan and do it all again and it was probably easier to watch him while scoring with his AC in Lusitinia day after day as surveillance. Just curious is all.

Good luck to both clans btw :)

Kicking someone without cause randomly when their cheating is a good way to get them to change their behavior to be less cheaterish is my thought on it but im not on enough to notice or care if someone is acing

Yup, makes more sense to keep someone around and make them feel secure in their cheating than tell them you've caught them so they panic before Ender can do anything. I was basically spamming Ender with circumstantial evidence this month to try and help catch him.

Haha yeah! Good one ;) ;)

"My evidence is that his hand and wrist should've broken at least 5 times by now!" xD Just kidding though. Thanks for the answers.

Personally I think clan wins should be revoked on months when a cheater is involved, regardless of whether their personal score was greater than the difference between 1st-2nd since if Lusitania had their autoclicker running as hard as it was from the start of the month that can influence a rival clans decision to score. Whether it's given to 2nd place or not I don't know but it doesn't seem right to me.

I wonder how many months would Eternal lose with this.

I'm not sure if a full clan should be punished by the actions of one individual. It's clear to Ender that Lusitania doesn't support cheating and we weren't taking advantage of his acing because as soon as we saw some awkward things we told him our suspicions which probably helped him catch mara. In the beginning he seemed legit, he was always talking on the chat and he didn't do anything suspicious until this month. He probably thought he was safe and let his ac working when he was afk, leading to some strange situations.

There's another player that we suspect and he is in Apex. Let's see if you aren't in the same unpleasant situation as we are now.

Anyway, what's clear is that the game is on a better situation now, apex was going towards a silent death and now I think it's a great opportunity to motivate your teammates and don't give us any more easy wins.

I wonder how many months would Eternal lose with this.

I'm not sure if a full clan should be punished by the actions of one individual

Eternal would lose a lot and it would be deserved, in esports if a pro cheats they are banned from the game and whatever team they are on normally gets trophies/qualifications etc revoked, it punishes those that didn't cheat but the important thing is it doesn't punish those competing against the cheater.

In the beginning he seemed legit, he was always talking on the chat and he didn't do anything suspicious until this month. He probably thought he was safe and let his ac working when he was afk, leading to some strange situations.

In the beginning he was a banned cheater listed on the Hall of shame for cheating getting 88 bots reset, I'm not sure what seems legit about this. You guys recruited and defended him for a long time. If he wasn't a banned cheater I would probably show more sympathy.

Anyway, what's clear is that the game is on a better situation now, apex was going towards a silent death and now I think it's a great opportunity to motivate your teammates and don't give us any more easy wins.

It's terrible for the game, this wont make us want to come back and play especially not against cheaters, I'm only playing because I was asked to and its a good chance to give my views on this. My stuff is still for sale I have no intention to play anywhere near as much as I did or care about winning anymore, same goes for some other Apex members, if Apex dies it will be down to human error we just dont play bots but our discord is very active especially atm and we play other stuff together. Also I'm not sure it was us giving you easy wins :D

I'll simply say punishing an entire team for a single player is absurd.

Ok but that team won by cheating, individual or not.

If I recruit Lance Armstrong to my cycling team I don't think people would be very happy, even more so if we won and he was cheating I doubt we would keep our trophy :D.

Honestly, what would the punishment really even be?

Possibly the trophy on clan pages, I guess - and the slight prestige there... but retroactively going back and subtracting/rewarding trophy points from the bots? Not happening. Some asterisk? Who really cares?

Like it or not, it just feels kinda like some feel-good idea to me that isn't really fundamentally even doing anything real.

It all happened. Here we are.

Time to deal with the now and look forward, I think.

Realistically, in my opinion, the bigger concern is more who woulda got shared their version of an auto-clicker and potentially who was in the know of shenanigans, if you really care... that's fine. And punish accordingly, if ya want. But asterisks and such? Meh. Just not impressed, personally.

Will say with the dumping strategy that almost every single bot in that clan woulda benefited from even a single auto-clicker, however... so I definitely get that and can empathize with feeling that whole clans should possibly be punished with such models for collecting energy.

Still... just not impressed with sentiment alone and no actual valuable idea that amounts to basically anything.

Well this isn't an esport and it's not some tangible reward/money on the line. But it's definitely an extra layer when done deliberately, like when a certain Eternal leader keeps someone in who admitted to cheating to him in person for example.

Hypothetically speaking, even if Ed were to manually go in and adjust whatever is deemed to be adjusted, I'd much rather that time go into preventing future cheaters instead of trying to correct already done wrongs.

I'll simply say punishing an entire team for a single player is absurd.

It'd only really make sense if that bot supplied between 75-100% of all energy for the clan and everyone else just coasted by I'd say. Aka getting free platinums by letting a cheater cheat.

I'd say that the best thing to do in the future would be to focus on maybe making the game harder to cheat at by adding more random elements or changes to fighting habits since at this point Ender has his method of catching them but the basic AC script probably barely changes because it's more than likely based off the idea that Ender has to get on and actually spend the time investigating and banning them, aka taking advantage of Ender's inactivity at times. It's hard to find a balance between keeping the game simple to play and letting people get away with using scripts because the game is kept simple :/ A rock and a hard place in a programming sense lol.

Esports are games, this is a game so they are pretty similar. IMO there doesn't need to be some monetary reward to mean a team shouldn't succeed/benefit from an individual cheating regardless of if they knew or not.

Maybe the new meta is recruit autoclickers and pretend you didnt know they were cheating then keep your wins, ez.

Think I agree with Gpof, far too much work to go back through ~13 years worth of cheating to try and rectify something for no real benefit, even if it would benefit me personally quite a lot. Would be a ton of dev time just for people to go "cool, anyway..."

Though I've gotta say Zac, you've suddenly got a very different stance on cheaters, I don't remember seeing your post about removing clan wins when it was you "benefiting" from cheaters. In fact you then went on to publicly defend said cheater in the forum, quote "highly doubt trki is cheating since he comes on chat a lot and always responds to bmail very quick", the very same logic you're criticizing now. You were also adamant to me that Aldin was cheating, making youtube videos of "proof", telling me I shouldn't join his clan and then accepted him to yours 2 months later. Just constant hypocrisy.

Almost like no thought goes into anything you say and it's just "whatever benefits me most at the time". Lusitania didn't publicly defend Mara's ACing, we contacted Ender and helped get him banned.

I knew you would try and flip the narrative with something like this kinda predictable and childish typical of you, lets not forget we are talking about your clan member getting caught.

To start trki wasn't an already banned cheater, this is pretty much what opened my eyes up to chatting means nothing which is what I was trying to explain to you about mara when you kept defending him.

For the 100th time, I thought Aldin was cheating. I left Strung Out to not be involved with cheaters, 3 years passed Ender didn't do anything I had to admit that I was probably wrong about him and give him a chance, yawn.

Lets not deflect here you guys have been caught for the biggest cheating scandal in bots history by bot count, this is serious stuff!

I should probably add I think what you do when you check everyones IP for competetive purposes using mod powers is just as bad as cheating IMO. Probably another reason you defended mara for so long.

I have just realised too you gave access of bots belonging to old players like wenom or benny that weren't yours to mara and enabled him to get them all locked, how selfish and retarded of you I mean we could go on and on and on about how terrible this is but I have said most of what I want to say.

To Zal more should be done to combat cheaters for sure,I still don't really understand why we dont have captcha anymore, atleast it looked like an effort was being made if anything else.

And you are seriously still mentioning me being a cheater lusi members? Just tell me are you being serious? :) So its me who u mentioned up saying that apex has one, ey? :) Biggest score i ever did was 4.5 plus using HA buff, and when i did it, i sent bmail to ender saying ender if u can check the codes or smth to see that im using HA on every bloody bot, just because people are always involving me in all these issues... Never try to blame others for your own mistakes, i had plenty and i embrace them all, good or bad, its simple as that.

There's no flipping a narrative, just pointing out your hypocrisy. The flipping is your views of cheaters flipping based on whether they were helping you or not.

You keep repeating this "3 years passed and I changed my mind thing", I think it's to make Aldin believe you, but you told me he was cheating in October (or November?) 2023, not 2020, and then accepted his help a few months later. You thought he was cheating right up until he could help you, then suddenly he was clean as a whistle and you don't mention it anymore.

Nah I don't think your AC Aldin, not trying to drag you into anything, was just pointing out that Zac told me you did, and then accepted you into his clan. He thought you cheated and still recruited you

The hypocrisy is just wild. Really sucks that Mara was cheating and it obviously hurts Lusi, but we noticed and did our best to get him banned. So it's a bit rich to be lectured about acting right by the guy who recruits people he thinks are cheats, and who publicly argued with Ender saying his cheater clanmate wasn't cheating.

You are deflecting by bringing up old stuff that has been discussed a million times before and has nothing to do with Mara, Aldin isn’t a banned cheater we just thought he cheated a long time ago and then changed our mind as so long had passed I’m not sure where the hypocrisy is? It’s not a case of it benefitting me I left strung with 20 million total energy which was my own choice I wouldn’t call that a benefit.

Don’t you think it’s hypocritical to defend a cheater and call people idiots for suggesting it, now you are totally changing your mind and pretending you are the ones that caught him after he’s been caught, even though you recruited him knowing he’s a banned cheater, it’s pretty wild to say the least.

Zach you are an idiot. All you do is flip flop like a fish out of water. Aren’t you suppose to be selling and retired? Either that or your emotional intelligence is lacking.

+1 to Zach being a hypocrite.

They are both hypocrites.
Zach doesn't need much explanation, he has always been this way. Attacking and leveling other players bots and then threatening you if you dare retaliate against him.
The fact someone named mara(number) was a previously banned cheater, managed to get second on monthly score in his second month playing, and Fish suspected him of using a script to create bots 2~ months ago. He should have been kicked from the clan, and claiming you were collecting evidence against him is a complete cop out. It's not your job to collect evidence, it's Enders, and if he was cheating it wouldn't have mattered as much if he wasn't doing it while helping the clan win.

Thanks Mr "I run a mile in under a minute, oh wait I mean kilometre", you calling people an idiot is very credible.

I'm just helping my clan mates try and beat the biggest cheating clan in history lol.

I'm just here for the pasta!

Just a reminder that nobody is omnipotent and hindsight is always 20/20. You can't expect leaders of clans to be able to mindread every person in their clan or what goes through the heads of people that would rather AC instead of playing a game fairly. Cheating doesn't happen only on this game and there's far worse cheaters out there that have gotten away for years upon years (heck, look at the Donkey Kong arcade "champion") that have made actual money and gained influence from their cheating whereas this is just another Croatian cheating for the 50th time on this game lol. Yes it sucks that he was part of Lusitinia and it helped them gain clan wins by doing so to a degree as with all the other cheaters this game has had. But if you legit gained say 400k the same month and gained the 1st place trophy from it it's not like you didn't help either.

Maybe a good thing to do in the future would be to give benefits or maybe have a Hall of Good Players or something to showcase those that have never cheated and never wanted to cheat. Yes, the majority of the players don't cheat but they get thrown by the wayside to showcase the cheaters with say 4 million energy in a month. It would be nice to see them get more credit for being a helpful member of the community or their clan/regular player is all. If there was less benefit to cheating on this game then people wouldn't do it at all was my point. Maybe not piling on the achievements for the highest scorers would be a good place to start.

By the way, the entire reason people cheat on this game is due to two factors. All the scripting, all the time spent, all of it is to achieve one of two objectives: scoring to get first place in the Hall of Fame for personal score or top clan, or B) to gain levels by using trainbots etc. The second one I would barely gibe a crap about because it would still take the AC like 10 years to achieve what others have done, but the 1st one is the big problem. As it stands, 1st place is the only way of getting a platinum for Top Clan, even if the first place clan got say 10 million energy and the second place got 9.5 million. For this the second place clan gets the same as the 10th place clan would literally only has to score like two hours to get top 10 thanks to the lack of competition outside of the top 2. This is stupid. Why should a clan that still gained 9 million energy more than 10th place get the same damn reward? I know it's a "1st place or nothing" mentality to get players engaged but all it has done on bots2 and bots4 has led to cheater after cheater being caught for that purpose alone. Until this is changed then cheaters will never stop. Maybe making the top 2-3 teams get the same reward would both foster a sense of competition between them while also not making people cheat more. Or some other idea etc.

I'm just spitballing here is all. Thinking of ways to stop cheating :)

“He was talking a mile a minute”

It’s an expression that’s been used for over a century

An expression that was obviously meant to express that I can run fast.

An expression that’s if taken seriously would make you what?

AN IDIOT!

Ah ok so why say you meant km?

......HAHAHAHAHAHA

http://bots4.net/profile/89336/One-Minute-Mile

Somebody even made a bot memorising this special occasion.

http://bots4.net/profile/95909/One-Minute-MaraThon

And this is the new release!

When I realized you idiots took it literally, I played along. Being in Canada we use the metric system so I thought it was an appropriate follow up to the retardation I was encountering.

So yeah I can run a kilometre a minute.

Idiot!

Ah riiight so you were just joking, makes complete sense now!

A Kilometer a minute is equivalent to a car going 60 km/h. The top speed of a horse is 71 km/h. So unless you're a horse or a car I don't see anyone beating that. Usain Bolt only went 44.72 km/h at top speed so unless you're better than him you're definitely not going a kilometer a minute.

Look at the bots pictures, haters gon hate zal!

No, I wasn’t joking.

“He was talking a mile a minute”

It’s an expression that’s been used for over a century

An expression that was obviously meant to express that I can run fast.

An expression that’s if taken seriously would make you what?

This implied you were joking and not to take it seriously? Anyway silence in the courtroom we are discussing the heinous acts of mara not how much of a chad you are Luth.

Thanks for the reminder gents.

O/ cheers

As it stands, 1st place is the only way of getting a platinum for Top Clan, even if the first place clan got say 10 million energy and the second place got 9.5 million. For this the second place clan gets the same as the 10th place clan...

Over said elsewhere... I just don't like games trying to enable those at top with actual in-game benefits that help them stay at top anyways.

Even worse, I think it promotes and encourages one top clan everyone would want to join.

In bots2, the reward tended to be promotions being easier in lesser clans. Even the filthy casuals could play how they want and not feel punished for it.

And, honestly, if you're not purchasing stars then hooking up with top clan seems even more sweet because it's not just more trophy points but fact that more platinum trophies can give discount for buff purchases (which compounds and exacerbates issue).

But that's all a bit of a sidenote (though related matter).

More directly related to all this?

Other players will now feel personally cheated by an issue of a cheater. In old days? A clan got a win they didn't deserve. You can tell yourself you actually won and it's kinda whatever. The victory was more a pride thing anyways. Now? Players will feel like they've literally lost something of value in game and others have advantages over them they don't "deserve."

Basically... almost no one is gonna think the best solution is NO ONE getting these trophies and tps... but... I mean... it really would be better if no one got those trophies on bots simply for being random member in a clan...

I dont 100% agree with the not getting trophy points. Hrad work getting plats for the ultimate discount is what keeps people playing. As an old bots2 player the system changed since then, took getting use to but thats the point, its suppose to be different. I think ender has done a fine job with the game, minus however, there seems to be a way to cheat still, not sure how and im sure he will figure that out eventually. Dont mind me im just here for my top plat i deserve and to shut all you up that said i couldnt do 3m, just look at me now, all solo. I do thank the apex clan for the help of the hoes and stars for extra gear and pushing me. I thought if mara was legit he would have helped aid me in fighting harder but atlas he wasnt. Its a shame no game is enjoyable to play as cheaters are everywhere. Good luck in the future tho everyone

-George

Hrad work getting plats for the ultimate discount is what keeps people playing

Well, let's imagine a game where the motivation for playerbase was simply to collect plats. And the game rewarded any player a plat for... simply being a member of the top clan at end of month.

Wouldn't... all the players just try and join one giant clan and deem competition to be a negative? And... any player not able to join top clan would then feel Disincentive to even continue playing, no?

Obviously, everyone likes trophies and any sorta suggestion whatsoever that less could be more is going to be mostly dismissed... but I really don't think there's a very good argument that everyone getting a plat for being in top clan is healthy, if one were to try and be objective.

Even if you think taking those trophies outta game would lower a desired balance below some desired threshold for trophies game can award people? Well, there are ample other things game could choose to give plats for - could shift those plats over to more individual energy plats handed out, for example.

Ender listened to the suggestion of putting a red stain in the clans. Congratulations Apex, you have a clean sheet but be aware to who you are selling your bots, if they end in the hands of a cheater, your profile will get stained :P

This seems like a fair way to deal with things.
Gives clans an incentive to actively police their members in a timely manner.
But doesn't punish people too harshly if they are a little complacent and/or actually unaware of whats going on.

Might be a little harsh not being limited to the top 20 contributors for the month (although this does make some sense due to dumping), and sales can easily become an issue, especially if the bot is sold multiple times.
But I assume the reason for not considering those situations is to make it easier to implement and maintain for Ender.

be aware to who you are selling your bots, if they end in the hands of a cheater, your profile will get stained

My thoughts exactly. So many bots get sold especially those that score and have high wins. I think bots from the trki bans fuck over some clan profiles more than the actual cheaters from their time did. Cringe change imo

We live in a time where VPNs are commonplace.
Which would make verifying a sale fairly difficult.
So I can understand why sales aren't considered in this feature. Although it is fairly harsh.

Although I like the idea of the change, I think it's a bad look for the game when every month is 'tarnished' in some way. I don't think Eternal had a single untarnished win for example. What would a new player think when starting the game and looking at the old rankings? And as others have said, some are in retrospect after buying bots/sharing bots, and in no way was the original win influenced by cheating.

As an aside I also thought it was interesting to see how steeply the cheating purportedly dropped off after captcha disappeared. Anyone with a hint of intelligence about how they cheat would easily go undetected atm, and I am very skeptical that the current era of bots is the cleanest that has ever existed. I would vote for captcha to return in a heartbeat.

I think 90% of the real clans (I mean with several members, not dumpers clans that belong to one person, etc) are tarnished in their profile. For example, from the winners, only Apex and Metsu are untarnished, all the others have those red boxes that we now need to get used to if Ender doesn't soft or remove it.

Good job Ender, I would like more done personally but I think this is a good compromise.

Ofcourse people don't like change especially when it affects them, there has only been trki that I remember in 13 years that has bought bots or atleast to a large extent, if you sell your bot to a cheater well then that's just bad luck really the same as if you buy a bot off one and the same as if you recruit a new player and he ends up cheating, but to recruit an already banned cheater and have this happen is totally deserved IMO.

90% of clans don't have red on their profile, it's pretty common sense that most cheaters clans will have been high on the historical clan rankings.

Cheating bastards. Would never see anybody from rapture cheat in bots4 or bots2 haha

Not a bad way of showcasing it. Some clans have red spots for hilarious reasons though, like Rapture having 9 months being red but only being like 8th place and 3rd etc. Same with Pirate Haven. I forget who even was the cheater back then. The only thing I truly hate about it is that the months that are tarnished when you look at the bot rankings, all the tarnished players are nullified so you don't even know which bots cheated anymore. So it looks like ghosts are the ones that cheated or you have to look back at the Hall of Shame records to find the cheater but it doesn't specify what bots they had. So from a records perspective it looks dumb.

Selling has always been at it's own risk though. Perhaps one way of combatting it would be to limit it to stars only and have all the records detailed in the forum/to Ender then if the buyer or seller was a cheater then they could have a record of bots that were bought/sold to them. This would allow them to not be deleted and perhaps returned to their original owner if they weren't used to cheat with too heavily. And by having it stars-only refunds could be applied. This might restore confidence in the buying/selling system since there would be a refund system in case of a ban.

Btw, saying to new players that people cheat on this game is moot. It's been known for years and still happens, which is why I said spending time on improving the game would probably be better. As for reintroducing the captcha system, maybe those new captchas like the ones with pictures or puzzle pieces (might cost money, I have no idea) and have them run every 30 minutes to 1 hour or so would be a good mix of adding security and not annoying people every 5 minutes. Although I imagine that cheaters would get around it by just logging out and back in so maybe having one at login would be good too.

If we did bring back captchas and if they were also present during login then could we PLEASE make it so locked bots can try to login just to be brought to a Buddy the Elf "captcha" that simply says "Hi, Buddy the Elf here. What's your favorite color?" And then whatever color they type in it tells them "sorry, that's not your favorite color."

Like, if we were to change the system in any fashion then that's the only thing I can think of that I really think the game needs...

If we did bring back captchas and if they were also present during login then could we PLEASE make it so locked bots can try to login just to be brought to a Buddy the Elf "captcha" that simply says "Hi, Buddy the Elf here. What's your favorite color?" And then whatever color they type in it tells them "sorry, that's not your favorite color."

Like, if we were to change the system in any fashion then that's the only thing I can think of that I really think the game needs...

I would also suggest that every clan profile that has the red tarnish announcement have their clan profile picture permanently changed to Buddy the Elf's YOU SIT ON A THRONE OF LIES meme. ;)

You know... 'Tarnished' isn't a terrible name for a clan...

What you doing, Zal?

Nos, Fish, Asmodeus? Wanna make a clan?

I'm up for whatever :P It'd be funny if we never have a cheater in it and have no tarnishes at all. You can make it if you want, I'll join :P Mal the clan leader would be fun ^_^

No, no, no.

I've been telling everyone that I'm actively trying NOT to have some owner role in any clan.

Been mostly trying to get Fish or Nos to start a clan for me to join up with. :P

But not me!

I say you start clan and we'll get someone else to be the "owner" and shift that title laters (assuming you don't want the hassle of title either)?

And then we'll just move bots and such at beginning of next month, of course... as this one's basically done anyways.

Or... we just start it on day1 of next month... whatever floats your boat.

But I'd be in!

By the way, somebody above wondered how many times Eternal won the month with cheaters and I checked in to it.

Even though the clan(s) no longer exist, you can go back and check the monthly announcements on the forum that announces the months winner. Eternal has the red Tarnished stamp on most if not all of the monthly announcements because those are not deleted if the clan is no more. So Eternal got the majority of their wins by using cheaters.

I also checked on Escapism and the same thing. Escapism won many of their months WITH CHEATERS and we have known that as being a fact since the beginning. It's a pretty sad day in this game to finally find out and to realize that probably most if not all of the winning clans cheated to win. Pitiful actually.

Are you now proud of all of those wins guys? Cheaters.

Well I'm proud to say rapture have never won with help from a cheater woop woop

Btw, small thing, anyone else notice that the Tarnished thing is on ALL Announcement pages? It's really strange. Also, maybe we could cut down on the giant redness? Maybe change the announcement to the normal green color of the forum so it doesn't scream in your face every time you log in.

I kind of like it. It's like a giant middle finger to clans that harbor cheaters, haha.

I legit ignore the homepage.

Could be an urgent message about free foot massages in flashing neon lights and I'd pay it no minds and just miss out.

Zals response perfectly explains my problem with this fairly shoddy solution, but its the opposite of what he's arguing. Because of the incestuous way bots works with many trades between small amounts of people, blanket saying "this bot was owned by a cheater when it got banned, so a clan race it competed in 12 years ago was therefore cheated too" doesn't make sense.

Here's an example. Clementine was my clan back when I first started, I've never AC'd, but my month of scoring on those bots has now been labelled a "tarnished month" and used as backup for Zal claiming cheating is more widespread than it is. The real context is that those wiped out names were my namesake bots that I sold to Ville years down the line as ratio whores. Further years down the line, he got banned and so they got reset, rightfully. They were owned by him at that point, so I don't mind them being reset, but now the only thing left of all of that context is that Clementine, my solo clan, were cheating in 2012. When in reality, they were just purchased by a cheater years later, who never had anything to do with that clan.

Btw, that MrZal8 bot is not me. I'm the actual Zal. The MrZal1-5 bots are owned by Esv now and the other ones, 6-8 or whatever were made by someone else, probably Pirate or someone else. I don't own any of the MrZal bots anymore.

Note to self: make an army of "MrZal" bots.

Then I'll have to make an army of MrMals :P

but now the only thing left of all of that context is that Clementine, my solo clan, were cheating in 2012. When in reality, they were just purchased by a cheater years later, who never had anything to do with that clan.

I don't understand why this would bother you I think the main issue is Lusitania members don't like the glaring red on their profile which is understandable. The same thing happened with my old clan Alliance as I sold my main no cheating happened and I don't care because its been and gone.

Whilst it's harsh it was your decision to sell that bot to that person, it's also just bad luck like when Benny bought Villes bots and they all got reset and nothing could be done about it.

Would be a ton of dev time just for people to go "cool, anyway..."

Was expecting you to just say "cool, anyway...". That's what I did after having a good laugh.

Haha I should have known it was Pirate from his Trumpian way of speaking

Btw, Ville had way more shit than got banned even. I gave him all my Kudowoodo bots for example, all like 100+ of them, but for some reason they never got banned even though Ville did afterwards. Now for some reason someone else has them but I have no idea who. So Ville must've gave them to someone else. It's an odd thing because I'm the maker of them but don't have them, Ville gets banned but they don't get deleted, and now someone else has them but they shouldn't even exist if Ville had them. This entire game has a problem with ownership of bots where a lot of bots aren't given back to original owners/makers or get swept up in cheating.

Obviously I've no real idea and am basically a new scrub still, having come back after so long... but I just can't imagine every bot ever logged in by some banned player would be hit. I just kinda assumed those records would go back 3-6 months or something... and then any bot with their registered email, probably.

But, again... just assumptions on my part.

So, technically, Wario won last month

🤔

I asked ChatGPT for you, here's what they think.

Technically, "Mount Wario" who placed 2nd should have won

If it was proven that Mara, from the winning Lusitania clan, was using unfair methods (such as an autoclicker), then yes, Mount Wario, who placed 2nd, should have won. Here's why:

1. Cheating Undermines Fairness: Mara's use of an autoclicker would have provided an unfair advantage, artificially boosting their performance. If proven, this would directly impact the legitimacy of the Lusitania clan's victory.
2. Integrity of the Competition: If Mara's cheating influenced the final results, Mount Wario's 2nd place could be considered the rightful win. In competitive environments, the results are often questioned and even nullified when cheating is involved, so the next legitimate competitor (in this case, Mount Wario) should be awarded the victory.
3. Enforcing Fairness: Awarding the win to Mount Wario would reinforce the competitive spirit and send a clear message that cheaters will not benefit from their actions. It would demonstrate the importance of upholding rules and maintaining fairness.
4. What Would Make Sense? If it's proven that the cheater’s actions affected the outcome, Mount Wario should technically be crowned the winner. However, this would depend on the specific rules of the competition and how much impact Mara’s cheating had on the results. Some competitions might even opt to strip the title completely, rather than passing it to the second-place finisher.

In conclusion, if Mara's cheating was confirmed and impacted the results, then Mount Wario should indeed be considered the rightful winner, to preserve fairness and the integrity of the competition.

Gratz!

Personally, I can stand the red marks on Lusitania and Escapism. I don't support cheating, don't get me wrong, but we all know that some clans got tarnished just because some of their bots were sold to cheaters after.

However, this tarnished thing is having a big impact in several players, to the point that they say they won't play again.

In summary, this is a very impactful thing, many say it's too much and the consequences could be that some old school players that never cheated don't play anymore which for me is a sad thing.

Ender, do you consider to remove this tarnished thing or to soft it in some way to not point out clans that never cheated and got tarnished just because they sold their bots to someone else that cheated afterwards?

Thing is esv they benefitted from somebody who cheated I don't think thr punishment is bad enough I think the tps they gained from the the cheaters shoukd be taken away also

So shoegazer should lose all his GW plats?

Fishwick should lose the trophies he got with clementine because he sold bots to Ville?

Does this make any sense? Most people will lose their TPS because there is cheaters in the game? Is my fault that mara was acing? My fault is to have trusted in mara, but even Ender posted in forum that it could have been an unfortunate coincidence and would be treating mara as a different person (I'm not sure if this mara is the same that was banned time ago). Ender's post was one of the reasons to keep mara in Lusitania. And now Ender will take away my tps? Now my clan is tarnished because I trusted in Ender's words?

Anyway, there was always cheaters in the game, so I should not accept new players and help them grow and stick to the game until they prove they aren't cheaters? So I should stop trying to recruit new players and help the game to continue active?

This all makes me want to disband Lusitania. Several of my players said they won't play anymore because of this tarnished thing, I shouldn't be recruiting new people because they can be cheating so I can't keep my clan active for much longer and it will eventually die. What's the point to continue leading a clan?

Ender do you see the impact this is having in the game? I'm sure you have received several bmails telling this is very impactful.

Something should be made in my opinion to rectify this.

This all makes me want to disband Lusitania.

Well... I'm sure leadership saying they want to disband everyone else's clan couldn't possibly be helping...

I typed nothing about this so far, only when i was mentioned.. I dont see why "cry me a river" is that much neccessary? Trki destroyed 8 out of i dont know how many months exactly,even tho he didnt make milions and milions of energy like mara did, we are still stained and that is a good thing. And Ender you did well, who doesnt want to play, doesnt have to play, gg and the end. Who doesnt want to be a leader, dont be a leader, simple. We all fight for the sake of this game, whp is a little kid still so sensitive, not even one game is for that person.

Thats all from me. Stay safe.

Honestly, it's like some red coloring in some places? Okay...

Couldn't really care less.

Could you imagine all the faux outrage if anything real had actually happened?

Rebrand and rebuild, get rid of that cheater tag, that's what I would do :)

Yeah might as well disband and start again without cheating, can't get caught auto clicking and then start having a go at Ender over the consequences.

Honestly, kinda think there should be an option to "reset" a clan anyways - as well as ability to change clan name... since clan merges are a thing of the past.

Not even for this scenario, really... just because I think those options would be nice. Like, start a clan at very end of a month and don't want the 400th place trophy to end up on your clan profile? Reset on rollover. Just wanna rebrand or made a mistake when naming or whatever? Would be nice to have the options... and in a case like Lusi? Huge pain to completely disband and expect every bot to rejoin and everything.

I have more sympathy for clans that got caught up in this simply by a bot getting banned after it was sold.
Lusitania members already admitted they suspected Mara of cheating up to 2 months ago, so it's really the fault of the clan for not acting on that suspicion at the time.

I have more sympathy for clans that got caught up in this simply by a bot getting banned after it was sold. Lusitania members already admitted they suspected Mara of cheating up to 2 months ago, so it's really the fault of the clan for not acting on that suspicion at the time.

Couldn't agree more, and the majority of the ones caught up in it don't care as much.

I was pretty happy when Ender reset mara. And seeing Apex active again was also good. We are all having fun now scoring because of mara getting caught. The game was dying and now we have a race until the last day. When was the last time it happened? This is the best of bots, full team cooperation and dedication to the game. I'm loving it :)

Random thought, maybe instead of disbanding the way it currently stands and resetting etc., there could be a way of slowly regaining a non-tarnished state by having months of no cheating as reparations? Like say Lusi had 3 months of cheating that helped them but didn't cheat for a year after they could get it removed but if they do it again like a 2-3 strike thing you get a permanent record? Like Rapture for example hasn't been active or cheated in forever but they have the tarnished thing so I doubt they would have cheaters -currently- in their clan. I'm not sure. Maybe the whole tarnished thing was a bad idea lol.

I've taken another pass at the TARNISHED implementation:

• It now only applies to first place finishes.
• It now only applies if 20%+ of a clan's monthly energy came from bots that were later locked/reset.
• There's now an appeals process to remove TARNISHED marks in cases where bots changed owners.
• The harshness of the language around TARNISHED has been toned down a bit.
• The end-of-month announcement banner is now shorter and has a link to cover the details.

As a result of these changes:

• Lusitania's TARNISHED marks have decreased from 4 to 1.
• Escapism's TARNISHED marks have decreased from 52 to 1.
• Eternal's TARNISHED marks have decreased from 72 to 8.
• Global TARNISHED marks have decreased from 306 to 19.
• Global TARNISHED marks may decrease even further from 19 once appeals are submitted/processed.

My philosophy on this: For the integrity of the game's clan competition, I think it's important that there is some official in-game recognition of clan wins where cheating was a significant factor. Although it's unfortunate for the legitimate players of a clan to have their contributions under the TARNISHED label, they still get to keep their trophies from the win, trophy points, and the win itself. I think this strikes the right balance between the undesirable extremes of (a) severely punishing the entire clan by taking away the win and all the in-game benefits that come with it and (b) completely ignoring that cheating was a significant factor in the clan's win.

Also, going forward I will be aiming to significantly decrease the time it takes to detect cheating, which will reduce the risk of recruiting unknown players, and reduce the likelihood of a clan receiving a TARNISHED mark sometime down the road. And while I won't be able to guarantee I'll catch all cheaters before months end because it's a challenging problem, I'm optimistic about this because I invested significantly into the game's anti-cheating system in response to the Mara incident (I'd actually confirmed the cheating a ~week before I carried out the locks/resets and used that time to test out my changes).

If you don't apply this filter:

It now only applies if 20%+ of a clan's monthly energy came from bots that were later locked/reset.

The impact would be very big? I think marking just 1st places is enough.

Our August should be tarnished too, mara got 2nd place in bot rankings.

So I suggest to remove the 20% contribution.

Btw, ty for softing this.

Can't say I'm too stoked on an update I already thought was meh now being changed to require time/manual input from you instead of it going elsewhere. But great to hear it's helped put some focus and vigor into the anti cheating systems

I think this is probably fairer and looks better for the game, although it seems a bit more confusing since there are wins labeled untarnished when they were actually tarnished, so it's not very accurate but I like the balance of softening tbh.

The impact would be very big? I think marking just 1st places is enough.

Here's the data I used to come up with the new implementation if anyone wants to poke around themselves. I picked 1st place and 20%+ to keep the number of affected {clan, months} relatively small (306 -> 19). My goal isn't to label every single instance where a single drop of cheating got into the mix, but rather just the egregious cases.

require time/manual input from you

I'm not too worried about this. This was part of my motivation for narrowing the scope of when TARNISHED applies. With only 19 marks now (and hopefully few-to-none going forward), there's a pretty small upper bound on the possible number of appeals to process.

there are wins labeled untarnished when they were actually tarnished

The challenge is that it's not possible to distinguish between a small amount of genuine cheating in a month vs. a bot later having been sold and cheated on later. The latter case shouldn't have TARNISHED applied and would require going through the manual appeals process. The former case is less important to go after IMO.

The challenge is that it's not possible to distinguish between a small amount of genuine cheating in a month vs. a bot later having been sold and cheated on later. The latter case shouldn't have TARNISHED applied and would require going through the manual appeals process.

I've already expressed distaste for omitting information in the history pages for the cheaters, but I'd like to rekindle it again. Suppose I wanted to appeal some months of Eternal's, it was so long ago that I don't think I would be able to accurately discern months where Ville cheated vs ones where Zach, and I think Bazza as well (possibly others?) scored but had their bots locked after having sold them years later. It would be nice to have those records easily available.

The only downside I can see to it would be having a sold bot that was locked, still associated to a legit players name. However, I think the majority of us who play/score are plenty aware of those types of instances.

I think the change is a much better approach. It's not perfect but it's a lot better and yeah hopefully future cheating gets caught before the end of the month anyway.

Would echo Gpofs comment, in a thread a while ago we talked about being able to see cheaters names if we so chose to, even if it's hidden behind some url manipulation, a toggle, or something similar. Just for the people who want to see that data (for an appeal, or to understand what bot cheated) to be able to do so without bringing back everything

20% might be too lenient, a better metric might be if any bot in the top 10 monthly energy for the month was caught cheating the win should be tarnished, as the top 10 places would have a significant impact on the clans performance, as well as being the plat tier for monthly score.

Fair points about appeals being difficult to write without being able to see locked/reset usernames/botnames in the historical HoF. They're now visible.

What is this now? Now u will choose a clan by will and decrease what you want and how much you think its best? Are you serious? People should fuking see every fcking month that a stupid cheater played, especially if he was NOT FCKING HIDDEN, AND IT WAS SO FUKING OBVIOUS! fck this game where people dictate the tempo and that when u hear a thing like "THEY WONT BE PLAYING ANYMORE" = Who gives a fck?!

Please chill out with the tone and please don't circumvent the bad word filter. I know there are a lot of different opinions on this topic - I'm willing to engage in discussion, but let's keep it civil and cordial.

There isn't a perfect solution to this problem. There is nothing I can do that will satisfy everyone. Therefore, I'm aiming to satisfy as many people as possible in a way that's consistent with my vision for the game. In this case, that means explicitly flagging cases where cheating contributed to a significant portion of a winning clan's victory. The problem with including cases like "finished 6th place, 4% energy from cheating" was that it added a ton of noise from (a) bots changing owners and (b) not materially affecting the final clan race result.

I still think 20% is still probably a bit high.
If a clan is only scoring 5-10 Million it might make sense, as that only works out to 1-2 Million.
However, if a clan is scoring 15-20 Million in a month a cheater would have to provide more than 3-5 Million individually.
That's quite a lot unless you are blatantly flaunting the cheating in everyone's faces.
If you limited it to top 10 monthly, and only for first place clans it might label a lot more as cheaters, but top 10 is typically a significant contribution.
Even top 3-5 would make more sense, but I can understand if you are trying to limit the amount of appeals you have to manually verify.

I knew it!!!

Warning, this is going to be a long old school Zal rant.

Ender, I and quite a few others have a bone to pick with you over the past 4 days or so. I'm just going to outline the problems one at a time though.

4 days ago, you caught Mara through the help of Lusitinia etc. and invested time into catching more cheaters faster etc., which is all well and good, but 3 major problems have come out of this:

Number 1: Lusitinia knew about mara for months supposedly but helped you get him caught by keeping him in, which leads to the problem of allowing cheaters TO cheat to catch their cheating and thus help clans wins months but apparently won't kick the cheaters for fear of not being able to catch their cheating? The logic in here is messy and makes it seem like cheating is ok so long as it gets caught eventually. This leads to problem 2:

Number 2: You thought that adding the tarnished idea to clans would showcase who cheated and when, so even though Lusitinia this time (for example) let a cheater cheat for 3-4 months or so gets a big red mark on their record. This has lead to a lot of discussion about cheating in general and what the punishment should be. As it stands though, there STILL IS NO ACTUAL PUNISHMENT for letting a cheater cheat for months on end other than a red flag which you changed from maybe slightly overkill to near useless now. Almost as if there was no point in making the thing to begin with. None of what you've done this month will prevent people from cheating more (unless you added new security features, which sounds like you have) but will ultimately make clans slightly, -slightly- more afraid to let in cheaters, but that fear probably has went from a 0 before mara to like a 50 when you made the original tarnished change to probably like a 0-5 again now.

Number 3: In 4 days since mara has been caught the top 2 clans have went from around 5 million energy to near 13 MILLION ENERGY EACH. In 4 days some what, I dunno, near 20 million energy has been gained and you don't think at all that maybe some of those 40 bots in those top 2 clans might be cheating? Mara gets caught for 2 million energy cheating over 25 days but 4 days at 5 million energy gained on average per clan and that's not suspicious at all, ok. This also leads to the problem of having too much Hastened Adventures out there but that's for the suggestions forum.

Out of these 3 main problems has come a flurry of activity and either positive or negative ideas about what the hell should happen/has happened. To a degree it's showcased just how unfair and lopsided the game has become to the favor of a couple dozen people, which has done little to nothing for motivation for some people and even those 2 dozen people involved. Zach, Off, Esv, Fish, FloySage, plenty of others have showcased their disdain in multiple ways that they either want to quit or have something done or even delete their entire clan or have lost all motivation (well, maybe not this month but it might be interested to see what December has in store). People like me, Asmo, Mal, and others went from having a nice month where we were lazily scoring and having fun to being pooped on by people with too many dumpers and hastened adventures lol. And all of this boils down to the problem of hoarding too many bots on both Lusitania and Apex's sides so that ridiculous outcomes like this become a thing.

Just saying that there's a lot of problems in the game and the past 4 days have just made them worse :/ I'm just pointing them out though so you can hopefully change a few of them. I know it's hard making changes people will find acceptable though. Maybe at the end of the day it's also us that are the problem by exploiting all the easy ways to doing things in the game but as it stands this game is in a weird stage. It's either time to go full forward on new ideas and development or starting over since there's too much hoarded and exploited already/this website is getting ancient and browsers/antiviruses hate it without HTTPS (but that's another problem lol).

Also, since when has there been a profanity filter?

Yeah I have to say after thinking about this for a while it does seem like you have given in to the Lusitania members and dont care about the others. 20 percent of a winning clans score is ridiculously high really.

The challenge is that it's not possible to distinguish between a small amount of genuine cheating in a month vs. a bot later having been sold and cheated on later.

I'm not really sure why? Surely the appeals process would be the same for what you consider a high or small amount. Regardless we can all distinguish that mara was not a sold bot and cheated in July and August.

I completely understand Aldins frustrations since now we are basically cherry picking when cheating should be punished for certain people. I wont be playing again, nevermind the lack of new content, players being able to check IP adress and the constatnt favouritism towards certain players. This games a joke.

Zal:

Warning, this is going to be a long old school Zal rant.

Ender, I and quite a few others have a bone to pick with you over the past 4 days or so. I'm just going to outline the problems one at a time though.

4 days ago, you caught Mara through the help of Lusitinia etc. and invested time into catching more cheaters faster etc., which is all well and good, but 3 major problems have come out of this:

Number 1: Lusitinia knew about mara for months supposedly but helped you get him caught by keeping him in, which leads to the problem of allowing cheaters TO cheat to catch their cheating and thus help clans wins months but apparently won't kick the cheaters for fear of not being able to catch their cheating? The logic in here is messy and makes it seem like cheating is ok so long as it gets caught eventually. This leads to problem 2:

Number 2: You thought that adding the tarnished idea to clans would showcase who cheated and when, so even though Lusitinia this time (for example) let a cheater cheat for 3-4 months or so gets a big red mark on their record. This has lead to a lot of discussion about cheating in general and what the punishment should be. As it stands though, there STILL IS NO ACTUAL PUNISHMENT for letting a cheater cheat for months on end other than a red flag which you changed from maybe slightly overkill to near useless now. Almost as if there was no point in making the thing to begin with. None of what you've done this month will prevent people from cheating more (unless you added new security features, which sounds like you have) but will ultimately make clans slightly, -slightly- more afraid to let in cheaters, but that fear probably has went from a 0 before mara to like a 50 when you made the original tarnished change to probably like a 0-5 again now.

Number 3: In 4 days since mara has been caught the top 2 clans have went from around 5 million energy to near 13 MILLION ENERGY EACH. In 4 days some what, I dunno, near 20 million energy has been gained and you don't think at all that maybe some of those 40 bots in those top 2 clans might be cheating? Mara gets caught for 2 million energy cheating over 25 days but 4 days at 5 million energy gained on average per clan and that's not suspicious at all, ok. This also leads to the problem of having too much Hastened Adventures out there but that's for the suggestions forum.

Out of these 3 main problems has come a flurry of activity and either positive or negative ideas about what the hell should happen/has happened. To a degree it's showcased just how unfair and lopsided the game has become to the favor of a couple dozen people, which has done little to nothing for motivation for some people and even those 2 dozen people involved. Zach, Off, Esv, Fish, FloySage, plenty of others have showcased their disdain in multiple ways that they either want to quit or have something done or even delete their entire clan or have lost all motivation (well, maybe not this month but it might be interested to see what December has in store). People like me, Asmo, Mal, and others went from having a nice month where we were lazily scoring and having fun to being pooped on by people with too many dumpers and hastened adventures lol. And all of this boils down to the problem of hoarding too many bots on both Lusitania and Apex's sides so that ridiculous outcomes like this become a thing.

Just saying that there's a lot of problems in the game and the past 4 days have just made them worse :/ I'm just pointing them out though so you can hopefully change a few of them. I know it's hard making changes people will find acceptable though. Maybe at the end of the day it's also us that are the problem by exploiting all the easy ways to doing things in the game but as it stands this game is in a weird stage. It's either time to go full forward on new ideas and development or starting over since there's too much hoarded and exploited already/this website is getting ancient and browsers/antiviruses hate it without HTTPS (but that's another problem lol).

Also, since when has there been a profanity filter?

thanks for the input, Zal. As stated before if you do not like the game, go play another.

Zach:

it does seem like you have given in to the Lusitania members

Nope, you did that when you and the boys saw an opportunity but massively failed.

I think ender is doing his best considering their are many people that still play all of which have their own concerns they'd like addressed.

Zach:

I wont be playing again

Good riddance! dont let the door hit you on the way out!

Typical Luthrin completely off-topic and toxic.

Nope, you did that when you and the boys saw an opportunity but massively failed.

I know you think now you won it's a good time to try and troll over it and it will bother me(lol), rather than be humble like I always am in victory or defeat. Congratulations you guys deserved it more, you came together as a team and clicked more links so well done especially LOMU who is probably the best player currently.(Luth I won't mention you trying to bribe George to leave Apex last night or anything about Mara having impact in the beginning of the month).

Good riddance! dont let the door hit you on the way out!

I'm happy you don't like me, I wouldn't want to be liked by a person like you.

Sticking on topic rather than gloating, I'm generally displeased to say the least about how innacurate the new tarnished is rather than do it the hard way and have all months where cheaters were involved "processed" and appealed properly, we are left with an innacurate half done job that doesnt solve the problem it was intended to. I could appeal most of Eternals but I'm not going to because whats the point, we have months labeled tarnished when they weren't and months labeled untarnished when they were.

And yes I have a bad habit of spelling inaccurate wrong :D

I and quite a few others have a bone to pick with you over the past 4 days or so.

Is there anyone that DOESN'T fall in this category at this point? 😅

it does seem like you have given in to the Lusitania members

The "change it or we quit" demands from some Lusitania members were unfortunate because it created a perception that if I change anything, that I capitulated. I've stated this elsewhere in the past, but I try really hard to focus on the merit of feedback rather than their source to avoid slipping into ad hominem reasoning.

Here was my thought process that led to the updated TARNISHED implementation: I was convinced by those that pointed out the flaw with the original implementation because of bots frequently changing ownership (with some real examples of false positives this created). An appeals process was the only solution I could think of for this problem, but with those costing dev time to process and with very little benefit for the game overall, having 306 TARNISHED labels floating out there was way too many. I knew that Lusitania coming in 1st place in October 2024 with 41% of their energy coming from locked/reset bots needed to be TARNISHED, but it was less important for Eternal coming in 3rd place in June 2015 with 2% of their energy coming from locked/reset bots (and maybe not even from cheating - I didn't look into which bots contributed to this and anyway don't have the offhand knowledge to know whether those bots changed ownership). So this convinced me a line needed to be drawn somewhere. Different people with different motivations will have different thoughts about exactly where that line should be drawn (those impacted by TARNISHED: move it higher; those not impacted by TARNISHED: move it lower; me: flag the obvious cases and minimize appeals), so I think we're at the point of diminishing returns. At the end of the day, I think the game is in a better state than it was a week ago with a cheater gone and that formally recognized in the game's historical results.

Surely the appeals process would be the same for what you consider a high or small amount.

My sentence was worded poorly. I should have said "The challenge is that it's not possible to automatically distinguish". The appeals process would indeed be the same regardless of the amount, but each of them has a fixed opportunity cost of dev time, so fewer is better than more if optimizing for that. Given infinite time/resources, I agree that processing appeals for every single case would be ideal, but I think you'll all get more value out of me spending my not-infinite dev time elsewhere improving the game in other ways.

Lusitinia knew about mara for months supposedly but helped you get him caught by keeping him in

The timeline:

• Nov 7: I receive first notice from Lusitania about possible cheating.
• Nov 19: I obtain definitive evidence of cheating.
• Nov 19-25: I beef up the anti-cheat system and test it on Mara.
• Nov 25: I lock/reset Mara bots.

you don't think at all that maybe some of those 40 bots in those top 2 clans might be cheating?

You're right that it's a prime opportunity to cheat given the close clan race. The close competition is also driving a lot of legitimate play. I've been monitoring closely.

this website is getting ancient and browsers/antiviruses hate it without HTTPS

I told myself this was one of the things I wanted to finish this long weekend but instead I've been spending all my time on Mara/TARNISHED/fallout. 🫠

players being able to check IP adress

I ignored this the first time you said it, but since you keep repeating it publicly, I feel compelled to add context to your misleading statements. Yes, a very limited and trusted number of game moderators can lookup players' IP addresses as a necessary component of doing their job. Beyond cheating, there are some awful, vile people that lurk on this game only to say heinous things and harass others. I'd love to have active game moderators with zero conflict of interest, but until that day comes, I have to stick with known people that have proven themselves trustworthy over the years. And I know you know all this because we discussed this topic privately over IRC and bmail extensively back in August. I spent a lot of time engaging with you on your concerns over abuse of power. I stated that I wanted to be "transparent with my decisions and reasoning" and to let me know if you "come across concrete instances of abuse-of-power/wrongdoing that I can look further into". I relayed your concerns anonymously to the moderator in question and stated to them that while I didn't doubt their integrity and that no concrete evidence of abuse had been presented, it was an important reminder to be cautious with moderation tools because of even just perceived bias, let alone actual bias. Your tone in our exchange back in August was friendly overall and you were thankful for my having spent time on it. Given where we'd left off that exchange, I don't think your claims in this thread are fair and it makes me feel a bit betrayed.

I think ender is doing his best

Thank you, I am trying. 🙏

Beyond cheating, there are some awful, vile people that lurk on this game only to say heinous things and harass others.

Also known as "the good ol' days."

Amirite?

My sentence was worded poorly. I should have said "The challenge is that it's not possible to automatically distinguish". The appeals process would indeed be the same regardless of the amount, but each of them has a fixed opportunity cost of dev time, so fewer is better than more if optimizing for that. Given infinite time/resources, I agree that processing appeals for every single case would be ideal, but I think you'll all get more value out of me spending my not-infinite dev time elsewhere improving the game in other ways.

So basically I don't have time to do a job properly, so let's do a bad one instead.

I ignored this the first time you said it, but since you keep repeating it publicly, I feel compelled to add context to your misleading statements. Yes, a very limited and trusted number of game moderators can lookup players' IP addresses as a necessary component of doing their job. Beyond cheating, there are some awful, vile people that lurk on this game only to say heinous things and harass others. I'd love to have active game moderators with zero conflict of interest, but until that day comes, I have to stick with known people that have proven themselves trustworthy over the years. And I know you know all this because we discussed this topic privately over IRC and bmail extensively back in August. I spent a lot of time engaging with you on your concerns over abuse of power. I stated that I wanted to be "transparent with my decisions and reasoning" and to let me know if you "come across concrete instances of abuse-of-power/wrongdoing that I can look further into". I relayed your concerns anonymously to the moderator in question and stated to them that while I didn't doubt their integrity and that no concrete evidence of abuse had been presented, it was an important reminder to be cautious with moderation tools because of even just perceived bias, let alone actual bias. Your tone in our exchange back in August was friendly overall and you were thankful for my having spent time on it. Given where we'd left off that exchange, I don't think your claims in this thread are fair and it makes me feel a bit betrayed.

What is misleading here? I said players can check IP and you have just admitted it. This was already public knowledge as the person brags about it and it was already known for years by most serious players there is no betrayal I'm just voicing my issues with the current state of the game like most other players, it's getting worse and worse. I understand that mods are needed and I think they do a great job even the person in question but when there are 2 main competing clans and one has a power the other doesnt or cant obtain it's not exactly a fair playing ground is it?

As far cheating goes, I can only speak on my own behalf. I never have and never will cheat in the game or see a point to do such in any game. I hope that someday there's no cheating on this game but I have my doubts as I'm sure others do. People that have the access to it will use it. Maybe not as obvious as mara but I'm sure there's people doing it still. Anyways I would like to take this time and say what a battle am I right?! Very impressive from both clans as both combined gains of 13m in a few days. Just shows that the grind is strong for both. However, this was the apex farewell tour, I would have liked to win the last month and go out on top for the year but it is what it is. I guess I should go out to the green pastures with Zach and Erik and the rest of Apex and enjoy the retirement home, just have to make sure Zach takes his meds after all.

Long story short, thank you to all and I'm sorry to those who I have clashed with over my time playing this game. I wish you all the best and happy holidays.

-George

Just to pipe in on your salt-fuelled rants, it's absolutely not true that I "brag about it". I don't like discussing it at all - years ago Ender told me not to let anyone know what we can or can't do as mods. The only time I've actively spoke about it in front of you is when I helped you find out who was harassing your clan members in the online list, you were very polite and cordial at the time but are now attempting to use it against me, similar to Eds story. That's pretty much the extent of what I can do as a mod - mute people and hope they don't realize you can just make another account.

Mod message over, here's the real response:

This is because you are losing the month, and your years of dominance, hence quitting when you realize the jig is up. Not because of what I do as a mod. It's really hard to take any of your posts seriously when you're clearly just driven by bias and spite and nothing else.

In regards to georges comment, I'm sure there'll be a thread for this win but the last 24-48h were absolutely insane, must easily have been the most energy scored ever in a short period by both clans. The spirit in discord was insane and it was really cool to be a part of.

I wish we still had chat logs to prove you were lying, everybody knows you can check IP I have even seen bmails of people asking you to check for reasons unrelated to moderation.

Why on earth am I quitting because we are losing, this is absurd to say when we have won for years and reached the highest levels of the game and their is nothing left to do. Not to mention we still won this year if we take into account Lusitanias cheating.

The majority of players are complaining about the game currently or selling up and with good reason, All the best George was fun playing with you.

Yeah, you won for years against no one and happily coasted, but as soon as a clan turns up and competes, it's time to stop playing. Thats kinda what I'm saying. I don't personally think winning months with 2m energy against no competition is "the highest levels of the game", which has been 80% of Apex's history.

The majority of players aren't selling, just a few Apex members. There were 30 bots online the last few days for hours on end, plenty of people still wanna play even though you've spat your dummy out and tried to take your football home.

And if you look over them years of dominance where the game was inactive so was I for 2 years pretty much or maybe just over 1 I had stopped playing for the same reason as now, lack of content and bordeom. You guys formed Lusitania and we beat you for half a year in some of the most competetive months in bots history setting the record at the time.

The game has been active because you guys got caught cheating and the players who has left decided to help try and win, now we will all go inactive again. I posted my bots for sale after winning a month it has nothing to do with that so please dont spread misinformation which is typical of you.

Look back at all announcement threads I have always been humble in victory or defeat so please stay humble and dont call me salty when I can promise you I'm not this month was already lost before mara was banned and I didn't care and have been selling my bots.

I dont see why you try to associate my issues with the game to victory or failure?

Well this was fun.

Loads of fun, you have a genuine issue with a flaw in an update and get hit with a load of gloating and unrelated disrespectful bull :D

I don't personally think winning months with 2m energy against no competition is "the highest levels of the game", which has been 80% of Apex's history.

When I said highest levels of the game I didn't mean winning a clan race, more the countless level 400 bots, best RW'S, tourneys in every cat that many Apex members built/achieved, which is a lot more than you have ever achieved or likely will so show some respect to them.

Just to be clear: Fishwick uses his mod powers to check who is playing what bots, often as soon as they are created, and whether they have broken any rules or not.

We used to get periodic updates in the clan discord about it, and it's probably still something that happens now.

Back to the main topic, 20% is way too high.
I am not sure why you won't consider top 10 monthly score as the criteria.
Keep it as for first place finishes only, and expand it to include any bot that places in the top 10 monthly, that way it focuses on the plat for monthly clan, and the plats for monthly contribution.
OR if that labels too many clans as tarnished, implement this new criteria from the start of next month into the future.

it's absolutely not true that I "brag about it". I don't like discussing it at all - years ago Ender told me not to let anyone know what we can or can't do as mods.

followed by this, straight from the horses mouth:

Fishwick uses his mod powers to check who is playing what bots, often as soon as they are created, and whether they have broken any rules or not.

We used to get periodic updates in the clan discord about it, and it's probably still something that happens now.

What an absolute laughable farce.

Ive never seen fishwick use ip to lookup anyone from my time in lusitania and escapism unless he does it super privately in a hidden channel somewhere :P but i also dont exactly pay enough attention anymore to notice so i may have missed something somewhere

I’m in lus discord and word of mouth about mod powers have been know for a long time. No, fish does not share IP’s with people in discord, I know cause I have had the pleasure of being denied by fish himself.

P.S

That’s not the horses mouth, that’s the horses ass.

Byeeeeee Zach!

There is a hidden channel for Punico rank, which isn't that unusual for a discord server to have.
I am not saying he does it for every bot, but he does do it fairly regularly. It's slightly distasteful to me as I like to mess with people anonymously on occasion, but I can also understand it would be hard to resist the temptation.

He doesn't share IPs, but that was never the accusation. He does check who owns which bots.

if theres evidence of him doing it that can be proved remove him from moderator cause thats scummy. But thats something to present to ender to look into not the forum. Should just lock this thread cause its just a bunch of complaints theres a forum for that and this one is way off topic at this point

He doesn't share IPs, but that was never the accusation. He does check who owns which bots.

Exactly, when I say sharing IP I mean ownership/identity just badly worded on my part, ofcourse nobody knows who 192.168. 1.1 is.

It's slightly distasteful to me as I like to mess with people anonymously on occasion, but I can also understand it would be hard to resist the temptation.

Wow I barely know you dude but I’ve always had a cringe feeling from you. You are the worst kind of human trash in this world. People like you make me very angry and is essentially how I lost my faith in humanity.

You are what makes this game toxic.

Thank you for saying this cause now everyone can see you for who you are!

(Spits)

The current members of the Punico chat would be Esv, Fish, Mojo(LOMU) and Samuli, you would have to convince on of them to corroborate what I have said as I no longer have access to the chat logs.

@Luth I never said I was a nice guy, but there is nothing against the rules about being sneaky.

Esv, Fish, Mojo(LOMU) and Samuli, you would have to convince on of them to corroborate what I have said as I no longer have access to the chat logs.

Which ofcourse is never going to happen, you have seen how defensive the lower ranking grunts of Lusitania are over it already as they don't want to lose that power.

Your definition of “sneaky” is to pretend and mislead people into believing you are somone else? 🤮

It just doesn’t compute with me.

Human nature can be a dark place trust me I know I’m human, but it takes a real dark POS to do that IMO.

Which ofcourse is never going to happen, you have seen how defensive the lower ranking grunts of Lusitania are over it already as they don't want to lose that power.

What power? Power? lol some people play in clans cause they want to feel apart of a team and when they find that place they could care less about ranks! Wanting “power” is a you problem.

I don't mislead people, I just don't tell them who I am. There is a difference.

Human nature can be a dark place trust me I know I’m human, but it takes a real dark POS to do that IMO.

Says the guy who does it himself and even pretended to be his own gf in chat once, how is Femmenikki?

This thread is spiralling way off topic now though with numerous complaints about how bad the game is and what's wrong with it spiralling into personal feuds and unrelated stuff. Maybe there should be a cater for all thread about this in complaints or something.

Zachs comment reveals why this is so touchy for me. I get accused of this crap for over a decade now. I have always been forthcoming and honest. I take pride in that!

Zach, why not use that same vigilance to expose fake people right now!? 12 years ago I had an X that played this game with me!

Today this very moment right above your post is a guy admitting he does infact pretend to be other people! What are you going to do about it? Punk?

What power? Power?

I mean the "power" of being able to check every bots player identity and not let them play privately or incognito as stated you fruitcake.

Luth, I never said I pretend to be other people, the exact opposite in fact.
Since when did it become a moral failing to attack other players bots without declaring who you are?
It's insane to even begin to make that connection.

My my I can't stand this. Luthrin, I'm so disappointed in you. Who are you to talk to Zach like he is a PoS? Let's go back and remind the good people of what you did to me many months shall we? I think we shouldn't go there honestly. Let's move forward and not act like children by calling names. This is what I believe is wrong with not just the game but anything online. Someone can say whatever to get a reaction and then it turns into childish banter that gets out of hand and off topic. The month is over, Lusitania wins the month, apex in second. Good race last few days by both. We can go back and fourth on apex won when the game was so called dead or not all day. We can look at numbers and I can be like well apex has/had multiple members that all scored above 3 or 4m without cheating and your clan hasn't. Who the hell cares honestly? Play, have fun or leave. For christ sake it's a script based game, you aren't playing for some million dollar prize pool, you're playing to have fun ( nos and I mean nothing bad by it ) or you play for bragging rights, personal goals, which ever, but just have some fun and stop being childish

Sorry rant over

When I want to attack somone I do! When asked if I attacked somone I admit it. Thats the difference between men and boys.

If you can attack somone and not stand behind it, you are a coward and yes are very capable of misleading people in other ways. Period

Zach with all this BS you endlessly spew about me pretending to be somone else I have always provided pictures as proof! You accused me on chat of leveling peets tourneys. I had you on Facebook and was willing to send you video of the attacks taking place in real time showing clearly it wasn’t me. This bothered you because the image you tried to depict of me couldn’t be sustain led so you got frustrated with my offer and said “I don’t care anyways”

12 years ago my x and I provided pictures of us sitting next to our computers.. you hated that, you couldn’t stand that the lie you created was being exposed as such, so you accused me of taking a picture of me and my sister. Up until a year ago you guy incessantly accused me of things, all of which I was able to prove was a lie!

You’re sick Zach, and I genuinely hope you get the help you need. Cheers

So you admit you bullied me and forced me to play?

12 years ago my x and I provided pictures of us sitting next to our computers.. you hated that, you couldn’t stand that the lie you created was being exposed as such, so you accused me of taking a picture of me and my sister. Up until a year ago you guy incessantly accused me of things, all of which I was able to prove was a lie!

Lmao I wasn't even there, I started playing in 2013. I just head the FemmeNikki thing from a lot of other players.

What an eventful couple of days

George STFU and score! If you don’t I will attack you!!

Lmao I wasn't even there, I started playing in 2013

Correction, 2014.

For the record: It's an internet game.

If you aren't having fun then you're doing things wrong.

Nothing wrong with making up different identities and whatnot - that includes making up a friggin' girlfriend even.

It's all fun and games, imo.

But what do I know? I'm just a young orphan girl raised by wolves and looking for a sugar daddy to come and save me...

And 12 years later Zach you are the one that stepped up to the plate. So you are the one getting struck out.

You have a picture of you an your sister playing bots? Adorable

It was exactly 11 years ago. You were there, or at least I had to endure you when you arrived about it. Thats forsure

You and* your sister.

11 years is a long time to be together.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQIN_1C-hbAsifBokfOdMdOkb-5wb5hfx4lsA&s <--Luth

Time for everyone to leave clans that have tarnished. Guess Apex is safe.

Fish can see my IP? How am I supposed to watch **** now knowing that?

I just wanted you to admit it luth. After all you are talking about people being a POS yet you did it to me for months. Constant online attacks, threats. I'm sure ender can see those emails. But you shouldn't call someone names when you are also in the wrong. Reformed luth or stuck in your old ways? You can't be both.

http://bots4.net/profile/90220/Shithead

Yeah that bot was built impersonating me, to "attack limit attack"(dumb profanity filter) my bot lmao. Which you still haven't shared who it was because you are scared of retaliation.

But why have you posted it lol?

Probably because it was me.

Might be retaliation for outing Fish.

Fish can see my IP? How am I supposed to watch **** now knowing that?

???

...I like it when he watches...

George. I once told you in strung out to score or beat it!

I several times, helped you to level your bots, shared great builds with you and even gave you stars for encouragement. Not lent but GAVE you stars!

Try recognizing when somone is good to you, and stop trying to make an enemy of everyone.

Probably because it was me.

Might be retaliation for outing Fish.

I dont care anymore, you could be "attacking to attack limit?" all my bots right now and it still wouldn't make me play this garbage game. :D

If this bot had stars and broken gear I would "put broken weapons and armours on it?"(definitely not the big nasty w word) for everyone to attack lol.

I guess we need to start saying full attack and ratio bot

Protect and unprotect ratio bots

Build 1-hit bots or thrash bots

Lmfao, yeah I'm done.

I can understand the reasoning behind moving away from r..ing bots, and I even agree with it. I still think the filter is a little too much, especially considering a lot of the bots player base tends to like the freedom of expression bots offered before the filter was enabled.

Sorry Ender, I don't mean to avoid the filter but I am not sure how to communicate my opinion on it without using the particular word.

Can't we all just get along!

No, frick you ... you hedgehog.

You are the son of a thousand fathers.

Why I never thought a snollygoster would be so rude to me.

Luth you're such a liar. It's really sad. Anyways let's all move on as this has gotten way off topic.

There is no topic anymore, this chat is now about talking (crude word for bodily excretions from the anus)

Yeah Ender seems to have gone missing since he admitted he basically doesn't care about a sensitive subject such as cheating enough to invest time into it, amongst many of the other complaints.

Fish also has gone missing since being proven to be a compulsive liar who likes to abuse mod powers.

So lets call eachother pleasant yet offensive names instead, mocking the new pathetic profanity filter.

Staff-bashing - Respectful criticism of game mechanics and decisions is okay (and encouraged), but unnecessary disrespect towards game staff (Ender + mods), complaints about lack of updates, etc. are not.

TBF, in the before times the mods woulda took a statement like the one found there and went ban-crazy on certain people...

I think we should give credit when it's due... otherwise, any complaints one might have lose most of their weight and it's hard to take you seriously or see you as reasonable...

I give credit where its due, infact I very rarely complain about anything on here. I have also been respectful, and simply given my own opinion that to me seems pretty factual.

Although to be honest I also couldn't care if it's seen as "staff bashing" if I'm not allowed to give my opinion on something and the games owner can't take genuine criticism from a long-time donating player, then that says more about the state of the game.

yikes!

Be nice to Ender guys - there is no perfect solution.

Auto clicking has been around longer than bots4; the main takeaways should be that he's putting in place some extras measures to keep people who are doing it out of the game in future, and willing to take on-board constructive feedback towards how changes are implemented. This is maybe the biggest change I can recall towards cheaters in 14 years of bots - all made with good intent.

If I was him I'd be tempted to pull the plug and stop the game running with some of the garbage that gets thrown out in these forums.

Although, it would be pretty funny if you were banned for staff-bashing and the end outcome of all of this was that a bunch of Apex wins were tarnished.

I'm pretty sure that was a tarnish-able offence too... idk it will be lost in this thread somewhere, I'm not really sure. I clicked too much in these days. Time to get outside...

the games owner can't take genuine criticism

How are you getting this from any of my replies? My previous post in this thread has a wall of text where I was fully transparent with my perspective on a complex and nuanced issue. Engaging like that is not what "can't take criticism" looks like. More than half of this thread has been a result of me trying to incorporate criticism and feedback into the TARNISHED system.

from a long-time donating player

I genuinely appreciate financial support for the game, but I don't let that influence my thinking. I think it would be worse for the game if I gave preferential treatment to someone because of their spending.

Yeah Ender seems to have gone missing since he admitted he basically doesn't care about a sensitive subject such as cheating enough to invest time into it

You are arguing in bad faith - anyone that read my previous replies can see that, so it's pointless to engage further with you.

Also, I'm starting to hand out 7 day mutes. I don't usually enforce staff-bashing, but my patience has been 100% exhausted over the past few days of forum discussions. The mutes will be extended if circumvented, and I'm ready to hand out mutes to others too if you decide to test the boundary.

I feel like I missed an entire giant conversation but after going through Ender's replies/others replies I feel like I've learned absolutely nothing on what's happening or what's next for the game except some people are getting muted for some reason.

Ed, can we get a (Muted) thing by usernames? That'd be hilarious.

Jeez if you start putting [Muted] next to usernames I might actually want to be muted, haha.

I also feel like I missed staff bashing (as it pertains to really bashing them) and not just engaging in discussion(really just back and forth between disagreeing people). Were some post deleted?

This thread was a great read. Bots has missed this sort of drama for a long time, and it was great to see so much activity in the last week of the month. A bit of a shame some Apex players are selling up as this month proved they are still a force to be reckoned with and there are more competitive months in store in the future if they maintain their activity.

I'm a bit surprised that no one has suggested a criteria for the tarnished wins to be if the total score made by the cheater(s) exceeded the winning margin between the top two clans. This isn't a perfect metric, as a cheater going ham in the first few weeks of the month is likely to discourage the rival clan from bothering to score if a large enough gap is built up within the first 1-2 weeks. However in cases of a close month, there would be little doubt that this would be the difference between a win and a loss and should be labelled tarnished regardless of if the contributing amount was >20% or not.

Let's be real: with all the energy from scatter-dumping all over clan? If you had an active auto-clicker in your clan during any winning month then you should have a tarnished victory and there's just no kinda metric possible to try and determine whether you woulda won otherwise.

All this "solution" is Possibly going to do is help determine how a theoretical AC'er in future could potentially decide how to act if they cared about also trying to avoid such a branding.

Were some post deleted?

No posts were deleted(that I can see) but I have said some pretty unfair/untrue things which I have apologised to Ender for mainly that he doesn't care, as I dont think that.

I still have issues with the new tarnished, mod powers and some other things but I'm not going to rattle on about it like a grumpy old man or even engage in the discussion anymore I think I have made my views known, besides I don't intend playing seriously from now on I will just make the odd flying visit for forum or bmails.

It's great he has done something to finally recognise months which cheaters have tarnished and I'm greatful, after all I think it was me that suggested it so thanks Ed.

He deleted some of SJ's posts.

Oh well that makes sense. SJ is a bit much most(all) of the time.