Game Center cleaning

[Sglouk]

I do not know if anybody here did something for this, but since a few days, the Game Center seems to have begun to clean some AB game leaderboard from obvious fake scores.

This is not (yet?) the case for AB Classic, but the AB Space and ABSW leaderboards (non HD version) now seem to be clean.

I do not know how fake scores were selected, but the point is that for the AB Space general leaderboard, there are now 6 ABN members in the top 8 scorers. The ranking differs however from the one here since there is no cap there of the Anchors Away level. Actually, some flingers who had not cheated but used the AA glitch might have been removed from the leaderboard by incorrectly having been considered as cheaters. It might actually be the case for some people here.

Topic

[burpie]

Great news. I hope they clean up the other scoreboards, too!

I use Android so I can’t see Game Center scores, but I’ve always wondered how our scores here compare to the larger community of OSX users. It’s nice to know that the best players are all here :-)

Apropos, congratulations on winning an Underdog badge yesterday!

P.S. Does the AB Space leader board list @Rat9? That’ll tell us if insane S-15 scores disqualify users. (Rat also tops that chart with a whopping 7.6 million points.)

[Sglouk]

@burpie

It seems that the Game Center makes the difference between the iPhone AB Space and the iPad AB Space HD versions, so that I never saw iPad users on my Game Center leaderboard.

Now, to answer your concern, on the leaderboard I saw since I play AB Space, there was a Korean guy (I think) who had a huge score on the Pig Dipper leaderboard (maybe 7M if I remember well), and who is now gone. So I presume that @rat9 might have disappeared or will soon as well on the AB Space HD leaderboard once it is cleaned. All I can say is that I now happen to be on top the the Pig Dipper leaderboard with 3.9M points (I got “only” 500k for the AA level). Maybe they put a cutoff at 4M, which sounds reasonnable if they had a quick look at our ABN leaderboard. Distinguishing what is the most relevant cutoff to take must have been difficult for them. For example, the new Top Scorer on Pig Bang is at 2.541M, which is suspiciously impressive, as it is only 3k below the sum of all our ABN Top Scores on every level of this episode (goavs4 ranks 2nd here).

(And thank you for the Underdog badge; I thought that if I had to get it one day, it would be from some AB Space level, but obviously with people like you and Rat, there are just too many top scores which are just unbeatable in a single day of effort.)

[AMslimfordy]

@sglouk SD and HD are treated separately — except for ABSW2 since that’s a “universal app”.

They likely did a pure score threshold: if(score > SomeThreshold) {delete}.

[Sglouk]

@amslimfordy

Yes, this was my interpretation. So in case we have some contact with these people, maybe we could mention them that the Pig Dipper threshold should be raised to, say, Rat’s standards + 10% (i.e., 12M, I would say), and check whether some other game episodes (Moon of Endor?) should also deserve an equivalent change.

[Kelani]

@sglouk last time I checked, I saw @Rat9 in there, but didn’t check Pig Dipper. I agree with Slim’s score threshold cleanout. Most of the obvious fake scores were in the trillions or higher. I’m sure they’ll be back before long. I saw some scores cleaned out in Rio a month ago, and they were all back a few days later.

[Rat]

@AMslimfordy @sglouk @Kelani and last, but not least @Burpie
I checked my Game Center standings. I’m no longer first on the overall Space leaderboard. They didn’t just remove my Pig Dipper Anchors Aweigh score, they removed all my Pig Dipper scores. I’m no longer ranked in PD. This took me out of any hope of contention in Space. Whaaaaa!!!!

So in their zealous effort to remove hackers, they removed the #1 Space leader. I appreciate their efforts to clean up the leaderboards. They were useless with all the hacked scores. Now the pendulum has swung too far the other way. They are now useless because they removed the top scorers.

Any thoughts @AMslimfordy?

[Kelani]

@Rat9 Ouch. See what being over-competitive gets you? :) Surely there’s got to be a way to appeal that.

[Rat]

@Kelani I’m not sure what citeria Game Center used. @Romo and @Ollygod were also removed from the Pig Dipper leaderboard and they don’t have ridiculous Anchor’s Aweigh scores. That eliminates their ability to compete in the overall Space leaderboard as well. Game Center evidently cut off the top end too low.

[burpie]

@Rat9 Apple should cap the score on S-15, just like ABN did and for the same reasons. Your score of 7 million points for level S-15 is just silly. Anything over 160k was obtained by waiting for a bug to rack up points – not by playing.

Perhaps BirdLeader can send a quick note to Rovio and Rovio can forward it to Apple.

[Sglouk]

@rat9

On my non HD version, the highest scores that survived is mine, with 3.9M. I presume that they put a cutoff at 4M on Pig Dipper (I am NOT responsible for this choice!). Can you confirm?

[Rat]

@Burpie I have no problem with a cutoff on S-15. Never did. As for my silly score, I was just competing against your silly million plus score, silly. ha ha

@Sglouk I can’t confirm what Game Center has done. I’m in the dark just like you.

[Sglouk]

@rat9

I was just asking what was the highest score on the Game Center for the Space HD version. I do not see it since with my iPhone I have the non HD version.

[Rat]

@Sglouk
The leader for Pig Dipper HD IOS is 3.917 million by @SuicideSolution. @HunnyBunny is second with 3.804 million.

[Romo]

@rat Thanks for letting me know this. It’s good news to clean it up. Too many hackers were ranked with fake points. One bad thing is we can’t see some of real flinger’s records.

[Romo]

@Rat9 (changed for notification)
Anyhow, it’s good decision by Rovio? Apple? though.

[Rat]

@Romo

Good idea!
Bad execution!

And the hackers are already coming back. So the only scores Apple/Rovio will have successfully removed are their top flingers.

[Romo]

@Rat9 The hackers are, probably , more deligent than Game Center management and Rovio/Apple has less resources to check real flingers? :-)

[Romo]

@sglouk I just read your writing a week ago.
The Korean in AB Space might be me. I used it for iPhone and got 2.5M for S-15 in past.
I found the score/rank of total & pig dipper was removed.

[Romo]

@Rat9 Now I real all discussion and understood what’s going on.
There is no good news. Only removed real flingers from the top. Sorry for silly talking above.

[Rat]

@Romo

Like I said, “Good idea, bad implementation”.

[HunnyBunny]

@rat @romo @burpie @sglouk

Seeing as GC now lists me in second place in PD shows how ridiculous this cull is. I can fling a bit, but you guys are way ahead of me in Space.

Btw my PD S-15 score is 700k so they obviously thought that was OK

[HunnyBunny]

Edit to include @rat9 to the above

[Sglouk]

@rat9

OK, so it strengthens my guess that the Pig Dipper threshold is at 4M. Then the only thing we need to do is to find the most appropriate person who can help to have the threshold raised to 12M.

@amslimfordy do we have some official contact with Rovio for this?

[Sglouk]

@hunnybunny

My guess is that only the episode total score is sent to the Game Center. Even if your S-15 score is high, it may not matter in case the total is not too high.

Btw, I would be curious to see how the GC deals with the NaN score one can get when experiencing the exploding planet glitch on 3-10 or 8-27.

[cosmo2503]

@sglouk what does NaN abrreviation stand for?