You won't believe it! This doomgod has been cheating all along!

[this is a split from the AV demo thread -dew]

On 7/11/2018 at 12:17 PM, Ancalagon said:

D2all uv-max in 4:13:37

30av-25337.zip

Yoo this is petty of me but, after some review there's several things about this that make it suspicious, so I'm marking it "probably TAS" on the av demo page

"probably tas" just wow

Damnit Ancalagon, you filthy scrub lord. How could you???

He's got no AV history to my knowledge

prboom+ usage raises eyebrows on such a crazy run

youtube comments he says 130 attempts for this achievement, this is the most unbelievable for me

actual gameplay analysis I'm not qualified to comment on, but maintaining a high level of aggression focus risk and luck for 4 hours is a tough pill to swallow

Camera on the kb/mouse would probably convince me. That's not something I normally care about, but if some guy benches 500kg tomorrow, you're going to want to check out his gear

I've seen a lot of accusations / suspicions over the years, but this is honestly the dumbest reasoning I've ever seen.

On top of it we get "actual gameplay analysis I'm not qualified to comment on." And yet you're accusing a player with a long history of awesome runs of being a cheater. 🤔

I'm a reasonable guy, you can argue in favor of its authenticity and convince me otherwise. Or we can just be dicks to eachother

You're out of touch, Vorpal. :D This run is nothing compared to the insane slaughter maxes and multiplayer performances by Ancalagon. Check his nochance.wad demo... (which he pretty much repeated live in ZDaemon with 350 ping to a 30 player audience)

This is not 2002. We have unbelievably skilled maxers today that would smash Adam Hegyi, Anders Johnsen, Xit Vono, etc to pieces. You need to catch up with them!

4 minutes ago, Memfis said:

We have unbelievably skilled maxers today 

That's exactly my point, and why I reckon additional proof is needed for astounding feats. Or do you guys think that records should only have meaning to the 50 people who are "in touch"?

Forgive me if i'm being ignorant, but going by that logic, how were astonishing feats proven back then?

This reminds me of the kids that think anyone better than them at a multiplayer game is a hacker.

This is not an unbelievable feat imo. Far from it. Alien Vendetta isn't even a hard wad by modern standards. It has generous ammo/health balance, features very few fights where you can't just camp safely and have to actually demonstrate your tactical skills in order to survive, and favors simple monster spam over devious crossfire situations. Resurgence, Speed of Doom, Unholy Realms, even Back to Saturn X are way more difficult overall, and I'm not even mentioning Slaughterfests and all that insane stuff. The days of AV being a hardcore megawad are long gone.

I'm not sure what to do about people who are out of touch. Anyone who's been following the demo scene for the last few years has to believe that either a) the reality is that we have a bunch of literal doom gods or b) there are hundreds of cheated demos by j4rio, Ancalagon, Rizera, Nevanos, TimeOfDeath, gggmork, etc on DSDA. To me the former is way more likely since it's hard to imagine people cheating so much, and also I've seen many of them demonstrating their incredible skills online. But I don't know how I would go about convincing someone who's less informed... Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is livestreams. Some of the best players host livestreams occasionally, so nowadays it's easier to observe your heroes "in their natural habitat" and make a judgement on their real skills. But also just watching demos for Time Of Maps, Italo Doom, or Sunlust should give you a good idea of what the modern players are like. They are beasts!

I have seen Ancalagon stream max attempts, and exits. Not for this particular demo in question but at least those streams can at least be used to show that Ancalagon has the potential skill-wise to make a demo of this type. You can apparently fake streams, this has been done before in other games such as Ocarina of Time, but when do we draw the line tbh.

There was nothing I would consider fishy or offensive during Ancalagon's streams (such as pausing during a recording with escape).

I don't play survival online or anything but apparently Ancalagon plays a lot of that stuff too. Is there a way to cheat that?

I mean outside of knowing a player has the ability to make a demo what else can be done if we cannot detect tas when players are using prboom+?

I have no reason to think Ancalagon is a cheater based off of what I have seen.

16 minutes ago, Memfis said:

Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is livestreams. 

The same conclusion I came to with my webcam comment. I jest a bit when I say I'm uninformed, I know other communities do demand this standard (or at least, their runners take the extra effort to dispel suspicion with live footage or cam-on-keyboard footage).

Best case scenario: maybe next time someone does this run they'll record their gross desk for me

Worst case scenario: 1 guy on the internet thinks another guy cheated at a video game

4 hours ago, Vorpal said:

 

Yoo this is petty of me but, after some review there's several things about this that make it suspicious, so I'm marking it "probably TAS" on the av demo page

A very good point about this was raised in the discord and it's that I would rather not have the demo in that site over having it labeled as probably tas, cause it is not.

You just complimented Ancalagon the best way possible. Calling him a cheater even though he is not cheating.

4 hours ago, Vorpal said:

He's got no AV history to my knowledge

Here's anc nearly destroying av32 with fast monsters on the first attempt during the legendary TNS pain rotation back in 2012. Knowledge is key.

4 hours ago, Vorpal said:

prboom+ usage raises eyebrows on such a crazy run

Actually, I wouldn't want to use anything else. Vast majority of runners use pr+ nowadays and you just wanna be as comfortable as possible for a 4hr run. While pr+ certainly facilitates cheating, a cheater could just as easily use it and then claim it was recorded in.. I dunno, crispy. Port paranoia is for ocelots, not men.

4 hours ago, Vorpal said:

youtube comments he says 130 attempts for this achievement, this is the most unbelievable for me

While I understand what you mean, it's not a small number at all for such a lengthy run, it certainly means a lot of hours wasted, heh. I'd be more suspicious if someone beat an extremely short and polished record in 130 attempts, but a veteran of anc's caliber on what's basically "just survive this in one piece"? I'm less worried.

It's funny that these things usually can have a clear debate. You can only choose to believe or not believe. BTW, PrBoom+ usage is not a way to argue about this since this is probably the most popular port. I watched the later maps and the style is rather conservative compared to actual single map record for that map. Given the fact that Ancalagon can play well in most single map runs, I would say these changes convince me enough to believe this is an actual single segmented run.

Another thing is that doing speedruns can improve your skill to a level beyond expectation. It's difficult to explain this because it's more a feeling thing, but I would say casual playing can improve your skill but it will eventually reach a difficult-to-cross threshold. Even under the pressure of single segment run, you get a lot of improvement of your skill. I would say, players' skill beyond someone's expectation is a normal thing to see.

2 hours ago, Memfis said:

To me the former is way more likely since it's hard to imagine people cheating so much

Another thing is what's the point of cheating on this. Classic Doom PWADs are just niche interest, not to mention probably AV is also borderline this because it's not an official game or something. I can understand cheating on popular esport games, but not this because probably no one outside the circle would care or do something to it. 

3 hours ago, kraflab said:

This reminds me of the kids that think anyone better than them at a multiplayer game is a hacker.

Now its all about dem scripts. Especially in TF2.

I could at least understand these allegations if ancalagon only released a few stellar demos out of nowhere. As it is, he is has released hundreds of demos and is a quite active online player.  I'd hop on a server and just play with him before accusing him with no proof whatsoever.  

this is embarrassing @Vorpal

2 hours ago, Vorpal said:

Worst case scenario: 1 guy on the internet thinks another guy cheated at a video game

I can think of worse scenarios: perhaps everyone loses confidence in the Doom gods. The official Alien Vendetta website said it was true! Who am I to doubt it? Might as well pack it all up and start recording in ZDoom, since you can't even prove that a supposed vanilla or choco demo wasn't recorded in PrBoom+. What a truly dark world that would be.

I thought clickbaiting with 'x popular player is cheating!' and then not showing significant evidence was what games like CSGO's communities did. Seeing it here in Doom? Really, man?

To be fair, the title was added by dew.

I think we need some room for cheating accusations. In the chess world you can get like a one year ban from all tournaments for "raising unfounded suspicions". The result, of course, is that there is obviously some cheating going on even at very high levels, but it's too scary to bring up and so nothing really changes. That's what's really unhealthy in my opinion. People shouldn't feel like speaking your mind is unwelcome.

I mean, it is true that our community is rather unique in the sense that there is barely any run validation going on, even for the most prestigious records. We definitely need to talk about this from time to time because obviously a situation like this will cause some distrust. It's not unfounded or ridiculous at all. But if you invite players from other speedrunning communities, many of them will definitely say that this blind trust we have is ridiculous. :D

25 minutes ago, Benjogami said:

I can think of worse scenarios: perhaps everyone loses confidence in the Doom gods. The official Alien Vendetta website said it was true! Who am I to doubt it? Might as well pack it all up and start recording in ZDoom, since you can't even prove that a supposed vanilla or choco demo wasn't recorded in PrBoom+. What a truly dark world that would be.

However, things in ZDoom don't behave as intended... It's kind of sad that most of these things don't really have evidence to clear any suspicion. Even with videos of keyboard/mouse and your face, the player can cheat, but it's just harder. Right now, it seems the situation you talked about is the worse case I can imagine. This could lead to people talk about TAS thing even they have no idea what is TAS, or people are watching a TAS video even they don't know what it is supposed to mean and think that's a live performance.

12 minutes ago, Memfis said:

I mean, it is true that our community is rather unique in the sense that there is barely any run validation going on, even for the most prestigious records. We definitely need to talk about this from time to time because obviously a situation like this will cause some distrust. It's not unfounded at all.

It seems any sort of verification method is quite costly relatively. As mentioned above, having videos for extra stuff doesn't really prove anything. It takes a lot of time to analyze everything. Even with this, it's hard to prove everything.

Kinda sad the official av site (subsite?) still says "probably tool assisted" despite the suggestion being so extensively dunked on in this thread, tbh.

Title is stupid...Ancalagon is among greatest speedruners....

A great doomer Okuplok already left community due to such "Feel" base accusations and now these thing ought to stop...

40 minutes ago, Memfis said:

To be fair, the title was added by dew.

Guilty as charged. It shoud be obvious from the message about splitting. :)

And yeah, as long as the discussion stays civil, I don't object to having it. I clearly side with anc here, but I think there's value in explaining the situation rather than just shutting it down, because lol John Snow there knows nothing.