Cheating on the EU4 Leaderboards

[Shade205]

I am guessing that the current leader of the EU4 has cheated his way to the top (Love the leaderboards by the way), considering that it is a player who is playing as Theodoro and the year is 1488 and his score is 4292819712. Do you have a plan to combat this sort of score abuse?

 

[Leakweeb]

Yep, that's me. Memory-edited the score, indeed. It's there as a form of "protest" for putting in a leaderboard all willy-nilly, without any form of anticheat or even just checking that the score isn't over 10k.
I'm all for combating this abuse, mostly by preventing it in the first place; but nothing of the sort is being done, as shown by my score.

 

[zeredek]

Wait how do you even check the leaderboards?

 

[Shade205]

Yep, that's me. Memory-edited the score, indeed. It's there as a form of "protest" for putting in a leaderboard all willy-nilly, without any form of anticheat or even just checking that the score isn't over 10k.
I'm all for combating this abuse, mostly by preventing it in the first place; but nothing of the sort is being done, as shown by my score.

Well I would have to say I am in agreement with your protest, if leaderboards are going to be put up they need to be policed.

 

[Leakweeb]

Wait how do you even check the leaderboards?

go to http://leaderboard.europauniversalis4.com/

 

[darkydark]

Yep, that's me. Memory-edited the score, indeed. It's there as a form of "protest" for putting in a leaderboard all willy-nilly, without any form of anticheat or even just checking that the score isn't over 10k.
I'm all for combating this abuse, mostly by preventing it in the first place; but nothing of the sort is being done, as shown by my score.

There are thousands of computer games. Tell me only one (not server-based) game where you can't cheat if you have some computer skills. So it isn't ok to blame Paradox for this.

 

[Sharples88]

There are thousands of computer games. Tell me only one game where you can't cheat if you have some computer skills.

Yeah it's a real issue where people can use undetected hacks to increase the score, it's a prevalent issue for world-wide games it's probably going to need constant updating to get rid of the unrealistic scores and users that ignore it can receive infractions or warnings for abusing the system. Not that it does any harm at all anyway.

 

[Leakweeb]

There are thousands of computer games. Tell me only one (not server-based) game where you can't cheat if you have some computer skills. So it isn't ok to blame Paradox for this.

Yeah, cuz opening up cheatengine and searching for my score is so skillful... And the leaderboard server has no way of knowing a score upwards of 200M is invalid...
And you wanted one example: Nuclear Thone's daily runs. You *can* cheat, but you get banned from the leaderboards if you post an invalid score.

 

[Knut Skallagrim]

And that's the reason i didn't even subscribe to that XD

 

[darkydark]

And you wanted one example: Nuclear Thone's daily runs. You *can* cheat, but you get banned from the leaderboards if you post an invalid score.

Ok, so the cheater with the highest valid score wins the daily runs. That makes you happy? It is hard for me to see much improvement.

 

[Kollatius]

I do not care about leaderboards. That's not why I play the game

 

[Leakweeb]

Ok, so the cheater with the highest valid score wins the daily runs. That makes you happy? It is hard for me to see much improvement.

You don't see the difference between a leaderboard filled with 1M+ scores and one with valid scores? Really?

 

[Path]

You don't see the difference between a leaderboard filled with 1M+ scores and one with valid scores? Really?

The point is that even if you police the board and remove all scores that aren't at least mathematically possible, the leaderboards will still be dominated by cheaters. Nothing stops you from using simple memory edits to achieve whatever you want, IM or no IM, so the leaderboard has no value regardless. It's only useful for comparing your own scores against those of players you trust.

 

[Leakweeb]

Update: Apparently my score has been removed (which is good!), but there're still a few clearly invalid scores (the first two, and the 1001 Ryukyu in 1472 one, for example) (which is not so good).

I do not care about leaderboards. That's not why I play the game

Good for you.

The point is that even if you police the board and remove all scores that aren't at least mathematically possible, the leaderboards will still be dominated by cheaters. Nothing stops you from using simple memory edits to achieve whatever you want, IM or no IM, so the leaderboard has no value regardless. It's only useful for comparing your own scores against those of players you trust.

So why was it implemented with a global ranking, then?

 

[Phibs]

It's only useful for comparing your own scores against those of players you trust.

This. Which would be useful if it had 'compare to friends' function a la binding of Isaac.
As is, the value truly is zero atm imo.

 

[PhoenixDown]

inb4 vac ban in singleplayer game

 

[Path]

So why was it implemented with a global ranking, then?

You'd have to ask Paradox. Leaderboards in a game where all the data is client side will never work, so I don't see the point in introducing them.

 

[Leakweeb]

Nothing stops you from using simple memory edits to achieve whatever you want

Isn't that sort of my point, btw?
What's the point of putting a global leaderboard on a game without any form of anticheat?

You'd have to ask Paradox. Leaderboards in a game where all the data is client side will never work, so I don't see the point in introducing them.

I see we agree, then.

 

[TinyWiking]

The answer you seek is yes
The leaderboard is still being worked on but we wanted to release it with the expansion since it's something the community has been asking for. Rest assured that the current situation is currently being looked at and we hope to have a good solution for it soon.

Happy to hear you like it btw, I'll make sure to pass it along !

 

[Seelensturm]

The fascinating thing about EU for me was always immersion and setting my own goals. Just play because it is fun and not to hunt for scores, achievements, victory cards, leaderboard positions...