After months of exhausting practice, I've come to realise that some people are cheating the Beat Saber leaderboards on the Quest. Now before you make the assumption that I'm just salty because I'm not that good at Beat Saber, I have some of the top scores on the Quest. But I must admit, none of them are on Expert+. I'm not a god! The reason I know people are cheating is because their scores are far above the maximum possible score achievable for a given song/ difficulty. The formula to calculate the approximate max score is as follows:
Number of blocks x max swing score x max combo x max modifier bonus = max score
Written another way: number of blocks x 115 x 8 x 1.19 = max score.
This is approximate because it doesn't take into account the time it takes to build up to the max combo, so the actual figure would be a little less.
But there are leaderboard scores that far exceed this maximum, which ruins it for all of the honest players that have put in so much time and effort to get where they are on the leaderboards. I've contacted Oculus Support and tried to contact the Beat Saber devs, but my words have fallen on deaf ears.
OK, it may be difficult to weed out the cheats, but when it's that obvious, why are they allowed to remain #1. I don't think the cheats should be banned from playing BS, but they should at least be banned from the leaderboards.
If you'd like to see examples of what I'm talking about, check out "$100 Bills", "Crab Rave" or "Epic" on normal difficulty and do the maths yourself.
I'd love to hear from the Quest community about this topic. Am I the only one that cares?
I've noticed the scores too, and ran the calculations myself. I mentioned it on beat saber discord, and only one person acknowledged my complaint. I went onto beat saber the following morning and the scores were gone. By the end of the day, those scores returned. Now there are even more of those scores posted. I'm sure the devs are aware that this is going on. As the cheating continues, it seems to be getting worse. It kind of proves to me that it does not matter to them that much. If it did matter they would remove those scores permanently from the leaderboard, AND prevent it from happening again. Or at least reduce the chance of it happening again
The game Mirror's Edge had a leaderboard for finishing maps, but it had a cool feature: you could watch a replay of every leaderboard entry. All the top scores had the player just flying through the air or going through walls. So at least it was obvious which were cheats (although nothing was done about them).
I generally don't trust leaderboards for the general public. Friends and myself, yes, but not random people. There's always a bunch of cheats.
I hate it when big companies advertise their short game as score focused, and that it's replayability comes from competing on the leaderboards, but then give fuck all about cleaning them from obvious cheats.
What are people's thoughts on having a name and shame list for cheats on this forum? We would have to be 100% sure that the score is a cheat though and not the result of some bug...how is the cheating being done?
Well, it's just a thought.
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In the case of Robo Recall it was someone who coded a "trainer" hack, which among other stuff let you increase your score multiplier. I talked to the guy who made it.
A name and shame might be a good deterrent, but I have no idea how it's being done. So you could only name people with impossibly high scores. Anyone cunning enough to keep their scores believable would get away with it.
I couldn't find any info on the subject, but if there is a bug in the game, exploiting it is still cheating IMO.
We could also start a thread of confirmed highscores with links to Youtube videos. I can't see how you could cheat if the whole thing was recorded. It would be a little tedious, but it would keep it fair for competitive players. Maybe just the top 10 scores for each song/ difficulty.
Yeah it's a tricky one. Confirmed via a recorded vid would be good but puts quite a bit of a burden on the innocent to jump through the hoops of gameplay recording... may be the only safe way to do it. I agree about only shaming the impossible scores.
I guess a confirmed vid leader board isn't accusing anyone, it's just a separate board that can't be argued with. I'm kind of liking it more!
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There will always be those taking a fast patch and also cheat to get fame 😞 People that are cheating should be banned for 3 months after scores been removed, no online score upload access.
It may take me a little time, but I'm willing to put some effort into a leaderboard thread.
I've just recorded the number of blocks and calculated the exact maximum scores for OST 1.
To get the exact maximum possible score was a little tricky, but to simplify:
((Total number of blocks - 14) x 1094.8) + 5747.7 = Exact possible maximum
The first 2 notes are at 1x combo The next 4 are at 2x combo The next 8 are at 4x combo The remaining notes are at 8x
OST 1 Song List: $100 Bills Easy: 156 notes, max 161,209 Normal: 196 notes, max 205,001 Hard: 264 notes, max 279,448 Exp: 437 notes, max 484,175 Exp+: 734 notes, max 794,004
Balearic Pumping Easy:170 notes, max 176,537 Normal: 239 notes, max 252,078 Hard: 341 notes, max 363,747 Exp: 459 notes, max 492,934 Exp+: 608 notes, max 656,059
Beat Saber Easy: 94 notes, max 93,332 Normal: 116 notes, max 117,417 Hard: 202 notes, max 211,570 Exp: 267 notes, max 282,732 Exp+: 632 notes, max 682,334
Breezer Easy: 106 notes, max 106,469 Normal: 173 notes, max 179,821 Hard: 272 notes, max 288,206 Exp: 356 notes, max 380,169 Exp+: 566 notes, max 610,077
Commercial Pumping Easy: 136 notes, max 139,313 Normal: 213 notes, max 223,613 Hard: 329 notes, max 350,610 Exp: 447 notes, max 479,796 Exp+: 848 notes, max 918,811
Country Roads Easy: 151 notes, max 155,735 Normal: 208 notes, max 218,139 Hard: 295 notes, max 313,387 Exp: 544 notes, max 585,992 Exp+: 773 notes, max 836,701
Escape Easy: 157 notes, max 162,304 Normal: 195 notes, max 203,907 Hard: 287 notes, max 304,628 Exp: 399 notes, max 427,246 Exp+: 600 notes, max 647,301
Legend Easy: 150 notes, max 154,641 Normal: 184 notes, max 191,864 Hard: 216 notes, max 226,897 Exp: 289 notes, max 306,818 Exp+: 638 notes, max 688,903
Lvl Insane Easy: 102 notes, max 102,090 Normal: 139 notes, max 142,598 Hard: 198 notes, max 207,191 Exp: 330 notes, max 351,705 Exp+: 587 notes, max 633,068
Turn Me On Easy: 121 notes, max 122,891 Normal: 156 notes, max 161,209 Hard: 244 notes, max 257,552 Exp: 341 notes, max 363,747 Exp+: 663 notes, max 716,273
I'll do this for every song, except the DLC (because I don't own it). Would be great if someone with the DLC could compile that. Once it's all done I'll try to think of a format for this, but of course I would welcome all the help I can get ?
