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Jul 28, 6:59 PM
#1
Lead Admin
Faerie Queen

Offline
Aug 2007
6433
Hello Summer 2025 participants,

It came to my attention a few hours before Week 4 calculations that one or more individuals were using duplicate accounts to boost the episode discussion points for Silent Witch. I removed these posts, which caused 158 players to mistakenly ace Silent Witch and be penalized for it.

On July 29 @ 6PM PDT, the FAL website will be down for maintenance to:
- Return the 5000pts penalty to players who aced Silent Witch
- Remove the "Already Used" flag for these players (so they can attempt to ace Silent Witch again)
- Recalculate the rankings for all teams based on this points adjustment

As a result of this, please be aware that your calculated rank may change after this maintenance.

Going forward, we will be adding a reputation system to the episode discussion posts calculation. I will not provide details, but roughly speaking, posts by accounts deemed to have poor reputation will not count, even if they exist in the thread.

You can still report accounts to me that you think are suspicious. However, please understand that as a result of this new system, I may not actively delete those posts anymore. Please use the FAL dashboard to help predict your aces, and I will do my best to not adjust them suddenly like yesterday's occurrence.


In closing, there's an old phrase that goes: This is why we can't have nice things.
Please do not cheat while playing the game. Have some morals, it's not that difficult.


Thank you everyone for your understanding! Best of luck in the remainder of the Summer season.
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Jul 28, 10:23 PM
#2
Offline
Oct 2024
1384
Thanks for telling!!
Jul 28, 10:26 PM
#3
Offline
Jul 2014
37
Overall a good change and certainly one in the right direction. I'm very happy to see there is something being actually done about this issue that has terrorized the FAL community for years. The previous system was both something that was very time consuming for you and also lead to situations like this one (sadly not the first time this exact situation has happened...).

However, given this new reputation system, it will be impossible for us to track what happens during the last hour before a deadline. Have you considered locking in the points for the last hour like it worked in the past? With this new system we could be forced to gamble on whether the 5 new comments posted 30 mins before the deadline are from a legit source or not.

Please consider adding this quality of life feature!!
I would also consider making it so acing can only be done on Monday the week after the points are counted (so you'd ace for w1 during Monday of w2). There would be 2 reasons to do this:

1) New players constantly missace, because an anime caps before the end of the week and they locked in their ace too early
2) This is a game played by people all over the world and for some of them the deadline is 4 am in the morning. I know several people who have to set up alarms to wake up every 2nd week to get a correct ace... you can imagine how bad it must be for them. And with this new system where you can't even check the correct count yourself before the deadline it's even worse lol.

The only downside to this idea is that it gives good players an extra day of stats to work with, but I think it's a fair tradeoff and I don't think the competitive players would mind it.

Edit: I originally wrote this post 5 mins after waking up, so I'm editing it to include my full thoughts.
MartinchJul 29, 1:44 AM
Jul 28, 11:02 PM
#4

Offline
Aug 2021
313
Reply to Martinch
Overall a good change and certainly one in the right direction. I'm very happy to see there is something being actually done about this issue that has terrorized the FAL community for years. The previous system was both something that was very time consuming for you and also lead to situations like this one (sadly not the first time this exact situation has happened...).

However, given this new reputation system, it will be impossible for us to track what happens during the last hour before a deadline. Have you considered locking in the points for the last hour like it worked in the past? With this new system we could be forced to gamble on whether the 5 new comments posted 30 mins before the deadline are from a legit source or not.

Please consider adding this quality of life feature!!
I would also consider making it so acing can only be done on Monday the week after the points are counted (so you'd ace for w1 during Monday of w2). There would be 2 reasons to do this:

1) New players constantly missace, because an anime caps before the end of the week and they locked in their ace too early
2) This is a game played by people all over the world and for some of them the deadline is 4 am in the morning. I know several people who have to set up alarms to wake up every 2nd week to get a correct ace... you can imagine how bad it must be for them. And with this new system where you can't even check the correct count yourself before the deadline it's even worse lol.

The only downside to this idea is that it gives good players an extra day of stats to work with, but I think it's a fair tradeoff and I don't think the competitive players would mind it.

Edit: I originally wrote this post 5 mins after waking up, so I'm editing it to include my full thoughts.
@Martinch

I agree with this. Just please count the correct points so players would be able to name the right Ace. Otherwise, this game will be impossible to guess correctly.
Jul 28, 11:29 PM
#5
Dragon Idol

Offline
May 2017
7770
Good that they're getting their points back but the rest feels a little bit excessive and unnecessary.
Jul 28, 11:46 PM
#6
Community Mod
TYRANT

Offline
Jan 2009
763
Thank you for the update, Kineta! Sorry to hear that people are creating extra work by being weird about something that's meant to be a silly bit of fun.




Another hero? Oh, please!
You're a god-damn philistine.
Jul 29, 12:26 AM
#7
Ceasefire NOW

Offline
Aug 2009
3822
Amazing how people would stoop this low just for a game.

Thanks for catching and resolving this for players.
Jul 29, 12:59 AM
#8
ranked 54 in FAL
Offline
Mar 2018
1598
so that's what happened, damn, i just thought the points projection led me astray and that i was done for this season because of that wrong ace.

awesome that you guys are doing all this work to fix this but pretty sad that people would actually cheat in this way.
Jul 29, 1:18 AM
#9
Go read Medalist
Offline
Apr 2007
290
I appreciate taking the effort to do this right; the prompt removal of posts just before deadline did hurt many legitimate players in the process. Honestly, doing these cleanups has always been unsustainable and a horribly inefficient way to spend a lead admin's time. Solving this systematically is the right way to go.

Martinch said:
Given this new reputation system, it will be impossible for us to track what happens during the last hour before a deadline. Have you considered locking in the points for the last hour like it worked in the past in order to not have to gamble on whether the 5 new comments posted 20 mins before the deadline are from a legit source or not?

This, this, this.

If the reputation system is implemented, locking points an hour before will be completely mandatory for competitive play, otherwise, yes, it turns into a gamble.

As for the solution itself... I like the fact that cheaters won't have an immediate confirmation whether their account is flagged or when it will be. This creates a lot of extra friction to manipulation attempts which will successfully prevent many of them. Not most of them, sadly, because nothing prevents accounts on good standing strategically "accumulating" discussion and unloading it all in the desired weeks.

I feel like to make the most out of this system, you might want to combine it with a simple but effective measure I described here (tl;dr hard-limiting user's point contribution per title per counting period). As a useful bonus, FAL players who worry about their reputation won't have to withhold themselves from posting under this system so you get more users to post. Everybody wins! (Except cheaters.)
Jul 29, 2:28 AM
因果導体

Offline
Sep 2021
1634
Nice clarification on the incident, I was wondering about the deal with the sudden drop of score in the last minutes.
Anyway, is there any method to counter the fake favourite and fake dropping by bots also? They're hard to spot unlike episode discussion.
Jul 29, 2:40 AM
Go read Medalist
Offline
Apr 2007
290
Reply to Martinch
Overall a good change and certainly one in the right direction. I'm very happy to see there is something being actually done about this issue that has terrorized the FAL community for years. The previous system was both something that was very time consuming for you and also lead to situations like this one (sadly not the first time this exact situation has happened...).

However, given this new reputation system, it will be impossible for us to track what happens during the last hour before a deadline. Have you considered locking in the points for the last hour like it worked in the past? With this new system we could be forced to gamble on whether the 5 new comments posted 30 mins before the deadline are from a legit source or not.

Please consider adding this quality of life feature!!
I would also consider making it so acing can only be done on Monday the week after the points are counted (so you'd ace for w1 during Monday of w2). There would be 2 reasons to do this:

1) New players constantly missace, because an anime caps before the end of the week and they locked in their ace too early
2) This is a game played by people all over the world and for some of them the deadline is 4 am in the morning. I know several people who have to set up alarms to wake up every 2nd week to get a correct ace... you can imagine how bad it must be for them. And with this new system where you can't even check the correct count yourself before the deadline it's even worse lol.

The only downside to this idea is that it gives good players an extra day of stats to work with, but I think it's a fair tradeoff and I don't think the competitive players would mind it.

Edit: I originally wrote this post 5 mins after waking up, so I'm editing it to include my full thoughts.
Martinch said:
1) New players constantly missace, because an anime caps before the end of the week and they locked in their ace too early
2) This is a game played by people all over the world and for some of them the deadline is 4 am in the morning. I know several people who have to set up alarms to wake up every 2nd week to get a correct ace... you can imagine how bad it must be for them. And with this new system where you can't even check the correct count yourself before the deadline it's even worse lol.

The only downside to this idea is that it gives good players an extra day of stats to work with, but I think it's a fair tradeoff and I don't think the competitive players would mind it.

I've been thinking about this... Do we actually need to ace manually?

Acing itself is a cool feature. But manual acing mainly exists to punish beginners, players from incompatible time zones (Asia/Australia/Oceania), and leave the rest open to sabotage in some cases. Abuse cases aside, there's no competitive advantage to acing correctly because once you understand the mechanics and are awake before deadline, it is completely trivial for any competitive player to look at two numbers and see which one is bigger. It's an intellectual task most of us learn to accomplish years before we can legally register at MAL.

Real competitive advantage comes from team composition and positioning of shows between active and bench which enables an experienced player to control which show is the eligible ace for the week. Making the ace declaration automatic doesn't change this in the slightest.

That being said, we'd still want to either lock stats in advance or allow post-lock actions to make emergency swaps. I'm not sure which one is better, both have upsides and downsides; maybe we could vote on it?
Jul 29, 5:46 AM
#FreeWatermelon

Offline
Feb 2020
9496
Woah idk if i should be grateful or become an unpopular human being by nagging and cherrypicking this late action.

For a better fal community, i guess, its all good.
Hide and seek is the best offline games on this fatamorgana-called-world-thing. Please comment nicely. I am newbie here.

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Jul 29, 10:43 AM
心を燃やせ ❤️‍🔥

Offline
Feb 2023
300
Appreciate you taking the time to correct this mess and uphold integrity to our events.

It's absurd and pathetic that ppl invest so much time and effort into cheating on something as non life changing as an online anime game.
𝙸 𝚔𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝚙𝚊𝚒𝚗 • u̲m̲a̲i̲ • レαmßεη† レïgh† • ɪ'ᴍ ᴀʟʟ ꜰɪʀᴇᴅ ᴜᴘ • ARISE
𝔥𝔢𝔞𝔩 • 𝒯𝒾𝓂𝑒 𝒜𝑔𝑒𝓃𝓉 • 𝟙𝟘𝟘𝟘-𝟟 • 𝐃𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐦𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐥 • ᖇIᑕEᗷᗩᒪᒪ

Jul 29, 1:01 PM

Offline
Jan 2018
571
Did not realize it was this bad. Thank you for doing the right by the players that got screwed over by the sudden increase of illegitimate posts.
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Jul 29, 1:14 PM

Offline
Jul 2011
392
Kineta said:
which caused 158 players to mistakenly ace Silent Witch and be penalized for it.

I'm one of those :(

When 50 min was left I had two options to Ace:
Dr. Stone - with 24,331 pts
Silent Witch - with 24,642 pts

and ofc I went and aced Silent Witch

:S


I remember debates in previous seasons about discussion points +75 being way too high and very convenient for bad actors taking advantage of.
Can we just nerf it at least a little?
nick_el_sonJul 29, 1:19 PM
Jul 29, 1:22 PM
Lilium Gardener

Offline
Jul 2011
4084
All those missed aces helped my team, but I am glad it is being corrected. Missed aces due to circumstance like these are a terrible way to sink a good FAL team. I am also going to back the others in this thread suggesting a points lock prior to the deadline. The unknown reputation metric is not a bad idea, but I'm sure you understand deadline guessing is not ideal for competitive play.
KingYoshiJul 29, 1:31 PM
Jul 29, 2:16 PM

Offline
Jan 2018
571
Reply to KingYoshi
All those missed aces helped my team, but I am glad it is being corrected. Missed aces due to circumstance like these are a terrible way to sink a good FAL team. I am also going to back the others in this thread suggesting a points lock prior to the deadline. The unknown reputation metric is not a bad idea, but I'm sure you understand deadline guessing is not ideal for competitive play.
@KingYoshi What about those that made suboptimal moves because of the chaos introduced by the spammers? Are they just SOL? I think the affected silent witch players should get to reorganize thier team for a period of time to correct this completely.
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Jul 29, 3:34 PM
Offline
Aug 2020
699
OK
Jul 29, 11:54 PM

Offline
May 2011
78
Thank you so much for trying to ensure justice. This situation is truly disgraceful. It would have been nice if you had permanently suspended these individuals, who don't even dare to put aside their selfishness and play fair, from the competition.
Jul 30, 9:10 AM
Offline
Jul 2021
219
Great move forward. Having the reputation system masked is the best way to make this system actually work and save admins time so they can focus on more meaningful things for the site than stopping cheaters in our silly little game. I do echo Mart and mooz’s opinions that we need some kind of “final score” before deadline so that this doesn’t turn acing into a crapshoot and/or automatically acing the correct show for players. Correctly acing the right show on your team has rarely been an interesting expression of skill in FAL.
Jul 30, 2:31 PM
Offline
Apr 2017
125
Reply to moozooh
Martinch said:
1) New players constantly missace, because an anime caps before the end of the week and they locked in their ace too early
2) This is a game played by people all over the world and for some of them the deadline is 4 am in the morning. I know several people who have to set up alarms to wake up every 2nd week to get a correct ace... you can imagine how bad it must be for them. And with this new system where you can't even check the correct count yourself before the deadline it's even worse lol.

The only downside to this idea is that it gives good players an extra day of stats to work with, but I think it's a fair tradeoff and I don't think the competitive players would mind it.

I've been thinking about this... Do we actually need to ace manually?

Acing itself is a cool feature. But manual acing mainly exists to punish beginners, players from incompatible time zones (Asia/Australia/Oceania), and leave the rest open to sabotage in some cases. Abuse cases aside, there's no competitive advantage to acing correctly because once you understand the mechanics and are awake before deadline, it is completely trivial for any competitive player to look at two numbers and see which one is bigger. It's an intellectual task most of us learn to accomplish years before we can legally register at MAL.

Real competitive advantage comes from team composition and positioning of shows between active and bench which enables an experienced player to control which show is the eligible ace for the week. Making the ace declaration automatic doesn't change this in the slightest.

That being said, we'd still want to either lock stats in advance or allow post-lock actions to make emergency swaps. I'm not sure which one is better, both have upsides and downsides; maybe we could vote on it?
@moozooh Manual acing is fine, else it becomes extra complicated thinking about titles getting auto-aced when there are multiple titles close to each other. Also sometimes one prefers to bench the highest score title one week to ace a lower score title which is expected to go past the threshold the week later. I recall it was a thing done for Kaiju no 8 season 1 premiere. The UI needs a fixing though to release ace automatically if title goes past threshold. I keep having to stay awake late night to check whether to change aces or not
Jul 30, 3:44 PM
Lilium Gardener

Offline
Jul 2011
4084
Reply to Konan_Edogawa_
@KingYoshi What about those that made suboptimal moves because of the chaos introduced by the spammers? Are they just SOL? I think the affected silent witch players should get to reorganize thier team for a period of time to correct this completely.
@Konan_Edogawa_ I would fall into that category, so I would be happy to be able to go back and ace Stone, leaving WItch in and swapping Sakamoto this week. I imagine all of that would just add to the mess though. The whole situation is a debacle, tbh. I'm just not one to make too big of a deal about it. I primarily just want FAL improved/fixed for the foreseeable future. I'm in the camp that despises discussion as a metric, in general. Though, any sort of improvement is better than nothing.
KingYoshiJul 30, 3:48 PM
Jul 30, 4:27 PM
John Titor

Offline
Jul 2017
1740
Thanks for cleaning the mess.

I was one of the "missacers". I admit that I had other plans IF Silent Witch wasn't the anime with the highest score, instead of staying with my team as it is now, but I'm thankful with the administration for taking a step in the right direction.
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Jul 30, 6:09 PM

Offline
Apr 2020
9
I guess they are the real villains from all the anime they watch, sick...
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