AARP Online Community and Discussion Forums - Re: Cheat Bots Have Infiltrated Mahjongg Toy Chest...

Meleah · ‎04-07-2023

To AARP: Just looking at the weekly and monthly scores for Mahjongg Toy Chest Classic, pretty sure 49,000+ is impossible to get in this game. In fact, most of the top ten scores that are showing up are obviously fake. I've been playing this game for many years...originally on another game site until it went defunct. The scoring is a little different here than on that other site - you used to be able to get higher scores on that other site as the tile values were slightly different, but nothing near 49K as it just wasn't possible, so that people are all of a sudden getting 30-49K scores here...yeah, no. Not sure when this influx of extremely high scores started happening, but seems pretty recent as I do check the weekly and monthly scores time to time.

Not sure if there is a way to block cheat bots, but if there is something that can be done about it, I suggest looking into it.

Thank you!

AARPLynne · ‎04-11-2023

Hi, thanks for pointing that out, @Meleah. The erroneous score has been removed from the leaderboard. -Lynne

Meleah · ‎04-13-2023

Thanks Lynn! I see the Weekly is back to normal, but the fake scores are still showing in the Monthly.

jm97889929 · ‎04-07-2023

In support of what Meleah said: I'm not sure what, if anything, can be done about this. I wasn't thinking it was bots, but it definitely is cheating. I thought perhaps there was a newly-published cheat code floating on the net, and a spate of game hackers descended on this single game on the AARP platform to test their mettle against each other.

Like Meleah, I too am a daily player of this particular game, having spent years on improving my score and figuring out strategies. Even with all my years of experience, I find it difficult to get a score in the 19,000s and have never gotten a score over 20K. Further, I have never seen the cheating scores like those seen in the past few weeks (36K, 49K, etc). These scores simply aren't possible to reach without cheating.

While most AARP games, like Mahjongg Toy Chest Classic, are open to anyone to play, I have to think the base of users are seniors who are using the games to improve dexterity, mental concentration, and frankly, give a small victory when getting onto the Top 10 high score board. The games pass the time for retirees, and it sucks the fun out of playing when you see usernames who have NEVER been on the top-ten high score board coming in and finishing in the 1st to 9th high score positions. We, the daily players, can no longer see our recognizable, legit, fellow competitors. We can no longer see our own names in the high score metric because playing the game by the rules is no longer enough to get you into the high score range.

For those of us who have spent so much time building our skills at this game, our game, it feels like our game was abruptly taken away from us. It now seems hopeless to attain a high score ever again, and that makes me feel like a daily routine I have long loved now is painful to undertake: it is pointless to play with no sense of seeing how well I am doing.

Meleah · ‎04-08-2023

@jm97889929 wrote:
We, the daily players, can no longer see our recognizable, legit, fellow competitors. We can no longer see our own names in the high score metric because playing the game by the rules is no longer enough to get you into the high score range.

I agree completely with everything you said, especially how our hard-earned legitimate scores are never going to show up in the monthly or weekly, or even the daily scores if these cheaters come in again. That's part of the fun is to see where you landed, and see how others around you that you are familiar with did too.

I saw another post about something else where they mentioned their game (can't recall what it was) had some unusually high scores that were impossible to get for that game, so this is happening on other games too. They said AARP finally did something about it after they all complained for a long time about it. They didn't say how it was resolved though. So maybe there is hope that AARP will step in and fix the problem with this game too.