Nockess is being banned for cheating

Everyone,

I don't post often on these forums anymore, but this is the one situation where I feel like I have to speak up.

There's a principle that I've kept in mind for a while now that whenever someone betrays my trust, I try to keep in mind their motivation, assess the situation, and make sure to adjust my opinion of the person based on where it actually matters. And sometimes I tend to err on the side of being too trusting, and, well, that's my fault. But in the end, I think it's important to remember something.

Marble Blast, in the end, is a game. It's a game that a large number of us are invested in, sure, but in the end, that's all it is. Rosie hasn't insulted or harassed anyone, inappropriately asked for information, or been a general jerk. Most people who get banned from this community have done one or more of those things. So ... in a sense, she's kind of the best person to be banned. She doesn't deserve the historical company that this puts her in. Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that she doesn't deserve to be banned. I'm saying that there's a very big difference between cheating at a game and hurting people's emotional well-being. Rosie has lied to us all, but cheating at a video game is probably one of the most harmless forms of dishonesty that exists.

So, if I may make a request as a humble mod-creator and one of the older members of this community, I ask that before you form an opinion of Rosie as a person, you consider what I've said above. To put it quite frankly, Rosie is and will remain a good friend of mine.

Though her times may be gone, the impact she has left on this community will never go away. She's still one of the best Hunt players, even if she won't get an opportunity to show this off in tournaments. She's still a very good speedrunner, even if we can't trust any individual run. And to be honest, she helped inspire me to get back into this game a bit more than I otherwise would have.

For me, it's easy to forgive what she's done. I'm not a very good Marble Blast speedrunner. I've only ever had one WR, and it wasn't Rosie who took it from me. (Curse you, DKMan.) I understand that it's a lot harder for some of you. But I ask that you do the same, because everything she's done is in the past now. Her times have been wiped, so she can't harm us in the same way anymore.

Again, I want to make it absolutely clear what I mean. Forgiveness doesn't mean we forget. Forgiveness doesn't mean we think she did nothing wrong. Forgiveness doesn't mean we have to give her a second chance; I would if I were the admins, but I'm pretty sure I would be heavily criticized and accused of showing bias in doing so. What forgiveness means is that we acknowledge that she feels the weight of what she's done and agree not to pile any more weight onto her. We should accept the fact that she's learned her lesson and seek to allow her to move on to better things instead of letting this be what defines her in our minds. The name Rosie/Nockess means more than a cheating scandal; it means a legacy of inspiration, innovation, and talent, which was ultimately marred by a bad decision.

I could keep rambling for another seventeen paragraphs if I wanted to, but to wrap things up, I just want to get two main things across. One is that I hope all of you who talk to Rosie and enjoy interacting with her will continue to do so. The other is that even if you shun Rosie entirely, know that I absolutely will not. I will stand by her side in everything that doesn't involve Marble Blast speedrunning from here forward, and if you think worse of me for doing so, that's not my problem.

Again, I agree that what Rosie has done was horrible and abused the trust of an entire video game speedrunning community. But it doesn't make her a bad person.

-- Whirligig231

I don't really know what to say here. This situation makes me feel disgusted, confused, disappointed and saddened all at the same time.
I defended Rosie as well, when she was accused of cheating on Battlements I stood up for her and attempted to run the .rec overnight to prove it was legitimate, but it didn't complete once. I just assumed that the .rec system was awful and destroyed a perfectly good recording. Her cheating never crossed my mind, I just thought she was an incredibly good player as I know her well and have experienced her skill firsthand in multiplayer many times.

It was very strange that she got as many world records as she did as fast as she did. I remember a few days in which she got 5+ which just seemed insane, and her incredibly fast rating gain seemed crazy as well. I still didn't consider her cheating.

I'm also decently glad I never got around to watching MBCL20, as I would feel even weirder right now after seeing it.

I still like her as a person, but it will be much more difficult for me to trust her for a while, as cheating is something I personally take very seriously (a bit too seriously in my case) and seeing as she was one of the best players for so long without saying anything is just too much.

As pretty much like everyone, I don't know what to say. A lot of different emotions coming to my head, betrayal, disappointment, sadness, the list goes on. I wasn't really here when Battlements happened so my opinions are probably different. Just the fact she cheated for a year kind of sickens me, especially when she faked 2 WRR 3 runs. This more than anything shows how much awareness addictions need, everything starts innocently then it progresses. But knowing a talent is lost all because of something this really gets to me.

It's gonna be hard to trust her in the near future. I can easily forgive her for any hacked WRs, but when a WRR comes in, I don't think I can ever forgive that. Her ban as sad as it can be it is 100% the right decision no doubt.

But, although all this stuff, I still believe she's a nice person, just went down through a horrible path that everyone can.

Im not mad about this, im super dissapointed. When i first saw this post, i thought it wasn't real, and that it was a joke pulled by the moderators.

It never crossed my mind that she was cheating, but it still was super weird and strange how she was getting a lot of World Records left and right, but i thought it was the mad skill tht she had. Now after this, it is hard to believe that any of her times were real.

I definetly lost my trust for her regarding Marble Blast and speedruning and it will be hard to get it back, but regarding other things, she really is a great person and no one should give her sh*t for cheating at a game.

I still do not know how she went on without admiting for so long, seeing as she was the 2nd best player on the leaderboards, but i can hope she has learned a lesson from this situation. (and we can still be friends)

hPerks pretty much said it all for me. I'd like to add that MBG in particular is precious to me, as it has been for the last ten years, and not just for the speedrunning aspect. When I have trusted someone and believed these amazing times on so many levels, only to realize that they are nothing but dishonest, that makes me more bitter than I've felt in a long time. True, maybe there were circumstances in Rosie's life that led to this, but I will never forget how my favorite game has been cheated like this. I have zero tolerance for shameful dishonesty, especially in such a competitive speedrunning community as the one surrounding Marble Blast Gold.

This announcement is probably one of the most disappointing things to start this month (and year) with, but putting the emotions on this is not worth it, in my opinion. But that doesn't mean I don't have anything to say about this.

At first sight, most of the records I've seen on YouTube were quite impressive, though I have to admit that the smooth camera operation (and its consistency) felt odd, and even then I'm not sure if that's any evidence of something fishy going on. I can definitely appreciate the effort put into the game, the performance shown throughout the years and all the tweaks discovered for levels, but that's up to a point...
I believe there is a difference between abusing the game's mechanics to speedrun the levels (by that I mean things like traplaunches) and actually modifying the way you're supposed to play the game to abuse such mechanics with an unfair accuracy and, of course, consistency using aforementioned speedhacks or any other software.
I don't think I'm the one to judge the actions that were done, but for a person with such skill and experience, to use those solutions for so long with the risk of conflicting with the ToS and getting banned as a possible aftermath it's irresponsible at best. I'd probably forgive using speedhacks for pathfinding and potential tweaks, but that's it. I'm not going to argue against banning her for cheating and having those unfair times posted here and for official events like the World Record Rampage, as this is clearly deserved.

Besides, that should not really affect anyone's relations with her in real life or via Discord (including mine), but I'll definitely understand distrust regarding speedrunning, at least for the following week. And while all of this isn't really painful for me, it's definitely something I'd rather not have seen happening.

That being said, it's enough from my end... I think it's time to move on and hope such incident won't happen again.
- Matthias

I honestly hope Nockess just takes it as a life lesson that doing things the cheap but easy way never works out in the end and can even blow up in your face and screw you over even more. You can’t get through life squeezing by. Treat everything fairly and such things won’t happen...

When I heard about this in the news, I was completely stunned. At first when I saw the headline, I thought it was some kind of a joke or a two-months-early April Fool's prank. But I did see that it was posted in the announcements by HiGuy, and read the entirety of the post, and I soon realized that I had to face the harsh reality that a highly revered member of this community had been cheating. I guess you could say I feel like my favorite athlete was caught doping.

If I'm frustrated about anything though regarding this situation, it's not that Nockess/Rosie/Rozi cheated. It's not that she frequently criticized me for having few world records despite having a high overall rating (which was a bit of a minor annoyance, but it's not like I could really argue with it). It's the hypocrisy that these two things together entailed. In fact, just a few days ago, she mentioned being pissed off that many of my PQ runs from my early videos barely made the cut for the Awesome Time. And it's not the fact that she used slowdowns to try to pull off insane tricks. In fact, I would be excited to know tricks that could hypothetically bring speedruns of this game to a new level. It's the fact that she deceived us into thinking that these runs were achieved legitimately. But the worst part of it all is that she chose to irreversibly damage her reputation after already becoming one of the game's most revered players and abusing all our trust.

In the end, I think this ban is justified, and to be honest at this point it seems unlikely that Nockess would even want to return to the community after this scandal has completely been blown open. I won't consider her to be a bad person because of this (and I don't plan on blocking her on social media), but my trust in her in regards to anything Marble Blast-related is probably not going to come back any time soon.

Anyway, I just hope the fallout doesn't effect anyone else here, and I hope it doesn't turn out that cheating is more widespread than we ever thought. But I'm probably going to be a bit more suspicious of most Marble Blast content in the future...

I honestly don't know whether to be mad or happy about this situation. Sure games can get hacked all the time, but banning someone doesn't seem logical. Unless if the person was harassing others, etc, etc.

I've been waiting to respond because I've been gathering ideas and trying to word things more nicely than I would have if I responded really soon.

The problem with the "it's just a game" idea that I've been seeing is that it's not just a game. There's a whole community surrounding this game. Rosie was part of this community and built relationships with us all. Unfortunately, her dishonesty damaged or even destroyed those relationships.

People pour hundreds and thousands of hours into this game, competing with each other. It's fair for no one if someone is cheating his/her way up the ranks.

What makes this worse is that Rosie performs excellently when not cheating, but she went the dishonest route despite likely being able to accomplish all her times and scores legitimately. The damage has already been done to this community and its crowning accomplishments. MBP WRR 3? Potentially cheated times. MBG WRR 5, which will happen probably soon? Cheated times that are (fortunately) being replaced. World record times and scores in general? Cheated. For these reasons I am unable to forgive Rosie for what she has done.

Don't expect to betray the community and get forgiveness by just apologizing.

It's fine if you use external tools offline to see if certain paths and tricks are possible. It's not fine if you pass those runs off as legitimate.

Cheaters never win.

I am shocked as much as everyone else in the community and I'm currently writing this reply in my English class.
As someone who was inspired by Nockess to become a better player, it's really disappointing to see one of the biggest influences to me in terms of skill and knowledge be now stripped of the title of one of the best, due to actions that are questionably bad.
But as someone who has interacted and talked to Nockess and I've got to say that she is one of the people that has kept the game living for quite some time, with new videos coming out every so often inspiring others to make efforts to join and play the game more.
The removal of her times was appropriate and the whole situation wasn't an uproar.

As the rest of the replies mention it was disappointing to hear this but I can forgive you Nockess.

- Dodo

I've known Nockess for a very long time; practically the entire three years I've been a part of this community. We became such close friends. We would compete against each others times in a friendly competition way back in those days. Next thing you know, time flies by and between us, I become much less active over time and Nockess... well she just blew everyone away. She was (and still is) a very skilled MB player, one of the best I've seen. Even with the knowledge of this predicament, that statement will always hold true to me.

But this... I'm not sure what to say. Nockess had always been my best friend on this entire site. She is still the same person, but I'm honestly not entirely sure what to think with all of this. She's gone now. Everything is gone. She is still such an amazing person in every aspect, but I'll never be able to look at her the same way ever again.

Nockess, if you're reading this, you had such an impact on my career in MB. You inspired me to chase after dreams I never thought I was going to be able to do at all in this game. I'm very sad to see you go out in this fashion, but there doesn't seem to be much of a choice now. I'm glad you came out and admitted to all of this, though. That is a respectable thing to do. I'm very disappointed, but I, nor anyone else, will forget the impact you had on the community as a whole.

Thank you for everything. I hope this experience has taught you a valuable lesson in life.

Ever since Nockess released her MBOpal - Full Speedrun video in 2017, I became fascinated by her amazing skills in what is considered a dead mod. With her videos that demonstrate such skill such as Marble Blast Custom Levels 11, she was one of the players who inspired me to make more Marble Blast videos and be more active in the community again. She sent some kind replies and comments to me, and just when she released her video on PQ demo levels, I hoped she'd beat all the levels in the full release when it came out.

Fast forward to 2018, when I heard the news that she was the first player in the leaderboards to beat all Awesome Times/Scores, I was so proud of her as I knew she could do it. When I looked her Hydropower score on the Leaderboards as 117, which is the maximum amount of points after you can get all the gems in that level, I messaged her about it. She said that she got 2:51 offline and when she asked hPerks to add her time, she could only add scores instead of times. I was quite unaware that players can ask hPerks to add his/her times offline, and that (s)he would need to send in the .rrec as proof; however, she claimed that he trusted her. Months level, I was starting to notice that she was achieving world records on many Leaderboards Custom Levels offline for Marble Blast Levels 20. At first, I assumed that she wanted to keep her world record times a secret. After watching the massive compilation, I was so impressed by her runs that I never suspect any cheating. By the end of last year, I saw that it was a big year for her as she released so many major projects. I had hoped to see what she'd bring for this year as she hit 1,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel. After thinking that she had it all, she had to face her downfall after having to admit that she cheated on many of her runs that were shown even in her recent videos. Even after hearing that Doomblah achieved 100% Awesome in PQ, I had read posts like Tue27 now being the first to achieve 100% Awesome, and after going to the announcements on Discord, and read the entire post, I was shocked and stunned. I had always looked up to her as one of my favorite players of all time, but after hearing this sad news, I had to take this was something that really happened. Not only it definitely feels like the Watergate scandal all over again, but it also feels as if someone you trust for many years has hurt you so bad, after that person betrayed you and then you stopped trusting that person.

I thought our friendship would be quite healthy as our conversations had started out pleasant; however, things took a turn. Over the past couple of months, I noticed that she removed me as a friend on Discord. When I followed her personal Instagram account, she later blocked me and unfollowed me on Twitter as well. She also had been giving me a hard time, but I'm sure that she was just messing around. After some users were making fun of me on Discord, she had mentioned me on Discord as being generic with my posts, which I cannot argue with that even though I was a bit upset about myself and wished I had come up with more original comments. She had never posted any positive comments on my more recent videos. I guess that my runs never impressed her, where my videos show easier paths that intermediate players could follow.

Nock, if you're reading this, thank you for inspiring me to make Marble Blast videos, to be more active in the community, and to make use of iMovie again. I'd definitely forgive you, but even though I may never look at you the same way, I'll always remember your contributions to the community. I'm sorry that this has to happen with you having to leave. I'm disappointed in you right now, and I know that you are probably in emotional pain right now. Still, I wished you good luck on your future endeavors, and I prayed that you'll find peace as teen adolescences can be a struggle for you, especially when it comes to mental health issues.

Best wishes,

eNetro

Well it seems I missed a fair bit. On the bright side, at least the sun still rises? Eventually (but probably not until several million years from now), the sun will explode, we will fade from existence, and none of this will matter. The joys of science never cease to provide optimism in even the worst of situations.

So I now I'm not really that active in the community anymore (college is tough) and I didn't personally know Rosie very well so I don't really have much of a place to speak from, but I do want to say one thing: I forgive you.

I agree with most everything above. Yes it was wrong to deceive us, yes I see how frustrating this can be to the community members who are especially talented at the game, yes cheating destroys a reputation, But in the end, we're only human. Mistakes are made all the time by everyone. I can see how the curiosity of pushing the game to the very limit creating this problem, and I'm sad that it means those crazy runs weren't legitimate.

I remember when I got my first world record in this game a year and a half ago. I spent literally hundreds of hours perfecting the run. Personally, it was one of my greatest accomplishments (in my mind at least). I can only remember a few other times in my life when I was that excited about something. The record stood for over a year, until Rosie beat it. I was kinda devastated, but also fascinated at the technique she used. Even though I know now that it was obtained illegitimately, I want you to know, Rosie, that I have no hard feelings about it. If anything, this put a new fire in me to continue speed running the game, to keep improving, since I know now that it is physically possible.

Yeah, I know I tend to look at only the positive in situations like this, but I think that's ok. We all know she did wrong, so I don't want to keep driving in the nail. I forgive you. I hope you still stick around to say hi. I'd hate to never hear from you again.

I wish you and everyone in this community the best and healing from this wound
God bless

~Nicholas "Stormin" Norman

Waz poppin, 69th place gamer here,

I believe its better to start off with the positives before we get to my opinion on this entire matter, Nockess was a...well...we didn't interact that much so I can't really tell what kind of person she was, pssh fuck well there goes any redeeming qualities I would list.

You know the first thing that came into my mind when I heard words about her getting banned for cheating were: Why? and I don't mean why inna 'griefing, sympathetic, my wife wants a divorce' kinda way, just...why would you go to that extent?

You went there and back again to build such a character, have the community on your back, inspire players to follow your footsteps only for them to realize that their 2nd place hero is just a mere cheater? Mind you this all takes place in a game like Marble Blast, the last game anyone would cheat in.
Have you no morals? No dignity? to cheat in such a quiet game like Marble Blast whom user base consists of 3 people who still play the game? Did it ever cross your mind the second you opened up cheat engine for the first time that "maybe developing myself to be this 'completionist' that people would look up to wouldn't be worth the effort?" What was the need? Loyality? Approval? You were able to achieve both but was it fair? Was it satisfying?

Its baffling that you were able to keep up such a character for a long time, was there any earlier instinct of being real for once and ditching this entire speedhack, colmesh placing act before it got up to the point of no return? Surely somewhere you thought this setup might hurt you and the community who placed their trust in you


and hurtful it was. Although I have to say, the approach you chose to take was somewhat sound, even though its foot to foot with a typical youtuber apology, its the thought that counts. You knew when to stop putting up such an act and Im sure you were alot more accepting of the consequences that would ensue rather than attempt to take everyone else down with you. I guess there were a few redeeming qualities afterall.

I'll leave it at that, Im sure you're a decent person outside the community...in a way. Its just petty that you chose to cheat in a ball game.

And no, this post isn't one big "fuck you followed by an 'implied' just kidding" just letting you know.

There's one thing I feel I need to point out about Kalle's post, because I don't think he's giving Rosie enough credit here:

For one thing, the initial suspicions predate the Battlements traplaunch by quite a lot (which supposedly was when the cheating began according to Nockess); and speaking of that run, it was done by using colmesh and not slowdown - which speaks against the narrative of "it started out as trying a tweak in Cheat Engine which spiraled out of control".

The Battlements run was in late February, specifically around the 25th according to Kalle's memory. Rosie has claimed that the cheating began "last February or so" but hadn't specified a date. I questioned her about the matter, and she now claims that the first video with cheated runs in it was Ralph's PlatinumQuest Custom Level Pack, published to YouTube on February 6. Rosie has also claimed to me that it was "a few weeks" from when she started cheating until the Battlements run. This forms a consistent narrative; if what I have been told by both parties is true, then Rosie started cheating around the beginning of February, with the Ralph levels video. Then she started to get deeper into it, until for the Battlements run a few weeks later, she resorted to using colmesh.

Although Kalle seems to believe that there was suspicion regarding Rosie's runs "quite a lot" before Battlements, he has yet to provide (in my opinion) sufficient evidence of this. He has only mentioned two concrete things to this end. The first is that he told me "Cheat Engine was publicly mentioned as early as October of 2017," but this doesn't mean that it factored into any submitted runs until February, given that it can be used as a legitimate tactic for practice and for making footage of a legitimate run look smoother; I can easily believe that it took a few months before Rosie (or anyone) started using it to cheat. The second thing Kalle has said to this end is that "the first suspicions date back to 2015"; he has elaborated on this in a conversation we had, but although I'm not at liberty to disclose the details of these allegations, he has admitted that he's not certain of them and that they may have simply been an innocent misunderstanding. They are also completely unrelated to the main focus of the ban, which is using speedhack and colmesh to fake single-player runs.

I'm not saying Kalle is lying or out to get Rosie or anything like that, merely that he seems to be implying that Rosie's apology message may have contained further lies, and I don't think that's the case. And, importantly, it changes how some of us might see Rosie's legacy at this point; not as one of "years of lies and undeserved praise," but rather as a tenured, honest MB speedrunning career with serious talent that was then marred by Rosie trying to illegally take it to another level in the last year.

It's unbelievably disappointing to know that just about the last years worth of speedrunning is a lie. I have considered Nockess a friendly rival since about two years ago, and on that I can side with hPerks due to how involved in the speedrunning lore I am. I won't be able to forgive the fact that, in an effort to gain a higher reputation within the community, while also pushing others aside for supposedly inferior skill, Nockess decided to take this path. However, I still have respect for her as a person, so much that is potrayed online is not what it seems and I believe Nockess is a great person who made a great mistake. It sucks to see someone so respected go out this way, and thankfully actions are being taken so that this never happens again.

"wwi that rleyy give srosi splashy" - noby, 2017

so i haven't been seen around here for almost a year but i got memo that this happened and wanted to put in my two cents on the situation

First, the allegations of cheating (across all gamemodes) dating back to 2015 are correct, I can say with certainty that Rozi tried to cheat (fake crashes) in April of '15 (according to the Challonge tournament bracket). Very first time was in a match with Regi. Rozi also faked at least one more crash throughout his tournament participation, and attempted to exploit the rules of the SP tourney (though, in all fairness he wasn't the only one who did that bit.) Nonetheless, this shows a characteristic of cheating.

I have no idea when SP cheating may have begun, I am simply providing witness to the fact that Rozi was unafraid to cheat as early as 2015. I also want to address the issue of his apology:

I'm not saying Kalle is lying or out to get Rosie or anything like that, merely that he seems to be implying that Rosie's apology message may have contained further lies, and I don't think that's the case. And, importantly, it changes how some of us might see Rosie's legacy at this point; not as one of "years of lies and undeserved praise," but rather as a tenured, honest MB speedrunning career with serious talent that was then marred by Rosie trying to illegally take it to another level in the last year.

I think Kalle is, in fact, implying that the apology contains further excuses and mitigation of his actions, and I think this is an accurate implication. I especially think it is hard to make a sincere apology immediately after being caught, it takes time to collect your feelings and begin to actually feel remorseful.

Last point, I would not be surprised if the SP cheating began long before the battlements traplaunch as said; but anyone who played MP could tell that Rozi's skill level was in fact quite high at least by the point I left (around a year ago.) It's not an 'either he cheated OR he was really good,' both can be true at the same time. "Years of lies" seems reasonable to me, "years of undeserved praise" less so. That said, when deception is mixed in with legitimacy, the praise that IS deserved becomes tainted and difficult to discern.

FYI, Rozi's female, Frostfire.

Either way, I'm shocked. But unfortunately, it is what it is. Cheaters never prosper.

Oh my. This is very unfortunate, and totally unforeseeable. I always found it odd that Rosie was so crazy talented at the game – perhaps she is, if it is to be believed that she only started using the hacks last year. While I am saddened by her cheating on WRR 3, it's just a game and I'm almost proud that she came forward with this and was honest with us. It is rather unfortunate that she is being banned, but I suppose that's the retribution for a cheater.

Goodbye Rosie, it was nice playing with you.

Man That Is So Bad To Hear Nockess's runs were amazing to me and now hearing what happened is just a shame i hope Nockess can come back and try again because in my eyes she is not a bad person just did some bad things feelsbadman

A few weeks later, and my wounds are still present. Rosie was one of my dearest best friends in the community.
That is, almost nobody else in the community will understand me better than Rosie. She was always there for me, helping me improving my skills, whether it's about playing or level-making.

I can't believe she did that, I'm still a little be disappointed about her behavior, but there's no way in hell I'll be starting to hate on her like probably 95% of the community will do and maybe still does.

Rosie is still my friend and, for some reason, I can't get mad at her. What she did is horribly bad, but we all do errors in our lives, and I know that better than anyone else.

I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get a lot of hate for what I just said and for what I'm going to say, but I think I can forgive Rosie just this once, but barely.

Cheaters never prosper.





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