Why do people have to cheat?
Most of us here love the game and playing it for what it is but there are those who want to cheat......Very narrow minded people with little or no brain.
Looking at the top 50 score board is a joke and Shame on the Admin for no control.
The following should be removed straight away and banned.

1 Christie
3 Sunshine
10 SEASON
11 xcvxcv
13 xiao
15 renjianzhao
20 lalala
23 A4
38 Gamster
42 Pocok
45 quchenghao
46 PUPUB

You only have to look through the forum and see the one's who want to cheat and it's allowed to tell them how to do it. Something very wrong here.
Great prog but sorry, going off it very, very fast when I read these things. Seems like Admin is only after the money like the cheaters.

Jonty,

The problem is that they exploit that is being used by the cheaters is 'out there'. All the new versions do not contain this exploit, but some old ones out there still do.

I have been removing 'cheaters' manually from the leaderboard--I know it bothers people. I don't have enough infrastructure on the leaderboards to ban anyone from it, though, but I am considering other solutions.

Incidentally, we don't make any money by running the leaderboard, so I don't really see how we're after 'the money'. We added it as a way to allow players to compare how they are doing, just for curiosity's sake. We plan to continue supporting a leaderboard with the next releases because most people like it. We are also trying to learn from what is not working with this version of the leaderboards.

Thanks for the reply. The leader Board is a great idea. My kids love seeing where they are but of course ask questions when they see someone selling average 7000 per fish and we only get 400 - 450 at the very top. I try to teach them not to cheat but here they see it all the time, like I'm sure a lot of other kids do.
I hope you do work the problems out and delete these cheaters. This is a family program for all to enjoy.
Maybe before you release your next version you should do some real testing or give a Beta version to a few to test.

Where can I find this leader board?

It's accessible from LDW's Fish Tycoon for Windows web page. Here's a link to it!

Way I see it, unless you're playing for a real life prize or actually competing against some real life person, cheating is okay. It's just you against your computer. It's not like cheating at cards in Vegas. Now THAT'S bad.

People need to lighten up. It's just a computer game. Not life or death.

I dont understand how ppl are cheating.... Dont you basically have to go through crossd breeding like crazy with your fingers crossed?

Either breed with fingers crossed ... or when you breed two fish keep track of what they produce. Eventually you can figure out the patterns to it all.

I'm totally fascinated by the game .. and have gone to an extreme with it. But there are no cheats involved, and I don't know of any. Folks keep asking for cheats ... but they are looking for something that doesn't exist.

It takes a whole lot of logical thinking, time and record keeping to figure out how things work, but if you enjoy that type of thing it's alot of fun! I myself LOVE it!

But if that's not your thing ... then just breeding and having fun and playing with fish can still get you the Magic Fish in time. And how much time doesn't matter! The fun does!!!

If someone needs cheats to play a game like this, it's probably just not really their type of game.

Playing for pride is just as important (if not more so) than playing for money to some people, so cheating the leaderboards is not a victimless crime. I definately think that the people who cheat should be removed from the leaderboard, though with the rising PC popularity of the game, it is surely becoming a daunting task. The most logical solution I can think of is to compare the timestamp of the users e-purchase receipt to the hours of real time played, and if the real time exceeds how long they've had the game, well....but I'm sure that is a whole heck of a lot harder than it sounds!

Either way, I'm sure the admins are doing everything they can, so I'm not gonna get all fussy when (and if!) I even come close to reaching the leaderboard stats...I'm sure all the cheating on the game they worked really hard to develop urks them too (their only mistake was having too much faith in the PC using populace going into the leaderboard idea, since I gather the coding makes it difficult to ban people), so unless you want to annoy the creators of the game, and a whole lot of honest people who took weeks to do what you can do in hours, STOP THE CHEATING ! (or at the very least, don't click refresh on your stats, since I assume thats when you get added to the leaderboard )

There has been alot of talk about cheating on the board lately ... and I'd like to try to draw a line between 'cheating' .. and spoiling the game only for yourself .. or things also known as "Spoilers".

This thread started out talking about the "Leader Board" .. which is the internet comparison of how your game is going compared to everyone else who compares their games with those stats. It's the info you get when you hit "Refresh" in your statistics chart. The Board is based on how much money you have earned during the game.

As I understand it, early versions of the hand held game had a bug it it that allow this data to be falsified. (I don't have the understand of how it worked or anything). Folks using that type of cheat have put scores on the Leader Board that are just obviously not realistic, and remove the chance of the rest of us getting on the board to slim/to none. Arthur has removed a lot of nutsy scores since I've been looking at the stats.

That is one problem unto itself ... without much of a solution at the moment, except for Arthur having to take the time to clean out the board himself. (Bet he could spend his time better working on other things!!!)

But then the thread pick up the common usage of the work "Cheat" these days ... and that is where there is a 'trick' to the game (secret things that give you lots of money ... fish that live forever .. things that give you an advantage in the game, or ways of doing things quicker than the game is designed to do it) and there 'Are No Cheats' of that type that I have heard of.

What there "IS", is things people have learned about the game by playing it LOTS. Things they have shared with others. These are in the threads marked "Spoiler" .. because they spoil the game for you if you'd rather figure it all out on by yourself.

But if you want help with the game............ That, IMO, is not cheating. That just means you are stumped and could use some advise to figure out what to do.

For example .. If you are playing the game and find this board, and are reading it to learn a bit more about the game, you might not want to run across information that would tell you what order you should buy things in to start the game quickly. That information spoils the game... but only for yourself. You aren't hurting anyone else, and the info definitely will not help get you on the leader board.

I have TONS of information on my website. I've gone Manic with the game, and beat it yesterday in 14 hours IF beating it means finding all the Magic Fish. (there is soooooooooo much more to the game than just that .... like finding the 21 Perfect Fish ... and then all 441 fish! I've done that, too and I'm STILL playing the game and still love it. It's just not a game that is ruined when you beat it. It's a game that is FUN!

Last year my 29 year old niece/ mother of two / was brutally murdered in a yet unsolved stabbing. I have a link to her memorial page on my Fishies Website (Her page is down at the moment... my server forgot to renew the domain name. DUH!!!!). While or family does not know "who" took Jamie from us, we do feel we know "WHAT" took her ... and that is the violence that is in the world today, and part of that is the violence in video and computer games. I have a page on her website about Overcoming Evil With Good.

When a game like Fish Tycoons comes along, It's just what the world needs, IMO! I guess maybe that's why I'm devoting so much time to it, and building such an extensive website for it.

I'm going to jump off my soap box here, and continue this thought as a new webpage ... I can see it's going on way to long. But my point is.

If you want 'cheats' for the game there aren't any. If you want "Spoilers .. also called HELP" with the game, check out the guide section of this forum. If you still need help .. check out my webpages. I'm covering about every aspect of the game I can think of.

Let's raise our kids on games like Fish Tycoon!

The "cheat" myself and a lot of other people are refering to, I believe, is going into the options menu and setting your computer clock ahead two hours to instantly go from pregnancy to adult fish. I could get on the leaderboard in an hour or two if I did that with my most expensive fish over and over...

<end potential flame-war> And as far as video game violence goes...I don't think you were trying to start a flame-war, but that's the kind of off-topic comment that'll do it. I love Fish Tycoon, but I (and many like me) also love games with violence in them, and as tragic as any murder is, don't be so quick to slander an entire genre of games and the players of those games by saying they make people violent. It is rather insulting to me and many others. <end potential flame war>

I play all kinds of games (ones that are violent and ones that aren't). I think the original comment was just that... a comment.... someones view. If you get offend by others views, you have no business reading forums. You'll drive yourself nuts (and others that have to listen to your responses). Free world and live and let live. That includes knowing and acepting that not everyone sees things the same way.. it doesn't mean it's wrong.

end of rant

**hugs for Bobbie** Im so sorry to hear about your loss. You and your family will be in my prayers. God bless

Your hugs are very much appreciated, CaraBeans22!!! Thank you!!!!

how do you get on the top 50? The statistics on my game show that for the internet statistics I am 13th for how much money i've made, yet that isn't the correct amount for 13th place on the top 50, and I'm not anywhere on the top 50. TIA

I know what you mean Frenchpea. I wonder if those stats have to do with the amount of time that you have played the game. I.E if I have played for 10 hours and have made 100,000,000,000 ( WOW, that's alot of zeros) but, you made 200,000 in 1 hour. I maybe on the leaderboard but, you made more money sooner.So on your stats you were 13 or whatever. BTW this is a total guess so don't take it too seriously

Been trying to update my statistics all day but I think that website is down. Was going to look at it finally.