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Unfortunately I can't just take your word for it.

Best advise I can offer is this one:

You could try wayback machine, for instance. If you're in a toplist:
https://web.archive.org/web/20181226113438/http://battletracker.com/index.php?page=AAOPlayerToplist
You may find it easier to find yourself at a different date (I'm fairly certain inactive accounts don't show up in the toplist) or something. Good luck!

OK.  Not a big deal.  Thanks for supporting this game!

However, I respectfully submit that there should be some sort of reasonable method of claiming honor.  The current framework which is nearly "screenshot or no honor" is unworkable for the super majority of players and frankly seems like an unwise method for a decades old dead game.  Also, that's pretty easy to fabricate.  I could have just mentioned a name on the toplist that wasn't mine, and you wouldn't have known.  Just my two cents.

I can't just take someone's word for "trust me, I was 100 honor".
And if this is such a dead game, then why are you here and why do you care?

Also, we do have name history. So if you show me a random name on the toplist, I can tell that it's not yours.

It might even be better to have everyone at the same honor so that weapon/class selection is based purely on performance of the last set, if honor claiming is impossible for the super majority of players.  Or, maybe someone who cannot prove their past honor with a screenshot could donate to get 100 honor?  I don't know.  Just trying to find a better framework.

I say all of this knowing full well that you're supporting this game out of your own pocket with no requirement to do so, and I'm extremely grateful for that!

If I believed everyone's "Trust me, I was XX honor", everyone would be 100 honor. And that's simply not true.

While you may (I really don't know) be correct with respect to your honor, I can't create a precedent where I give you your honor on your word alone. After that, anyone can come in and claim the same and I'd have no choice but to take the same action.

The problem with everyone being at the same honor is that we loose the progress aspect that people enjoy. The absence of progress (with respect to honor, anyway), has been here for a few years until we were able to enable honor gain through AATracker. And while I may be wrong, I do think this was deterring some people from playing the game.

As for the pay-to-win scenario you're proposing, I don't even know what to say about that, really.


With that said, if you can provide a better framework with at least some accountability, I'm more than willing to hear you out. I.e if you could get such info reliably from TWL/ESL or whatever (if I remember correctly, some of them required you to take a SS of the result at the end of matches).

I agree and don't think that I suggested that; if I did, I did not intend to.  I intended to suggest that the framework should be more workable than nearly "screenshot or no honor," such as a demonstration of special game knowledge or something else.  I'm not saying that I have a perfect solution or that purely "trust me" is better.
I meant no offense with that.  I meant "dead" in a factual sense in that the creator of the game no longer supports it.  I apologize that that came across offensively.  Maybe I could have used a less ambiguous word.  I care about this game and enjoy it, which is why I thanked you multiple times.

Clearly I was offended somewhat by what you said before. Though I shouldn't have responded in the manner that I did. So I'm sorry for that as well.

You match Assist username to toplist account name?  That is essentially as susceptible to fraud as "trust me."  All one needs to do is create an Assist username that matches a toplist account name, correct?

We know when people had what name. So if you've got a screenshot from some time that doesn't match your name at the time, we will be able to tell.
And we obviously can also tell if/when an account is brand new. Though someone who used to be on the top list could very well come back with no 25Assist account (or no access to one) and thus create a new account. We treat these cases on a case by case basis based on the information/evidence that's provided to us.

Due to the small (read: can't recall one) number of such requests, I do not think there needs to be a rigid process for this.

"Pay to win" is a strawman of that suggestion.  Honor does nothing other than factor into, along with previous set performance, an individual's class slot selection order.  No one on the team gets a stronger gun, more health, etc. from anyone being 100 honor, nor does the team get an additional class slot.  Honor is just one of two factors in an individual's class selection order; the class slot will be accessible to the team no matter what.  Paying for 100 honor would not be "paying for more ability to win" but paying for more personal enjoyment by getting to play your ideal class more often.  Even then, 100 honor does not guarantee that you will get your preferred class.  All of that being said, I do agree that paying for honor could be problematic.  I just quickly threw out that idea.

You're talking about paying for an advantage. Like you said, by paying for a higher honor, you're paying for easier access to a better weapon/slot compared to someone who's not paid for the higher honor.
While I'm sure everyone defines "pay-to-win" in their own way, I would say that this certainly qualifies.
Even wikipedia mentions gaining an advantage in this regard:

In some games, players who are willing to pay for special items, downloadable content, or to skip cooldown timers may be able to gain an advantage over those playing for free who might otherwise hardly be able to access said items. Such games are called "pay-to-win".

(not that wikipedia is necessarily the best source, but it's one from a person other than me).

Here are a few suggestions, some that I've already mentioned but am listing here for accessibility:

1. (my favorite idea)  Do not allow honor claims, and reset everyone's honor.  As we've demonstrated in this conversation, it is extremely difficult if not impossible to truly verify whether someone held a previous level of honor since this game is dead no longer supported by the creator and very, very few third parties.

Now this part I'm sure is probably controversial, but I personally think it could be really fun to reset everyone's honor to 10.  Then, we all start from the same point, we know that no one has an honor that they did not earn, and honor will mean a lot more because you earned it through Assist.  I think that that could be really cool.  Maybe we could poll the community?  Even if I had 100 honor, I'd be a fan of the reset because it adds a new ability to progress and compete against other players!


Man, the more that I think about it, this one could be fun.  Might be fun to do the same to stats.

I think this is a great idea, in principle.
But I'm afraid this wouldn't go too well with the parts of the community that are already at high honor. I'd be willing to bet that it'd feel to them as if they were punished for something.
We're talking about players who've played this game for (close to) 20 years. And have achieved a high honor score. And now we'd be telling them that this effort was futile.

I think it would have been different if:
a) this was communicated from the start of the project, or
b) there were technical reasons for us to not be able to continue with existing honor levels.

But unfortunately, we do not live in either of these scenarios. And people generally do not like something to be taken away that they feel they've been promised (even if there was no explicit promising anywhere).

2.  Require some sort of direct-message quiz that would require advanced game knowledge.  This isn't a great solution because you could have been 50 honor and still have advanced knowledge, but I think that it's at least worth mentioning.

In today's era, I don't really see how this could go well. Even ChatGPT could probably answer most of the questions we'd be able to come up with. We could probably work through a bunch of questions to find ones that ChatGPT answers incorrectly, but that would make it likely that actual experienced players don't know the answers, either. Not to mention that the knowledge base for each individual player may be very different. One player could play exclusively Bridge Crossing for long enough to get 100 honor (these players existed! I checked map top lists back in the day - I must have been a bored ass teenager). Another could have played competitively for years and know many intricate details of the game, yet never amassed honor higher than 50 (again, these players existed!) and could now ask for 100.
Plus since we had a fixed number of questions, the answers would surely circulate among those who'd be interested in gaining honor.

3.  Allow people to pay for honor.  This game rarely if ever hits its donation goal.  Every time that I have tried to, the donation link was broken.  I'll try again, BTW.  Looks like it's working now.  Further, as discussed above, this is not pay to win.

We're used to not hitting the donation goal. We're currently capable of covering our costs. While it is a minority of the team taking this burden on right now, others have offered to pitch in as well.
And that's one of the reasons we semi-disabled (i.e broke) the donation link as well. The other being the non-existent actual active development on the project.

But I still maintain that this would be paying for an advantage. And I personally don't like that. I suppose if enough players agreed/wanted this, we could do something with this. But I don't really see this being too popular (on the basis of the good old "eBay honor!" shaming of the olden days).

4.  Keep doing what is being done.  This is probably my least favorite idea, as it's susceptible to fraud and makes it highly unlikely that people will be able to successfully claim honor.

I don't really see what makes us so susceptible to fraud. But if you could enlighten me, that would be helpful.

I must not be understanding the requirements to have one's honor claim approved.  It seemed like you just needed to say "here's my name on the toplist, which is the same as my Assist username."  If a screenshot is always required, I would guess that 95% of return players won't be able to reclaim honor.  I'll shut up about this, but that seems not great.

It's on a case by case basis. I've yet to see someone even try to use wayback machine to prove their honor. I'd need to look at what they can provide in order to prove their honor to decide whether or not they're entitled to it.
But one thing we do have is name history and login history. So we can link different accounts together as long as they've been played with during the 25Assist 'era'.
Outside of that (i.e if no direct link exists), we'd try to use some reasonable judgement. For one, if one just changed their name to match that of someone who used to be on the BT toplist in (e.g) 2009, and they had never used a name that's in any way similar to that before, that'd probably be a good indication that it's a fraudulant query.
But again, this has all been down to some discretion on our part. But we need something to go on other than someone's word.

I agree that you're paying for an "advantage" in that your higher honor might give you a class slot pick before someone else.  However, my point is that that "advantage" in no way helps you or your team win, thus I don't consider that "pay to win."  It can, in some circumstances, give you priority over someone else in class selection.  But that does not give you or your team an advantage toward winning.

Whether you win is not really important here. You'd be paying for an advantage for yourself, personally. Otherwise, someone else might have grabbed the 'good gun' or 'good starting position'. You'd be improving your game experience at the expense of another player.

Would you be ok if I created a poll and at least polled active players?  I could post it in the Shoutbox periodically.  Worse case scenario, nothing changes--so no one gets mad.  I'd make sure to ask people of their current honor to see if higher honor players are more opposed than lower honor players.

I would just gather the data and give it to you to decide what to do with it.

You could try. But I don't know how many responses you'd be getting. Given how small the active playing community is, you might not even be able to draw a meaningful conclusion from your results.

Can you make it so that people can just donate with a credit card?  I don't use PayPal.

We don't have a legal entity for '25Assist'. Thus there is no legal entity to have a bank account. The PayPal link we had up was set up to go to the person who was responsible for paying the bills.
So I don't think this is likely.

With that said, we do appreciate the offer for a donation. And even more so the effort in thinking out loud to try and make the experience better for everyone!