Nothing Matters Until Anti Cheat Is Addressed

@raaaavus they have addressed it now multiple times. They’re on it.

No, they have acknowledged it. Acknowledging and addressing an issue are two wildly different things.

They have addressed it in passing, with no substantial updates, no indicia of progress, no hard commitments to implement changes or fixes at any point in the immediate future, etc.

Just as Hitreg: saying "we are working on it" for years with precious few updates or.commitments is meaningless.

To date, the only support they have been able to offer is pushing the responsibility of to the players, encouraging them to do substantial work in order to improve the service Rare provides.

Given the significance of the problem, and rampancy of cheaters, a short, 3 minute "hey we know this is a problem," with no commitment or hard promises to do something is undeniably inadequate. Players can and should expect better.

@callmebackdraft I tend to agree. I know Call of Duty implemented a phone number link requirement. Now, things like Google voice numbers etc. can theoretically be used to thwart this, but it would at least be an additional step.

However, cheat detection also needs to be bolstered. Relying solely on the community to record, edit, and submit manual reports is not viable.

I wonder if they could implement an idea that CSGO has, obviously it is a lot bigger and more popular game with daily 1million players, so in turn has a lot more cheaters.

But in theory the system they have basically ''60% of the time works everytime'' You do meet smurfs or people cheating once in a while, but you wouldn't get 3 cheaters out 4 matches.

The system is called Trust factor and nobody knows exactly how it works. But in a way its a combination of many things as:

• Prime status

• Steam account

• Reputation

• Inventory

• Time played
  Maybe even more, so if this was translated into sea of thieves:

• Pirate legend

• Xbox account age

• Reputation/Commendations

• Combined purchased cosmetic cost

• Days in sea

So some Legendary Hunter of Sea of Thieves should not be matched against Level 8 Gold Hoarder with Crab outfit, even if MMR thinks they are the same skill level, obviously system wouldnt have any other choice if nobody else is available.

@raaaavus said in Nothing Matters Until Anti Cheat Is Addressed:

No, they have acknowledged it. Acknowledging and addressing an issue are two wildly different things.

They have addressed it in passing, with no substantial updates, no indicia of progress, no hard commitments to implement changes or fixes at any point in the immediate future, etc.

Hmmm, perhaps read the article here: https://www.seaofthieves.com/news/fair-play-update-spring2023

Further to this, our security team have issued permanent bans to an additional 8,000 accounts in the last 12 months as a result of internal cheat detection and anti-tampering measures.

we also work diligently behind the scenes to detect and block newly developed and evolving cheats.

Sounds to me like they're addressing it.

@lem0n-curry
As of their June 28 post, reports of cheating have continued, if not escalated. It does not appear that this "addressing" has been effective.

@foambreaker

If "multiple fixes" fail to abate the problem, such that there are still wide reports of rampant cheaters, and crews unable to play multiple matches in a row without consistently encountering cheaters, I would say that whatever "fixes" have been implemented are woefully and unacceptably inadequate.

Even games with top-of-the-line anti-cheat systems still have cheater problems...some even significantly so

A high quality anti-cheat implementation is not going to eradicate the problem. Hopefully we're all cognizant of that as Rare (hopefully) tries to get the problem more under control.

As a player with significant hours and hundreds upon hundreds of hourglass battles...I can count the number of blatant cheaters I've encountered on one hand.

Ironically, I've been called a cheater exponentially more times than I have actually seen cheaters 🤣

The problem, as pointed out already, is the account creation and, most likely, linking to Steam. That's something that needs to be worked out between Microsoft, Rare, and Valve.

Adding client-side anti-cheat isn't a magical solution. Call of Duty has one of the most advanced kernel-level anti-cheat solutions in Ricochet and still they have to deal with cheaters.

But any lesser solution will be a band-aid at best, a placebo at worst. Plus they've now got Steam Deck "verified" status to consider. Anti-cheat solutions don't always play well there and the ones that do (Easy Anti-Cheat, for example) are not great.

Remember, this is a relatively small part of the playerbase doing this and their aim is to impact the game negatively, that's how they get their jollies and kicks. So, for them, getting banned is all part of their objective. They want it to seem like a much, much bigger problem than it is because it grows their "perceived" notoriety. The fact that some of us can name infamous cheaters, that's troubling.

Yes, it's an issue that needs to be dealt with, but the way the community has being shouting over it has really played into their game plan.

@foambreaker said in Nothing Matters Until Anti Cheat Is Addressed:

@callmebackdraft "...the main issue is the absolute ease with which players can just get a new account and be back on the seas within minutes..."

IMHO this is over hyped. How many times does someone who cheats to get a cosmetic, start over from 0 and cheat again?

They're not cheating to get a cosmetic. They already have cheats for that. They're cheating because that's what they do. They do not care about progression or unlocks.

unable to play Hourglass for a full session without encountering at least one crew of blatant cheaters.

What about the rest of the game? The 99% of the game?

@burnbacon The 99% of the game comprised of repetitive voyages and world events, with effectively no new content in over a year?

Not to be snide, but (1) "PVE"/open world isn't really 99% of the game, and (2) this deemphasizes long-time players who have worn down the content already in the game. Now, the issue of rare focusing on quality of life improvements, limited-time 'story' quests, and ways to expedite old content is a separate discussion. But even setting it aside, the availability of other content in the game doesn't justify failing to timely and significantly address cheaters.

Clearly there is no silver bullet, but cheaters harming the playability the most significant addition to the game in the last year is not a small problem.

@ix-indi-xi

COD has a significantly larger playerbase and that playerbase isn't divided between those doing PvP and those doing PvE or a mix. Sea of Thieves' smaller playerbase combined with an even smaller population doing Hourglass increases the chances of running into a cheater - even if they are a small group.

Anti-cheat isn't a 100% Fail-proof method, it's there to deter and make it hard as possible for users to cheat in the first place.

It's not a real deterrent to these types of people. They are determined to get around any anti-cheat. It mainly acts as a placebo for folks complaining about cheaters and often will throw up false positives for perfectly normal background applications (Luke from LTT was once temp banned from WoW for example because of a false positive). Common software such as Corsair's ICUE, Logitech G Hub, and even GeForce Experience are known to trigger false positives on some anti-cheats.

MixelPLX recent video with Pillow shows that a 13 year old downloaded cheats that allowed him to literally teleport anywhere on his sloop.
Fly around with kegs and use aimbot, all in the same cheating suite.

I've watched the video in question and I've seen others. I've also seen them happening live on streams I've modded. I'm well aware of what they can do but genuine cheaters are not as common as uproars would have folks believe.

But players stop playing Hourglass because they don't want to deal with the cheaters that they hear have infested the mode... creating an even smaller pool of players and more chance those who remain will encounter them.

I don't want to beat around the bush here, but when ESP gets downloaded thousands of times after a SoT patch, that is HUGE in numbers.

Pails in comparison to the ''10,000'' accounts banned. Yeah good luck finding those closet cheaters instead...

Where are these stats exactly? Inflating/fudging numbers for downloads of dodgy software is nothing new, it makes the software seem more popular than it actually is. It's often just a delivery method for malware as well. I would take those "stats" with a grain of salt.

I want to be very clear here. I do think it's an issue that needs addressing but, as I've already stated, the core problem is the loopholes around account creation and alts.

@wolfmanbush

This has absolutely nothing to do with what is "popular" to complain about.

Today after work I had a chance to play for about 2 hours with a friend of mine. In 5 matches, we matched with cheaters 3 times. One was a repeat of the same crew. And by "cheating" I mean "as soon as the ship surfaced, he set a keg off in the hold of our ship." We we have a video clip of the cheater teleporting onto our ship the second time and appearing with a lit keg before disappearing.

This is the norm for our crew on hourglass.

The problem is pervasive enough that Rare has spoken about it, but for months now, the majority of enforcement seems to have relied on the community doing Rare's job for them.

I'm sorry, but no amount of downplaying the problem justifies months of relative inaction. Despite the few brief statements Rare has made, there has been no apparent decrease in cheater instances.

@wolfmanbush effort and enforcement are meaningless without results.

By all accounts: there have been few, if any results.

Moreover, for any "behind the scenes" work, there is no evidence that rare has even begun to implement well-established industry practices like hardware bans, or requiring all accounts to attach to a less-re-setable identifier, like a phone number. These should be the bare minimum expectation given the time this issue has been ongoing.

The results after what are reportedly months of efforts do not encourage a great deal of faith in the messaging (similar to the Hitreg issues which have plagued the game since day 1, been listed as a "known issue" in years of patch notes, and has seen very little improvement).

Sharing data is the least Rare could do here, and while its nice to hear they are working on it, words with no results are unacceptable.

@raaaavus there is no way in hell I’m adding an identifier like my phone number to be able to play. Screw. That. Idea.

Pretty sure the ppl making these could easily pad stats and gear to match what the system is looking for...

@wolfmanbush

A single, commonly-used method for preventing generation of brand new accounts to circumvent bans is hardly "maximum security."

No one is asking for perfection. Cheaters do exist in any game. But in 25 years of gaming, I have never experienced a cheating problem as bad as Sea of Thieves Hourglass. Not even DeltaForce 2 back 20 years ago -- a game with virtually no regular support and widely available, free, easy to use 'trainers' -- had as many blatant hackers as Sea of Thieves currently has.

We don't necessarily need perfect anti cheat. But attaining a level of control where my crew doesn't see a cheater every single session where we queue up for hourglass is certainly achievable.

@tesiccl for a reason, or just 'cause?