It's not even funny anymore.

All you can do is report players and move on. If you’re not doing that then how are Rare to try and make your experience in game better?

@tesiccl

Rare added anticheat after months, if not a full year, of the PvP community complaining about it on these very forums.
I'm doubtful they would have done anything of substance if not for these players voicing their concerns.

Trying to tackle the widespread cheating/exploit issue by "just reporting bro" is akin to trying to fill up a barrel with a hole at the bottom.
If you believe this is the way to take the fight to those individuals, you're a fool.

Also, inb4 Rare locks this threads as they would rather bury their head in the sand and avoid bad press, as they've done in the past, rather than actually adressing the situation.

It is actually not even funny how close your post is to mine from yesterday too...

https://www.seaofthieves.com/community/forums/topic/172403/why-is-the-game-so-broken/24

But I am feeling exactly the same way as you at the moment - I can handle my fair share - like you say, no game can be perfect. But its these crashes that are the most draining for me right now - I have some friends who simply cannot get the game to run no matter what they try. And now it is common for most in my crew to crash at least once per session, usually during pvp or diving. And the worst are the server crashes that are becoming very frequent now - we have often found our entire crew kicked at the same time, losing connection to the server and losing everything because we cannot rejoin that session.

@tesiccl https://www.seaofthieves.com/pl/community/forums/topic/172365/is-easy-anti-cheat-actually-working/1

I did it, I reported it to them, I even wrote about it on the forum and nothing, they closed the topic. The fight against cheaters is an arms race in which Rare is not actively participating. They have to take it seriously. There are many such posts talking about this problem.

@bekkbloodaxe96 Thank god I'm not the only one, recently my friend had to reinstall the entire game because Anti cheat broke down for him.

I read what you wrote and I completely agree with you, brother.

I've played since launch and while I don't disagree that we're in a bit of a rough spot with stability and the cheating problems, for what it's worth I think Rare is doing a pretty good job at balancing content release and maintenance/fixes.

I think they absolutely do care about player opinion but they focus a lot on the "casual" player as most games do.

There are some of us who wouldn't mind at all if they took it easy on new content if it meant catching up on fixes which I could see them doing in the near future if we speak up enough.

Huge respect for the HG grind though and I wish you the best in it!

@manmcbearpig That's why reporting doesn't help. I read on these forums what they can do and it's disgusting, it's an arms race that Rare is clearly losing and we are the victims.
And the number of exploits that go unpatched for years is overwhelming.
The existence of alliance servers where money is literally printed and Hourglass is exploited is beyond my understanding.

@wolfmanbush Dude, we don't need poetry on a feedback forum. It really is as simple as taking actual steps to fix a problem.

@guildar9194

Every anti cheat can be bypassed more or less, true, but I did a little research and when I saw how cheaters easily bypass anti cheat on these forums, describe all the exploits and laugh at Rare and us, they go into these files as if they made the game themselves, I met cheaters who they had an indestructible ship, aimbot, speedhack, they deleted my ship, crashed the server, some of them looked like they were playing in creative mode from minecraft, 15 minutes of searching I found so many cheating programs that I could terrorize the entire server, it's just sick.

Użytkownik @guildar9194 napisał w It's not even funny anymore.:

@sir-patrick1241 said in It's not even funny anymore.:

@guildar9194

Every anti cheat can be bypassed more or less, true, but I did a little research and when I saw how cheaters easily bypass anti cheat on these forums, describe all the exploits and laugh at Rare and us, they go into these files as if they made the game themselves, I met cheaters who they had an indestructible ship, aimbot, speedhack, they deleted my ship, crashed the server, some of them looked like they were playing in creative mode from minecraft, 15 minutes of searching I found so many cheating programs that I could terrorize the entire server, it's just sick.

I will tell you right now; A majority of 'cheating programs' you find on youtube or google are keyloggers.

Yes, people cheat.
Yes, people dodge anti-cheats.
But, for every cheater you run into, you never see the 10, 20, or 100 that were banned before you ever met them. Which leads to a kind of cognitive bias, since you can't really compare what you experience to what you never experience.

What I experienced? I experienced a broken game in which cheaters have organized their own playground, believe me, cheating programs are easy to find, I have played many games in my time, so my experience is quite extensive in this matter Valve has recently proven that if you want, you can ban cheaters and all bots from the game, you just have to want it There will always be cheaters, but not on this scale.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Seaofthieves/comments/1ai3njr/why_is_there_so_many_cheaters_now/

@guildar9194
We can go on like this forever, but the truth is that Rare should sit down and think about its priorities, let's say that Rare will not do anything Hourglass will die, like Arena, the servers will become a playground for cheaters and we are their toys, more and more people will write posts like this on this forum and more and more people will get angry and leave the game or start cheating themselves, is that what we want?

I'm not writing all this to argue or complain about Rare, I made the decision that I won't give up, it's not in my nature, I will fight and keep writing because it's my nature and I can't fight with my own nature, it's a paradox, you see.

@guildar9194

I'll take the bait. :)

Any anti-cheat can be bypassed.

Sure, any anti-cheat can be bypassed, and to be fair, in this day and age it is to be expected to come across cheaters while playing online multiplayer games. It's just the reality of modern day gaming. Still, I've played enough games to tell you that SOT is a special case amongst those.

There will always be cheaters, no matter the game.
But how come my experience playing other multiplayer online games hasn't nearly been impacted as much by the presence of these individuals than during my time playing SOT ?

What you are saying is essentially 'Why tell the police about crimes? They don't always catch the robbers, so it's useless to report a crime!'

Cool sophism, still a poor argument nonetheless.

What if I were to tell you that in order for these robbers to be put under the jail, you'd have to go through a long and hefty process to actually get the police to investigate in the first place. Now let's say these criminals are found guilty and sentenced, but you find out they're being released the very same day and are now back at your house, robbing the place, once again.

Now repeat that cycle indefinitely.
You'd come to the conclusion that the issue lies within the judiciary system itself.

Ok. What's your idea to stop cheaters? If it's so foolish to tell Rare, who can update their anti-cheat when it's avoided, that people are cheating; What's your alternative?

As many others and myself already have proposed, there needs to be hurdles put in place within the system, alongside regular anticheat updates.

Statistical anomalies (Absurdly high amount of gold being earned, time spent in the air, 95%+ ratio of cannonballs/snipes hit etc..) should at the very least trigger some form of warning within the system.

Also gatekeeping acess to Hourglass, as it is already a form of endgame activity, to non-Pirate legends seems needed.

In my opinion, faster bans and it being more tedious for cheaters to acess the on-demand PvP mode are the keys to deterring them from coming back endlessly.

The fact that you use insults to make your point tells me you fall in the Dunning-Kruger effect.

People are not being cordial to you because you're not participating in this debate in good faith. You guys get off on going against the grain and trying to sound smart rather than adding anything meaningful to the conversation.

Maybe you should go play the game instead of writing about it.
See for yourself!

@manmcbearpig said in It's not even funny anymore.:

@tesiccl try banning cheaters.

And how do they do that if you dont report them so they know who to? Anticheat is not an end all solution, and there is some initiative to be taken by players to help it. If you dont report cheaters you cant complain about them, because if no one is reporting whats going on, the devs dont know whats going on.

@manmcbearpig

try banning cheaters.

Are you asking me to personally ban them?

I have seen these same threads, with the same, valid, questions/suggestions/complains over and over again, over years in this forum. The hacks are indeed a problem for years now.
I think posting and talking about it is best option we have. Try to draw attention to the issue if you think its important, if others think alike you will see the upvotes. I mean, the anticheat was a nice implementation, its a good countermeasure, but its obviously not working as intended, at least up to now that is.

Be fair to the Devs though: Its a fairly small team I think, and they have a ton of continous work to do on the game.

@priet-praat6806 sagte in It's not even funny anymore.:

How difficult could it be to detect repairs without someone around? How difficult can it be to detect a 95% hitrate with chainshots? How hard van it be to detect 4 players on a sloop (and all returning to it after the ferry? How hard can it be to detect a sloopto go faster than its usualmax speed? How hard can it be to detect people boarding without using the stairs?

As a professional developer I can tell you: it it not diccult. So it must be a matter lof prioroties

yeah I guess I would agree with some of those. I am not a programmer, but my guess would also be that the blatant things should be really easy to detect. you also do not need an anticheat software to recognise teleporting players I guess. Or powder keg teleports - u know, the most obvious stuff.
I think, sadly, the publisher probably calls the shots, not the Devs. Thats usually how things go in a life service game. And the publisher wants to squeeze out forever new stuff to monetise. Fixing bugs, performance, hacks - does not get you money. Not right away.. its a curse of the industry really, not limited to SoT

@parrotlord6426 then it has to be down to us as the consumer to resist buying into Preview Games, Pre-order and watching reviews, the games industry is exploiting the human condition right now, to have things, to buy the latest often at considerable cost, it's not unusual for games to cost £60 plus pounds and that again on DLC.
We are daft enough to fall for it.
Never again for me, I watch the reviews, if I pay £60 for a game it better be finished and perfect, otherwise it's just something that makes you unhappy and frustrated. The games industry needs to learn a lesson from the consumer, it ain't getting bought unless it's worth it. If it's broken it's never worth it.

Games will always have a small number of issues. That's something I can live with if the developers are aware and fixing.

I always think of Cornered Ape and Stardew Valley, a one man band who has stayed with that game, fixing, improving and adding content, whether you love or dislike the game, it's playability is 110%.
It has remained in the top spots since its release.

I recently started Divinity Original Sin 2, it has a number of small issues but the game is perfectly fine tuned. It cost me a £10 in the sale. £10 well spent. That game is almost 20 years old.
Nintendo manage to release games that are on the whole finished and polished.

Why are we accepting half finished frustrating badly made rubbish that never gets to a polished end.

If I like the idea of a game then I have funded money for game development, I did that with Kynseed, you do it knowingly and accept the risks.

The games industry needs a good shake up and only the Consumer has control over that one.

It's not all bad Breath of the Wild 500 plus hours worth every penny
Fire Emblem games 500 plus hours worth every penny.
Assassin's Creed Odyssey near 1000 hrs still playing worth every penny.
Sea of Thieves came with the Xbox I bought just to play the game. First of it's kind for me, is it 6 years since launch. I don't want to think how many hours.
On a good day, when pirate interaction is positive and friendly priceless, when you have a good naval battle with genuine fun and no toxicity, priceless.
Those days don't happen enough, lag, being quadrupled gunned by the skeletons and unable to compete due to the game issues soul destroying.

Then the answer from the Devs the community is getting better, risk reward. I do all the digging, all the souls tickets, shrines and no one comes to fight my boat with stacks of loot on board so if I'm lucky to win the encounter I get nada. The PvP'er gets my hard earned loot. Risk reward they should get 30% of the value they took no risk whatsoever to get it.

Some games are balanced and fun.

Sea of Thieves needs a radical overhaul.

It's dying and players are disappearing. I wish it was trouble free and playable because on a good day nothing else comes close.