We need to unite as community ASAP

@kurec11 or we need to ostracize and avoid streamers that cheat and exploit, reporting them at every possible opportunity.

Honest players boycotting the game just means the density of individuals cheating will increase. It will feel worse.

We need to call for swift and aggressive actions against bad actors in the community.

@captain-fob4141 why would the cheaters increase when less people, alot of players not happy withe recent state of the game we need to unite so our voices can be heard

@wolfmanbush Okay but they can just play the game without spending real money, idea is to unite so the game can be fixed(hopefully).
I can give you an example, from a long time the player base wanted anti cheat the devs didnt implement it and when the requests got so frequent so community got united and it happened.

@kurec11 said in We need to unite as community ASAP:

@captain-fob4141 why would the cheaters increase when less people, alot of players not happy withe recent state of the game we need to unite so our voices can be heard

Maybe cheaters by number wouldn't increase, but the ratio would with the type of boycott you're proposing.

@habiki The idea is to unite as community voice our concerns so game can be fixed, i love this game and less we are not doing anything worse it gets every season

@kurec11 the ammount won't increase, but the number of cheaters vs number of honest players will go up.

If you have 1 cheater in a group of 10 and 5 non cheaters leave, now you have 1 cheater in a group of 5 ie increase from 10% to 20% of the community are now cheaters.

@captain-fob4141 to be honest i dont know how they deal with cheaters but when things get drastic they will

@kurec11 you report them, rare reviews the reports and either temporary bans, permanently bans, or determines there was no abuse.

i totally stand behind the idea. the server performance was bad already and after the latest patch its atrocious. i used to be on around 50 ping now im on 80 and it spikes to 120 constantly. fighting on a burning blade is insanely tilting cause everybody is just zipping around. i dont even want to go near a BB at this point.

when HGn your ship is under the watertexture every other fight, another new introduction of the season.

im sure they know of all these problems when they hired a team to work on that. its sad to see the games development over the last 2 years. servers always were an issue and it got worse with every update. now it just feels like they are squeezing the last drop out of us.

"hey thanks for buying the bilge-rat dance emote - you also might like this ravenwood weapon bundle set." you can tell when someone sold out.

Maybe we should stop playing until these issues are properly addressed and fixed

Well. I paid for this game and it works fine for me. So, since I paid for it and no game pass or whatever. I’m gonna play it

@captain-fob4141 said in We need to unite as community ASAP:

@kurec11 you report them, rare reviews the reports and either temporary bans, permanently bans, or determines there was no abuse.

I'd like to note that this is the type of community effort I think we should be focusing on, not a wholesale boycott of the game.

If everyone keeps sailing, takes the time to learn how to capture video evidence of exploits, and becomes familiar with the reporting process.........that's a much better way to combat cheaters and exploits rather than directing good players to leave.

@captain-fob4141 @WolfManbush

I feel like the "increase in cheaters" may itself be a byproduct of the playerbase thinning out for various reasons.

HG is designed to appeal to players like me who want quick, on-demand PvP. But I get burned out much sooner than I used to. I have much less patience with the server performance and, yes, the cheaters.

So now, good faith players are less likely to have fair fights against me, and more likely to run into cannon-TP clowns or crews cloning merch crates. And those good faith players won't need to be involved in any bandwagon campaigns. They too may eventually get burned out, drop out of the player pool, making any cheaters look like a more representative percentage... because statistically, they will be.

Until Rare addresses server performance & EAC is able to catch sus behavior better, none of this will change. Would be nice if they saved all the S14 stuff for S15, and took a season to truly focus on maintenance and security.

@theblackbellamy @WolfManbush I'm not a dev, but I feel like the game is not going to see any serious server-side improvements unless they start vaulting content. We have SO MUCH content running it's crazy.

Start putting stuff in the vault for a season or 2 and put things on rotation (Sea Forts, Shrines, Treasuries, The Roar, The Burning Blade, etc). I distinctly remember the devs were talking about content having an on/off switch at some point. Start switching things off. It'll increase player engagement as it comes back around...and I'd bet that the biproduct is that the game feels so much better. It really didn't start feeling noticably shaky until Season 3, and then really started tanking in Season 4. And it's only gotten worse with each bit of content they've added.

We don't need all this content always available.

The game has been in a somewhat bad state for years now.
All those issues you mention (hacks, lags, compat issues) have been voiced in the forum for at least 2 years now. In my perception they never got better ever since they started coming up. For hacks it is since S8 mainly, for combat issues it goes back to at least 2020, for the lags it begun only recently, however there where alrdy issues starting with captaincy on S7.
I think it is safe to say: The game will not get better. Stop expecting it.
I think it is also safe to say why: The game code probably just does not give it.

I think it is fair to expect some honesty from Rare, but I do not think we will ever get it.
I do not blame them for the limits of their game or the capacities that are available - ingame and in the Dev-Team.
I do however blame them 100% for missleading the community (imho intentionally) for years now. In every mayor update the Ad-Team shouts from the rooftops of YT and X how great the game is, how all things got fixed - or are getting fixed. How great everything is and will become - eventually. Just have faith - and give your money dear folks.
When in reality, they must know. They just ignore and misslead. Thats the only thing that really, really grinds my gears.
But yeah, it really is in a bad shape. I experience 1-2 Disconnects in every single session. The game always allows me to hop back in, but sometimes its really tough.
And the hackers - well, yeah. Had teleporting invincible players jump us just yesterday, during a 10 streak on the burning blade. yay the game is doing just great.
But, whatever. "jUsT rEpOrT tHeM"
I think at this point everyone who plays the game knows what he/she is getting into. Dont expect the Publisher to change, just vote with your wallet and time (how/where you spend it).

@sweetsandman Put them in rotation, or give them their own separate TT-like servers.

Players could dive/fast travel to shrines + treasuries. No loot going in, so people can't use it to escape with loot. And after you've completed it and you're ready to surface, you spawn into a regular Adventure server, so that there is still risk on the way to turn in.

The Roar could be it's own high risk/reward server. Only 1 place to turn in, and you're more likely to see other players who also wanted to be there. They could scale the rewards up to reflect the significantly higher risk.

I have no idea how feasible any of this would be, but it could be a way to keep the content without needing to rotate it.

Been playing since Pirates life and there hasnt been a season where there isnt game breaking problems...after I achieved double gold in HG i seriously do not play as much. I should not have to restart my game multiple times in a session to fix bugs, I should not have to do work-arounds to get supplies normally. I love SoT, always will, but im convinced they will NEVER not have game breaking bugs. I mean a game thats 60% water and that doesnt even work?...

@jrip1298 I've debated with Wolf on this topic enough to know that he is not defending cheaters.

He can correct me if I'm wrong, but if I were to offer a simple steel man: his stance is that baseless hacksuations are more common than based ones. And they help nothing, and only add to the misconception that the problem is larger than it is. He's not wrong there. It's a numbers thing.

Once you're good enough at any game, you're more likely to get hackusated by lesser skilled players with frail egos. And this is SoT... where server performance is so poor that casual players see average desync in PvP and cry "he's teleporting!"

This is why I feel that if Rare were to dedicate a season to improving the servers & making sure EAC is actually functioning, it would help reduce cheaters as well as the overall hackustaing.

I've been gaming for 30+ years. My main game was CS 1.3 competitively and while it is an entirely different game, even back then cheating was unnoticeable to me. You would have to log into the HLTV with your SteamID to enter any league matches, and this was all recorded gameplay. If you failed to provide your recording you were considered to be cheating and it permanently stays attached to your ID.

Currently in Sea of Thieves they are unable to patch simple exploits that change the dynamic of the game in favour of those who use them. No patches, and no punishments are where we are now. Half the players crud launching, doubling up supps, etc. have no fear of getting caught and are somewhat justified in order to have an even playing field.

Also, the subscription cheaters are back with a more advanced method of cheating. The videos you see of "beating a cheater in hg" will be gone because these are next level beyond the usual teleport to cannon with aimbot.

Yes exactly! Important issues need to be resolved much faster. Especially for how much rare and Microsoft makes.

@kurec11 said in We need to unite as community ASAP:

.... the server lag is getting out of hand.

The main issue for me.

I have fast internet. Ping using the tool (below) is regularly below 10. In-game my ping is 90's avg up to rubber band central.
I'm regularly getting owned in game, purely because my pirate is stuck on a sail or wheel and can't let go. Humph!

Sea of Thieves Server Status and Ping Test Tool

@theblackbellamy

NGL, I've been hacksuated more times than I could count. I used to be right next to an Azure data center and still experienced insane amounts of lag/desync. I've taken one-blunders to the face and not died, I've had swabbies lag across galleys and drop my anchor.

I only report cheating if it's hard evidence, like flying or tp/aimbot. It sucks because I can't guarantee if some of my own reports would be legit or not.

@thegoldenaurora sea of thieves is popular, but not Fortnite popular. It makes money but I think you are severely overestimating its success. Microsoft is porting games to other consoles cuz they are outperforming Xbox as a whole.

@jrip1298 sagte in We need to unite as community ASAP:

@wolfmanbush
I hope you are not defending cheaters, because that’s what it is looking like.

Ofc thats what he is doing. Even though he will never admit it. Follow him and other certain individuals for longer periods in the forum and it will get very clear what they are doing.
Just so you know, I had the exact same opinion multiple times too, in different threads, when debating with him - and other certain individuals. There are some people who just seem to be very motivated to go into almost every critical thread, and almost entirelly to take the developers side: To downplay and devalidate your experiences and observations. Individuals who are very sophisticated in staying vague, not "taking sides" but still taking the side of negating the issues YOU have, them being very good at mirroring everything back to you, to make you feel like YOU are the problem - and not the ton of issues the game has. it is a rethorical manipulation tactic. Sometimes its just so well crafted that you need to step back for a moment to realize it.
I leave it up to you to determine yourself why wolfmanbush and others appear to do that. Maybe they are just the biggest fanboys - fair enough. Maybe something else is the reason.

As general advice I would say: Allow yourself to be questioned - but at the same time, if you do, and then you still think you have a valid point - state your point and defend it. Dont get sucked up in meaningless debates with certain individuals, whose only goals seem to be to derail and make you feel like you are the problem. Ignore them, they only water down the valid critique.

No matter how sophisticated their speech may be, people can smell it.. ;) even if they cannot pinpoint the smell down to a certain thing. But they do feel something is off when debating those certain individuals. Naturally, as humans are sometimes very good at smelling manipulation. Its a survival instinct after all.

I avoided Hourglass for so long because folks kept saying it was full of cheaters.

I started diving again recently (G&G weekend) and I've done 113 solo fights since then, with only one obvious cheater - he was on my boat immediately when I surfaced. I know what very good players can do, so I'm rarely one to call someone a cheater just for being skilled. It's also very hard to be sure with the state of servers right now.

The use of launch exploits is far more common, though far from an epidemic. Still, it has a chilling effect and I don't dare even risk losing after a 2-streak to someone exploiting - so I end up lowering earlier than I usually would. I've also seen larger HG crews doing supply exploits and I do think Rare needs to come down hard with those players - some of whom are brazen enough to stream it.

Maybe cheats are more common with a higher ELO, I only win about 60% of fights, so I'm not usually coming up against the sweatiest of players (though the edge camper-boarders are very common and annoying) or maybe cheaters are more common in duos or other regions? (I'm EU)

Regarding the "water glitch", this is a server desync issue. The water is fine, but your ship's bob sinewave is out of sync with the water sinewave (they are different because the waves use a more aggressive amplitude) - the result being that the ship goes down as waves go up. This is probably the most common in HG because of the server merge, it's taking longer than it should to get things lined up. Anyways, that's what's going on, hopefully they can sort it out because it does really make the start of fights more frustrating.

In the history of gaming, boycotts rarely do anything (insert CoD MW2 2009 boycott meme), all we can really do is keep giving feedback that's constructive and informational, and hope it reaches the right ears.