RARE, Please just let the community help with the hit reg issue.

Rare isn't going to hand over the source code to the game to anyone who wants to contribute, and it's probably due in part to just how embarrassing it is.

I agree that there are factors that they can't release for pretty clear reasons in terms of the code, but giving us an insight into what the code process is might give some big brains an idea of what the issue is. As far as the internet thing is concerned. There are PLENTY of other games that aren't this bad.

And if you're not having issues with hit reg then I very much Envy you my friend. I play with fibre and a decent PC so...

@urbianebinkie

The hit reg isn't a "complex" coding issue. That is just a cookie cutter response they give. Like "we are still working on hit registration" with every update.

The issue with hit registration is simple but they made it complicated.

The real issue with hit registration is when they moved most of the games files server side. So majority of the computation for the game is happening server side. They did this because of mainly 1 reason and that was because of the increase in game file size.

Most games don't increase exponentially in file size as patches and expansions happen. When they start to produce more and more content the game files were actually pretty big. Sea of Thieves was already around 40g I think during launch and then updates were an additional 10g files?? Update files for hungering deep and the like were pretty large and then devils Roar and shrouded spoils, etc etc. So they moved the majority of the memory of the game server side because the game was already going to max out a lot of xbox one original hard drives and most potato computers.

Hit detection is happening server side used to be client side. Now, in most cases this would be pretty good to a degree. At least to a game like Sea of Thieves that ISN'T a FPS like Overwatch, except the tick rate for the server is HORRENDOUS. Increasing tick rate increases bandwidth requirements.

Next is the capabilities of the actual servers themselves. The servers are strained like crazy. There is just too much going on in the world. Barrels with multitudes of loot, sunken ships, repeated barrel spawns for every ship on the server. Devils Roar volcanoes, the massive amount of loot EVERYWHERE. Skeleton ships.

The game is suppose to be ran on xbox one originals. Which is horribly under powered. So the servers have to match up to the capabilities of those consoles original consoles.

FPS games and high input games have a average tick rate of like 66 to 70. Sea of Thieves sits at around 18 to 23, I think in some cases can get up to 25 to 30, not to mention this is a server side game.

A slow tick rate, with the game being server side, play fab Microsoft Azure servers which are virtual, and not to mention the ever increasing content release for the game, I'm sorry to say but they are NEVER going to fix hit registration.

To fix hit registration they would have to rework combat but they won't do that.

Unfortunately Sea of Thieves has turned into most companies and are using the "revolving door" model for their game and predatory practices on the human psyche.

@galactic-geek

In the beginning they used to get bigger. The patches weren't small at all and I think if you ever had to reinstall because the patches didn't work, you had to install the game and then the patches?? I don't know I never had to do it, so if anyone remembers from back then maybe they can shed some light.

However, the game files weren't switched to the server until some time after launch. Maybe 8 months?? Maybe a year?? It was around the time the game file size dropped for both platforms. Before that change, the game was pretty large. When I have time tomorrow I'll try to go over all the files. I still have a video I'm trying to make for double gunning plus taking on a ton of projects at work. Would have had it done earlier but things with the forums kind of stayed my hand.

Some interesting discussions already about this topic. Seems to be a lot of different views. Would be nice to get some clarification from Rare that isn't just "We're working on hit reg" Its ruining the game for me. I've just left the game because we got beaten by an immortal crew, Again.

@galactic-geek said in RARE, Please just let the community help with the hit reg issue.:

@xultanis-dragon I don't recall the Sea of Thieves files ever getting larger; only smaller.

So it looks like I was mistaken to a degree. The files were HUGE from the beginning however they were getting larger. They started at around 400m then before they switches the files to server side the largest update was around 4g. File sizes kept getting higher.

So I was mistaken that the files were large, they were getting LARGER. My bad.

I'm actually getting pretty close to uninstalling this game. Just went into an arena and literally none of my shots were hitting, couldn't see my guns, sometimes the game was forcing my screen to turn horizontally. This game is really good but they need to just re code it ... Think I'm gonna move onto something else soon with my crew unless we get some sort of decent update...

Hitreg is so bad, How bad.... I could not kill a chicken. I did run out of the bullets in DG and that thing was still running around. :) So yeah somebody get that fixed because its simply the most annoying item in the game.

@great0grind As a software engineer of nearly ten years I can say that this may not just be on the devs. Game companies are notorious for running their devs into the ground. Long hours, short deadlines, high stress. They don't always have time to do things right, so technical debt starts to pile up. If you don't have time to go back and clean that up, then you get hacky code on top of hacky code on top of hacky code, and after, oh, roughly three years, it's nearly impossible to fix anything because the code is a mess and you'd have to do a massive refactor to even hope to properly address anything.

I've never seen the SoT source code, of course, but the way it takes way, way too long for Rare to fix bugs and the screwy, random nature of many of them makes me think that they've painted themselves into a corner and have no idea how to fix it. After all, huge refactors take a lot of time and resources, and if they do that then people might buy less reskinned junk in the Pirate Emporium.

I have very little hope that we'll see significant improvement.

@fatbeard1353 Thank you for confirming what I have long thought to be the truth about it
...