Regarding SOT Anti-Cheat

@WolfManbush There you go, they even confirmed it in video it is a problem.

Now obviously every game has a problem since there will always be Devs who know how to work on Kernel level and create cheats.

Even when they said they will fix the problem, truth is they won't. Yea maybe they will shut down those people who call themselves "Hacking devs" (instead they just copy paste others code) but that means demand on cheating will be more and that equals Sea of Thieves getting attention by real "Hack Devs" that operate on Kernel level and cheats would be 100% undetectable. Right now there is no need for them to create cheats because you don't even need to operate at that level.

There is a possible one fix to lower cheaters even if those "New true Hack Devs" come.

And that is to add EAC. There was a question does EAC instant ban ?

EAC my friend is the best of the best Anti-Cheat there is. EAC might be considered literally "malware" because it operates at Kernel level aswell as very powerful cheats and it can detect absolutely anything. ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING.

Now of course there are methods to bypass even that, but you would need to update constantly your cheat for it (Like almost daily) and that's why games that have EAC don't have many cheaters. Because it's not worth to create cheat for that unless creating cheats is your full-time job.

EDIT: My point is there will be always be cheating, but with EAC it will be a tiny, tiny minor problem, so you wouldn't need to worry if you think other side cheats.

@pit0nn

[mod edit]

I am hoping LUCID lets RARE tackle what RARE is good at - Story , PVE , Concepts , Skins ( MORE SKINS PLEASE ) , and enhancing the game , and that their focus will be - PVP , PVP , PVP - HITREG , PVP & Dealing with cheating.

This game is so unique in its combat that with , semi improved hitreg and no cheating - with some support for a competitive mode whether its custom "arena" servers that allow arena scoring or something , this game has so much marketing potential for Competitive PVP its bananas

@wolfmanbush While I do agree with most of your points, thing is those points do not refer to actually extremely good players calling out. I can know in the first 15 seconds of a fight engagement if other is cheating or not. That's what experience does, and I am sure you can too.

EDIT: Well not really 15 seconds but you get me

The situation of game is really disappointing, within release of arenas the game got flooded by cheaters, by my own experience I saw at least every 2-3th game a cheater, some were obvious, some were good at hiding it. There's no problem partnering with some external anti-cheat, most likely in this case it's all up to greed, cause you need to pay them. Fall guys, children game, literal walking beans have easy anti-cheat, The Isle, pretty old game from 2015 which is barely alive, 1-1.5k max peak players daily have EAC as well.
Sad, really sad, also can't criticize game and how it work's because your messages get timed out or blacklisted, happened loads of time to me in official SOT disc, ( btw this reply gonna get deleted as well for sure :D ) I mean we critcize for good, we wan't the game to get better so take criticism, don't hide it, don't delete it, get to work and game will get bigger and you'll get your money, if you have time to release each week or two new skins at emporium, then you should use that time to fix long lasting issues.

@copperhead6006 Well said !!! ^^

Partner with EAC and 99% of criticism will be gone. I don't know what is stoping them from doing it, did they already try, do they have a grudge against them, or are they just greedy (No mean to disrespect). I don't know what it is.

I feel the need to spread some actual information here.

First, EAC is laughable at best. Far as I know it prevents modification of game files and bubbles the actual server from receiving third party commands etc. You can get around this from tunneling and SOT has a very bare bones version of checking core game files which also doesn't foil this completely.

Most cheats you are seeing are from either script kiddies using third party code available free on any random google search which uses third party access to run not in the game itself but as a separate application.

The rest, the paid for ones are from leaked code that one of the azure handling cloud services lost and hackers used that to script build a For Sale application that unlocks everything in the game etc.

Also the banning feature is not hard ware based and can be removed either manually or by running a script to remove a piece of code placed on banned account. Also if you did hardware ban, also easy to fool with spoofing which is also easy.

Right now from what little I've probed the server and client sides the security is virtually non existent so.... They should probable fix that.

EAC is not an end all be all, look at Dead by Daylight. I run into script kiddies all the time and we even had a bot epidemic at one point till they had to completely remove all the code relying on it from the client altogether because they couldn't come up with any other countermeasure.

Now less than 10 people out of a hundred know how to make these scripts for the script kiddies that are using them, but they are making money or having fun so doubt that will stop.

HOWEVER, not having any security at all more or less as it is now is unacceptable. SOT made it under the radar for a longgggg time and now the chickens are coming home to roost.

I fear though that until this cuts into Microsoft Profits they will greenlight any money into Rare's budget to setup these services.

That being said, I truly pity you if you decide to use cheats against me :).

Warmest Regards,

TP

@personalc0ffee you can spoof that too. Also, as of right now the azure infrastructure doesnt even log your mac or ip, and has no implementation for mac logging and has no local or cloud services support for saving that data. I suspect this is also due to budget restrictions and doubt it was ever even brought up.

The only real way to ban would be microsoft account and or steam account bans, but doubt that will ever happen.

@thrawnpariah So as I've said there will always be ways around but you need security in some form, ideally you should focus on this as much as possible but the company literally looks at it like product recalls, what is the amount of money spent on security services versus impact to the bottom line. Ideally they don't want to spend any money on security.

@thrawnpariah Also well said.

Any form of security should be added.

Now I know it is not hard to bypass EAC if you have right knowledge, but as you said those script kiddies will vanish if that is added, since "Cheat making COPY, PASTE" won't work if EAC is in. Also you misunderstood me. I said it is easily(I say for senior and very experienced Windows API programmers) to bypass any anti cheat but I also said that EAC is the best of the Anti Cheats, meaning there is no better.

Thing is if EAC is added, those as you call "script kiddies" won't be able to just copy, paste code. You will need an extremely big knowledge from C++ (Logics) and Windows API to bypass it, which "Script kiddies" don't have because they have been copy, pasting code their entire life.

@crowley-sot Their latest podcast they quickly mention cheaters, but vague details, no timeline etc just that they are looking into it.
So at least they are aware, but when action will be done, its who evers guess at this point.

@callmebackdraft

Understand, EAC is not an option. EAC and other kernel level AC software is extremely invasive and poses a massive security risk to the user. Companies like Vanguard have given users information to the CCP (allegedly). If EAC or similar kernel level ACs are implemented, it will look very poorly on Rare as a company.

VAC did it correctly, but hasn’t been able to keep up with cheaters for awhile.

@thrawnpariah Didn't Azure claim to have an ''AI'' when it came to anti-cheats regarding learning and adapting in finding cheaters?

I swear I read it somewhere, and if true, its obviously pretty darn bad...

@xxii-sonik-iixx Tell me about VAC being good ... :D

They gave up on it I think, there was new method discovered for how they actually ban cheaters. They track their stats and if something goes out of the ordinary "It's considered cheating".

@pit0nn said in Regarding SOT Anti-Cheat:

@xxii-sonik-iixx Tell me about VAC being good ... :D

They gave up on it I think, there was new method discovered for how they actually ban cheaters. They track their stats and if something goes out of the ordinary "It's considered cheating".

I didn't say VAC was good. I said they did it the correct way by not being intrusive. They were good for awhile, but have been quite ineffective for the past 5+ years.

Had an ''interesting fight'' ,we won the battle but at the last second they have turned our ship upside down and sank us? How bad one has to be too lose with cheats?^^

@forthefade

When it comes to cheating, I have to say, me and my friends agree that it feels like the wave has passed. We used to see cheaters daily during our streaks and now it's become rare once again, although it does still happen. We mostly exclusively play on galleon EU tho. What servers and boat do you play on?

@forthefade said in Regarding SOT Anti-Cheat:

@karkona

lol what? I don't think you understand Azure is

I already stated that very fact. Also, why don't you go ahead and tell us exactly what Azure is and how it does not collect data to catch cheaters? I'd like to hear it.
If you are asking for complete prevention of any and all cheaters before they can even do it without them running free for a while before they get caught thats a tall order.

@krahaborr I dont think thats cheating/hacks as much so then just really bad server lag, where players would seem to teleport on your end of the screen (And you sometimes do to them but you don't realise it on their end.)
Although some hacks like de-sync your player character exists, its hard to tell between the two at times.