Reporting cheaters and griefers need to be more accessible.

Reporting in Xbox is easy. Use the "Record What Happened" and "Recently Played With" choices.

This is coming from someone that got into online gaming with this game. The last time I had much to do with gaming was 90-early 00s

It's wild how low and no accountability accusations are in gaming and specifically in SoT.

I'm not talking about some random kid getting mad and flippantly saying nonsense in the moment. I am talking about adults that play a game all day with high skill and influence in a community that make baseless accusations daily over losing or taking a bump to the ego. Completely baseless with no accountability and it is enabled by the people they keep around them.

People that have massive experience and strong skill that regularly accuse people with comparable skill of cheating is wild to me. That just trickles down and people around them use that as justification to make more baseless accusations.

Why should that be rewarded with convenience? Why should a workload be amplified when a community refuses to keep some humility in their gameplay and to take "sus" accusations seriously?

The only people that are truly responsible and accountable are those that don't publicly accuse people outside of obvious cheating and even then that's for support to deal with, not for engagement farming.

I don't know how many people actually report what they accuse publicly but if it's even a little bit of what I have seen over the years that's a lot of baseless accusations ending up in reports.

I get accused of cheating regularly and I am a peaceful meg harvester that literally only defends myself against attacks and I have literally no tdm skill that helps against the skilled players that I fight.

I get accused regularly by brigs that end up winning the fight and still accuse me after the fight lol. Even after switching to controller and only have a few months of total controller experience for pvp. Sus accusations are generally nonsense imo.

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and I didn't even dive into the mess of recent players being wildly unreliable and leading to all sorts of inaccurate accusations.

@thenestiik said in Reporting cheaters and griefers need to be more accessible.:

@wolfmanbush I understand your reasoning and agree with your views as well as frustration with the community but do not agree about the final verdict. I would say the current solution is "amplifying workload" as opposed to suggested changes.

However, none of us has real data for analysis regarding the actual workload of those reports. One cannot really say if there would be a lot of reports to handle (or are) based on the experience from the community, in the same way, one cannot deduce whether the game is dying just from Steam numbers.

I think it's fair to say easier reporting will lead to more reporting when people are upset in the moment.

Cool down time leads to more reasonable decision making even if someone didn't handle their reaction to frustration well.

How much more reporting? dunno but when people are heated and reporting is easy it'll lead to quite a bit more reporting.

Also this community fires each other up a lot. Especially with cheating. One popular streamer makes a baseless accusation or sees actual obvious cheating and it turns a mole hill into a mountain because of the people that follow them and get caught up in the exaggeration of it all. Social media being so tied into SoT now just makes that much more prevalent.

@thenestiik said in Reporting cheaters and griefers need to be more accessible.:

@wolfmanbush said in Reporting cheaters and griefers need to be more accessible.:

I think it's fair to say easier reporting will lead to more reporting when people are upset in the moment.

I am not advocating that it would not, but the difference lies in the systems being used, which are not equal.

Currently, video evidence is required but it definitely does not determine the final verdict. Otherwise, I could just grab a random cheating video, edit your gamer tag into it, and voilà, you have a report. Because of this, the process of investigating the report most likely includes another steps, where the reviewer must check server logs (or any other source of information) to verify whether the contents of the video are really truthful.

"In-game" reports open up possibilities to include this information directly in the report without any visibility to the user. Reports done via the webpage will most likely lack important information, and after initial checks, the reviewer must first find all of the information (based probably on the gamer-tags), and only after that, the actual investigation can start, as opposed to the suggested changes.

The suggested changes aim to benefit both sides, raising the question of whether the positive aspects outweigh the negatives in this proposed solution.

Of course, Rare will choose the solution that is most suitable for them. However, as I mentioned in my replies above, I do believe this is more about technical debt than about "amplifying workload."

What about people that cold call their recent players list or use the "report player" feature to see names and pick the wrong name?

Just in the last couple of months I have received multiple messages from players along the lines of "I am reporting you cheater" "Nice hacks" but I never fought with them. They grabbed my name off recents/report while they were active in an hourglass fight or while they were in a fight that had nothing to do with me.

Did they do it or were they just venting? no clue, but that is a heavily flawed scenario for people to be accused in.

I've seen popular streamers flat out say that they don't know who did what so they will report multiple names off recents, that is wild to me.

Recents are also wrong and/or leave people out of the list a lot.
I've had the names in front of me not match the names on the list a LOT.

@thenestiik said in Reporting cheaters and griefers need to be more accessible.:

@wolfmanbush said in Reporting cheaters and griefers need to be more accessible.:

What about people that cold call their recent players list or use the "report player" feature to see names and pick the wrong name?

The review process is still in place! Perhaps I was not clear in my response. However, the entire TLDR of my replies revolves around making essential information easily accessible to reviewers in a secure and faster manner. The review itself, of course, would not be automatic.

The issue currently is that players can generate tons of reports that can't even be reviewed because the information they provide might not be correct. With the in-game report, the report is captured on the client and sent to the servers. The report can then be linked (on the backend, so users can't modify this action), for example, with the server chat log based on the information proposed by the client (server and timestamp). A reviewer can then quickly view the messages of linked players, which would be truthful because they are linked internally in Rare's systems. The reviewer could verify whether what the player is stating in the report is accurate

In contrast to the current solution, a reviewer has to watch a video, locate the recent games played by the player using their tag, and identify the server they were on to verify the truthfulness of the video's content. Not to mention that the reviewer can make mistakes while searching for this kind of information!

I don't think you are making bad or wrong points but imo Rare does much better with support than they get credit for.

I think "sus" culture destroys gaming environments. I don't think it should be rewarded.

As it exists people get banned all the time for violating ToS. Nobody seriously violating ToS lasts long (on that account) in SoT.

There is no accountability with the accusations though. Many partners do it, other content creators with influence, skilled players,pvers, etc.

Anyone that does well in this game in a random scenario gets accused, cheating, stream sniping, toxic, on and on and on. Just for playing alright in the moment. That has consequences in the community. It makes it unpleasant as heck.

@thenestiik said in Reporting cheaters and griefers need to be more accessible.:

I just want to add that I mostly agree with everything you say - I am just trying to provide different views regarding specific issues.

I like that. I think it's good for the discussion and for the forums.

Rare very well may be working on changes/improvements for efficiency, I dunno.

As much as I would like accountability to be present, just like you, this is a problem that is inherently difficult to solve. Accountability should be implemented by the community. If there is a streamer who is making accusations, people should not support him. If they do, as a society, we fail, and doom (or something like that) awaits us.

Ideally people would surround themselves with people that challenge them when necessary. Social media/twitch aren't great with that, they enable a lot of not-so-great conduct. I very much do not like good people vs bad people arguments though, I find that a highly flawed way to view things and people.

Although I think people with power/influence should be more responsible/accountable with it I think it doesn't dismiss what they do outside of those moments. Nobody looks great when they share a huge chunk of what they do, especially unedited in the moment. People are gonna say and do things that aren't gonna age well. Everyone in that setting would face that. They benefit from being seen as leaders in the community so accountability and responsible use of power are a part of strong leadership.

I don't condone the witch-hunting type of stuff that people consider accountability. Making bad gaming/community calls in the moment doesn't justify what the internet has a way of doing to people. My hope is just that people keep people around them that will challenge the yelling at the clouds moments, mainly because as public figures it significantly influences how people in those social circles will conduct themselves around the community as a whole.

@thenestiik said in Reporting cheaters and griefers need to be more accessible.:

@wolfmanbush

Social media/twitch aren't great with that, they enable a lot of not-so-great conduct

The entire premise of this game is socialization. It was the developers' intention to create a game that is "fun to watch." Unfortunately, I cannot provide a source, but I believe it was stated in one of their official videos (perhaps the anniversary video released during Season 9).

Twitch and other online social spaces have their flaws, but those will always be linked to this game. The reason why Rare is pushing so hard for these platforms during adventures, community weekends, etc., is simultaneously the entire premise of this game. Anyone with some experience from the internet could predict that the issues you describe would happen to this game before it was developed. I acknowledge that this reply does not directly address your point.

(While I argue that the premise of the game is socialization, that does not mean this game cannot be played by solo players or by those who do not want to socialize.! )

The positive experiences that this game can offer marginally outweigh the negative ones (whether direct or indirect), and as long as this fact holds true, there will always be someone playing Sea of Thieves. Anyone can reach those positive experiences if they are willing to withstand the negative ones (or they will encounter them in Safer Seas). This game holds a unique value that is hard to find in today's world of gaming (no, no one will persuade me that there is another game like Sea of Thieves). If the side effect of being provided with this value is dealing with the issues you have mentioned above, then I am willing to withstand them and hold my ground.

At the same time, I wish you good luck in facing points you have mentioned!

Social media/twitch are largely networking which can be quite different than substantively socializing. Networking is far more self serving, business focused, financial/status/etc. People are finding that out while participating in guilds as they are currently designed.

Everyone bubbles up to some degree, it just takes leadership within the bubbles to keep things reasonable and accountable.

I think a lot of SoT content creators are cool as people, have no problem with content creation being a part of the deal, just not cool with influence being irresponsibly (even when not really that intentional) used as it causes a lot of drama and negativity in the community, which then drives out other cool people.

Leadership in the community is everything, especially in a community that is big on status like Rare/SoT are. Accountable, responsible, fair, principled. Leadership is never perfect, just needs consistency. There are perks to being seen as a leader in a community, those perks should be supported by consistent leadership actions.

If people that have some form of power in the community hold themselves accountable and abstain from accusing random people of wrongdoing in random gaming scenarios (and set that tone in their social areas) and just play the game/move on, then that will have a positive effect eventually as others follow the lead.

@locke5474677 said in Reporting cheaters and griefers need to be more accessible.:

okay we have to agree to two points first of all:

• sot still has a cheating problem
• the studio has to provide its customers with a convenient way to report cheaters

providing video evidence is not convenient for 90% of players, especially with the limitations. not everybody is recording or streaming gameplay and has the knowledge/time to clip/cut a video into small bites for the support team to digest.

the support ticket way is hideous and outdated, again the bar for sending in reports has to be superlow so even total casuals dont mind the effort.

there is also no feedback on reports, i have 2k hours and ive filed 2 reports so far against obv cheaters including crystal clear video evidence, i didnt get any feedback on if the accounts have been banned, nor if the video evidence i consider crytal clear is actually accepted as crystal clear.

cheater are invisible aswell, how is a user supposed to report someone whos gamertag he has never seen? yeah i can go to last played with and find that crew with 100% certainty but there is no way to report him in todays system. i can find out which crew i faught but i cannot provide video evidence of an invisible guy one blundering my crew over and over again.

so there need to be upgrades, there needs to be ingame reporting, like its almost 2024 and not 2010. there are infinite possibilities to improve the reporting system.

Use the Xbox "Record What Happened" and "Recently Played With" features, super easy.

If you are reporting someone you have to provide proof, otherwise it is just sour grapes.

No matter how long you have played you will never be told the outcome of a report, it is a privacy issue.