So, how long untill we can actually play Athenas Fortune again?

@callmebackdraft

The exploit was known before the weekend. They had people available over the weekend to nerf the loot. Now it is no longer the weekend so people are back in the office. OP is simply asking for information, which is not unreasonable.

@callmebackdraft I do realize we are on a monday.
There where people available on the weekend to nerf the loot.
Every programmer knows it is a very bad idea to implement updates/changes on a friday/weekend, when you cannot adress issues accordingly because people are - like you said - not working.
And the issue was known for weeks.
Its not my fault they chose this path, I also dont blame anyone. I am simply asking for information.

@parrotlord6426 Yes, due to an exploit that went viral on Friday, Saturday morning they implemented a nerf on the lower tier Athena Loot, the Regular Athena Skull, the Cup, and the Crate of Voyages.

They said this on the official Sea of Thieves Discord, as well as the Sea of Thieves Service/Support social media accounts.

I understand that this is upsetting, but they had two choices, either implement this quick fix, or shut the servers down for an emergency patch/maintenance during community weekend... which would not have been quick.

Thank the YouTubers/Social Media accounts that have been pushing exploits just for some quick hits to a video... otherwise it wouldn't have been as noticeable, and it wouldn't have affected your Athena Voyages.

@reverend-toast
Why did they not have the option of fixing it before the weekend - or afterwards?

Well, i do not use social media or discord, and on the main page here in the forum they did not even specify what items exactly they nerfed, or how much they nerfed it.
They wrote: "After close monitoring of today's events, we've made some temporary changes to the value of select loot items to ensure a fairer reward for certain behaviours"
So this is leaving it up to me and others to find out ourselves via wasting time and effort what and how exactly they nerfed things...

It is not only the solution they took, but also how they communicated it.

@callmebackdraft

I'm fully aware of how software development and live service support is done, thanks. The OP's request was for information, not an immediate fix.

I think it would have made far more sense for rare to make an announcement saying that rep gained using the exploit will not be kept, and then to just track the amount of each item people are selling and flag those people using the exploit that way. roll backs are a way better method of dealing with exploits as it doesnt affect people otherwise, and it makes people less inclined to put effort into a future exploit as they know they will just end up losing the rep they gained after the fact.

Ashen Legendary Voyages seemed VERY lucrative for us over the weekend, so I don't see the issue. Yes, they nerfed trinkets into the floor, but Athena chests were still very good from what we saw.

Given the nature of the exploit, it seems to me like a good quick fix and, hopefully, they can look at patching it long term soon, as well as the other exploits.

@realstyli I am happy for you the ashen chests seemingly worked fine.
The normal athena stuff I tried to sell did not.
My issue on communication is exactly that: How was I supposed to know ashen works when normal does not xd
So, now you could make a bunch of progress on the weekend, I am happy for you. I could not xd
no problemo, just a game. But could it have been handled better? probably yes

@realstyli said in So, how long untill we can actually play Athenas Fortune again?:

Ashen Legendary Voyages seemed VERY lucrative for us over the weekend, so I don't see the issue. Yes, they nerfed trinkets into the floor, but Athena chests were still very good from what we saw.

Given the nature of the exploit, it seems to me like a good quick fix and, hopefully, they can look at patching it long term soon, as well as the other exploits.

The fix was terrible. I like doing the treasuries when I'm solo and the loot in them was largely nerfed into the ground.

I've said it elsewhere and I'll say it here. The exploit was a thing for weeks. They should have just disabled diving to sea forts instead of nerfing loot across the entire sandbox for community weekend.

Another thing mentioned here was the communication around the dev response. Not being clear on all channels about what specific items were affected in what specific ways left people guessing about where to spend their time.

All these things combined with the constant crashes and dropped frames (series x here), audio issues, and "unable to interact with my ship after diving" bugs that I still encountered.........woof.

I still had fun because the people I sail with are good company and we made the best of a bad situation, but this community weekend left a sour taste.

@reverend-toast
They forgot to mention it in the most important place:

IN GAME

not discord, not twitter/x, not snapchat, or Instagram, or threads, Mastodon or truth social.

In the game itself, you know the one that has to be online to even be played, the one that is directly connected to their own servers...

They need to stop burying important information on third party platforms or buried in this comparably low activity forum and address their audience directly. After the last few weeks we are pretty aware of that obnoxious red tag telling us that they're unable to fix things in a timely manner. They easily could have used that or any other manner of in game messaging.

Maybe even a note like popup plunder that appears at the start of a session or Athena Voyage.

@habiki said in So, how long untill we can actually play Athenas Fortune again?:

@realstyli said in So, how long untill we can actually play Athenas Fortune again?:

Ashen Legendary Voyages seemed VERY lucrative for us over the weekend, so I don't see the issue. Yes, they nerfed trinkets into the floor, but Athena chests were still very good from what we saw.

Given the nature of the exploit, it seems to me like a good quick fix and, hopefully, they can look at patching it long term soon, as well as the other exploits.

The fix was terrible. I like doing the treasuries when I'm solo and the loot in them was largely nerfed into the ground.

I've said it elsewhere and I'll say it here. The exploit was a thing for weeks. They should have just disabled diving to sea forts instead of nerfing loot across the entire sandbox for community weekend.

Probably has to do with frequency of the use of the exploit and priority of other issues they tried to fix after the GDX update. If "only a few" (I have no idea how widespread the exploit was before the weekend) did this, they might have decided to act on it later - when it became "at least one crew on every other server", they deemed to act upon it harsly.

Another thing mentioned here was the communication around the dev response. Not being clear on all channels about what specific items were affected in what specific ways left people guessing about where to spend their time.

Better communication certainly have been nice. We decided to just not do the raiding bit - do world events, random islands, some PvP &c - didn't notice the effects of the nerve at all - we had fun and earned loads of gold.

@lem0n-curry said in So, how long untill we can actually play Athenas Fortune again?:

@habiki said in So, how long untill we can actually play Athenas Fortune again?:

@realstyli said in So, how long untill we can actually play Athenas Fortune again?:

Better communication certainly have been nice. We decided to just not do the raiding bit - do world events, random islands, some PvP &c - didn't notice the effects of the nerve at all - we had fun and earned loads of gold.

That's what my crew and I tried last night. Was a bit deflating when we finished a skeleton fort and saw it was the leftovers of someone's Athena dive..... which meant much of the loot was nerfed.

@habiki said in So, how long untill we can actually play Athenas Fortune again?:

@lem0n-curry said in So, how long untill we can actually play Athenas Fortune again?:

@habiki said in So, how long untill we can actually play Athenas Fortune again?:

@realstyli said in So, how long untill we can actually play Athenas Fortune again?:

Better communication certainly have been nice. We decided to just not do the raiding bit - do world events, random islands, some PvP &c - didn't notice the effects of the nerve at all - we had fun and earned loads of gold.

That's what my crew and I tried last night. Was a bit deflating when we finished a skeleton fort and saw it was the leftovers of someone's Athena dive..... which meant much of the loot was nerfed.

You're lucky - when we dove to an Athena fort (before the weekend), the skellies didn't even spawn. But yeah that is no fun, I'm glad we only found "default" forts.

@parrotlord6426 how much about programming do you know? Do you know the level of modifications they did to the unreal engine to make the game work?

Programming takes time, bug fixing takes time.

Also developers are entitled to have a weekend off. The found the error at the start of community weekend and put in a quick fix… not the best fix… but the only one they could do with short notice.

Rest assured: the programmers are now back on the clock working on a fix so the loot values can go back to normal.

@reverend-toast I think I know enough about programming to understand that you don`t lose your ability to talk when you get into it. You are missing the point.
I am asking for information/give feedback on the lack of information. About when the loot will be back normal. Not about what happened. Everyone knows what happened :)

@parrotlord6426 Then you should know that it will be most likely fixed when the next patch rolls out. This happens with pretty much every live service game when an exploit is discovered. They make a quick fix to mitigate it, then fix it with a future patch.

Regardless, it is the mostly worthless Athena Treasure anyways. If you are desperate for Athena Loot you can easily do Devils Roar Athena Voyages and the Emissary Voyage. The Ashen Athena Chest's value more than makes up for the skull/cup/crate nerf, and you can also reminisce that the Athena Chests were the only loot that had Athena Value for a very long time.

They do not NEED to provide an update. They pointed out they had to make changes, plus since the exploit still exists they do not want to draw additional attention to it since it potentially can cause server instability and they didn't nerf the other companies loot tables.

@reverend-toast look, dude, can I just ask a question here without someone getting personally offended by that? If you dont care about it - fine. No need to spam the topic when you have nothing of value to add.
I dont know where you are coming from, dont care either, I for myself would very much like to get some precise information about what loot and missions are affected, so I know what to deal with and what to avoid. If you have any sources or information on that (or your claims for that matter), plz feel free to add them to the debate.

Furthermore, I am free to post critique on how Rare handles the situation. You can dislike it, but wether you like or not, you will have to accept it.

@Reverend-Toast I mean, the post over in the announcements did say it was a temporary change for the community weekend. It's now two days after......I don't think simply asking when we can expect things to go back to normal is something to call a person out over.

@parrotlord6426 But to your point, you are posting this in a public forum, and we are free to criticize the question if it is coming across as a bit unreasonable.

You literally were asking why it wasn't fixed before community weekend, while they didn't know about the exploit till after the weekend started, and then why they still hadn't fixed it when it was the day after the weekend ended.