Compensation for Dealing with Cheaters

Games barely have the resources for the reporting itself.

Adding an extra level for compensation of specific losses just isn't realistic.

The more they have to do the less they will do efficiently and effectively, at the amount of cases per day that a popular game is gonna have.

@comet1997

Thoughts on some of the reasons why it might not be a great idea do add to the post, though.

Similar ideas have come to these forums before, and one potential negative side effect is people spamming Rare with reports in order to receive rewards. How to mitigate that?

I’d imagine that Rare already receives a lot of reports based on false claims.

For the record, I record everything as long as I remember to push the button, and I have gotten cheaters banned multiple times via reporting with evidence, so I could potentially be someone who benefits from a reward system. With that said, I know for a fact that there are many people who claim cheating when in reality they just got sunk legitimately. I blame the cheaters for this, they put doubt in all our heads so now many people might call a snipe cheating when in reality the player was just good, but I digress. Point being, I could see many reports coming in that are baseless in hopes of receiving rewards. If that happened, it would just bog down the seemingly already struggling efforts to mitigate cheating.

I’d like to see reporting with evidence become easier and more streamlined. Perhaps Rare could team up with an existing video recording software that’s a light download and could be recommended to SoT players. I just use my existing nvidia software, but if there were sponsored software downloadable from the website with some streamlined process to upload, it might be helpful. I always just upload to YouTube and provide the link in my reporting because for some reason the upload feature on the website hasn’t worked for me, and it’s not due to size.

1. How would the game track if someone has interacted with a cheater?
2. How would the game track what a person 'loses'? Both these things seem resource-heavy for the servers & require new coding.
3. Just because you ran into a cheater, you don't deserve 'compensation'.
4. Just because you THINK someone is cheating; it does not mean someone is actually cheating. And you KNOW some salty players will report someone who's NOT cheating, then start deluging support with 'I know he was cheating, and I want my compensation!' demands.

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Basically; No, you're not entitled compensation. And tracking what people 'lose' to cheaters is massive work for little reason.
Just report players and move on.

@comet1997 said in Compensation for Dealing with Cheaters:

TLDR: There should be a system for the legitimate players who have to deal with cheaters wherein they are compensated for losing items to the cheaters after those cheaters have been banned.
...
Please leave other fair suggestions that could be a part of this system that I'm suggesting, or other ways to compensate the legitimate and loyal player base who deal with such rampant cheating.

I agree with you that there should be compensation.

Although my regular crew and I faced a lot of cheaters, I am the only one reporting them. Why? Because my crewmates believe it's not worth their time to report with evidence.

Sure, Rare would permanently ban them if given evidence. But it would eat up our time to record, upload a clip, and make a support ticket. And what do we get in return? Nothing. These cheaters return on another account the next day. My crew previously took a long break because there were just too many cheaters.

We're tired. We're playing a game to have fun. But instead we meet cheaters and we're asked to send a report. And we're compensated with nothing. Hell nah - just play a different game.

Gathering and presenting evidence is work. Not everyone want to work as anti-cheat detector while playing a game.

If my crew were compensated for our loss (in commendations, reputation, gold or supplies), it might give them an incentive to go through the hassle of reporting cheaters, and to continue playing even as an anti-cheat detector (instead of taking long breaks or giving up on the game).

If Rare wants more people to report (and thus get rid of cheaters more quickly, instead of having them play 3 days before someone finally reports them with evidence, and another 3 days for them to review evidence before banning them permanently), Rare should compensate players for time spent reporting confirmed cheaters.

If calculating the exact loss is too much effort, make it simpler: 1 level of hourglass faction rep - awarded only if the reported offender is a confirmed cheater - given to the reporting player's crew for lost time - win streak, supplies, spawncamp timer, etc.

@capt-greldik said in Compensation for Dealing with Cheaters:

... Similar ideas have come to these forums before, and one potential negative side effect is people spamming Rare with reports in order to receive rewards. How to mitigate that?

I’d imagine that Rare already receives a lot of reports based on false claims.

I think Rare can learn how to manage false reports efficiently. Players who repeatedly make reports without clear evidence can go to the bottom of the queue - or Rare can send a quick reply to ask for clearer evidence or timestamps. Those who give evidence with clear timestamps for when a blatant cheat happened can be prioritized in the cheat reports queue. Rare can afford to hire more interns/people to help with anticheat initiatives.

Not sure if this would work? Do an anti-cheat month with this in place. And see what happens. If it works well, continue, if it doesn't, change and/or stop.

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I doubt Rare would do anything. They'll just let Hourglass die from exploits/cheaters because the number of hourglass players is decreasing - so they don't find it worthwhile to give it attention. Another Arena story.

I want to tell you something.
I once went to a trading post with a friend, and at the trading post, we found a ship that had just set sail.
We want to sell treasure at the trading post.
I used a cannon from a distance to shoot myself towards the island, went up to the island to check what they were doing, and communicated through voice communication,
I told them I don't want to fight. We are preparing to sell items,
He told me that he logged into the game just to see if there were any new costumes and weapons.
Then my friend drove the boat over, and that person used a "goodbye" emoji on us, and then he quit the game,
My friend saw him standing there and disappeared directly. He recorded what happened. Prepare to submit report: Invisible cheat.
I told my friend that he just quit the game.

@mr-spx-ss said in Compensation for Dealing with Cheaters:

I want to tell you something.
I once went to a trading post with a friend, and at the trading post, we found a ship that had just set sail.
We want to sell treasure at the trading post.
I used a cannon from a distance to shoot myself towards the island, went up to the island to check what they were doing, and communicated through voice communication,
I told them I don't want to fight. We are preparing to sell items,
He told me that he logged into the game just to see if there were any new costumes and weapons.
Then my friend drove the boat over, and that person used a "goodbye" emoji on us, and then he quit the game,
My friend saw him standing there and disappeared directly. He recorded what happened. Prepare to submit report: Invisible cheat.
I told my friend that he just quit the game.

He can report. The accused isn't going to be banned. There will be no compensation.

If your friends makes fake reports 100 times, his account might be blocked from support.

The best compensation for helping cheaters get banned/caught is having less cheaters in the game we like, helping make the game enjoyable and safe for everyone in the community that plays SoT legitimately.

@comet1997

Please do not respond if you do not have something helpful to add to this post

This is laughable.
People are being helpful by grounding you into reality.
SoT just doesn't have the foundation to implement such a massive system of keeping track of all the players and cheating encounters to then give them a ''compensation''.

The ONLY games I know that give compensation from a cheating encounter that do are Fortnite and League/Valorant who are much more advanced and have actual experienced top tier devs developing said system. RARE doesn't.
Also the two games I mentioned do it in real time. Meaning AC detects said cheater mid match, and the match is either cancelled or played through but no one wins/losses rank points. That's the sole compensation they get, time wasted...

SoT doesn't even have a ROBUST Anti-Cheat that can detect real time cheaters and instead have ALWAYS relied on player reports to catch them. Their whole Anti-cheat implementation is a COMPLETE joke compared to Fortnite that uses the same Anti-Cheat...

I also see a LOT of loopholes to be exploited...

@bekkbloodaxe96 said in Compensation for Dealing with Cheaters:

However, I would like to see a better reports system - particularly that pop-up in game that asks for more information following an in game report is quite frustrating - It is basically not worth reporting in game since you cannot track them in game and this message does not even give a reference number for which report it is associated with. And some people aren't going to engage with the web support - therefore a missed opportunity for catching more of these dishonest players.

In PUBG, whenever we report a player in-game, we're also prompted to send the last 1 min of gameplay (replay) to the devs.

SoT doesn't have replay features. But SoT is on Xbox. Even all Steam players go through the Xbox app to play SoT. Xbox has gameplay recording feature.

A lot of players who won't go through the trouble of reporting on a website, may not even be aware of xbox's recording feature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaAx5WeXDBg

Not sure how doable it is, but SoT should consider changing the in-game report system: so when we report a player in-game, we're also prompted to send the last 1 min of gameplay (xbox recording) to the devs - without going through the website.

I think that OP is already aware that there are many problems with the suggestion.

Instead of simply repeating the same identified problems, try being a creative, try helping to figure out a solution.

I don’t usually post or debate in forums anymore, but cheaters have really found a way to get under my skin and infuriate me. I’ll probably stop playing because of this unstoppable cheater problem, but here I am—trying to channel my frustration by at least doing something about it.

First of all, I rarely report players. I’ve encountered many cheaters before but never bothered reporting them because going through the hassle of gathering video evidence and submitting a report felt pointless—especially now that the rumors about ban evasion have been proven true.

@raft2c7c said in Compensation for Dealing with Cheaters:

We're tired. We're playing a game to have fun. But instead we meet cheaters and we're asked to send a report. And we're compensated with nothing. Hell nah - just play a different game.

Gathering and presenting evidence is work. Not everyone want to work as anti-cheat detector while playing a game.

I couldn’t agree more. I reported two cheaters recently—one on Jan 28 and the other on Jan 29—both of whom were permanently removed from the game, as confirmed by Epoch (Sea of Thieves) via email. But here’s the thing: I strongly suspect they were the same person using a new account. That’s another story, though.

For heaven's sake, I bought this game to have fun, not to play detective. Yet, to properly report a cheater, I have to:

• Pre-record all my gameplay or use an instant replay feature.
• Manually gather evidence and put together a solid report.
• Submit the report following a long, outdated process with strict criteria.
• Deal with ridiculous limitations—only 5 evidence files per report, each under 50MB, or else I need to upload them elsewhere.

@smuntface said in Compensation for Dealing with Cheaters:

I think the issue with "rewarding" players for reporting cheating, is that it may increase reports for behaviour that isn't cheating.
If you genuinely want the cheaters banned, increasing the number of false reports may not get the result you're wanting.

I strongly disagree with this mindset. It assumes that people would report just for the reward, and while some might try, false reports would be easy to filter out. Remember, the report still has to meet the strict criteria I mentioned above. I don't think players would waste time submitting fake reports, just hoping and praying that the support staff bans someone and rewards them.

To summarize:

Considering how archaic this report system is, I do believe players should receive some kind of compensation for doing the work of an anti-cheat team. My suggestion is slightly different from @comet1997’s:

• If a reported player is successfully banned, reward the reporter with 50 Ancient Coins or another reasonable amount.

At the very least, this would give players some incentive to help clean up the game—a job that shouldn’t be theirs in the first place.

@ampolovisky said in Compensation for Dealing with Cheaters:

For heaven's sake, I bought this game to have fun, not to play detective. Yet, to properly report a cheater, I have to:

• Pre-record all my gameplay or use an instant replay feature.
• Manually gather evidence and put together a solid report.
• Submit the report following a long, outdated process with strict criteria.
• Deal with ridiculous limitations—only 5 evidence files per report, each under 50MB, or else I need to upload them elsewhere.

Yeah it is a lot of work.

A kill cam that can be downloaded a couple hours after your game would cut down a lot of work. You would get a better view of what the player did also besides your own player view.

@tesiccl Like I stated before, I couldn’t disagree more with this mindset. So, the player—a paying customer who bought the game to have fun—should be the one crippled instead?

Reporting a single cheater takes far too much time. If we consider the time a player loses at the hands of a cheater, let’s not forget that you could lose a boat full of treasures, representing more than two hours of gameplay, or a streak in Hourglass, which could also take several hours to build. Now, add to that the time spent reporting a single cheater—time that should be spent enjoying the game. As I mentioned earlier, gathering evidence and putting together a solid report is a tedious process that most players, including myself, don’t want to waste their time on. And once again, this is a job that shouldn’t be theirs in the first place.

Furthermore, recording video impacts a player's system performance. Let’s have some empathy and remember that not everyone has a high-end PC—which might be another reason many players choose not to report cheaters in the first place.