Ever since the explosive epidemic of cheating starting in Season 8's Hourglass, Rare has done what they could to denounce it and ask its users to report the many instance of cheating occurring in the game only for them to eventually "fix" it in a monthly patch.
Rare has made it abundantly clear that they have zero tolerance towards those who cheat. That has been very clear and despite the ban evasions happening which is mostly out of their power, they have stuck to it. But now a new question arises: What about those who PLAY with cheaters?
On the first day of Season 15, I was sailing with a crew of friends on a galleon, in which we eventually came across a FoF that had a sloop crew at it. We sunk the crew the first time, allied with another sloop that arrived after sinking the first crew, and that same crew returned a few more times.
On their 3rd return, they refused to naval (couldn't blame them, it's a 5v2), but after things got mysteriously quiet as their boat was very far away from the fort, what went from a duo crew of pirates with the "Inspiring Artist" title (earned from winning several SoTShots), turned into a solo inspiring artist, and a second crew member who was replaced in which the new crew member was blatantly cheating, utilizing an ability to instantly climb up a ladder and of course, a cheat to quick swap (little debatable calling that a cheat but eh).
By some miracle we eventually defeated the sloop again after outplaying that cheater with traps, swords, and just sheer crew size. We collect the majority of the FoF loot as the sloop makes its second return with the cheater, outplay the cheater's boards and leave to the outpost to sell, and log off, as the sloop gave up chasing us in tailwind.
My crew's captain made the report on all 3 players from that sloop because of the cheating. They told us what Support had expectedly done, banned the cheater. Good, right? No. They made it clear that all of the players in relation to that boat should have been severely penalized. They even recorded the full encounter involving all 3 players for the report to support.
Default responses. No actions were reasonably taken against the players clearly subbing in the cheater. The only evidence we had was player activity, in which at least 48 hours after the first day of the season when we encountered them, one of them earned another Xbox achievement, and their playtime increased, showcasing that no punishment could have been given, and these Inspiring Artists are allowed to run free while their subbed in cheater makes a new alt account and continues to help them on fights they really don't like.
So to TL;DR all of this.
Is it punishable to play with cheaters in Sea of Thieves?
The captain asked support in a new ticket, and got no response at all. Leaving us concerned if Rare's stance on cheaters is really being taken seriously. If we can come across players with a very prestigious title and hard-earned curses who just sub in a cheater when they want to win a fight they are unable to win, how fair is that? Can we just do that too and face no repercussion if we're reported? Sense needs to be made of this because this is severely unacceptable, and not a single player should be above the Pirate Code, the Terms of Service, and the Code of Conduct.
