Calling all Script Kiddies - What do you want to see in the API

  • RGBKnights
    Master
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    Founder

    SoT is for better or worst is a Session based game. I am not going to great detail about what the means, but it does mean that very little will persist in the game environment.

    Modern session-based games have an API, that lets 3rd part developers create great experiences outside and around the game. Things like leaderboards, companion apps, websites for session/global stats. We know they are collecting this data as they have shared a number of posters with stats from the Alpha and Beta.

    RARE I hope your listening because we really want an API for this game!

    That this point I turn it over to the community:

    1. What you to want to see in the SoT API?
    2. What type of applications would like 3rd party developers to create?
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  • RGBKnights
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    Some things that have been talked about before:
    Most player kills
    Most skeleton kills
    Most chests found in a crew
    Most treasure earned
    Most treasure lost (dug up but not cashed in by crew)
    Most deaths
    Most time spent drunk
    Best accuracy
    Worst accuracy
    Longest distance covered swimming
    Longest time spent in battles
    Most canons reloaded
    Most ship hits with canons
    Most people hit with canons (for those lucky shots)
    Most cumulative distance fallen, for those in the crows nest drinking grog!
    Most treasure chests found in a row
    Most times spewing up from drinking too much grog!
    Most chests stolen from other crews.
    Longest fall to death.
    Killed most by skeletons.
    Best K.D. ratio.
    Most stuff stolen from other crews.
    Most time spent at the wheel. (Top helmsman)
    Biggest single treasure reward.
    Most time spent searching a treasure.
    Most treasures stolen from other ships.
    Most time alive.
    Most time that a full crew was together.
    Most time spent playing music.
    Most Hull repairs completed.
    Most time spent on land (For all ye landlubbers-)
    Most time spent at sea (For all ye scurvy knaves-)
    Most times that someone fell overboard.
    Explored the most
    Most stolen treasurers
    Most banked gold
    Most ships sunk
    Most added friends
    Longest engagement at sea.
    Longest kill shot.
    Most distance covered by swimming;
    Most meermaids ignored;
    Most climbed up to the crowsnest;
    Most distance covered on your own ship;
    Most distance covered on someone elses enemy ship.

  • MisterDoomed

    The minute a game lets 3rd party software or programs in they have all but sent a invite out for all out hacking and endorsed it.
    I hope no 3rd party anything is allowed but i know its a pipe dream..ill definitely have fun though till they ruin SoTs.

  • RGBKnights
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    @misterdoomed

    Hacking is not really an issue with these APIs as they are generally read-only data. Lots of other games have them with no issue. Cheating is something an issue but generally, this is dealt with be delaying the data by seconds, or minutes, or till the session is finished.

    We have some exmaples over the last few months of the type of data that could be exposed and it would have no negative impact on the effect on the game.

  • SnowBodhi

    Based on my experience of Destiny...

    Event timer so you know when public events are happening.
    See the in game clock outside the game.
    Know which of your friends are in a ship together and where.

  • MisterDoomed

    @rgbknights
    Unfortunately that is the exact thing everyone says about them. I cant name drop but the last game with pvp that i played that allowed these had the worst hacking ive ever seen online and the game devs promised it was all just exaggerated and impossible to hack...funny thing was i was in clans that both used the hacks "not in the game" and one even insisted you use it or be excududed from clan activities and they even paid for the hack for you.
    Any game is hackable and allowing 3rd party software is the worst inho..but dont worry im in the minority in this thinking.

  • RGBKnights
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    @misterdoomed

    I don't want to go 10 rounds on you with this one because we are both right. It is up to Rare to implement something that will expose the data we want to consume in a way in a way that is safe for the community to interact with.

  • RGBKnights
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    @snoweffigy
    knowing your friends are on a ship together and where could get tricky in the realm of privacy issues (At least without some kind of opt-in flag) but I like it and good is a good base for getting guilds up and running. As well community driven races!

  • LogansDadToo
    Founder

    @rgbknights
    Rare have said they don't want leaderboards or stat tables, so why would they want to allow / endorse anything like this??
    If Rare wants the community to know some of the stand out statistics then they will probably release them when they want to.

  • RGBKnights
    Master
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    @logansdadtoo

    They have built a PvP game, people are going to want stats to compare with others!

  • LogansDadToo
    Founder

    @rgbknights
    They have built a shared world adventure game with a pvp element, & have stated they want no leaderboards or stat tables!
    COD, Battlefield & soon to be Skull & Bones are PVP, this is not!

  • RGBKnights
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    @logansdadtoo

    No leaderboards eh! I would have a better time believe you if they did not release the last round of stats with Captain Cross pic up there with most kills!

    They love these stats posters (have produced them a number of times now) and we as the community love them too!

    What we asking for is an API to get data!

  • Musicmee
    Vanguard
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    Deckhand

    @rgbknights @LogansDadToo

    And I think this is how they will continue to present global stats to us in the future too.

  • LogansDadToo
    Founder

    @rgbknights
    I didn't know you could get leaderboards with just one entry, you learn something new every day.
    Good luck expecting a feature what will not be included ;)

  • LogansDadToo
    Founder

    @musicmee
    Yep, that's what i'm expecting them to do as well :)

  • xCALYPT0x
    Master
    Insider
    Boatswain

    @misterdoomed They just need to get some tips from Riot on how to implement this. Tons of League of Legends based apps that rely on this data to show player performance, item builds, runes, etc.

  • xCALYPT0x
    Master
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    Boatswain

    Real shame that Rare doesn't want leader-boards. I thought the whole idea was to "become a pirate legend." Was looking forward to seeing which pirates had found the most chests, which had traded the most, which had killed the most skeleton captains, and who had sunk the most ships :)

  • RGBKnights
    Master
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    @xcalypt0x

    These are some great examples. I myself, have been using the Steam API for years now to create AI for Dota2 match analysis. It is a great little community that never would have existed with the data from the game.

  • xCALYPT0x
    Master
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    Boatswain

    @rgbknights Exactly. I think it would be very beneficial. I must admit, I do not know a lot about these APIs but I assume the are just REST services that rely on some backend database queries to fetch data. I do not see how they could be implemented to create 3rd party hacks, except maybe some in-game overlays that present data to the player. No invincibility or unlimited ammo type stuff though.

  • Damdrara
    Ship Mate
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    What might be nice might be API similar to Destiny that allows to change gear (...well, outfits and such in this case)

    Other than that.. as much information about my character as possible. name, levels with the different npc factions, current amount of gold, all items I have unlocked (be it outfits, tools, ship customization, titles, emblems, achievements...); but also all items that exist, if they are for purchase include price and vendor location. I'd love to make (or see someone make) a collection page similar to destinysets.com giving me a nice overview over what I own and what else I could get.

    information about my current playsession: some ID for the current session, what kind of ship I am sailing on, who my crewmates are, maybe even coordinates of where the ship and each crewmember is. a list of other crews/players in my session (but without coordinates, obviously) - seeing who else is in my session might be nice in a missed connections kinda way - I know i met a few friendly players who weren't in my crew but just random encounters, and this could allow us to track who we met, since Xbox's "Recent Players" only tracks crew.

  • LIFEWCOKE
    Commander
    Boatswain
    Founder

    @rgbknights said in Calling all Script Kiddies - What do you want to see in the API:

    @logansdadtoo
    They love these stats posters...

    I wouldn't say that. It felt like we were pulling teeth to get them to produce more of these.

    I do love the idea of stats though. I really prefer the oddball stats like we got with the first posters. The ones after that were pretty lame in my opinion.

  • RGBKnights
    Master
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    @theamadox

    This is a neat idea. I was not thinking about a writable API, although they smart cookies over there at Rare I am sure they could figure it out. Would be kinda cool to do dress up with my character out of the game, or ship customization.

  • Musicmee
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    Deckhand

    It would be nice if Rare had their own internal API so they could call some of our in game data over to the forums/main site like out current commendation levels and maybe some event data like current time and season or any other timed events that might be happening.

  • RGBKnights
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    @musicmee

    If they go through all that trouble why not make it public... So people can build there own application around this data.

    Maybe a phone app with those timed events with push notifications so you don't miss one or a widget on my guild site with my commendation levels?

  • Vitaefinis
    Ship Mate

    I actually sent in an application to Rare specifically about this topic just yesterday, crossing my fingers :P
    Nice to see this topic coming up in the forums ^^

    Every game should have APIs in 2018 in my opinion, no matter how small or big.
    There is no single source where good ideas come from, everyone can be a contributor if we enabled everyone to build on a great base, there's no stopping the innovative things that will come out.

    Sooner or later people reverse engineer things, given enough demand. If there's an official API set, people would rather focus on building on there.
    Just look at Pokemon Go, it had an awesome dev community in the beginning but they had to reverse engineer the whole thing.
    Some devs used their skills for cheating, some devs used their skills for cool apps and add-ons. For example: I created an app that connected to my smart bulbs and whenever a gym battle was going at the nearest gym to my place, it would flash and then when the battle is done, it would take the color of the victorious team.
    They chose to battle all devs instead of trying to implement anti-cheat measures...
    Overwatch didn't (and I guess still doesn't) have an official API, so we had to scrape their stats website which, in turn, lead to unregulated traffic and load to their systems.
    This kind of list goes on and on. Not having official APIs is not time or resource saving, it's actually extra headache.

    League of Legends, World of Warcraft, Destiny 2, Eve Online, Guild Wars, Steam, Mixer, Xbox Live, Twitch all have various APIs and there's a massive ecosystem around them which provide value to the players & users. There are tons of APIs out there that I can't recount here, which we can integrate things to.
    Just imagine how cool IoT Sea of Thieves merch would be.

    Apart from stats, achievements, commendations, character & asset management, game info (items, merchants, factions, mobs etc.), I think real time event triggers would be an awesome addition as well.
    I get excited just thinking about the possibilities :)

  • RGBKnights
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    @vitaefinis

    Oh, man don't even get me started on Pokemon GO... That was 6 months of development I never going to get back...

    But your point is very important; "sooner or later people reverse engineer things!" Why not work with the community than against it.

  • Vitaefinis
    Ship Mate

    @rgbknights Exactly. The sooner they start partnerships with the fans who wanna actually invest their personal time and professional skills, the better. This is valid for every company with a public product.

  • Arkhanor86
    Master
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    Founder

    Well, I'm a programmer and would love to have access to some sort of SoT API. It would be fun to learn new things and create some fun apps.

  • AetherBones
    Master
    Founder

    Player stats would be nice. Theres no threat of benefiting hackers with a reaponsible api. (I maintain multiple api for a living)
    Hacking is unavoidable in any fps pc game. The aimbot hackers have their system down pat and bots are advancing in dificulty to detect.

    Id really like to make a fan site for this game with rich features. Allowing the community to expand features outside the game promote it and the community so I hope Rare encourages this with some sort of api.

  • RicketySteak378

    Yes +1, i'm developer and i wish an API for create more features.

    I would like create website too about this fantastic game.

    Hope Rare make a public API. :)

    Maybe: number of banana eats ? :D

  • Solidice Peter
    Seafarer

    RGBKnights has hit the nail right on the head time and time again in this thread.
    I love this game, and I love how it sets itself apart from others, but in today's competitive gaming world, not exposing an API is a horrible decision, one that could determine the life span of this game. The API that RGBKnight is talking about, would simply provide read only data upon request, from a Sea of Thieves database... for those following along, that means you can't change the data, only receive it...
    There is no reason not to expose an API, and I think Rare is probably just focused on rolling out the game as smoothly as possible within their budgetary means, and then when the time is right (fingers crossed), they will release the API for all of us creative and eager developers willing to step up and create content for the community. A friend and I have already created an interactive map index, where users can search by island name or browse by image, and get the location of the island, and also the closest outpost. This all being created from data while playing the beta, the sky is the limit with what developers can come up with when API's are exposed.
    If anyone wants the link to the SoT island index let me know.

  • Solidice Peter
    Seafarer

    @vitaefinis
    Well said. Rare should follow the pirate code!

  • gadgetnottz
    Founder

    Thing is, i can understand if they say one is coming but only once launch is settled to not add to the problems we are seeing.

    Has anyone actually seen how data is being requesting from/to the game?

  • RGBKnights
    Master
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    @gadgetnottz

    Has anyone actually seen how data is being requesting from/to the game?

    I would think this is a somewhat closely guarded secret, but they have dropped a number of keywords and a developer did release a number of tech articles explaining a number of details.

    I also have a bunch of experience in this field so I know what to look for... Enough to believe messages could be included in a new system and processed to create long-term storage for use in an API.

  • British Legends
    Captain
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    Founder

    Typically community driven innovations (given enough data) succeed the most. It would be a great source of data to build upon, should they allow it.

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