Has there actually been an increase in cheaters, or just a decrease in play skill?

You know, I didn't do it in this game when I bought it because PvP didn't seem like a major part of the game based on the trailers and game descriptions, but any time I'm looking at a new PvP oriented game to buy, the first thing I do is google cheats for it.

If I find a lot of them available for sale or whatever, I don't play that game. That's probably the easiest way to find out if there are cheaters. If there is cheat software available, people are using it. Simple as that.

I dunno

I just look at every opponent like Drago. I just rely on experience and instinct and heart and keep swinging till I get Apollo'd or until I cut them

Juiced to the gills or not. No pain

@gallerine5582

Not cheating.

There is a problem with new players joining the game. This game has a TON of bugs. Lots of the players, like yourself, already know about the bugs. Hig registration being a HUGE one.

Secondly a lot of the newer players don't understand how joining sessions work.

Lots of them are joining off xbox lfg or playing with friends who have a friend on the other side of the pond. You play in the region of whoever started the lobby and lots of the new players don't know this fact. This causes latency issues and if you are on xbox you have no idea what you ping is. So players from the US can be playing on EU servers and would never know because unlike most games, SoT doesn't have a region preference and no I don't want that to change. Its a good way to get a chance to find new people you would otherwise never meet.

The latency issues thats been going on plus with the constant hit registration bug, they have no idea that its not hacks they are running into but just SoT being SoT.

I found someone a few weeks ago who called me a hacker because he got backtracked by my sniper shot. He saw that I missed, I SAW that I missed, game suggested otherwise and he died. Called me a hacker. Told him this game had severe bugs and problems and his words "Wait, is the game in beta?? I thought this game has been out for years" , no it just got worse as time goes on. "who would want to play a like this"

So that is one portion of players who claim hacks is because they don't know how riddled the game is with bugs.

The next portion are the players that never really PvP and never learned how to do anything. So when they go up against any other player that PvP's, whatever the PvP'er does is impossible.

Like aiming cannon shots at the wheel or the cannons. Then theres the quick scoping and what not. Players, especially PvE, have a habit of calling hacks because they view actions of other players as "impossible" by their standards. Not their fault, they have no frame of reference since they never tried to do such things and since they rarely PvP, they rarely run into such things.

So its a mixture of ignorance of actual player capability, newer players not understanding that whats happening is broken gameplay, and just angry players. A few other things as well but mostly yeah, this game doesn't have a bunch of hackers. I've played 3 years and maybe ran into 4?? 3 were clear as day. 1 was just really sus. Cannon shots were just WAAAAAAY to good from pretty much max distance.

@venatorlupos

Not really a fair comparison for a game. Some games have lots of cheats but because the game has private servers or what not. The cheats you need to be on the look out for are the account websites. Those aren't easy to find but not too difficult. There a communities and discords that pass those around. Those are worse because those hacks even though sell for higher price, they are harder to punish because of the way the hacks work with the game.

Example :

Aimbot - Players can get banned even without a report for something like this. Game checks accounts for insane accuracy's with guns. If you fired so many shots in a time period and 95% of those are headshots, gonna get banned by the system automatically.

Lower spread - This hack lowers the potential spread of the weapon you are using. So you can still die and you can still miss, but your shots will work slightly better than enemy players. Makes it harder to punish because its harder to prove that any hack is happening.

Good hacks aren't all over google. The good ones

@xultanis-dragon The point I'm making is still there. SoT specific cheat or generic overlay cheat. If cheating is possible, there are players who will do it.

You might be saying that they're harder to catch if they're using an overlay or something, but my point is that there's no need to catch them. If the software exists and you don't want cheaters in your game, you've got to use anti cheat methods of one kind or another.

Now I'm no coder and maybe the anti cheat available isn't sophisticated enough to stop the cheat available.

Hit youtube for 5 minutes and see recent videos of people sharing the functionality of the cheats. Its all over the place. People realize its a bare-bone game with no fancy hud or motion tracker then boom. Either get better, quit, or cheat. There are large groups in all categories there. The game needs full throttle anti cheat function either way.

@ancientchaos13 said in Has there actually been an increase in cheaters, or just a decrease in play skill?:

Hit youtube for 5 minutes and see recent videos of people sharing the functionality of the cheats. Its all over the place. People realize its a bare-bone game with no fancy hud or motion tracker then boom. Either get better, quit, or cheat. There are large groups in all categories there. The game needs full throttle anti cheat function either way.

only if it doesn't cause substantive inconvenience to those playing the game without cheating and only if it doesn't increase the risk of falsely punishing players

there is no hard data to go off of over cheating on this game. It's a lot of "it's everywhere" and "I never see it"

what we do know is that the environment itself prevents it a lot of the time

max 6 ships per server and a massive portion of the base being new/casual and either peaceful, not much of a threat, or only dabble in pvp

Bringing in anything that is unjust or inconveniences without clear data of it being a problem is creating a bigger problem as a solution to an unproven problem imo.

@wolfmanbush i mean regardless of frequency, an anti-cheat setup is good thing on any game. Specially any game that has crossplay capability. As another poster said if a cheat exists, then somebody is using it. Otherwise it wouldn't be in question to begin with. The only point i'm putting out there is that any game will benefit from anti cheat precautions cause the cheats do indeed exist.
A short spectator mode would be pretty cool too but thats just a preference thing for me.

@redeyesith I'm no expert, but I was under the impression that some of the newer anti cheat methods are something that you have to install and run or not be allowed in a game.

There are also detection anti cheats that look for exceptional skill and such, but the reason people assume there's no anti cheat is because they aren't required to run an anti cheat when they play.

@nitroxien said in Has there actually been an increase in cheaters, or just a decrease in play skill?:

I used to not think there were any cheaters in this game till just the other day we ran into a group of cheaters. Brand new accounts as you would expect, everything looked normal at first glance, but when we tried to fight them they were invincible to two blunder shots to the face. Now of course I assumed it was lag, but before we knew it they were literally flying and instant reloading weapons... So yeah we were lucky to have been playing with someone who records so we sent it in and they got banned, but that incident leads me to believe more in cheaters increasing and their prevalence increasing as well. Not out of hand yet but would like Rare to take a step earlier than later.

the new account and good at pvp thing could be a result of bans for cheating but a lot of that is gonna also be related to toxicity and drama in their pvp communities and that sort of thing as well as getting in trouble for being not cool around the adventure mode behavior wise

I've fought quite a few of the skilled people with newish accounts and trollish names and they were just skilled mostly.

@venatorlupos said in Has there actually been an increase in cheaters, or just a decrease in play skill?:

@redeyesith I'm no expert, but I was under the impression that some of the newer anti cheat methods are something that you have to install and run or not be allowed in a game.

There are also detection anti cheats that look for exceptional skill and such, but the reason people assume there's no anti cheat is because they aren't required to run an anti cheat when they play.

Those types of anti cheats were on the rise but they have been shut down by the gaming community as a whole.

Having to install a separate program that sends data/information from your computer to the vendor to verify files is a very big privacy no no.

Its one of those "hey so we have access to all your files but we PROMISE we won't use any of that information against your will, only information we deem necessary for marketing so that we can cater advertisements to your history"

The legal language is always open.

Doom tried to push a anti-cheat that runs at the kernel level of your PC. HUGE no no as nothing needs access to the kernel because that means the program itself also dictates what other programs you are running on your PC not just cheat programs. It could block the use of some programs simply because the anti-cheat thought it was a cheat program. It effects your PC not just stopping you from cheating on Doom.

"Why do people care?? If you aren't cheating or got nothing to hide then you wouldn't care." - False. I have heard this argument used A LOT through the years about a lot of things. People have their reasons for wanting to keep private things private.

@venatorlupos said in Has there actually been an increase in cheaters, or just a decrease in play skill?:

@redeyesith I'm no expert, but I was under the impression that some of the newer anti cheat methods are something that you have to install and run or not be allowed in a game.

There are also detection anti cheats that look for exceptional skill and such, but the reason people assume there's no anti cheat is because they aren't required to run an anti cheat when they play.

Those types of anti cheats were on the rise but they have been shut down by the gaming community as a whole.

Having to install a separate program that sends data/information from your computer to the vendor to verify files is a very big privacy no no.

Its one of those "hey so we have access to all your files but we PROMISE we won't use any of that information against your will, only information we deem necessary for marketing so that we can cater advertisements to your history"

The legal language is always open.

Doom tried to push a anti-cheat that runs at the kernel level of your PC. HUGE no no as nothing needs access to the kernel because that means the program itself also dictates what other programs you are running on your PC not just cheat programs. It could block the use of some programs simply because the anti-cheat thought it was a cheat program. It effects your PC not just stopping you from cheating on Doom.

"Why do people care?? If you aren't cheating or got nothing to hide then you wouldn't care." - False. I have heard this argument used A LOT through the years about a lot of things. People have their reasons for wanting to keep private things private.

I've seen "snipers" shooting cannons , unsinkable sloops and ships sailing faster under exact same conditions , but hey , "it's a pirate game". I cannot affirm they were cheating.

@calico-jack3172 said in Has there actually been an increase in cheaters, or just a decrease in play skill?:

I've seen "snipers" shooting cannons , unsinkable sloops and ships sailing faster under exact same conditions , but hey , "it's a pirate game". I cannot affirm they were cheating.

sloops can get Bonnie and Clyde'd and stay up with through it all with an experienced duo and can last quite a while for a solo that is also capable of keeping people off the ship

sailing faster is just more experience. It's how crews catch up to those running against the wind. A skilled crew that are active in the roles is gonna catch up to less skilled players that are panicking and being chased. Most crews running aren't running for fun they are running because they don't want to fight and with that comes a lot of fear and mistakes. Which is capitalized on by chasers with skill

cannon shots could be cheating but people spend thousands of hours on this game and some literally do nothing but fight while in skilled and well coordinated crews. Some people also just have an eye for it even if they aren't much good at anything else combat wise

@wolfmanbush , I know experienced players can be great shooters or quick repair the ship , but how could two sloops exactly against the wind , full sail in same angle , have different speeds ? Maybe the game takes ship's grossweight into account? I'd love to learn the trick !

@calico-jack3172 said in Has there actually been an increase in cheaters, or just a decrease in play skill?:

@wolfmanbush , I know experienced players can be great shooters or quick repair the ship , but how could two sloops exactly against the wind , full sail in same angle , have different speeds ? Maybe the game takes ship's grossweight into account? I'd love to learn the trick !

nothing is the exact same especially skill and ability to take advantage of very important moments

I'm not generally a runner as I find it an extreme waste of time but if I were there are a lot of crews that would eventually catch me.

People often see "this is outside of what I am capable of" as shenanigans but really the massive skill gap is well known and if people have extra crew members it just makes it that much easier for them.

It's understandable to some degree it's an environment that has a lot of people without much experience and they are exposed to not only weird server issues that make all sorts of things look and feel weird but also a skill gap that is rather ridiculous to witness. That doesn't mean feeling that way is based on fact but it's understandable why people would think it is at times.

@ronin20 said in Has there actually been an increase in cheaters, or just a decrease in play skill?:

I think its idiotic to believe that cheaters are around every corner of this game. I also think its idiotic to assume there's none and the player complaining is just lying or simply bad at the game. The all or none assumption people seem to fall on achieves nothing.

Going on about it in adventure doesn't make much sense to me for more than just it largely not being proven. Those piles of casuals that come in for jack sparrow and to sail around and fish and do casual treasure hunting and are mostly peaceful or just lightly dip in the pvp pool are not cheating. No reason to and no reason to think they are. This group is a very large chunk of who fills the servers so that right there is going to keep a lot of it out just by the nature of the player base and how they play. As long as this game stays so casual and child/family friendly that won't change much on adventure servers.

now arena and tdm stuff is a whole different story. Lots of breeding ground in those scenarios for people to mess around with cheats

there are people that voice concerns over arena cheating but largely the threads and complaints are coming from pve heavy adventurers which I think warrants some skepticism about how much it's happening given the skill gaps and given the experience gaps and given the server issues and mostly that a lot of people playing adventure simply aren't here to cheat they are here to mess around pve'ing and don't take the game as serious as some of us do. They take up too much server space to allow a whole lot of pvp cheating to where it could ruin the game or harm it significantly in adventure mode