cheat problem

the game is dying because of cheaters

Oh look…
Or when you say “the game” you mean the tool Hourglass?

@metal-ravage

Sounds easy bro. Report people and the stock answer is “we need more evidence”. Video size is so limited and the expectation placed on you to clip vids. I don’t even own a desktop computer. Even a 1 min vid won’t send.

I was getting sniped through the middle deck of a brig and at the far side of the ship 2 days ago by a 3 man crew lol.

@wolfmanbush I agree with everything you mentioned here. I will say though, if the announcement was to eliminate HG, I don't think you would see anywhere near the revival participation rate as Arena's last days because the fundamentals are different and there is more commitment involved. Also, Arena did not have anywhere near the amount of cheaters or foulplay as HG does. HG imho is the main reason the cheater population exploded in the game. Sure, it might of happened anyway but the mode was an accelerant. Because of that, the mode reputation is so tarnished and the gameplay is so formulized that people are just over it whether or not it dies.

The best you can do, is to record and report them now for the time being, until improvements are made.

It is vital that you report cheaters when you do encounter them, as Sea of Thieves collects statistics on the number of fluctuating reports of people using cheating software. Statistics starts to highlight what needs to be worked on.

Cheating in online games is pain however there is a arms race between anti-cheat developers and cheat developers which is never ending. When they brought out EAC, it knocked out the more terrible cheat developers however those dedicated ones now have to work harder to develop their cheat. Sea of Thieves is bring out better ban evasion detection which is good to hear. It will never knock out the most dedicated ones but will certainly lower reports in which you will see less cheaters on the seas.

Things take time.

@r333f folks want their curses.

The carrot dangling at the end of the Arena grind wasn't that great. The cosmetics didn't even really scream "Arena." All frou-frou with bright colors and feathers. Looked less like PvPers and more like grandmas watching the Kentucky Derby.

Its population was mainly temporary commendation grinders and people who genuinely loved Arena (for PvP/practice, for competition). But if you weren't interested in PvP or commendations or bright, feathery cosmetics, it was a mode one could easily avoid.

HG rewards come with a lot more fomo, and with that comes desperation, and with that, and absent a system to catch it, comes cheating.

@WolfManbush is right in theory... but who wants to be the first one to wade in the water after a shark attack, while they're still actively looking for sharks? Lol. Sure you have a lot less to lose playing HG, as this is just a video game. But folks do value their free time, especially when limited.

In the current state of the game, you couldn't pay me to play HG. I've got camos to grind on BO6. That's where my time is going over the holidays.

@theblackbellamy pretty much spot on … I lol’d at the grandmas at Kentucky derby. So good haha

@metal-ravage lol like when will you stop simping for Rare... They have been discussing fixing the cheater problem in this game for LITERAL YEARS now...

They discussed fixing the cheater problem since pre-HG and it has only been getting worse. Rare has flat out been losing the battle for years now, in fact it was not until the mass screaming of people on the forums that we finally got an anti-cheat added to the game.

So many people tried to cover up the mass cheating problem in this game whether it be here on the forums or on reddit, in fact for the longest time we were in the flat out denial phase with people saying cheaters don't exist and it's a skill issue.

So complaining about the system is fair, it's bad, Rare's solutions so far have been awful, and this game is now down to the lowest it's ever been in part because of this.

@burnbacon No the whole game in part. Cheaters are definitely not the only problem but they are definitely a major one. Steam charts reported the all time lowest average ever for this game. Let's not live in denial and pretend things are going well.

Steam charts reported the all time lowest average ever for this game.

never trust those charts and what about the other players? Console players.
Seems everyone just gets info from one source of a game.

So what is your solution? Complain till you are blue in the mouth?!

@metal-ravage As a founder and long time forum user you should know all too well that complaining on the forums has been the ONLY solution since when it did not happen Rare just ignored it entirely.

It took over a year of people screaming on the forums begging for an anti-cheat and finally Rare caved in as the sub reddit, forum, and discord starting getting littered with irrefutable evidence as people kept adamantly denying it.

Players begged so much on the forums for PvE servers since the start of the game and guess what they got safer seas.

Players screamed on the forums about double gunning and Rare finally removed it due to all the people whining. Yeah honestly seems to be the only thing that works with Rare.

Players pointed out in methodical and logical ways super early all the problems with hourglass and they still shipped it in a garbage state pointing out the issues of MMR and win streak, running in the zone, and supply disparities and Rare did nothing. Rare has shown to only respond to major backlash at this point it seems.

It took major screaming on the forums of spawn camping concerns and Rare not being able to provide a clear response since people would spawn camp other ships to steal their supplies in HG till they finally implemented barrels floating up after a fight to alleviate this.

There is a lot to be done in order to implement fixes without touching the core game and believe you me RARE is doing the best they can.

I'm not sure what you even mean by this... Implementation of a proper anti-cheat, implementing proper hardware bans. I get it's a hard battle, but Rare has shown countless times in the past that they will only respond to community pressure unfortunately.

There has been minimal developer communication tbh on a lot of concerns and problems in this game they are about on par with Blizzard which tbh is not a good sign. Answering like 3 questions on SoT podcasts once every 6 months is not clear communication on their end. The answer of we can't talk about anti-cheat to not share secrets is a massive cop out when Riot gives long developer posts discussing Vanguard, I get not going into detail, but the entire hush on it does not build confidence.

I get Riot is a bigger company but I am so jealous and wish we could have the same level of communication with Rare as Riot has would make the community feel so much better. Riot offers developer updates, active responses on sub-reddits and forums, Riot August and Riot Phreak consistently twitch stream answering questions directly from chat while playing League. They will discuss with players on discord chats, and more.

Most communications in the SoT forums are mods saying dropping anchor on this post...

Rare has a tendency to ship new content and not care about anything else in the game continually just trying to hit the next deadline. I would be so happy if Rare said for 1 whole year no new content we will doing nothing but revamp what we have in the game alreay and make it better talking with the community with changes they want to see. Instead we just get broken patch after broken patched tossed at us and ignored after release.

Well they did say in the recent podcast where they were being transparent that they actually believe "easy anti-cheat has been superb catching thousands of cheaters daily". There were less than 5000 active players on steam sailing last time I checked and I've seen many cheaters - some blatant subscription cheaters clear as day, as well as more subtle cheaters with .pak files and still people currently quickswapping faster than the mechanic allows.

Going further they said they were going to combat certain unintended exploits and yet people are still abusing ladder launching, which is way more powerful than rod launching and map launching were (didn't they say they were going to address this in a podcast?) but yet it still remains. They also haven't prevented people from parking their ship in an unsinkable area or even addressed the matter. Seems like a pretty simple fix for that. But hey, they patched the improved flower emote that nobody wanted fixed.

To their credit they prevented the rod launch more than once, the map launch, the crouch/keg launch, the bone caller dupe and a lot of PvE related fixes. But they lost me with saying Easy Anti-Cheat has been superb. It has not

@captdirtyoar True it is an ongoing battle in PvP games, but developers NEED to stay on top of it which Rare is just not doing. I'd hate to see SoT turn into PUBG or Tarkov but it's on that path right now unfortunately where we are just going to see lobbies of cheaters vs cheaters.

I don't care what tools they implement, but they need to do something since EAC alone was not enough. Hardware bans, 2 Factor login, downloadable kill cam... All tools they can use to help combat cheating, just need them to do some something not say they are doing something while they keep losing by increasing margins.

Rare saying we are doing stuff despite the problem turning worst for YEARS now is not a good sign.