@wolfmanbush said in Regarding SOT Anti-Cheat:
their problem isn't cheating
A) They seem to think that their problem is cheating. B) My problem is cheating.
their problem is that non-organic play ran off organic play and pvp interest so much that season 8 was necessary to being with.
Season 8 significantly increased encounters but didn't significantly increase interest in the game or the content so they have content that most of the streamers are playing in which draws in the cheaters to go mess with them. Low activity is the issue, low interest is the issue.
I disagree, crushing what interest there was with poor skill based matchmaking so that whatever surge there was in PvE players dipping their toe into PvP play was immediately smashed with a sledgehammer when they got rolled by someone far outside of their skill ceiling when they had been sold a mode that was supposed to be skill based, only to learn that without asking for it or knowing about it the skill based window opens to a point of meaninglessness. Even and without that, I don't much engage with the hourglass and I've seen an increase in what I'm pretty certain is cheating activity.
The majority of people that left this game didn't leave over cheating, they left because of imbalanced risk/reward and because of the enabling of non-organic pvp and the repeated buffing of dock supplies, and because of a significant drop in significance in the organic environment because of mass cheesing and people long time players were disrespected with how milestones were implemented, specifically losing the overview stat page which many used as motivation for years.
What do you base that belief on? Its purely anecdotal, but everyone I started playing this game has left because of encountering cheating not because of anything else you mentioned.
Too little activity mixed with a mass increase of encounters causes the illusion of mass cheating but it's from the low interest and low activity. Also there are crews losing multiple times a day that only lost once or twice a month in random adventure because of the game going from non-competitive fights to competitive fights and that has frustrations higher on top of people focusing on random clips that are being passed around.
Again, you're suggesting that the issue is whether or not the cheating is "mass" before its a big problem. It doesn't need to be mass cheating for it to be a big problem. The perception and experience of it can create a problem irrespective of how widespread it is. Let me put it this way, say I offer you a handful of M&Ms from a bowl of 1000, and I mention that one of them is a lump of pure cyanide made to seem exactly like an M&M. The cyanide M&M is not a mass problem, but its a huge problem. Take for example cheats that allow you to teleport and see people on the map, by definition one person with those cheats could sour the experience of a whole server in minutes, and it doesn't take multiple experiences with cheating that you're powerless to stop to turn someone off the game, it only takes one. The things you're talking about, the change in the organic experience, they take multiple sessions to notice, having a session ruined by cheating is instant.
Every game has some cheating, season 8 just condenses it into low activity but high content creator activity content and content creators have a lot of reach when they share it.
Well, not really, every game with forced PvP has cheating which can ruin the game for other players, which is a very different thing. Choosing to up the encounter rate with that and not being prepared to deal with the predictable player reaction to it seems like a mis-step.
The cheaters in this game are specifically looking for streamers and for clips to meme on them. They do not care about the names stuck in the middle, cheating in this game is largely tied to it being a small community that is heavily attached to streaming. This content created a thunderdome for it. Which is why it was silly that they were pushing for it to begin with, but everyone gets so caught up in content creation and "pvpers need an update" they completely ignore the obvious effects of what they want. A "pvp update" is an update that actually makes people want to farm treasure, that's a pvp update in a game like this.
What do you have to back up that claim? I'm not a streamer and I've experienced a couple of definite hacks in the last month when I'd only experienced one maybe in the full year previous. Its clearly anecdotal, but I'd like to know how you know that hacking is mainly used to target streamers rather than standard gamers?
Content that all the streamers are going to play, that most other players aren't that into so it's low activity and it's very easy to encounter streamers... I wonder what will happen in that type of scenario. It's about as be careful what you wish for as it gets.
Again, that's down to the fairly insane decision to forcibly throw skill based matchmaking in the junk after what is arbitrarily designated too much of a wait.
This content is a Hell in a Cell match between streamers and people looking for streamers for one reason or another while a group of neither are stuck in the middle. That's what this is.
Again, this isn't about season 8, its about what appears to be the fallout of season 8. Evidence is clearly always going to be anecdotal here, but people seem to be encountering more cheating outside as well as inside hourglass, which would make sense. Even if what you say is right, is it insane to suggest that due to "normal" players having an increased encounters with cheaters might drive otherwise normal players to feel that they have an excuse to start using hacks to level the playing field? And is it impossible that such an tendency might bleed out of hourglass?
Even if all of that is untrue, even if every single thing you say is true, what's wrong with trying to cut down on cheating more? What exactly is the pro not doing more against cheating argument here? Your whole position seems to boil down to, at best, "I don't think its needed", that's not the same as "Its a bad idea".
