I wanted to know if the great gods of the sea (RARE) are working on improving the experience of enthusiastic sailors regarding the abuse of third-party programs that favor certain buccaneers with short beards and dubious morality. In order not to parrot, I want to mention that in my mercantile adventures I have crossed certain ships manned by pirates with marksmanship inherited from Triton himself. Mainly in the dense seas of LATAM.
This worries my crew, who at times want to raise the belas and lower the anchors in safe harbor, so as not to sail again.
From your cabin, Captain Twisted Skull greeted you.
Sea of Cheats (?)
This was a fun read, but in all seriousness cheats are surprisingly uncommon for this game. Many people play this game just for the pvp and practice their aim every day mainly in the Arena. I have only encountered 2 confirmed cheaters in my 3 years of playing this game very often so I consider it very rare, but if you believe they truly are cheating then try to get a clip of it and submit a support ticket here: https://support.seaofthieves.com/hc/en-gb/requests/new
@personalc0ffee said in Sea of Cheats (?):
Cheaters are more common than you think they are. It is just not near as effective in this game.
If you suspect someone of cheating, capture a few min of footage and then file a report.
Kinda feel SoT should add an ingame reporting tool. Its quite cumbersome to try and report someone. Also its hard to get evidence because you are not going to report someone for doing 1 amazing shot. But after the 5th sniper shot from a tower with you swimming 10 feet under the water...By the time you have a good enough suspicion its very common for the encounter to be over, with you sunk and half way across the map.
@l-snapper-l said in Sea of Cheats (?):
This was a fun read, but in all seriousness cheats are surprisingly uncommon for this game.
I have no idea how/why people say cheating is very uncommon in SoT. How do they even know? I am not talking about CLEAR cheats such as flying or immortality or that kind of stuff. I am talking about the harder ones to detect from a player's perspective such as aimbot and ESP.
Every game where shooting is a thing has issues with both of those. And if a game that IS all about the shooting has issues with cheaters and finds it difficult to automate fixes to it....I find it almost imposible to believe a game such as SoT where shooting is not the main/unique element would have better fixes/systems against it.
From my experience most people from EU use ESP. Best way to test if they are using ESP or not is swimming around their ship very deep underwater (I mean like POTC TT2 deep), if they can still see and shoot you from the ship it’s definitely ESP. For some reasons they can’t see if you are carrying an item ((?) Need confirmation from someone who is using ESP lol) because a simple keg always finishes them.
People who use pirated copy of the game gets banned in 2 to 5 days so I don’t think they even own the game but constantly making a new Microsoft account must be tiresome.
As others said, they are more common than you think but in this game using ESP and Aimbot isn’t enough to take down an experienced crew. We sunk many cheaters before and only once we got super camped by 4 Chinese cheaters after we sunk their gally back when you could shoot through the ships hull. That’s the only instance that I remember where we got really frustrated with cheaters.
@kissofkilll
Of course you can take out a bad cheater if you are good. But that doesnt means we shouldnt find solutions for cheating, and I find it staggering SoT makes it so hard to report.I am fairly certain there has to be ESP and aimbot, and I have experienced contact with some players that were VERY likely using one or both of those.
But...I am kinda curious if there is some sort of cannon aimbot. That one does sound a lot harder to make, as the trajectory of the ball depends on your speed, torque, heading, and all of those of the enemy ship, and not sure your game client would have access to all of those parameters. Anyone knows if there is ship aimbot?
TL:DR more reports = less likely they will look into it uless there are plenty of them but even then non cheaters would be bombarded with reports as well.
Forums didn't allow me to post longer answer.
@limend
You honestly think less reports = less cheaters? Like X) How does that make any sense?No, if they receive 92039029302 reports, it doesnt means they have to look at 92039029302 reports. They can SIMPLY keep a track of reported players, and if the same player is consistently reported of the same problem by different people, then that is probably a player you might wanna have a look at.
Every other recent game with aimbot issues has a ingame report system. Having to come to a website to use a broken form is just medieval and gives the idea they do not care about dealing with cheaters.
I never said less reports = less cheats, but more reports = more work and same ammount of cheaters. If you don't get evidance of player x then how can rare decide if he's one or not? They can't look at replays or anything so it's same as me claiming you to be a pitch pocketer. It's my word against yours so you can't make a conclusion.
But let's say you clip it, good, then you can report them here on forums and it's done.Also you brought up the "what if they keep a count of reports and only look into iy when they go over x" well that's the problem. Let's say I am a cheater who plays 10h a week and only cheats during hard fights. It can take months if not years for me to hit the "limit" where as good players who play 20h a week would break that point before me. Rare can't watch replays of our sessions so we should stuck with thr current system.
@limend
You...just have absolutely no idea how a server or a game works do you? sighMore reports only equal the same amount of cheaters if you ignore the reports or dont handle/process them intelligently.
Since you clearly have absolutely no idea what you are talking about I will let you know what processes some other games take:
- If someone is suspected a cheater they can apply programs or commands that perform extra monitoring on their inputs and computer that normal players do not get for multiple reasons, to gather evidence to either absolve or prove someone cheats.
- People in charge of finding cheaters can have an interface that monitors suspected cheaters, and allow the mod to start following a suspected cheater just as he approaches other players, to observe him without the player's knowledge.
- Similar to the above some admins can join the same game and pretend to be a player, using extra debugging tools to observe the suspected cheater's behaviour. IE: A mod could enable godmode, disable mermaid spawning, and swim really deep under water out of sight of a suspected cheater to see if the suspected cheater sees/shots him.
And the rest of your argument "SOME cheaters might cheat ONLY some times, so it will be difficult to catch them, so we shouldnt even try, it doesnt matters if the approach would probably help us catch the cheaters that DO cheat all the time"...sheesh...you are a smart boy are you not?
And rare doesnt needs to have 20 people doing this job. A single one now and then looking at the worst/higher suspects would be a good start.
Let me repply when I get back home in 8 or so hours but let me ask this, if you have one worker babysitting 20-30k players (out of which let's say 1000 are noted as "high priority" around +800 servers when merging from one to one can take 20sec -1 minute. Especially when they may just be sailing in straight line?
And what happens when someone godlike keeps getting reported each session? Will they check him every now and then or will they just ignore him.
Your solution to hacking/cheaters is...doing nothing because its hard?
Other games do these things, so your argument trying to prove it impossible is nonsensical because a lot of games/companies do it. There are ways to do it efficiently, Rare is just being lazy.
@kakaroto9766 said in Sea of Cheats (?):
Your solution to hacking/cheaters is...doing nothing because its hard?
I sad I would repply later when I get back home so did I word it badly or are you trying to start an argument?
Not to mentione you didn't even answer the questions I asked from you.
@limend said in Sea of Cheats (?):
@kakaroto9766 said in Sea of Cheats (?):
Your solution to hacking/cheaters is...doing nothing because its hard?
I sad I would repply later when I get back home so did I word it badly or are you trying to start an argument?
Not to mentione you didn't even answer the questions I asked from you.
I replied it by saying that a lot of companies already do this, in games where there are also really skilled players that could be confused with hackers. There is a way of doing it, almos every other game does it, but Rare doesnt.
You want examples of every little bit of how a system could work? You want us to design it in here? Okay lets go thorough your specific question/example, even tho we already know its manageable in probably multiple ways.
- If a player is highly skilled and reported multiple times, a mod can test if he is likely cheating, then mark him off so he is not reviewed again in 1-6 months. Or their system can have a que which takes in to consideration multiple factors, including whether if this user has been reviewed in the past/recently.
Now you can bring another pointless complication you come up with around a potential reporting system and I can explain ways to solve it. But thats once again a waste of time because its been proved multiple times in multiple game genres that it IS doable, as lots of companies do it every day.
The real question here is: If other games are capable of doing it, and they do it. Why shouldnt Rare?
@kakaroto9766 the method of manually reviewing is not only time consuming from a manpower perspective, it is also littered with false bans. Humans make mistakes. You also need to understand people with a decent headset, hardware, and settings are going to have a slight edge vs people on a 1080p 60hz monitor with monitor speakers, or a TV. These things are hard to review for without reviewing on the same setup.
There are many games which go by their own “methods” of banning. I have been banned in a few of them for having “unusually high stats”. War Thunder in particular used to have their own ways of banning before they contracted EAC. I was banned 3 times while being ranked in the top 1k of players in ground battles. Once EAC got onboard I started playing again as I trusted their software would not give a false ban based on actual detection for banning. Top 700-900 consistently and no ban.
If people want anti-cheat that is effective, timely, and accurate then that is a 3rd party company that specializes in it and has the right software to detect memory reads, 3rd party programs operating in ring 0-1, program hooks, 3rd party dll injections, etc.
Personally if Rare ever thinks cheating is getting out of hand in the game, they should contract EAC, BE, or one of the other known companies with a good reputation without being too intrusive on the client system. (Actually BE has been caught up in some controversy lately about saving snapshots of client hard disks on their servers so maybe count them out)
@kakaroto9766 said in Sea of Cheats (?):
I replied it by saying that a lot of companies already do this, in games where there are also really skilled players that could be confused with hackers. There is a way of doing it, almos every other game does it, but Rare doesnt.
There are but at least from my experience people have being banned there for being good or not at all but my library of games that do this is slim.
You want examples of every little bit of how a system could work? You want us to design it in here? Okay lets go thorough your specific question/example, even tho we already know its manageable in probably multiple ways.
Not full on business plan but at least tell how it would work and the most important problems that could come up with it and not just shady scaffolding for one and then present is as The solution.
- If a player is highly skilled and reported multiple times, a mod can test if he is likely cheating, then mark him off so he is not reviewed again in 1-6 months. Or their system can have a que which takes in to consideration multiple factors, including whether if this user has been reviewed in the past/recently.
I mean the main problem I got with more complex problem or one where it's to easy is that it would create a lot more work for rare (by creating the system and hiring people) for a problem which (in my opinion) doesn't need any polishing.
Right now you can report anyone if you got evidence which you can get on any platform easily so if you doubt that someone is cheating you can report them with the clip instead of forcing rare to get the evidences instead.
My main problem with this is that your ideas are quite complex and require A LOT of work (and a lot of money) for reason that doesn't seem to be a problem. I and a lot of others have been playing during the years when you never encountered one and we have learned to take all hacker calls with a grain of salt. It may have become a greater problem lately but I haven't played for few months.
The real question here is: If other games are capable of doing it, and they do it. Why shouldnt Rare?
It's expensive and at lest in My experience SoT isn't suffering from hackers. (but like I said my experiences are from +2 months back)
Not to mention SoT doesn't work like most other games. In most FPS games matches are short and full of action with short load times where as sot can have hours of sailing without any action and long load times between servers which also may experience spikes when player joins.
Your solution to hacking/cheaters is...doing nothing because its hard?
I love how you put words in my mouth.
Isn't that your problem with current report system? Unable to use forums as it's to hard so you don't report them?Other games do these things, so your argument trying to prove it impossible is nonsensical because a lot of games/companies do it. There are ways to do it efficiently, Rare is just being lazy.
There are ways but they aren't always worth the time and money + having it working in game x doesn't mean it will work in sot as well.
Right now you can report anyone if you got evidence which you can get on any platform easily so if you doubt that someone is cheating you can report them with the clip instead of forcing rare to get the evidences instead.
So rare should not be responsible to invest time in fixing the game or banning cheaters, but players should spend their time gathering evidence? This is like asking citizens to gather evidence rather than asking the police to do it.
I already explained why this is unlikely to happen above, and likely allows cheaters to keep cheatingMy main problem with this is that your ideas are quite complex and require **A LOT of work (and a lot of money) for reason that doesn't seem to be a problem
You think its not a problem. Doesnt necessarily mean that is the case, and again, its not that complex, and its something most other online games do. So rare should have the expertise and money to implement it.
It's expensive and at lest in My experience SoT isn't suffering from hackers. (but like I said my experiences are from +2 months back)
How do you know? Its also common sense. In 1 game you have pvp, aiming, and possibility of using aimbot and ESP, and reporting is done outside the game, cumbersome, and requiring players to do the work for rare.
In other pvp game with the same features you have an easy report tool in game, with dedicated systems and staff with tools to investigate and monitor cheaters.
...Which one do you think makes sense will have more cheaters?
The fact that they dont catch a lot does not mean there's not a lot. It just means they dont care if there's a lot.Not to mention SoT doesn't work like most other games. In most FPS games matches are short and full of action with short load times where as sot can have hours of sailing without any action and long load times between servers which also may experience spikes when player joins.
...and....how is that related to reporting and catching cheaters?.....
EAC would probably be a good approach, but even games with EAC and other similar systems still have some manual reviewing and a report system because automated systems cannot usually catch every hack.
I honestly question the "Lots of pros are banned". Might it happen in rare situations? Yeah it might. But its such an small or non-existent problem that no games have any controversies about that issue, even when they use these kind of systems.
@kakaroto9766 said in Sea of Cheats (?):
@limend
You honestly think less reports = less cheaters? Like X) How does that make any sense?Did I say so?
No, if they receive 92039029302 reports, it doesnt means they have to look at 92039029302 reports.
Did I say so? Sorry if you misunderstood me.
They can SIMPLY keep a track of reported players, and if the same player is consistently reported of the same problem by different people, then that is probably a player you might wanna have a look at. rs.
And that is the problem! If I encounter hacker/toxic and no one else reports him it's almost worthless. But ones who get reported BY A LOT get "looked" into (Which BTW rare CAN'T do) and spend even more time when the 100h galleon open crew gets beaten by solo sloop clicks one button as they aren't skilled enough or willing to go and report from forums.
Also rare has NO WAY to replay games as hard as it may be to believe and it's more than time consuming to how between players who sail 9/10 of the time on seas hoping to have one of them fighting and finding out if they are hacking (don't forget server swapping takes ages). Also what if that player isn't hacking/toxic that time? He will be ignored and not being looked for a long time.
@kakaroto9766 ha detto in Sea of Cheats (?):
But...I am kinda curious if there is some sort of cannon aimbot. That one does sound a lot harder to make, as the trajectory of the ball depends on your speed, torque, heading, and all of those of the enemy ship, and not sure your game client would have access to all of those parameters. Anyone knows if there is ship aimbot?
Unfortunately yes. I don't know if giving precise indications could break the ToS of the forum so let's say that you just need to do a quick google search to understand what cheaters can do, and yes, cannon aimbot is one of them.
As others said, it is extremely difficult to prove that you are dealing with a cheater, lucky shots? experience? who knows for sure? the only thing you and your crew can do is improve your skills and your lucky shots will happen more often.
And before somebody think it, no I'm not one of "them", the last cheats I used in a game were iddqd and idkfa :)If games with in game report systems could deal with cheaters better than games that don't, COD Warzone wouldn't be littered with them.
While I think that in game report systems can be helpful in catching a few extra cheaters it likely also makes the number of false reports, made because someone got killed or their loot stolen, skyrocket.
@kakaroto9766 said in Sea of Cheats (?):
EAC would probably be a good approach, but even games with EAC and other similar systems still have some manual reviewing and a report system because automated systems cannot usually catch every hack.
I honestly question the "Lots of pros are banned". Might it happen in rare situations? Yeah it might. But its such an small or non-existent problem that no games have any controversies about that issue, even when they use these kind of systems.
The manual reviewing that game companies have in place after contracting anti-cheat companies is usually for things like verbal/communication abuse which would definitely be the case in this game. They are also for reporting people with offending name infractions, bugs, glitches, exploit abuse, etc.
Trust me, manual reporting definitely has its reasons and uses. Reporting people for using code or software that is hooking into the game really isn't a very good one. This can be extremely difficult to prove/disprove by watching someone from another player's viewpoint (as is the case with submitting recordings) and could only even come close by watching the suspected player over hours of gameplay and different situations both from their POV and 3rd person/admin view of events.
This game in particular, the latency and hit reg can be so bad at times, it looks like your enemy was facing away when he hit you (aimbot accusations), never seen him eat (must of been invincible cheats), and the list goes on.
The only thing I can think of is for detecting ESP users. Video would be good for that if you are tucked in a very inconspicuous place with a good view of approach. If they run straight for you, that is as blatant as it gets (have actually seen this on occasion but the times I have is a drop in the bucket over 3 years and 1k hours)
@kommodoreyenser said in Sea of Cheats (?):
The only thing I can think of is for detecting ESP users. Video would be good for that if you are tucked in a very inconspicuous place with a good view of approach. If they run straight for you, that is as blatant as it gets (have actually seen this on occasion but the times I have is a drop in the bucket over 3 years and 1k hours)
Not gonna lie, I'd never heard of ESP before today since I know next to nothing about cheats/hacks. It's...dumb. Defeats the entire point of the game.
@cptphteven said in Sea of Cheats (?):
@kommodoreyenser said in Sea of Cheats (?):
The only thing I can think of is for detecting ESP users. Video would be good for that if you are tucked in a very inconspicuous place with a good view of approach. If they run straight for you, that is as blatant as it gets (have actually seen this on occasion but the times I have is a drop in the bucket over 3 years and 1k hours)
Not gonna lie, I'd never heard of ESP before today since I know next to nothing about cheats/hacks. It's...dumb. Defeats the entire point of the game.
Absolutely. It is usually used in FPS or other combat games where players need to pay attention to their surroundings and have situational awareness. Another learned skill that many shortcut because they get mad they run out in the open and die all the time rather than learning and growing.
@kommodoreyenser said in Sea of Cheats (?):
@cptphteven said in Sea of Cheats (?):
@kommodoreyenser said in Sea of Cheats (?):
The only thing I can think of is for detecting ESP users. Video would be good for that if you are tucked in a very inconspicuous place with a good view of approach. If they run straight for you, that is as blatant as it gets (have actually seen this on occasion but the times I have is a drop in the bucket over 3 years and 1k hours)
Not gonna lie, I'd never heard of ESP before today since I know next to nothing about cheats/hacks. It's...dumb. Defeats the entire point of the game.
Absolutely. It is usually used in FPS or other combat games where players need to pay attention to their surroundings and have situational awareness. Another learned skill that many shortcut because they get mad they run out in the open and die all the time rather than learning and growing.
It's even worse here - the whole point of the game is looking for loot. A hud that tells you where it is would make the game REAL boring REAL fast.
@cptphteven said in Sea of Cheats (?):
@kommodoreyenser said in Sea of Cheats (?):
@cptphteven said in Sea of Cheats (?):
@kommodoreyenser said in Sea of Cheats (?):
The only thing I can think of is for detecting ESP users. Video would be good for that if you are tucked in a very inconspicuous place with a good view of approach. If they run straight for you, that is as blatant as it gets (have actually seen this on occasion but the times I have is a drop in the bucket over 3 years and 1k hours)
Not gonna lie, I'd never heard of ESP before today since I know next to nothing about cheats/hacks. It's...dumb. Defeats the entire point of the game.
Absolutely. It is usually used in FPS or other combat games where players need to pay attention to their surroundings and have situational awareness. Another learned skill that many shortcut because they get mad they run out in the open and die all the time rather than learning and growing.
It's even worse here - the whole point of the game is looking for loot. A hud that tells you where it is would make the game REAL boring REAL fast.
They probably (guessing here) don't use it that much to find things on the beach but more for detecting other crews.
As an adventure pve/pvper that generally only fights people that attack first and is a consistent target of the server cheating isn't really anything I focus on
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most of the time I have no idea who is cheating no matter what my gut tells me. Lack of evidence makes it pointless to focus on
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I've fought so many awesomely skilled crews over the years I know what some people are capable of and it far exceeds what cheaters can do with their cheats. Skilled crews are putting on a performance, an art piece of war. Their coordination and combat chemistry are impeccable. I'm not even talking the popular streamer crews I'm talking people much more skilled than that in combat.
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The servers are full of casuals and new players and non-hostile adventurers. It's one or two hostile ships generally and it's not hard to keep a 70-90% win rate depending on the luck of the month and that's on top of generally being left alone for hours at a time.
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Helmspeople win/lose fights. Master the art of steering and even cheaters are largely not going to be able to compete
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Efficiency takes the wind out of the sails of both cheaters and skilled pvpers. Do it fast do it skillfully and get it done. Makes it hard for them to keep up.
I have no idea how often people cheat or who is using cheats against me I just know my results and in the scenario of pve/pvp adventure I've just never seen it as anything that has made any significant difference.
I've probably been sword sliced into a pirate salad by inexperienced players on a 225+ ping server 200x more than I've ever lost to someone cheating if I had to take a guess
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@limend
You honestly think less reports = less cheaters? Like X) How does that make any sense?Did I say so?
Yes, you did:
more reports = less likely they will look into it
If they are less likely to look in to a report, they will be less likely to ban cheaters. Hard to understand?
No, if they receive 92039029302 reports, it doesnt means they have to look at 92039029302 reports.
Did I say so? Sorry if you misunderstood me.
You implied it with the above quote, saying that many reports would make it impossible to sort thorough them.
get "looked" into (Which BTW rare CAN'T do)
Why cant rare do this when other similar sized and even smaller companies do it effectively? I have asked this multiple times yet you dodge it.
Also rare has NO WAY to replay games as hard as it may be to believe
Are you incapable of reading or of understanding what you read? You keep repeating "replay games" like a parrot, when no one has mentioned that as an option. I listed other multiple ways in which a game like SoT can be tested for cheating, things that as I already mentioned other games do effectively.
of the time on seas hoping to have one of them fighting and finding out if they are hacking
Ill repeat myself in something I said above because clearly you are the kind of person that needs to hear the same thing 3-5 times to maybe half get it:
You dont need to "Hope". Its really easy to design a que system that gives you a list of online players who are suspected of cheating/hacking, as well as a scoring system of how suspicious each player is. You dont need to wait for that player to be in combat, you can login as an admin, and start a fight yourself to test the other player. If you deem them innocent you let them sink you with some random 4-6 pieces of loot in your boat for their trouble and they never found out they were checked by an admin.
And for like the 4th time.
Is your solution to just ignore cheaters? I honestly think people who defend that position as passionately as you are likely cheaters
I already said, all your whining about "how to do it" or if "it should be done" is nonsensical given it has been proved to work by dozens of online games that do this every day.
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