I think the end of Sea of Thieves is imminent.

LOL! What?

Sure there is some cheating going on, have seen it maybe two times (in adventure) during my career as a pirate. In the hour glass fights there might be more cheaters, or then its just lag or there are simply lots of better PvP crews doing that specifically... so hard to say. But cheating is seriously not a big problem in SoT.

BUT regarding new content. The SoT world is slowly changing, new places and semi hidden stuff is added. They expand the lore slowly, sometimes we players can even help form it.

... and one last little thing...

MONKEY ISLAND!!!

I honestly think Sea of Thieves is gonna be one of those games that quietly lives on in the background past it’s prime.

The hit reg really needs to be fixed, but I agree I don't think the game is going dark anytime soon

mod users are running rampant,

Explain how this means the game is ending.

no new mechanics have been introduced

Play the new Adventure.

server stability is worse than ever before

My servers have been pretty great if I say. No lag spikes or stretching.

simple bugs take 2-3 seasons to be patched up.

What do you think are simple bugs and what info do you have to fix those simple bugs. Dont leave stuff out.

Have you ever head, "The Calm before the storm"? It quiet now.....

Yeah, I'm going to disagree. People have been claiming that the game is dying for a long while now, and yet the numbers haven't significantly dwindled in any fashion. We are in year 5 of their 10 year plan for this game, and that's not even to say they won't go beyond that (which I think they will.)

@tesiccl competitive whiners will disagree

@valor-omega I know that, and all those concerns were with the lack of player base. My concern is the condition of each update, delays, broken features, exploits and mods that they haven’t fixed, a host of other issues that remain, at what point does Rare decide the game has been pushed to its limits as far as what they are capable of dealing with? Sure the game will likely live in another decade or more, but when does Rare decide to stop developing the game and dropping updates? As I’ve said I would love it if I am wrong but I do want to voice my concerns.

@tek-lt Here we go again...... just another "AHHH THE GAME IS DYING" post. Content only slowed down because big stuff like monkey island and guilds are on the horizon that take a lot of dec recources. After season 9 we will get back on track with bug fixes and content. I'm not worried about it, and you shouldn't be either. Just wait. It will be fine! I can see were you are coming from, but it's a big of an exaggeration. The game is still top 100 on steam, and are getting plenty of money from Xbox.

TL;DR Calm down. Everything is fine!

People have been claiming that sot is dying since the day it launched, as for no new mechanics... They introduced both captaincy and hourglass in the last 2 seasons, that is absolutely new mechanics, and no new features is debunked when you consider they already announced a whole series of tall tales next month.

As for server stability, theres no real way to measure that from the players, all that can be said is personal experience, and in my own experience the servers are more stable now than they were a few seasons ago.

Doomsaying is not new, and always there are reasons and examples given every time some one has gone doom saying in the last 5 years, but it has never happened, and since the game constantly floats in the top 50 most played on xbox it shows that its not likely to happen any time soon.

@ghostfire1981 Can I ask what server region you play in? Because it's genuinely shocking to me that anyone can still think that cheating isn't a massive issue in SoT.

I am from Australia and play on OCE servers and since the launch of season 9 I don't think I've had a single session without encountering a cheater in one form or another. If I had to guess I'd say the rate of players using some kind of mod would be close to a third of the current player base.

The tools available for cheaters have exploded in the last 12 months across a wide variety of games, creating a black market for mods and mod users. Between selling the software and cheaters renting themselves out to boost other players; there are financial incentives at play and that means its only going to get worse.

IMO The content drought is a drop in the ocean compared to the negative impact of cheaters are having on the sustainability of this game. I think it could even be too late. Regular players are now using cheats now just because they're sick of losing to other cheaters. I've seen players with thousands of hours in the game, blatantly cheating and getting banned for it. If they activated a sophisticated anti-cheat tomorrow, they'd lose nearly half their active players at this point.

@superking12 1/3 of the player base is WAY too big a number. There is no way it is that many. Yes, it is an issue. It's just not as bad as you say.

1. Where did you get that info from?

2. Rare agnowledges cheating and yes it is a problem, but I belive that anti-cheat is on the horizon. They just can't tell the players that otherwise it would give cheaters a heads-up.

@riptide3683 I acknowledge that the problem has a region/ server population bias and is probably more significant in my region than others. However, that doesn't mean it should be look at as less urgent. If OCE is has the most cheaters then it should be viewed as the canary in the coal mine. I've watched the problem grow exponentially over the last 2 seasons and the rapid evolution in sophistication and commercialization of cheat software is indicative of a growing market and demand. It's not going to just go away and it's not going to stay confined to just one region.

1. Where did you get that info from?

From my personal experience. Dozens of recordings, reports, and bans. Independent research and public discourse on the subject

2. Rare agnowledges cheating and yes it is a problem, but I belive that anti-cheat is on the horizon. They just can't tell the players that otherwise it would give cheaters a heads-up.

I hope you're right about anti-cheat being close at hand and the reason for the devs lack of transparency on the subject. I'm not sure what a heads up would really give a cheater, either the anti-cheat works or it doesn't. The cynic in me says they have an understanding of how prevalent the use of this software is among 'normal' players and can ascribe a certain emporium dollar value loss to a sudden ban wave which could make flicking the switch less appealing.

@superking12 said in I think the end of Sea of Thieves is imminent.:

@ghostfire1981 Can I ask what server region you play in? Because it's genuinely shocking to me that anyone can still think that cheating isn't a massive issue in SoT.

Well, i guess its on some (central/nordic) European server. I live in Finland, and i see a lot of players from Germany, France, Spain, GB and from our nordic neighbours (mostly from Sweden). We play after work/family stuff a couple of hours most evenings 22:00-00:30 (GMT+3). Not many cheaters there. We have had some suspicion of cheating in some of the hourglass fights, but it might as well be really good players.

I am from Australia and play on OCE servers and since the launch of season 9 I don't think I've had a single session without encountering a cheater in one form or another. If I had to guess I'd say the rate of players using some kind of mod would be close to a third of the current player base.

I have played since day one of the game. I even played during the dark ages of the game. (Older pirates know what i mean, time between the first meg, and the mercenary missions and so on). But i digress, in all those years i have not seen that many cheaters. Sure there have been lots of really good players and yes some lag issues and similar. But clear cheating, that is really really rare.

The tools available for cheaters have exploded in the last 12 months across a wide variety of games, creating a black market for mods and mod users. Between selling the software and cheaters renting themselves out to boost other players; there are financial incentives at play and that means its only going to get worse.

IMO The content drought is a drop in the ocean compared to the negative impact of cheaters are having on the sustainability of this game. I think it could even be too late. Regular players are now using cheats now just because they're sick of losing to other cheaters. I've seen players with thousands of hours in the game, blatantly cheating and getting banned for it. If they activated a sophisticated anti-cheat tomorrow, they'd lose nearly half their active players at this point.

Trust me, there are lots of normal, noncheaters playing the game. Those who cheat usually stop playing when they have everything they want, and then they get bored and leave. Then there are just us old pirates left. Or at least that is what i hope. :)

The most effective advertisers for sot cheats are sot community members that are regularly pushing counter productive narratives and information as people that are opposed to cheats.

This is some seriously backwards logic. I'm telling you that every single day I encounter a player cheating and I have the report history to prove it. You really think people aren't already aware that they can freely cheat in this game? The most effective advertisement for cheaters is being able to openly peddle their wears, in-game, constantly, completely unopposed for months if not years. While the developers leave any action being taken completely up to speculation.

"Someone started a fire in the building! Quick get some water!"

"Shhh... All this water talk will have more people starting more fires."

@ghostfire1981 said in I think the end of Sea of Thieves is imminent.:

Trust me, there are lots of normal, noncheaters playing the game. Those who cheat usually stop playing when they have everything they want, and then they get bored and leave. Then there are just us old pirates left. Or at least that is what i hope. :)

Look, I get it. You don't see it, so you don't believe it's true or just don't care. Either way it's not your problem. Your optimism that cheaters will just get bored and leave does not reflect the reality.

Think about it, why cheat in a non-competitive game where the only rewards are cosmetic? There are two answers to that question; 1. They are playing a different game i.e. griefing people, general sadism. 2. They want the in-game prestige of being perceived as being better at the game than others (and therefore cheat covertly). In other words, they are just as invested in the game as long haul players maybe even more than most. Neither will get bored as long as they're getting what they want; other people being miserable, or a false sense of superiority.

"It's easy to do, people are getting away with it, it's free, everyone is doing it"

It's the same effect as those looking to spread cheats are counting on, leading people in a vulnerable spot to make poor choices. Chaos leads to more chaos, increasing harmful conduct for perceived awareness just leads to more harm and more consequences for people that should have never been manipulated to begin with.

People shouldn't give in to it, they are gonna get their mains popped eventually if they mess around and will get tossed aside when they aren't useful to the narratives with people around the community regarding the topic.

So let me get this straight, because I'm speaking out about my experience in the game being severely negatively effected by cheaters, I'm being manipulated and making matters worse? But ignoring the issue and allowing cheaters to literally demonstrate their product first hand completely undisturbed without so much as a denouncement or reassurance that a solution is close at hand by the developers; is totally fine and not at all contributing to the problem.

I swear, some of the people in these forums have their heads buried so deep in the sand that they'd be half way to the southern hemisphere by now. Maybe if they keep going they'll end up on OCE servers and see first hand how bad the problem actually is...

@wolfmanbush said in I think the end of Sea of Thieves is imminent.:

@superking12 said in I think the end of Sea of Thieves is imminent.:

"It's easy to do, people are getting away with it, it's free, everyone is doing it"

It's the same effect as those looking to spread cheats are counting on, leading people in a vulnerable spot to make poor choices. Chaos leads to more chaos, increasing harmful conduct for perceived awareness just leads to more harm and more consequences for people that should have never been manipulated to begin with.

People shouldn't give in to it, they are gonna get their mains popped eventually if they mess around and will get tossed aside when they aren't useful to the narratives with people around the community regarding the topic.

So let me get this straight, because I'm speaking out about my experience in the game being severely negatively effected by cheaters, I'm being manipulated and making matters worse? But ignoring the issue and allowing cheaters to literally demonstrate their product first hand completely undisturbed without so much as a denouncement or reassurance that a solution is close at hand by the developers; is totally fine and not at all contributing to the problem.

I swear, some of the people in these forums have their heads buried so deep in the sand that they'd be half way to the southern hemisphere by now. Maybe if they keep going they'll end up on OCE servers and see first hand how bad the problem actually is...

I acknowledged the issue in low population areas in my first post.

There has been a growing narrative that making it worse is the way to make it better which isn't what will happen. It just leads to people making a poor choice in a vulnerable moment to have significant and permanent consequences.

Nothing I've said has supported that narrative. The exact opposite in fact.

People from partners to other content creators to daily posters around the socials have taken to just repeating "anti-cheat" over and over but every popular game with a public anticheat has people talking about the cheats in the game online. Games with public anti-cheat struggle with cheating as well.

That's not my agenda and I never made any claims of a perfect solution. I just want people to understand the severity of the problem. It's absolutely rampant but because it's more diluted on the more populated servers the sentiment is complacency.

People have also started leaning into "I don't report anymore because it doesn't matter" which is a counter productive narrative to put out there, if people wanna eventually contribute to popping some main accounts that information is useful to get to Rare even if it doesn't seem worth it for immediate result.

I've said many times that I continue to report but it's not that simple. The sophistication of these mods allows for considerable deniability and makes it very hard to make an airtight case for reporting and just as hard for Rare to verify I'm sure. The weight of circumstantial evidence such as a suspicious player having cosmetics that are virtually impossible for an account with so few hours or having multiple other players in their friends list who have been previously reported/ banned for cheating themselves, can't possibly meet the burden of proof for Rare but is absolutely enough to identify them. Reporting being the only method of enforcement is just closing the gate after the horse has bolted. I'm not saying it's pointless, I believe it's worth the effort to inconvenience cheaters wherever possible but the fact is it's not a sustainable practice and really players shouldn't be the ones burdened with having to clean up this mess anyway.

As a sot main player with 2000+ hours, I must say that for the first time I'm feeling a lot of sense of burnout. Season 9 isn't content. Season 10 according to the roadmap would be guilds intended as "social option", but we know that they would never add guilds as we generally see in classic mmorpg games. Monkey island is good, but also delayed and spread in three months (also 3 tall tales instead of 5). I really like the lore and so I like adventures, but even there everything seem stretched, chaotic and with lots of non senses. Twitch drops are now a reskin factory, in game cosmetics that are not reskins are almost only tied to season pass, extreme grindy commendations or huge gold playouts, but emporium is always full swing. Emissary ledger rewards are getting more and more delayed, console players are stopping from playing with PC friends because of cheaters and so on. Speaking of content creators, in these days I saw that a lot of partners and big streamers are struggling to find content for their videos, and a lot of them are already switching to other games because their followers are getting bored of seeing always the same stuff.

@blazebeard2313 That's alright to feel a bit burnt out after all this playtime. I also take breaks every now and then.

@grog-minto yeah, I for example switch to grounded every now and then. What makes me feel worried is the fact that the devs keep going with a strange policy: add new cool stuff behind huge grinds only to nerf it after a while just to say "with this new update you can do this thing easier", leaving already existent players with frustration because they don't add new stuff and they devaluate achievements that took ages to complete to nothingness. There are less than 5 years left for the game, and at this rate we won't be able to have brand new things to play together with adventures / tall tales for lore progression. We asked for communication and clarifications about problems, delays and so on, they responded with useless podcasts where all they do is to be the most vague possible and evading inportant questions.

@wolfmanbush said in I think the end of Sea of Thieves is imminent.:

Neighbors picking up the phone when they see the horse get out, or when it goes running across their property or down the road is exactly how the horse gets back home. People lookin' out is always a part of keeping things going. Prevention always only goes so far, gotta have community support and participation to deal with the inevitable.

Even if people get whatever anticheat deal they are wanting there will still be people up to something and it will still take people gathering some evidence to address it in those cases/encounters.

You're being intentionally obtuse and arguing with yourself at this point mate. I never said reporting shouldn't be a part of the strategy or that anticheat is some magic fix-all. I'm getting tired of repeating myself on this but I am in favour of a report system and use it frequently myself. It's simply not enough and it is only effective after the damage has been done and after a great deal of effort. Prevention, in this case doesn't exist, which is entirely my point so 'only going so far' is a hell of a lot further than it current does.

@superking12 I had played over 3k hours and done enough HG to get both of my curses, before I ever met a cheater. I normally play about 50/50 on EU and NA servers. I didn’t meet my first cheater until this year when I made a friend in OCE and started doing HG in Aussie servers. Then it was like every other match was a cheater and he told me how bad the cheating problem was in Australia. Some of the cheaters even openly advertised their cheats after they beat you so you can be like them. I was shocked and disgusted. I learned about all the various types of cheats that exist and how they impact gameplay. It’s not a set of knowledge I ever wanted to accumulate and I stopped playing on those servers after a few short weeks.

So I’d say it truly impacts certain areas significantly more than others. Until then I’d never met anyone I even thought was cheating. I’m very familiar with lag/stutter and hitreg so most unusual encounters usually boiled down to performance issues. I’d never encountered anyone who teleported/used speed hacks, or hit shots that didn’t make sense. And if something seemed off on my screen, it was fine on my partners’(or vice versa) so it just aligned with the known syncing issues.

I met my first cheater on my native servers last week in adventure while helping 3 new players on a galleon. I felt bad for them and explained to them it isn’t normal, especially in our area. That cheaters do exist everywhere in every game, but it isn’t “the norm” here. We play other competitive games together and are familiar with the cheats in them. So it wasn’t a foreign concept, just unexpected.

One thing I’ve noticed is that people in the competitive gaming world know before they start that cheaters exist, you will run into them here and there, and you just report them and hope for the best. But in SoT people seem to think cheating is this insanely foreign concept and they get extremely butthurt about it. Maybe it’s because people think cheating is only an issue in competitive settings and they don’t realize SoT does include a competitive setting itself.