Huge Anti Cheat Ideas

love these ideas. no idea how feasible they are, but love them. @rare, do that ^

Doesn't really make sense to me

It's like this arrogant low level shame game thing where people act like catching people that foolishly download some free stuff is truly deterring or putting pressure on the top dogs in cheating circles. They don't care lol.

The most that will come from it is mocking some streamer into oblivion if they get caught but it does nothing about cheating. If anything it gives some another toy to mess with.

People that know what they are doing see it as something exciting to counter, not some scary thing.

It's a strategy that truly doesn't understand the opponent imo.

If they are proven guilty, ban 'em

In this game specifically it would be annoying as heck and break all sorts of immersion to be around that stuff.

@googoodan said in Huge Anti Cheat Ideas:

Right, it's totally better for Rare to continue doing that whole batch of nothing they've been doing about cheating.

That's literally never been the case.

There is this thing in SoT where people act like this game or the devs here are some sort of exception when dealing with cheating, like it's worse here or like they don't do good work here even though the same stuff that happens here happens in every comparable game (and often times is worse in other places).

People get frustrated and they exaggerate or they super focus on the negative, I get that, people are people, it's understandable that people get frustrated.

What I have never understood is the knowingly inaccurate opinions that people push to dismiss all the effort involved. I know that people here and people with a louder voice in the community play other games, I know that they are aware that other games have the same issues (including all the games with extra "anti-cheat")

It's a struggle in the space, one that everyone is going through, so to act like Rare or the people involved in working on things are doing a worse job when the environment has never reflected that is just making it more unpleasant for the community as a whole imo.

Everyone knows darn well that every comparable game and community is going through the same thing. I know that and I don't even play other games.

Frustration is understandable, flat out spreading untrue and unfair criticism is not, imo.

Same goes for calling everyone sus all the time just because some people cheat, frustration does not justify all the inaccurate and baseless stuff spread around this community.

@googoodan said in Huge Anti Cheat Ideas:

Thats a whole lot of gamersplaining for no reason. Rare has zero excuse for the state of cheating in this game. Stop defending it. The "well akshually they've done more than nothing since they banned people who got cosmetics they weren't supposed to get" vibe just doesn't cut it.

They can't even get the game to properly function; it's been weeks since the Season 11 update and we're still greeted that season 11 achievements still aren't working. Don't defend this. Demand Rare do better.

I don't demand that people do things. I'll criticize specifics if necessary but I ain't demanding and I've long found this "do better, be better" stuff that people use on one another to be extremely offputting and obnoxiously condescending.

Being tougher on people than is necessary is nothing more than self serving mistreatment. It doesn't help. Understanding the threat, the effort, and being reasonable and understanding with people (while still expressing constructive criticism) is the way to eventual improvement.

This is something that will always be around in a variety of ways, it's always a battle and a struggle in the space. You are free to do things how you do them but I'd rather quit a game that I care about than to give people an extra tough time over something that is largely out of their control.

Nobody wants to have their effort dismissed, mocked, insulted in the creative space. Nobody works on a project and looks forward to hearing that it's broken over and over again, that they do nothing, that they aren't good enough. Doesn't make a bit of sense to tear down and be unreasonable with the people that are working on the repairs and the security. Not in gaming and not anywhere, that's not leadership, it's not productive, it's just getting revenge on people for not reaching someone's expectations, revenge for frustrations over a video game, doesn't improve anything about cheating.

The MVPirates are the ones that took the time to make reasonable reports with evidence even though people are always spreading around how pointless it is, those are the people that are helping with improvement and gaining more resources to combat the threat.

@usaxarmystrong

I don't understand why it's so hard to catch cheaters. (let me just state for the record in nearly 400 hours i don't think I've witnessed cheating first hand)

Maybe someone can help me out. The server is responsible for tracking all items in the game right? Players, ships , loots, yes?

I'd imagine there are logs or could be logs , yes? Why is it hard to find objects behaving in a way that is beyond the parameters set by the game?

Like if one of these objects the server is tracking moves at a rate that is not possible. Or if and object or player is in a xyz coordinate that is "unnatural". Or say a boat fixes or empties itself way faster than possible , etc. You get the idea.

@theblackbellamy said in Huge Anti Cheat Ideas:

@wolfmanbush said:

If they are proven guilty, ban 'em

I'm with you there. We don't need "invisibility" and "ricochet bullets." Just catch them at launch, crash their client, issue a redbeard, "contact support for help" error message, done.

Reporting is helpful, sure. But what's better than waiting for a guilty verdict is an anti-cheat that detects 3rd party things proactively. Yeah it's always going to be an ongoing battle against cheat devs, but then Rare should at least arm themselves for that battle.

If they're going to steal anything from CoD, maybe a "Kill Cam" on the ferry. "The Ferryman's Mirror." Might help with the reporting? Only half-kidding here.

I definitely get the frustrations with cheating. I'm a solo that defends a lot so the last thing I need on top of being the smaller ship and/or smaller crew is people doing stuff they shouldn't be doing.

It's also frustrating (for example) when main accounts get banned from them accidentally getting themselves busted rather than being banned for being detected. Very understandable that people want to see people caught through security detection rather than "busted" because they streamed something or this or that happened.

I'm big on trying to handle things reasonably and benefit of the doubt etc etc but I def support main accounts being banned if they are cheating and will support detection strategies as long as they are solid with accuracy. The last thing SoT needs is a bunch of false bans (that even if resolved and reinstated) will still just add to the chaos of this situation.

I'm hoping that the time they are taking is really getting it right so it mostly goes smooth and they can ban the right accounts for the right reasons based on accuracy.

@theblackbellamy said in Huge Anti Cheat Ideas:

@wolfmanbush said:

If they are proven guilty, ban 'em

I'm with you there. We don't need "invisibility" and "ricochet bullets." Just catch them at launch, crash their client, issue a redbeard, "contact support for help" error message, done.

Reporting is helpful, sure. But what's better than waiting for a guilty verdict is an anti-cheat that detects 3rd party things proactively. Yeah it's always going to be an ongoing battle against cheat devs, but then Rare should at least arm themselves for that battle.

If they're going to steal anything from CoD, maybe a "Kill Cam" on the ferry. "The Ferryman's Mirror." Might help with the reporting? Only half-kidding here.

One of the reasons companies issue ban waves instead of instant-banning is to confuse cheat-makers and slow down the development of new cheats.

If someone is insta-banned; they can go onto a cheat forum & say 'I got banned using your cheat'. Now the makers know to update it.
But if it's in waves; It confuses the issue. Now someone got banned, but perhaps it was because of an event 3 weeks ago. While someone else got banned more recently. And someone else will say they have not cheated recently & still met the banhammer.

Sure; the cheats will still be updated, but more slowly, giving developers more time to patch exploits used to allow cheating.