Do something about rampant cheating

@wolfmanbush said in Do something about rampant cheating:
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You suspect that people are cheating but you don't know that as a fact.

I say a player being able to one-shot-kill another player at full health with the pistol projectile hitting the leg a pretty good indicator.
I say a player being able to throw a single blunderbomb at my crewmate (who was at full health) and instantly kill him is a pretty good indicator.
I say a player sloop taking no damage or refusing to sink when enough damage was done to sink a galleon would also give us reason to "suspect" cheats are being used.

Funny thing is, this is the 3rd time we've ran into players doing this in the space of a month.
I sail almost all day every day. The sequences of events as described above should not be possible.

I've been noticing a massive influx of them as well. There are several dozens of variations of hacks that can be downloaded and are working today. They've gone unchecked for a long time.

I don't know why it feels so sudden, but maybe the word is just going around that Rare isn't banning anyone. That not only implies it's safe, but also encourages a lot of victims to try it themselves. I know one major part of the problem is that their report system requires evidence. They won't take names and go spectate. Maybe a reason for that problem is too many goofy reports, but decent judgement should resolve that.

I reported two groups in the past week that would repeatedly cannon over my ship and double gun me from the sky with pistol/sniper. There is a trick where you can sprint to swap more quickly to fire the next shot, but this particular hack they are using can do it for you while airborn in only a quarter second time. It's basically half the delay of the more well-known glitch that doesn't require hacks. Landing cannon shots from max distance or just never missing is speculative, but some things like double gun speed, or shooting at people who are deep under water during a kraken (while they are sucked up from a kraken) are far more straight forward.

Anyways, they told me no video, too bad. They won't even go watch them. I have a hard time believing they will make an effective anticheat because of how well they've all randomized their signatures. What they really need to do is hire a few admins to just go watch. I've seen a handful of youtube personalities that dedicated their content creation to this. They'd even do sneaky stuff like set themselves to be invisible and watch the hacker with esp try to sneak up on them.

As soon as word gets out that bans or ban waves start happening, I'm sure things will calm down right quick. Definitely feels like the game is beyond critical mass with this issue. Something needs to be done soon because I'm running into these types of people multiple times per week now. Used to be EXTREMELY rare, but I have very little interest playing an infested game.

Also, has anyone noticed that a vast majority of them also talk like gremlins or use voice changers?

@veramys said in Do something about rampant cheating:

I've seen several cheaters in the last month and it's getting to the point where we feel like (RARE) just don't care.

@wolfmanbush said in Do something about rampant cheating:

You suspect that people are cheating but you don't know that as a fact.

Over the years I've played there's only been 3 times my crew was absolutely certain another player/crew was cheating.

On one of those occasions, all of a sudden one of the Mods appeared on our boat and told us there were cheaters on the server, so they were shutting the server down. News to us! It was a good experience too, as he answered some of our questions. Whoever that mod was - thanks!
So what I'm saying is - Rare is aware of cheating on servers - and is active on this IME.

@orsokuma2668 the hitbox is the same anywhere on the body and the first two can be hitreg. The 3rd one can just be a lucky sloop. I’ve survived crazy situations in a sloop because the people shooting at me either hit the one spot on the ship that doesn’t make a hole (next to the bed) or kept hitting 2nd deck shots.

None of what you described are clear accounts of cheating.

I can accept that, in Sea of Thieves, a headshot and a kneecapping are equivalent in damage dealt. I cannot accept that a crewmate at full health got one-shotted by a pistol at range.

If you have seen several cheaters in the last month, why have you not taken the steps to report them rather than just saying in general that you have seen them, on the forum that cant do anything about said cheaters?

I used to be steadfast in the idea that cheaters are not really that common, and only target content creators just to make them upset on stream.

I feel like this isn't the case anymore, but I'm not just gonna let a bunch of new forum users declare there is a genuine problem when it is very likely a skill issue and a lack of health management on their behalf. (No proof, and I can't believe you.)

Whether or not there is a rampant rise of "cheaters" really depends on what you're doing on the seas. If you're stacking FotD as a Reaper V, expect to have your time and potential money stripped away from you, if you're an unmarked ship doing a tall tale, expect this to happen to you less (just don't cry on the mic and they probably won't care after you sink).

@orsokuma2668

I say a player being able to one-shot-kill another player at full health with the pistol projectile hitting the leg a pretty good indicator.
I say a player being able to throw a single blunderbomb at my crewmate (who was at full health) and instantly kill him is a pretty good indicator.

Or he just got shot twice? Me and my crew have sometimes intentionally or accidentally synced up our guns to drop someone near instantly. There's also a pretty common bug where your health is incorrect, either it takes ages to update your actual health, or the health bar just doesn't show making you believe you are at full hp when in reality you are not. I have a video of me getting ''oneshot'' by a sword as I went from no visible healthbar to dead immediately. In actuality I was only on like 20hp. There's also cases of guns dealing incorrect damage, I've been shot by a Pistol and its dealt like 30 damage, no clue what kinda code messup causes such a weird occurrence, but it can happen.

I say a player sloop taking no damage or refusing to sink when enough damage was done to sink a galleon would also give us reason to "suspect" cheats are being used.

Is this to say they had a cheat to prevent ship damage? Are you sure they just weren't repairing it? Sloop is the slowest sinking of all ships relative to amount of damage put in. If they're fast at bailing and repairing, and you are only shooting a small area of their boat, its not hard to maintain. If you shoot 100 Cannonballs all in one area you wont make more than like 2 different holes, you'll just prevent them from fixing those 2 spots. But as its only 2 spots you can easily outbail it or just let it fill up for a good 20 seconds before the water gets too high. The only way to know for sure they were cheating is if you went on their boat and could visibly see them not taking any new holes. Theres no such thing as ''enough damage was done''. Sea of Thieves doesn't operate on a Ship health system. Its not Hit x amount of cannonballs to Sink them. You can sink to 1 cannonball or survive 100 it depends on how the team deals with the damage.

As the guy said above, Most likely this is not cheating, this is a matter of not knowing game mechanics well enough, or due to bugs.

⛵ peacefully around on my xbox/controller preferred servers avoiding people and not seeing seeing any cheaters...

If it's so rampant, you should have your clip making software ready at all times.

Create your own anticheat that actually works and start banning people actively cheating.

From the history of gamers, no anti-cheat "actually works" it prevents them for a time but always a work around.
and how would you go about banning people who cheat?

I've seen several cheaters in the last month

Video record, Report. Done.

@itz-majman said in Do something about rampant cheating:

"RARE ADD ANTI-CHEAT. HACKERS EVERYWHERE"

Way off topic, but this reminds me of in Mass Effect 1 where the mercs would often yell "Enemies Everywhere!" constantly!