Cheaters are running hourglass,, and this is how it should be handled

@potatosord responding to paragraph 3 and 4 of your essay:

3. I never claimed to be an hourglass god, I simply pointed out where I am coming from perspective-wise, so you being insulting and defensive removes intelligence from your argument, and I encourage you to be better. Saying "noone uses curse balls and bonecallers don't offer an advantage"? Yeah I'm just gonna hard disagree. You are correct, that many crews are not smart in their use, and just spam them and you can deal with them. But trust, if we fought and I decided to use those on you? I'd pick which ones and time them at just the worst possible moment for you to deal with them. Also, people use them constantly, usually when they are about to lose their streak. I'd pay money to see you easily deal with me throwing bonecallers while im boarding you and telling my MC to hit you with a weary ball at the same time. Believe it or not, over 1000 matches actually isn't that much comparatively. THATS NOT SAYING IM BETTER THAN YOU. But I have played this since season 8, with few breaks from SoT in general. and 1000 matches and 500 levels I achieved years ago. So forgive me when I say that yeah, you count as a casual member of the hourglass community, and while it can happen occasionally, you are being tested by top level players and cheaters FAR LESS. Your responses out this.

4. I always love it when someone brings up the 98%/2% Arena stat. First of all, in those days, your average PvE session on adventure, or Steal if you were hopping for them, would take longer than an Arena match usually just to get through the first island, or sometimes to even get to the Grade V reaper or w/e you were hunting. Then fighting time, sailing, turning in loot. Adventure was inherently more time consuming, and the 5 boat game mode was inherently less approachable to new players. Also, grinding to Legendary Sea Dog in Arena took way less time and matches than a level 1000 curse, it was more comparable to getting double 100 curses. Meaning you could get your cosmetics, and be done with Arena if you wanted to, and many did exactly that. Hourglass you have to keep going much longer. LSD took me 2 months back in the day. Double gold took me 9.

These are the reasons players time in game was so much more in Adventure, not because it was a separate game mode. Hourglass is very different. Fighting a 1v1 is much more approachable than Arena's timed format, 5 ships, and points. The curses for grinding hourglass take alot more time to achieve. Way more people play hourglass now, than Arena in its prime. So separating the game mode and balancing supplies absolutely would not kill it, it would make it even more approachable and less discouraging to the newer player or casual pvper. That's just another hard disagree from me. I would say that I know quite a bit about what I am talking about, sir.

@swmmmr

1. HG should be for captain ships only and every crew member should be at least Level 25 in three trading companies if not PL. If does not take that long to get, PL. So not really worried about turning off players from HG B/c how many are turned off from cheaters? To do HG required flying either a Reapers, Athena or guild flag. Sure cheaters could farm accounts but that takes effort, time and money on their part while giving rare another way to catch them. The only down side to this is more cheaters in the main game. Maybe its better to have them in HG?

2. Univerisal supplies. No, but I do think we should up captaincy supplies for HG. Now, if you want to max supplies fast, scuttle ship to new seas after looting barrels for chain etc. Then dive to sea fort raid. 150 cannon plus great food. There are other tricks as well to gets extra supplies. So why not make HG ships be able to buy HG supplies in the form of a crate from either the mysterious stranger or skelly, once you vote for HG.

3. HG servers. This is a good idea that gets ignored & strawmaned. Way it would work is when you dive from the main game worlds to HG, you go to a HG server. No world events, voyages or loot except flags and supply crates are possible here. This would increase server performance as resources would not be wasted on non HG content. Skelly sloops etc could still spawn. There could be up to three HG fights occuring. So you could still get third partied by another ship once they finnish their fight but it would always be by another HG ship. To get back to the main world you vote to dive to hand in. This will dive you to a standard server, to the same location you are currently at.

4. Rare should make invasion a more common thing on the standard servers by merging ships on the other side of the map out to make space for invading ships.

if we force a large number of mass-banned cheaters to grind on new accounts for days to regain Hourglass access, they will be forced into the Adventure Mode. This could lead to a significant increase in griefing and targeted aggressive activity on the main servers, potentially ruining multi-hour loot stacking sessions for casual players and new players alike. This might simply move the problem, and perhaps even amplify it in the wider game.

Sounds about right and possible.

Instead, I would prefer to see the game select more remote locations on the map for the Hourglass circle to form, and then implement a mechanic that prevents third-party intervention (e.g., non-Hourglass ships) within the established combat boundary.

Issue with this, is third party isn't a problem or issue. It part of the experience of PvP, which when you click "Hourglass/Dive" You sign up for PvP, your telling players you want PvP. So when you have another ship joining in on the action, that is all legit and part of...Player vs Player.

And I guess nobody remembers when you have stationary locations as spawn points, is horrible. You may not be targeted by a third party ship during your fight, But players will simply wait or Shoot from a distance. Heck, How would you even keep players out? Force field?
Frankly, nobody wants to fight another ship is "open empty waters" with no rocks/islands to use or sail around. It be down to who ever boards first and spawn kills. No need to sail.

Your idea for separate HG servers is a good one.

As for cheaters moving to adventure, some will. Some already play only there anyway. But most just want to be in fights with other pirates instantly, which HG gives them. And after a couple times grinding on adventure, many will be discouraged and move on to other games.

As for supplies, I simply cannot fathom how this isn't a higher priority to you. Stocking up before and after fights is boring, monotonous, work. And results in unbalanced fights, and negative player interactions. Newer players will play less if they sink most fights and have to restock.

Proof: If the "meta" is exploit buying at two separate stations and then also maybe sometimes going to a fortress to suck up barrels, then it isn't a good system, at all. Make a one stop shop for HG. Or let me bank supplies at end-of-session to have them ready next time I get on. Or just have a default amount that resets each dive, which I think would be the most respectful of my time as a player.

The big problem is that some people use cheats in a more subtle way to circumvent the reporting clips and not make the cheat so visually noticeable.

@rafaxf7429 True, but closet cheaters are beatable alot of the times. I haven't seen many of them lately, more just blatant, flying machine gunning pirates lol

@swmmmr said in Cheaters are running hourglass,, and this is how it should be handled:

@rafaxf7429 True, but closet cheaters are beatable alot of the times. I haven't seen many of them lately, more just blatant, flying machine gunning pirates lol

Had a guy last night who was firing 3 shots as quickly as you can say 1, 2, 3. Never seen that one before. He squad wiped us, I guess it helps when you don't have to reload. Given he had the wandering reaper sails, I was a bit surprised he was willing to risk a ban.

@swmmmr

I just submitted a report against an obnoxious HG cheater--it was so blatant I was killed before my ship even surfaced. I honestly don't understand how or why Rare can't do us die-hard fans a solid and fix how we gather resources for Hourglass. Similarly to your idea, we should have a small interval where we can buy chainshot and cannonballs only if we have committed to an hourglass invasion.

The current system would be fine if there were no cheaters or suspicious losses but honestly, losing my streak and supplies to this nonsense turns me away from the game.

@potatosord Congrats on the levels, we're nearly equals. The difference is that your gameplay experience sounds like a fairy tale. Only one cheater? Unbelievable.

A friendly piece of advice: drop everything and go buy a lottery ticket. In fact, buy all of them. You have the most outrageous luck I've ever seen.

@peppigno84 said:

@potatosord ...The difference is that your gameplay experience sounds like a fairy tale. Only one cheater? Unbelievable.

Somehow "1000+ HG matches and only 1 confirmed cheater" was only the second least believable thing I read in this thread.

@peppigno84 My partner has sat behind me and watched it all. Genuinely, in 1000+ matches of HG I have only had one confirmed cheater and one potential cheater. Luck can only take you so far before statistics catch up, there is no way I'm that disproportionately lucky with who I come across.

@potatosord said:

Luck can only take you so far before statistics catch up, there is no way I'm that disproportionately lucky with who I come across.

I mean Rare has acknowledged that cheating is an issue. They've addressed it multiple times. They brought in EAC. They discussed some plans to limit access to HG, in an attempt to deter cheaters.

The statistics aren't in your favor lol. You're apparently an anomaly. And it is entirely possible that you're just disproportionately lucky.

Still willing to believe that over funny @burnbacon having done 20 HG matches at all, let alone back-to-back.

@theblackbellamy I never said the stats were in my favour, I just can't believe that players come across that many cheaters that often. Like even being 10x luckier than the next guy, would mean they would only see 10 cheaters total. I can believe my luck might be in the top 10% of luck but the way you guys talk, it sounds like I'm in the top 0.01% of luck. I suppose somebody has to be there, for there to be that kind of average/disparity, but it seems wild to me that there is genuinely that many cheaters and I just outright do not experience them. I play the game almost every single day, I have been making myself get at least one hourglass level (usually get 3-5) every single day to try to grind to gold bones. I play at least 10 matches of HG a day, often much more. I have played for at least 8 hours a day every day during every double XP event since May of this year, getting on average 30 levels a day during these events. I went from never playing hourglass once to having skeleton curse in 3 weeks. It just seems insane to me to think that I am somehow entirely outside of the cheater problem. I just outright do not experience them, and the only time I did, anticheat banned them within 15 seconds of the match starting, and I got a victory while on the ferry. Teleported to my ladder, climbed, hotswap 2 tapped me, and before I was even alive again he was banned.

@potatosord Look, what you've just written is even more unbelievable than your previous statement.

So, let me get this straight: not only have you met a single cheater in what sounds like thousands of hours of Hourglass, but on that one occasion, the anti-cheat worked perfectly, banned them in a record-breaking 15 seconds, and even gifted you the win.

I'm asking seriously: are you reading the other comments here and on other forums? Don't you get the slightest feeling that your experience is unique, almost a statistical anomaly compared to what the entire community is reporting?

At this point, the question just begs to be asked, and this isn't meant to be a provocation: what servers do you play on? What region are you connecting from? I'm asking out of genuine curiosity to understand, although my personal experience is that cheaters are a global problem now, regardless of the server.

@potatosord This would make sense if you played solo, and on a dead stamp. If your region is unpopular for top solos, its rare that a cheater would waste time solo slooping. Esp on db exp weekend when its comparatively easy to snipe streamers and top players.

@best0fthewest The entire match lasted less than 15 seconds and I got the victory almost instantly. Unless he had 20 kegs on his boat, lit one, cannoned over to me, killed me, jumped off my boat, and didn't attempt to rep or bilge, there is no way a boat can sink that fast or get to the edge of the circle that fast. If you alt f4 the game holds your spot on the server for 10 minutes, in case you reconnect. As far as I'm aware, the game treats alt f4 as if the game crashed. He was not on SoT when I checked XBL recently played with. Every time I've alt f4'd it asks me to reconnect to the same session. He was not on my boat when I got back.
In the last 5 days or so, there have been new cheats released that are very powerful. We were talking about before that time period. Obviously now we have to contend with those as well, prior to the release of those cheats I have only seen one confirmed cheater. I can hold out hope that my luck remains as good as it has been, though the new cheats are more powerful than many of the past.