Taking a Break from SoT due to cheaters

@miles-traveler Never did I say that cheats do not exist. What I said was that 99% of the time when people are calling "HAXZS!" it just is not the case. Just like the "god mode" that people were running into where they could not kill another player... it wasn't a cheat... it was an issue with the game that was patched.

We have seen two people "teleport" when we shot them more than 3 times between 4 people shooting them. We shot them, they simply vanished. 3 or 4 rifle shots, they ate zero bananas, did not ever "die" but then just poofed... I blame that on the server more than "teleporting" which I see reported all the time. Odds are they did die, back on shot number two.

Yes, there absolutely are commercially available cheats for this game. From what I have read, they suck. I have also read a lot of the hacking forums where people are talking (A LOT) about how hard it is to develop your own cheats for this game. So far, publicly, I have had zero low-key cheats to submit to Rare...which is an amazing record for a game. Not saying that there are no homebrew cheats either... just saying that the people that usually poke and prod their games are expressing concern that this game has been hard to crack (mostly because it is hard to get to since Windows treats it as an app -- with the same goofy security that all apps get, like being in a folder that is inaccessible, etc).

From what I have read in those same forums, CE does work to a degree. You can do simple things like lock your ammo at 1, so you never run out. I am hopeful that Rare can take the necessary steps to block CheatEngine...or contact CheatEngine and work with them to block it, seeing as it is an open project and not intended for use with multiplayer games.

I cannot foresee a condition caused by a player where a galleon would become invulnerable...because I am certain that a galleon sinking is a thing handled by the server and not by the client. With that setup alone you cannot force a galleon to be invulnerable. You simply ran into a crew that was on top of things and refuse to admit it... tell me I am being dismissive of your claims all you want, but we have been hit by 3 powderkegs at once and managed to save the ship without much hassle.

I am not being dismissive of your claims though, I am simply reminding you that it is easier to say someone is cheating for them to actually be cheating, and that there are many conditions caused by the game itself that may make it seem like they are cheating.

The biggest exploits I have run into so far come in the form of abusing game mechanics. Only one of those affects other players, and I have a support ticket in right now hoping that they patch that one out. It should never have been possible to begin with, as it is pretty standard practice when developing a game to block this particular exploit/glitch as it is pretty game-changing for someone exploiting it. Rare got back to me within about 30 minutes, and hopefully this ends up being changed within the next patch or two. I keep my fingers crossed and pray to the Kraken daily.

@miles-traveler to be fair I haven't come across any cheaters but I have encountered instances that were peculiar but I'm reluctant to say they were cheating. Unless I see someone flying around insta-killing people and spawning in 2 krakens and 1000's of captains chests I'm reluctant to call someone a cheater. That being said I do agree there are or have been instances of cheating but whether it still occurs I cant say.

@miles-traveler said in Taking a Break from SoT due to cheaters:

@urihamrayne There is a video on reddit of players not taking damage from sword hits. And while I have yet to find a vid showing no ship damage. I have heard about it plenty and seen it myself.

I mean a quick google search should provide video. If not it doesn't exists, by the same logic you're using that if it merely shows up in a search then it must (a) work, (b) be untraceable, and (c) be widespread.

@Miles-Traveler I posted this in another thread. But I'll post it here too.

Well.... tonight was the night. For the first time since I started playing Sea of Thieves, I think we ran into a hacker(s). Of course, I don't know how to record in-game on PC so I couldn't even get their names. I set up shortcuts to record to my DVR, but I don't think I did it right, or didn't hit the right buttons, I have no idea. Never needed to record anything before.

It was only 2 of the 4 that were highly suspicious. I've fought a lot of people in this game over the course of 300+ hours, and I've come across people that were just flat out better than me, but these guys were different. 2 of them boarded our ship and killed all 4 of us in under 5 seconds with pistols. It was amazing. I figured they were just damn good, but it started to feel like they were too good. They never missed... like, ever. Every shot was dead on, no matter how much they jumped and moved around. The crew I was with are pretty good, we don't usually lose in fights at all, but we stood absolutely no chance against these guys. In 3 separate engagements, we killed 1 of them that we don't think was hacking, and 1 that we think was, and that's it. We couldn't even begin to aim at them or fire our weapons because we were killed so quickly.

At one point I jumped from the bow of the ship and got shot mid-air, and then again as soon as my feet touched the deck. All the while they're taunting us and reminding us how we're going to die before we can even step foot on their ship. We sunk a total of 3 times, and just kept going back. They purposely weren't finishing the the skull fort we were at (with the captain spawned already) just so they could fight us more. They were that confident.

At one point I jumped in the water about 30 yards away from their ship and swam down as low as I could trying to hide my gamertag. Next thing I see is two bullets whiz through the water from the general direction of their ship and I was dead. I couldn't see them, or see their gamertags underwater.

My buddy claims one of the two were using dual pistols, a blue one and an orange one, but I didn't see that myself so I couldn't say if what he saw was accurate or not.

Of course the recent players works about 5% of the time in this game, so I can't even look there to find them. Instead it wants to show me the people that were in my crew that I was playing with. Gee, thanks.

Anyways.... tonight was the night, it finally happened. I still can't say for sure if they were hacking, and if they weren't they were absolute gods at this game. Now I need to figure out how to get my DVR to work right. Any tips on how to do that is appreciated, as I thought I had it ready to go! I'm glad that it took 300+ hours to ever come across one these low lifes, and hopefully it will be another 300+ before I see another one.

@r*****k-ye-ye Know what is funny? You joined on my galleon a few days ago, climbed to the top of the crows nest, and powder kegged it, and logged off. You are the problem with this game, yet you are sitting here whining about cheaters.

Go figure.

@r*****k-ye-ye said in Taking a Break from SoT due to cheaters:

@aod-fluid thats because i saw you and friedns were in a aparty i first sent each of you messages ur one friend told me to "p**s off" I can find and send you the message after ur friend told me to p**s off i then blew up your ship so maybe rather than accusing people you get your facts in order.. we can talk this out in a party if your man enough? r*****k ye ye im on all the time.

NO ONE in AOD told you that... and we had finished playing, there was one other person in the crew left with me and he was at the clothing store purchasing items. No one told you anything because you literally joined, went straight up to the crows nest, grabbed a keg, dropped down, blew it up, and quit the game. lol.

Again, you are here complaining about the problem with this game, but you are one of the big problems with this game.

@miles-traveler said in Taking a Break from SoT due to cheaters:

@daddy-sanctus said in Taking a Break from SoT due to cheaters:

Crazy, I haven’t come across an unsinkable ship. I’ve definitely seen some ships I thought should have been sunk but the crews were able to save it. I’ve been on galleons that we’re triple barreled and we managed to save it. Just depends on the crew.

I’m sorry, but I highly doubt you’ve been running into cheaters like that in back to back days. The odds of that happening are astronomically low.

There are cheat programs I could go download right now on PC that give aimbot, wall vision, radar, lockon, cannon predition, evasion assist, health manipulation and more. Just google it dude. You can highly doubt it all you want but any PC player willing to risk their account can download it.

Do it, prove how easy and well it works

@miles-traveler said in Taking a Break from SoT due to cheaters:

@urihamrayne There is a video on reddit of players not taking damage from sword hits. And while I have yet to find a vid showing no ship damage. I have heard about it plenty and seen it myself.

There was also an explanation from Rare stating that people were not taking damage because of an issue with the game's "tutorial" mode and that it was fixed several patches ago... that was what caused immortality/godmode... not a "cheat".

From 1.0.6 - "Tutorial Invulnerability - Players are no longer invulnerable during parts of the Tutorial when first launching the game.
This should resolve confusion around players seemingly being invulnerable at outposts. We take all reports very seriously, so please log a Support Ticket and we will investigate further."

And this is the video you are referring to likely, because I have seen it brought up time and time again:

[Mod edited]

@wombaxx said in Taking a Break from SoT due to cheaters:

We HAVE to recognize that cheats exists in this game! And I'm sure that RARE are well aware and trying to find a solution.. It needs to happens fast, tho.. Because from what I just saw after a quick googlin, It's not looking very good!

There are currently: aimbots, triggerbots, loot finders, god mode and even a settimg so when you full your bucket it insta-empties.. (Which maybe looks like the boat won't sink)

But I have faith in RARE :)

For the eleven-millionth time, you did not find god-mode out there for SoT. I have explained what it is over and over again in this thread.

There are definitely cheats out there for this game, and every other game. There are cheats out for console games as well...just not as many people using them.

There is also a SEVERE disadvantage in playing on a console when compared to a computer. You can deny that all day long, but it is the plain and simple truth.

There are also a LOT of issues right now with latency, or server "lag", or something... that makes it LOOK like players are teleporting. We had someone yesterday drop our anchor, but we could not see them AT ALL. We are not here crying "HAXZXS!" Today we literally fought the invisible man... again, no one is here crying "HAXZXS!!!11111shift-one!"

If you pay attention, you will notice other things. I can't tell you how many times I have watched one of my crew run to a dock...reach the end of the dock, and suddenly start running in place. Then suddenly "teleport" to the ship. Every single subsequent player that ran the same route did the same thing. There is something going on with server reporting, latency, CPU spiking... SOMETHING that we as players cannot possibly explain that could easily be perceived as "cheating".

That is the problem though. It is so easy to get angry or frustrated and call "OMGHAXSZBBQ!!!" when we lose a fort, or our ship goes down. The thing to remember though, is that we are playing a game.

Part of playing a game is losing... It will happen. It is inevitable. It is very likely just the way the game played out, and not because someone was cheating.

I had two clear cheating ones tonight both have been reported for aim botting through walls clips were recorded and will be sent if needed. I am not shocked it’s pc players as they are the one ones who can hack. I think rare will be loosing Xbox and legitimately straight up pc players through this.

I find the likelihood that you've encountered cheaters lower than you seem to presume is true.

I assure you I am aware that hacks can and will be used in games, it's just a thing that is what it is. Rare takes these issues seriously as they can and do engage in bans and other solves. I actually trust MS/Rare on this topic, even if I am very cynical about others.

I had a few situations like this, where I'd face to face PvP someone and unload a tremendous amount of damage on them, and they'd live. One time I had actually recorded I had a ping jump from my average of 70 to over 400 in one second, to 800 the next, then back to 70.

Just before and during that ping spike I had sniped the target at medium range in the foot (hipfire), slashed him with a sword 3 times and a 4th I wasn't sure counted as a hit despite the impact notification (his body didn't react despite the hit marker), then I sword slashed him... I never lost camera view of him and he never ate a banana. Then a few moments later I was teleported off the ship despite the ship not moving (was anchored etc)

To me, this was a series of potentially hacks, I shared it with a community rep before finally settling on a report to MS/Rare and the security team.

I was later contacted and the situation was sent for review to Rare's security team indeed, though the team later insisted it was merely a lag/synchronization issue.

It has been my experience that this happens to me often, not the ping itself - that rarely occurs - but sync and the amount of hits on a target that the player perceives actually land versus what the game itself actually counts are apparently a common issue.

Frustrating to say the least.

Last night I was the galleon that expected to come to the forums today to read about possible 'cheating".

My Galleon crew, 2 on xbox and 1 on PC that runs at 20 fps (at best) lowest graphics settings and myself on a 1070 running at 90 fps (capped at 60 for Vsync) 70 ping started our night.

In the course of our day we sank a total of 10 ships. 2 ships at once at a Skull fort, (and them both again when they respawned), a sad sloop we felt sorry for harassing and probably shouldn't have but he arrived while we were at an outpost after sinking a galleon and our blood was still hot, and the rest were more galleons.

We were the meanies of the seas yesterday.

We ran over GPB's, were bombed several times during fights, took a beating from Skull forts (And when we had to sink one galleon because we were literally OUT of cannonballs...had to use the supplies we could steal from the ship when we'd board to fire back not to mention lure them into skull fort skeleton range ).

Our players would kill and be killed constantly when boarding, at least one such boarding we had on of our XBOX players (my son) board, drop anchor and hop, skip and dance around the enemy crew distracting them so we could slink behind the parked ship and unload, a task he handled with grace - not not dying - pirouetting around the enemy crew with the grace of NEO in the matrix.

Not one of us cheated.

Not one of us had "bad ping"

Sometimes... perhaps sometimes often... things just don't go as expected.

Not every instance is actually cheating. And as I opened the post, not every instance of OBVIOUS cheating... is actually cheating.

Sometimes, some crews just have all the luck!

@blooddoll22 you ever been shot through a window on a moving ship out of sight range?