I have over 2,000 hours in Sea of Thieves, and although that doesn't even compare to the hours others have put into the game, I believe my opinion on this matter is valid.
I haven't been a part of the Sea of Thieves community from the very beginning, but I put my heart and soul into this game, I made this game my home. I looked up to Rare, I praised Rare, but now, I see the truth.
The game is dying, and neither Rare or Microsoft are trying to save it. They think pumping out new content, like Captaincy Ships, the hourglass, rebuilding New Golden Sands Outpost, etc will save the game. But it won't.
The reason Sea of Thieves is dying, isn't because it's a dated game, because it's 5 years old, because "all games dies". It's because Rare is not pushing the updates that matter. From the very beginning, cheaters have been a problem, but with the release of the hourglass, the hacker community has grown, hackers are becoming more confident, blatantly hacking. And what is Rare doing to counteract this issue? Nothing.
A 5 year old multiplayer game, that not only had a rocky start like many games, but proved themselves by adding new exhilarating content to the game, doesn't even have an anticheat. And has made absolutely no announcements on implementing an anticheat.
I want to believe that they are working on an anticheat, but I can't believe that. Sea of Thieves has made Rare and Microsoft millions of dollars, and if they really seemed to care about fighting the cheating community in Sea of Thieves, they would have partnered with a trustworthy anticheat, like Easy AntiCheat temporarily while their developers make a more permanent anticheat for the game.
Shelling out thousands, or hundreds of thousands of dollars to make an anticheat for Sea of Thieves might sound stupid, because then the entire cheating community will leave the game, which the community is massive, I would say at least 20% of the playerbase has tried a cheat in Sea of Thieves. And losing your playerbase is deadly to a game, but think of the amount of players who will come back to Sea of Thieves after they learn Rare finally implemented an anticheat, and they finally don't have to worry about having gunpowder barrels teleported onto their ship, or players blatantly teleporting onto their ships ladder. The playerbase will throw even more money at Sea of Thieves knowing that they don't have to be scared about running into hackers every day and quitting the game, ultimately wasting the hundreds of dollars they spent on the games cosmetics.
Releasing a new multiplayer game, that has a PvP system without anticheat is okay. But growing that games community for 5 years, and then releasing an entire season revolving around PvP while still not implementing an anticheat is hysterical.
Ontop of this problem, the punishment system is completely laughable. You can get permanently banned for just being a tiny bit toxic. If you sink someone and call them "trash" and that butthurt pirate reports you to Rare, you'll get a temporary ban, and if you do it again you're gone, from the game, for good.
Rare you are trying to keep your community friendly, in the worst way possible. If someone is found being toxic, communication ban them! Don't ban them from the entire game! Players will get mad in a PvPvE game, and pirates will say stupid things, but banning them completely from the game for saying something slightly toxic is stupid. When people get banned this way, they learn how laughable the punishment system is, and they either drop the game for good, or they get around the ban, by buying the Xbox Game Pass for just $1 the first month, and then, they can either keep playing the game, like all pirates should, or they can let the negative thoughts in their head rain free, and cheat in the game, spread toxicity, ruin the environment.
Rare, whether you like it or not, you are killing this game. I've already given up on the game, I play from time to time with my friends, but I don't spend nearly as much time in the game as I once did. I don't spend money on the game anymore. And sooner or later, the entire community will follow, no matter how fun, or exciting your new content releases are.
I have a feeling this entire post will get locked or even deleted by Rare's CSR's because "Discussion of disciplinary actions taken against individual players is not permitted on the Forums" (Although this isn't discussing a ban, like many other posts before me), or "Toxicity", but I still have hope that triheadedmonkey won't close this post.
