Season 14 - State of Play Update 2

speaking of high skilled techniques, wouldn't you consider quick swapping that as well?

It's available in game to everyone who takes the 15 minutes or so to learn how to do it and it's muscle memory at that point

I'm just trying to understand why some things are called exploits, and others are called "high skilled techniques"

When does Rare plan to tighten the anti cheat and chat filters, the current version of both is so easy to bypass its laughable. It might be time to switch to something more robust than the current iteration of Easy Anticheat the game has.

@Sonicbob

@ii-stealy-ii

With all due respect, it's a moot argument. They get to decide what is and isn't an acceptable technique

Hey thanks for the honesty about these issues...
I just have one question, why are you trying so hard to patch any form of quick-swaping? as we saw that you have no problem calling unintended mechanics: "high-skill techniques that only skillfull pirates can pull off"
Current quick-swap using crouch is very clean and fluid, it doesnt break the animations at all. So why dont just leave it in game and give players who want to enhance their skill something they can use and train.

It’s a shame that we’re having to wait for these great features, but I’m seriously concerned about the knock on effect this is having into Season 15 and whatever is expected then.

I really hope a delay is put in place for the upcoming content to allow for more polish (cause you can’t have 3 seasons in a row with the same poor quality level put out) and we get a strong start to 2025.

Thank you!

Personally, I think you should drop the war against the quickswap and just focus in real issues. With or without the quickswap, high skilled player will always outplay casual gamers.

@ii-stealy-ii

I'd say the difference is that Quick swap was an unintended effect, while the keg technique is something that the tools naturally allows for. That's why they're still monitoring the Keg play, to see if what they've allowed their tools to do would break the dynamic

@w0tyy
Instantly killing another player removes any opportunity for counter-play, which makes fights shorter and less interesting. There needs to be some lower limit on time-to-kill, and the devs need to be able to control and adjust that time. Techniques that bypass it affect the intended game balance.

@arrvocado
It's not a moot argument. The distinction between the two gets more blurry as time goes on. Having an openly communicated guideline for how these things are categorized will go a long way in helping people understand what constitutes an exploit they want to fix and a "technique" they're comfortable keeping.
Stop hand-waving people's concerns like this.

@Xeriel i will just say this, the difference between normal swap and crouch swap is around 0.3-0.4 seconds, in that time you dont have time to munch pineapple even with normal swap so, it really doesnt matter if you are against a skilled player you will die either way.
What quickswapp (crouch swap) offer is smooth and fluid gun play that everyone who preffers pvp loves.

@ii-stealy-ii Bypassing animations by exploiting window frames in different tools to get past the set limitations on time between shots, swaps, and reloads vs taking the time to learn how to properly shoot, turn, aim, and fire a harpoon at an item with all of these features not inherently being counter-productive to each other?
That's pretty standard and easy to understand friend. The crouch swap is at least a very small difference, so I'm not horribly upset that it's back, so long as it doesn't get so bad you're under COD style bullet barrages.

@sonicbob
I don't know how much data you actually get from us playing in Insiders, but if you for example make it so we keep the dubloons and gold we get while playing, or even maybe multiply them, and get them transferred to the Live game, more than just the weekly stuff, more people might be wanting to actually try out stuff there and not just stay an hour at the docks...

Just an idea to help you catch bugs before released to live.

While the reintroduction of quick switching using crouch was a compounding reason for disabling this feature shortly after launch, our attempts to expedite a fix for this haven't been good enough and negatively impacted the fluidity of moving into and out of crouching in normal gameplay scenarios.

As a result, quick switching will remain possible with crouching as part of this update while the team take more time behind the scenes to implement a more fluid resolution for this issue. As we have knowingly made the call to release this feature with this exploit, no enforcement action will be taken against players choosing to use it – however, expect this to be fixed in a coming update, so don't get too attached…

I'll be honest, the mixed messenging on exploits is incredibly frustrating and disappointing. Not being able to fix the quick swap exploit is totally understandable but giving folks carte blanche is the wrong approach, IMHO.

You're effectively telling players to exploit as much as they want, as long as it's widespread enough, we won't punish you... which is not what you said recently.

In your own words, from August's SOT News:

...some bugs and unintended mechanics are going to find their way to live. However, players that abuse them to gain an advantage should expect to be penalised, and that can range from progress being removed through to suspended playtime depending on the severity of the impact. The responsibility ultimately sits with you as players on how you approach this. Clearly, the best approach is report it, don't use it and certainly don't share it. If you do however choose to take advantage of it, you should expect follow-up actions on your account - you've been warned.

Why is there no information about fixing a exploit with a cutlass when a pirate can accelerate very much?

@w0tyy Personally I wouldn't call quick swap a high skill technique. If anyone can do it with 5 minutes of practice than its not high skill. Not to mention, there's a skill gap that crouch swap potentially introduces that being able to harpoon a keg out of a cannon does not.

It would be problematic and not fun for casual players for crouch swapping to stay in the game. You argument may as well be just to bring quick swap back in general, because at least then no other inputs have to be pressed to achieve the same effect as other players.

Are you going to fix the Radial Menu bug (button does not appear to swap blow-dart types due to it prioritizing non-radial menu button press) and the save settings bug (setting changes don’t save after logging out and starting a new game session — making it so you have to re-bind settings every single session).

If your R3 (console was previously bound to something and the settings don’t save, you have to constantly re-bind everything when starting a new game.

@dre1sh are you talking about sword lunging? Because that is something they are not going to fix

Thank you for the update Drew. It's good to get some transparency on things that need transparency.

Now I haven't posted in the forums at all so my word may not mean anything to most if not all in here but I'm gonna speak my own piece. As a casual player, I picked up double gunning pretty quickswap removal, it took me one five minute long video and ten minutes of practice. In total that's 15mins out of my playtime to get the muscle memory down, it takes longer to fully run an outpost for supplies, store the supplies, organize barrels, and raise the anchor. That's before anyone has figured out what they want to do that session.

Just how the sword lunge and jump was an "unintended mechanic" but made into a skill that could be taught and learned, maybe it's time to adopt quickswap into the same light, especially if it's causing more discourse between the player base. My own two cents on this topic

Now I know ultimately it's the decision of the devs of what stays in and what gets removed but consider the fact that combat fluidity and smoothness has felt amazing and the seas have been more alive and active with this "unintended mechanic" being back

Best regards

-Omen

Regarding crouching and quick-swapping, the devs need to be more consistent.

Either hold the feature until it isn't broken, or bring it back and clearly communicate that quick-swapping still isn't acceptable and will result in action taken. Saying it's okay to use for now is the wrong message and indicative of not wanting to make another difficult/unpopular decision.

It also doesn't safeguard the player experience.

Quick-swapping doesn't belong in the game, and this is just fueling the folks who call for the exploit to remain as a sanctioned feature.

@thyl1an I highly doubt a move away from Easy Anti-cheat because its integrated into Unreal Engine. If say, they were ever to move to Unreal Engine 5, there's even less reason to do so because its built into UE5, so its easy to set up and even less reason to move away from it.

@ii-stealy-ii said in Season 14 - State of Play Update 2:

speaking of high skilled techniques, wouldn't you consider quick swapping that as well?

No because it is a bug that comes from things not working as intended, and is based on framerate so regardless of how skilled some one is, some people physically cant do it even if they otherwise do everything exactly right, just because their frame rate is too low.

Meanwhile keg grappling is entirely skill based and doesnt bar people from using it in any way other than skill gap exclusively.

I think a lot of these “exploits” should be discovered in insiders. I think that is what insiders was intentes for. But because of the NDA everything is hush hush. But if the NDA was removed, there would be streamers dedicated to discovering these exploits and exposing them much sooner. Nobody actually plays insiders including myself because nobody is actually active on there. I also think there needs to be better incentives for insiders along with the weekly rewards. This would incentivize people to play it consistently before a season to find all these bugs other than logging in once a week to sit in the tavern. It is frustrated to see all this new content get removed because there wasn’t proper testing done. The exploits are widespread only after a couple of days in the live client.

@ii-stealy-ii dijo en Season 14 - State of Play Update 2:

speaking of high skilled techniques, wouldn't you consider quick swapping that as well?

It's available in game to everyone who takes the 15 minutes or so to learn how to do it and it's muscle memory at that point

I'm just trying to understand why some things are called exploits, and others are called "high skilled techniques"

Because it doesn't make any sense adding more weapons if the only combat strat that works is double tapping with a blunder and an eye of reach. There should be a minimum balance between all weapons so people have a reason to play with them and clearly that is not the case. Is not a just a "high skill technique" because if they add it it becomes the only one, and people should not have to choose between playing a pirate game like It's a shooter or loosing.

Sorry but... who still cares about this when there are ALWAYS the same issues happening?
How many times do you [mod edit] and still demand the trust of your community?

This is unacceptable. I stopped and am so happy not supporting this game anymore.

Revert the blunderbuss back to what it used to be and we will forgive you for all of these horrible mistakes.

@eddietheburr Just because it's not Call of Duty doesn't mean Sea of Thieves can't be a proper competitive FPS with fluid gunplay. This whole "just play CoD" argument has been thrown around for as long as people have been getting outskilled and it is so tone deaf... OP clearly wanted insight into why the line between exploit and skilled technique is so blurry and for good reason, but instead they get this dismissive and honestly very snarky comment which helps no one. Now about quick swapping being removed again, no one actually cares. We just want the devs to be more clear on where this line is, and if at all possible the game and with that the weapons within the game, to behave as expected, in whatever fashion that may mean.

@hqv2 said in Season 14 - State of Play Update 2:

Revert the blunderbuss back to what it used to be and we will forgive you for all of these horrible mistakes.

No thanks. The blunderbuss fits into the game so much better in it's current state.

@goldsmen I mean, the arena quickswap was based on frame rate iirc but as someone who learned the one that wasnt a single button press on a nvidia 1030, I can confirm that it wasn't dependant on frame rate

@ciberpepinillos You can quick-swap sword pistol, sword sniper, pistol sniper. its not just blunder snipe. the only reason blunder snipe is meta is because its well rounded. blunder up close, snipe when afar or when out of blunder. Blunder snipe also has the lowest skill floor aside for sword blunder. Quickswap takes skill, not accepting this is foolish.
Does X-canceling take no skill? No it does not, it does take skill. this is because if you miss time it your gun doesn't shoot. Same thing with quick-swapping. The reason it doesn't work with the new weapons is because they all have some weird jank to them, sure the jank isn't that bad, but its far from fluid.
Have you ever quickswapped with sword pistol? Its crazy cool looking and feels more satisfying than: slash .. hit ... slash .. hit, swap ..... .. shoot.

Meanwhile keg grappling is entirely skill based and doesnt bar people from using it in any way other than skill gap exclusively.

I can 99.5% guarantee that nobody with less than 40 fps can do mid-air keg-grabbing. This is made less likely by frames dropping as soon as players are shot out of the cannon.