I understand the effort rare has had to fix the cheater problem. However, I believe that hourglass is the playground, the competitive mode cheaters need to flourish. Because of this, I believe it should be either removed or reworked. This way, the number of cheaters will definetely dwindle. This was most evident to me when grinding level 100 on guardians, as xbox servers were dead and because of this i had to play on pc ones plagued by cheaters. The pros and cons of its existence are evident as despite all the things it does well, it inteoduced the cheating epidemic.
Hourglass and its relation to the cheater problem
I believe it should be either removed or reworked
Won’t change anything. Cheaters in video games are like bugs themselves in video games. You can patch them up all you want but they will appear again.
Removing hourglass won’t change anything. After all hourglass is just a tool for pvp. Remove a tool, they still have the same playground.
@BurnBacon Yes it will. My point is evidenced by the fact that cheaters only started to appear after hourglass was introduced as it was the competitive mode they needed.
@xxcrowedxx said in Hourglass and its relation to the cheater problem:
@BurnBacon Yes it will. My point is evidenced by the fact that cheaters only started to appear after hourglass was introduced as it was the competitive mode they needed.
This is not true; cheat software for SoT was available before Hourglass.
@xxcrowedxx el modo competitivo no tiene mérito alguno cuando el 90% de los jugadores que lo han completado al 100% lo han hecho mediante trampas. El otro 10% son gente con mucha suerte de tener conexiones con pings por debajo de 40 y contra los cuales es imposible pelear por muchas horas de juego o habilidad tengas. En los últimos 2 años, y con más de 300 días de tiempo de juego real, he visto al menos 15 jugadores con 30, 40 o 50 días de tiempo de juego con las maldiciones doradas (nivel 1000), en ese tiempo de juego es imposible hacer esto sin estar dopado. No me molesto en conseguir más allá del nivel 100 solo por el simple hecho desbloquear el mapa completo, no hay mérito alguno en hacer ni un solo nivel más.
Competitive mode has no merit when 90% of the players who have completed it 100% have done so through cheating. The other 10% are people who are very lucky to have connections with pings below 40 and against whom it is impossible to fight no matter how many hours of play or skill you have. In the last 2 years, and with more than 300 days of real game time, I have seen at least 15 players with 30, 40 or 50 days of play time with the golden curses (level 1000), in that play time it is impossible to do this without being doped. I don't bother getting beyond level 100 just for the sake of unlocking the full map, there's no merit in doing even one more level.
@lem0n-curry I almost never saw a cheater outside of arena before hourglass was introduced and I had around 2k hours of play time mostly pvping during this time. Cheaters existed but were very rare because the adventure mode is lacked a competitive aspect. Hourglass increased the cheating problem in sea of thieves many times over.
@thezocki said in Hourglass and its relation to the cheater problem:
I have seen at least 15 players with 30, 40 or 50 days of play time with the golden curses
You do realise that the days counter in xbox statistics is not in game days right ? It is every real time hour played counted up and when it hits the next 24 hours mark it adds a day.
So 30 days would be 30 x 24 =720 real world hours played. While i don’t disagree the game and especially hour glass has a cheater problem 720 hours is ALOT and more then enough to get gold curses.
@callmebackdraft I understand how the counter works, you don't need to do the math, we all know how to count. And I differ greatly in whether 720, 960 or 1200 hours is enough to reach the golden curses without cheating or having a direct connection to NASA or the KGB.
If we are to do the math, I will do them for you. With 1000 hours of play (41.6 days) you have to level up 1 level per hour of real gameplay. That is, if you only dedicate yourself to playing in this mode and win all the battles, it would be mathematically possible. Everyone can interpret it as they want, I am very clear about it.
That said, it would be good for the future of this mode if the game provided distinct counters for each game mode, or at least, percentages of time pointing to one mode or another practiced.
It is the contrasted opinion of a player with more than 7500 hours of play.
Have a nice day.
The Zocki@xxcrowedxx they existed since the game came out. You just didn't realize it. There was "see all loot" and other such cheats from the beginning. You're just observing what happens when the cheaters are annoying enough that it chases off the non cheaters.
@happykitten5269 we ran into cheaters before arena existed. It probably wasn't as bad then but definitely dealt with it.
@lem0n-curry It existed but coming across a cheater was extremely rare. Hourglass is the perfect conpetitive playground for cheaters
@thezocki you dont take into account streak multipliers, after 4 sinks each ship sunk gives quite alot of xp, not to mention lowering streaks. One level per hour is easily attainable. And selling the flags. With a decent crew 1hr per level is EASILY attainable.
Maybe look up sponge on yt (current WR holder for largest streak afawk) and see how they can decimate crews. And also see how they come up against some of the most insane crews to go up against.
Using your logic nobody would have made it to 9999 yet either, (and yet people did, since that gives the most hard/longest to earn titles in the game.) because that would take 416.6 days while playing 24 hours per day. And since that is not an option lets say people play 12 hrs per day that would mean 833 days that would mean more days then the game mode has been out.
@callmebackdraft they play with less than 40 ping, they have a connection to NASA, so it's easy to win , It is one of those 10%.
@thezocki said in Hourglass and its relation to the cheater problem:
@callmebackdraft they play with less than 40 ping, they have a connection to NASA, so it's easy to win , It is one of those 10%.
I'm far from being a Sponge fan-boy, but he and his crew regularly play on NA West servers with 180+ ping. Ping isn't everything... especially not in a janky game like SoT, this isn't Counter Strike with precision.
There’s only so much Rare can do about the problem. They already have their hands full trying to please everybody. It takes a lot of work to go in and manually remove every cheater, since there are so many of them. Easy Anti-Cheat is the best they can do right now. Yes I do think the problem needs to be solved, but there’s only so much Rare can do. If you have a problem with a cheater, you can always report them yourself.
Doing a fort with a friend. We finish it, open it, to find most of the items gone, and a player flying above us trying to troll us by pointing it out.
Sailing with friends, had some loot to turn in, proceed to get fly-kegged by a cheater several times.
This one I have a video of, and took place quite a while ago, the first time the CoF was in FotD. Completed FotD with friends, we open the vault to find nothing. This was long before the grapple gun made it's appearance as well.
Don't kid yourself. Cheaters will go for anything and anyone they want to. Hourglass is just a side-bonus.
@capt-greldik 180 ping?? I doubt they will win many matches when playing with 180 ping... Ping is not everything, but it is a very, very important part of the action-reaction times; it is not the same to play a shooter with 40 ping as it is with 180 ping. It is also not the same to play with an RTX 3070 than with an RTX 4090. Finding balanced matches in every sense is a utopia. But I reiterate, they are that 10% of players, and I have nothing against them; the problem lies with the cheaters in HG and finding a useful way to detect them before the match begins. In this sense, generating differentiated game time counters and implementing prerequisites of game time or % of achievements completed to access HG mode would be possible measures to study to eliminate them from HG mode. Hence the conversation with @CallMeBackdrafT , that's where I wanted to go.
The amount of cheaters that appeared with Hourglass is just a way to express frustation. Those players are somehow frustrated with the game and use cheating and exploiting to feel superior to any player that wants to have fun in the game. Is their way to tell "hey I'm here and you can't do nothing about it". Hopefully, Rare implements the Ban Evasion software they are working on, so most of those cheaters need to pay for a more expensive hack to bypass that.
Everytime SoT has had any sort of competition, cheaters have showed to "flex".Some truth bombs down below ^_^ :
@xxcrowedxx said
However, I believe that hourglass is the playground, the competitive mode cheaters need to flourish.
Wait but I thought Sea of Thieves wasn't ''competitive'' to begin with, it's what I've been told by some peeps on the forums? Clown Emoji
I almost never saw a cheater outside of arena before hourglass was introduced and I had around 2k hours of play time mostly pvping during this time. Cheaters existed but were very rare because the adventure mode is lacked a competitive aspect. Hourglass increased the cheating problem in sea of thieves many times over.RE combating it. gummy can come back and update the cheat in a single day and clown on RARE.
ESP was widely used yet RARELY detectable, if you played often in the official SoT Discord and got to know folks, they would sometimes self snitch that they were using said program. Which would otherwise fly under the radar.
It's almost impossible to know if someone is using ESP, and I've always reported players using it but got no where because ''not enough proof'' as they say... To put it into perspective, ESP also shown how many players have downloaded it for the SoT version, let me tell you back then it was more players downloading that ONE cheat then monthly steam users playing the game currently... (20k + downloads each update)Other popular cheats existed and still exist such as Carrot, Pigor, Athenaware, Aimlock io oh and independent developed private cheats...
JUST Because a cheater is NOT flying around dropping kegs from the sky, doesn't mean that a huge chunk of players are suddenly not using other cheating software.
Did you know around 12% of gamers cheat on average? I'm waging to bet it's higher in Sea of Thieves due to the nature of the game, and also a very poor anti-cheat implementation.
Competitive SoT players of the past have raised the alarm bell of how prevalent cheating in this game was before Hourglass was even a thing, you know, the community that got killed off, but RARE did their best to hide it and pretend it was never an issue. Until they had to implement EAC as a sort of ''badge'' to their game, and failed even at that as we see today.Not because easy anti-cheat itself is bad when even Titans like Fortnite use it to great success but more so it's implementation.
@capt-pilotes said
The amount of cheaters that appeared with Hourglass is just a way to express frustation. Those players are somehow frustrated with the game and use cheating and exploiting to feel superior to any player that wants to have fun in the game. Is their way to tell "hey I'm here and you can't do nothing about it".
True, some do it for pure fun, some to grief, others where upset that RARE killed Arena and it's branching communities as a result, you know the one thing that RARE LOVES to boast about caring about their communities huh?
Hopefully, Rare implements the Ban Evasion software they are working on, so most of those cheaters need to pay for a more expensive hack to bypass that.
Everytime SoT has had any sort of competition, cheaters have showed to "flex".Yes, but most get caught by experienced competitive players, while only a small fraction bypass them Cough TDS Zeez from Team Venomous Cough were they get caught by once in a blue moon ban wave.
However the majority of casuals cheating? Good luck catching them...
Also like EVERYONE Knows it's a cat and mouse game.
DMA is the ultimate cheating tool that not even EPIC/Fortnite have a response to, but that's the extreme side of cheating, having to spend hundreds on hardware just to cheat on Sea of Thieves is not something 99% of cheaters in this game will do. Since there's no money to be made doing that...
I can't even begin to imagine how many players outright quit playing SoT because of cheaters, which is a narrative I've heard from many people the past few years, so it's a good bunch of them.
10 out of 19
