Commitment to Player Safety - State of Play

Sounds like wonderful news ! ♡
Just sad there even had to be set up a level requirement in this wonderful sandbox game from start cuz of what is causing it. But really good there being some difficulties to provide them from hurting the playerbase in the hg mode.

I wish people could play the game the way it was intended to play. it's such a great game and it will always feel better to accomplish everything the fair way.

Thank you!

Thank you for posting and addressing these issues.
Unfortunate that it had to take place after the backlash and callouts, but I for one am extremely happy to see it. Better late than never in this case, but I do hope that any future issues are addressed sooner than these.

The hourglass updates are a very welcome sight, I don't know many players who have engaged in it before Adventure anyway so I doubt that it will disrupt any regular players, and if anything makes the PvP Curses just a slight bit more prestigious which is nice.
The updates to the Profanity Filter and Chat Moderation sound great, though I'm shocked that they weren't more regularly updated, nonetheless an encouraging thing to hear about.
Overall this is an incredible post and I am very happy to see it.

Thank you @Sonicbob and Rare.

Imagine..

Players who can play hourglass, get spawn camped in the tavern by cheaters, so they never reach the boat to actually play HG xddd

You are biting it from the WRONG side.

Locking HG behind requirements sounds great if you don’t analyze it - and obviously you didn’t.
Cheaters farm what they need using cheats.
Adventure players get them instead.

Sit down and think how to combat cheats itself.
You have MICROSOFT support - admit you can’t handle it alone..

Somehow they don’t hack our Windows computers, use the same security for SoT accounts. Simple.

Much love and GL. You will need it.

This idea is one thats been tossed around in the forums before. And every time, it seemed to recieve the criticism it deserved. This announcement makes me feel that Rare has either not considered the repercussions, or they don't care that this will further reduce HG's casual player pool.

This change will not:

1] Keep cheaters out from the game - it only temporarily restricts their access to HG. For those who are dedicated to causing trouble, this will only be a minor setback that can be worked around by:
A] Buying leveled accounts.
B] Exploiting/grinding to whatever desired level within a day or two while rolling PvE crews. I mean if PL can be achieved in a weekend, how long are you really expecting to keep a cheater away?

2] Keep closeted cheaters out of HG. It will prevent new accounts from joining, sure. But there are folks in your community who have gone under the radar for hundreds (or thousands) of hours. And EAC needs to do a better job to catching them, not just the default cosmetic clowns.

It's possible that some of these are also accounts that have been purchased from previous owners, which again, won't be restricted by these changes.

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Ultimately, the effect I predict this will have is: 1] fewer casuals will participate in HG, 2] cheaters are hindered for a small amount of time, and then will return to HG.

This is like if airports required a mandatory waiting period at check-in before allowing people to go through faulty metal detectors. Terrorists aren't going to get bored and go home.

What is the point of a kernel level anti-cheat? Why did it work more effectively when it was first released? How can it be utilized better?

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I will add though, that I think automated moderation for messaging is a good thing. The level-lock might be a step back, but this is at least a step in the right direction.

@theblackbellamy

I can understand the concerns you raised, and I don't think the Hourglass restriction would be enough on its own.

However, the statement says:

As part of coming updates, we’ll be placing restrictions on certain parts of the experience that will require play time in order to access, such as locking Hourglass play behind a reputation lock.

Now, my read on that is that there will be further time and gameplay restrictions for new accounts, not just the Hourglass levels.

In my opinion, the requirement to enter High Seas should be:
(1) completing the Maiden Voyage's Unto The Horizon achievement
(2) two hours playtime on Safer Seas
(3) completing the Just Getting Started achievement (GH, OOS, MA tutorials) in Safer Seas

Yes, this kind of idea has been floated before and been shot down but I think we've reached a breaking point where something needs to be done... and doing nothing is clearly not working. It may inconvenience new players but, for legit accounts, it's a one-off delay to entering the High Seas. For cheaters, it would be every single time they create an alt, expanding the time it takes them to get back sailing from minutes to hours.

Buying levelled accounts might be a concern but that already happens to a degree (as well as buying access to Alliance servers), and any kind of financial burden is going to deter a good chunk of people. There will always be cheaters in the game, they are almost impossible to completely eradicate, but the point is to reduce them to insignificant levels and slow them down. Inconvenience breeds frustration.

I think these kinds of restrictions, in combination with platform-level changes (closing alt account loopholes), will have a big impact on the number of cheaters.

@captain-fob4141

@coo1ngboot yeah so sounds like it's not actually a concern. You [everyone] is responsible for controlling the audio that comes out of their microphone, intended or otherwise. If it is a concern to you [personally] or others, they need to recognize that muting or PPT is the correct option.

Fair enough.
I'm just thinking for people this does happen to. You're right, you can control the audio that comes from your own microphone that is directly connected to you.
but anything your child, family does or starts watching or randomly starts saying, you CAN NOT.

These are Edgecases; And that is what I'm trying to bring to light.

@bleu-solo yeah I definitely get what you're saying it's a serious catch 22.

@realstyli What you suggested might not even be much of an inconvenience to brand new players. It would really only annoy ban evaders lol. And what you suggested also doesn't keep casual players out of HG, which is my main issue with level-restricting HG at all.

Whatever the solutions are, they should target ban evasion without catching good faith new players in the crossfire.

Also, if you told me half a year ago that cheaters had the power to yellowbeard accounts, I probably would've responded with "sure thing bud," just because of how insane that sounds.

So even your suggestion may only be effective up to the point where the cheaters can run some scripts and bypass or forge the Maiden Voyage and Safe Seas requirements. Might sound impossible now, but who knows in a week or month after this is implemented?

I agree that "something" should be done over "nothing," I just wish that the "something" was better utilization of EAC to catch cheaters regardless of how long they have been playing. I understand that's a massive ask, but given the state of the game, it really is where Rare should focus a massive amount of their efforts.

we’ll be placing restrictions on certain parts of the experience that will require play time in order to access, such as locking Hourglass play behind a reputation lock

If it’s not massive enough. Leveling up in your game is too easy. Hours of play might be just but can easily be bypassed.

@theblackbellamy said in Commitment to Player Safety - State of Play:

@realstyli What you suggested might not even be much of an inconvenience to brand new players. It would really only annoy ban evaders lol. And what you suggested also doesn't keep casual players out of HG, which is my main issue with level-restricting HG at all.

We don't yet know what the HG level restriction will be, I suspect it won't be too dramatic if other measures are also taken on top. But at the same time, I'd rather not face complete newbies in HG that don't even know what it is they're opting in to. I had a couple of them in my grind recently and, while a win is a win, I didn't feel good about it.

In any case, I'm curious how they fix the potential workarounds that others have mentioned in this thread.

Also, if you told me half a year ago that cheaters had the power to yellowbeard accounts, I probably would've responded with "sure thing bud," just because of how insane that sounds.

So even your suggestion may only be effective up to the point where the cheaters can run some scripts and bypass or forge the Maiden Voyage and Safe Seas requirements.

I don't think what they did was all that sophisticated. When the Apex Legends "hack" happened earlier this year, one of the leading theories was that it was a dev's account that was compromised. I'm guessing that's what happened here, given the tools the cheaters had at their disposal. I'm just glad Rare discovered it and sorted it out relatively quick, and I hope they put measures in place to prevent it happening again.

I agree that "something" should be done over "nothing," I just wish that the "something" was better utilization of EAC to catch cheaters regardless of how long they have been playing.

I've been saying since day one that EAC is misconfigured with SoT, and I still stand by that theory, given all the issues it's created for legit players (to this day, the Steam clients - both retail and [redacted] - will corrupt the EasyAntiCheat_EOS.sys log file regularly on me, locking up my PC completely).

@realstyli said:

We don't yet know what the HG level restriction will be, I suspect it won't be too dramatic if other measures are also taken on top. But at the same time, I'd rather not face complete newbies in HG that don't even know what it is they're opting in to. I had a couple of them in my grind recently and, while a win is a win, I didn't feel good about it.

In any case, I'm curious how they fix the potential workarounds that others have mentioned in this thread.

Lol the "newbies" I've come across recently have mostly been ban evaders. So if anything, my crew will benefit from these changes, however temporary the effects may be.

It is unfortunate for those real newbies that they had to face you. I want HG to provide them with more fights at their level, and so I worry about changes that might gatekeep such players out.

I hope they incorporate some of the suggestions you made, as those are good ways to annoy the cheaters, without directly keeping casual + new players from having access to HG.

So when players are complaining they were unfairly banned it may actually be true. Scary.

@Sonicbob In March Easy anticheat was introduced and with it, some players got permanent Hazelnutbeard that leaded to a Redbeard eventually. Happened to a mate, and to more players.

He tried to solve this unfortunate situation with no success cause the team in charge doesn't even double check the bans (some are very obvious but some are not). Meanwhile actual cheaters've never left the game.

I know the team have a lot of work, but everyone make mistakes and some profiles should be double checked.

Any word about this? Thanks in advance.

About Hourglass... cheaters can get the levels of reputation they want... So they could easily bypass your level lock.

@sonicbob If the cheater use their account which is more than your restrict time to vote the hourglass. And invite other cheater whose account new here when they matched. Then this rule will be broken

@tesiccl said in Commitment to Player Safety - State of Play:

Alongside our game security, we are aware of the impact that ban evasion has within the experience and how frustrating it is to see malicious actors circumventing permanent account bans. We are exploring ways to mitigate against this at both a game and platform level.

We also plan to introduce a system that will monitor the content of chat messages more closely and provide moderation behind the scenes.

Reactive rather than proactive approaches do nothing for the health of the game. 6 years better late than never I guess.

WOW!!!NICE!!lets go rare!!

@rocketmankian MASSIVE W if integrated correctly...

There is a problem that developers ignore complaints about cheaters, after sending a complaint about a player using cheats, with video evidence of the use of cheats! And after some time after contacting the support service, you meet the same player again with Cheats!