Season 8 invite farming

Can't they just disable inviting players to crew once hourglass is active? And re-enabling it once it finished?

@wolfmanbush Well in that case, this is a feature and not an exploit imo :)

If it's a competitive environment, then invitations once participants are declared should not be permitted. Team swapping should not be permitted since it's a competition.

If its a casual shootaround then I don't see a problem with this. I wish more people would do it to get to the curses and forget this crazy mess of a game mode and leave it to sweats and battle hungry pirates ^^ just my thoughts

@wolfmanbush You're right. And I don't think they should change the way they view it if hourglass remains as is. All those other things happen in the main adventure mode too. Why one should be treated different than the other.

At least to satisfaction of a lot of people, alliance servers won't be able to exploit it and you would still need to find an opponent trusting and listening.

I had a fight today where the guy started the fight with raising sails and firing a white flare. He was salty when I sank him :D Maybe he wanted to do this, I thought it was the dice nonsense. If I knew that this was the case, I would have gladly accepted it.

AFAIK when you're solo and in an hour glass battle, a friend that wants to join either ends up on the ferry for the duration or can't join.
That friend should not get allegiance as he's not participating - though I never checked if that's the way it actually works.

People joining from opposing crew likewise shouldn't get in on the crew, the hourglass fight and thus not on any earnings.

Or are people solo brigging when this happens ?

@funniercape8 a dit dans Season 8 invite farming :

This literally makes my blood boil. I worked my butt off to get the skeleton curse.

I saw 3 level 1000 curses already. 100 % cheesed. You're welcome.

this is very broken and benefits both players. Upvote so devs can see please needs a fix ASAP

I'd say what is broken is you inviting him, not the game.

I remember during early Season 8, there was a time when I was stuck on the ferry while my crew had to 3v4, since they voted up & were matched sooner than I could join. Has this changed? I know it doesn't apply to disconnects (and it shouldn't), as I have been hazelnutted mid-fight a few times, and was able to re-join.

But it does seem problematic if someone can join a solo crew, making it a duo, while the game thinks the opponent is still a solo. This could lead to a lot of unfair 2v1 situations, in a mode where players are expecting opponents of equal size and skill.

However, that is the only issue I see with "invite farming." My general take on loss-farming has done a 180 in recent weeks. It's gone from "let's discourage this" to "ah who gives a flying..."

Imo, Rare should focus on fixing issues that would make the mode more appealing to the larger, casual playerbase, so that they don't feel the need to resort to dice-rolling and whatnot. I've seen a lot of really good ideas thrown around in the last few months (e.g. Daily deeds for allegiance; "win of the day"; boosted XP for defending; allegiance for actions, rather than just W/L). Rare has done such a good job ignoring all of it, you'd think they don't even visit their own forums.

The mode suffers low activity, even on double-xp weekends. Hell, all the changes they have made so far benefit my playstyle, and I barely even play anymore since the milestones & commendations broke a few patches ago.

At least loss-farmers are engaging in the content organically, offering match-ups to good-faith participants, and not hiding away in alliance servers, shrinking the hourglass player pool even further. They are providing quick wins to those who, let's be honest, probably need them. In all of my fights I've had in S8, I've run into many more confirmed cheaters than I've run into loss-farmers. Lol. I remember two solo sloopers, very early in S8, and then a gally crew of dice rollers when I was on my alt recently. That's it. Especially now with cross-stamp matching, I don't think anyone who is out looking for sweaty fights will regularly run into loss-farmers.

So, unless the invites can be exploited in a way that leads to 2v1s, I say leave it alone. Just because someone is offering you a spot on their crew for an easy win, doesn't mean you need to take them up on it. Sink them and move on.

@uh-mega-dingus I had someone ask me to do this, i sank him. Think this one is gonna be on the community to police sadly. At best devs could make it so the person joining doesn't get win rep just the hourglass being dropped I'd guess.
I've invited buddies a few times when I'm handing in streaks to get free rep though don't think this should be stopped

I only invite same faction people since the fight is useless for commendations, if their boat asks for an inv. Reapers however, get sunk nerds ;)

Take your wins and shut up.
Loss farmers are going to get their curses and get out. Then all the sweat wannabes will be free to get curb-stomped by the actual sweats.

@d3adst1ck Ah okay, it remains a 1v1 (1v0). In that case, I really don't mind lol. I was just concerned with folks potentially finding a way to 2v1, but that wouldn't happen. Thanks for explaining.

Then I maintain my "who cares, just sink them" position.

I don't see the problem here, as the exploit you are talking about leave the other player a choice, it's not something absolutely broker like general cheating, shores of gold exploit or invincibility exploit. If the other part involved doesn't agree, then you can pvp normally. If the one who asked for the invite get sunk and he is salty, double glory for you. If you want to level up faster because you are tired / you don't like the mode and so on, do it. It's basically the same as the shores of gold curse. There are players who grinded tall tales legit, and those who used checkpoint, invites and so on. The invite thing for hourglass is no different, also it allows morr positive player interactions than toxic encounters where the loser shouts slurs. There are a lot of broken things in the game that deserve polishment before this.

@foambreaker said in Season 8 invite farming:

They need to reset the rep to ZERO for those who have done this.

But why? They can really only do it once, then they have to go back to the main menu and relaunch, hope for another willing participant, etc. They could just be loss-farming and probably it would come out in the wash for time spent vs xp earned. If you have a problem with loss-farming...well, there's not a whole lot Rare could do about it. They how would you know if someone was loss-farming or just very poor at PvP?

Better to just let them get their curses and get out. Most doing this probably are only going for level 100-110. I doubt many would try this method to get to level 1000. And even if they did, the number of those who would invite them in the mode will continue to drop as more and more get their base curses and go back to Adventure proper.

It's just a silly costume for a silly pirate game. If you're putting a lot of weight on the meaning and value of it, that's kind of on you. Just let them do their thing and be grateful for the easy sink.

I feel a lot of these problems come from Solo slooping being the most time consuming of all the Hourglass ship configurations when taking part in good faith PVP. Rare has said that they see Solo slooping as hard mode and I think a lot of people see Soloing a sloop as their only option when it comes to PVP, because the people they normally sail with either don't want to do pvp or they are already on a full ship. I don't blame people that are looking for other ways to level up faster because the current progression and xp system is so bare bones that it only favors people who win, can keep a streak going and keep playing, and if they can't win, get attacked and sunk by any threat after you won your match or can't keep playing after you get a small streak going they are out of luck. While do like the Hourglass as a frame work for on demand pvp, I find having the two most requested curses lock behind it dumb for all the problems it has created, I think one reason Rare did that was so they could get more people playing it in hope they would give feedback for their new mode before adding other ways to level up.