Hourglass Suggestion re Falling Playing Count

One of the main purposes of the Hourglass mode was to give an on-demand PvP option to those looking for "good fights", who were frustrated with the closing of Arena because finding a ship to fight took a good amount of time in Adventure, and more often than not it was a solo PvE sloop who ran or scuttled at the first sight of a Grade V Reaper.

The Hourglass mode served a two-fold purpose:

1. Giving those who just wanted a good battle with an evenly-matched crew an opportunity to have that in a timely manner.
2. Easing the pressure on more "casual" or PvE-focused players who just wanted to take part in the Adventure world and didn't want to be continually hunted by frustrated PvP-enthusiasts who didn't have an outlet for their desires.

Switching the Hourglass mode to include sinking any ship will nullify reason 2 for having the mode. If you can sink ANY ship and get rep for it, people who are interested in progression and the curses will simply seek out fresh-spawned solo sloops and PvE players to get quick wins and earn faster progression. This will increase the amount of "bad experiences" for newer and more casual/PvE minded players and overall decrease organic production in the game, as these PvPers won't be out for loot, but just another sink.

I think keeping it the way it is is the best bet for good balance in the game, however what they need to do is do something to increase interest in the mode. Increasing the rep people get with a loss would go a long way, as well as more rewards spread throughout the progression. Currently you get to Allegiance a bit over 100 and there's not a lot of reason to do the mode anymore. There's so little in there between 100 and 1000 that many people play just to get the curses and never come back. Increasing the incentive to take part in it, even if you are not great at PvP, would do wonders for the mode. Perhaps you always keep your gold for each win without having to turn in the hourglass, or you get some gold or progress towards cosmetics just for matches played without the stipulation of a win.

@peteloaf777 said in Hourglass Suggestion re Falling Playing Count:

[...] open up allegiance progression to sinks outside of hourglass dives. For example, sinking ANY player ship awards progression if you are ‘flying’ the hourglass. This would increase player engagement across the seas and reengage the community in Servans/Guardians.

Nope. The Hourglass shouldn't affect the PvPvE balance of Adventure. What would actually happen is that ships would be very unscrupulous when it comes to sinking ships (we've already got a glimpse of that with jettisoned supplies).

It would lead to a lot of players who don't like the PvP aspect of the game leaving from frustration and spreading the word that Sea of Thieves is only for sweats. The whole game population would drop. We get enough "PvE server" requests and calling other players "toxic" for sinking them as it is.

Any fixes to Hourglass PvP should be done without impacting Adventure any more than necessary. The Hourglass being opt-in is by design to prevent the above frustrations.

This goes back to the unbalance being due to poor weapon mechanics allowing animation canceling into the game. It's downright the cause for a feeling of unbalance Navel to combat leaning heavily on firing both weapons before a player can do one action.

This is a Pirate game 80% of it is sailing but it seems that 70% combat is done in tight quarters semi auto firing weapon mechanics. Why does one play a game? Choose any game EX: Racing you race, Fighter jet you fly, Hunting game you hunt, and War game you're a Soldier. The point here is you choose a game because it's representing a time, place, fantasy, adventure, or something you would like to know more about or an action closely representing a Sport, or any genre. You don't buy a racing game be blown up by a player who figurers out an exploit, or Hunting game turns into a dance off game.

Pirate game is not call of Duty, or any FPS that bases is shoot kill respawn do it again. Sure, feels that way? this is a Pirate game where Naval should reign supreme with the elements of boarding, but firearms should be minimally effective. Melee weapons should be more effective because they were relevant during the time of pirates not tap tap I'm dead respawn do it again. If I wanted to play call of duty be respawn killed I, play that. It's more satisfying when a fight is a match of chess verse some guy that stands five feet from me firers both weapons before I can perform one action. Sword is broken, you have to strike, dodge, Lunge, block, and maneuver.

The question here is do you think that Sea of Thieves is in a state to where the game feels like a pirate game when your being respawn killed over and over again because of unfair advantage because your opponent exploits themselves to sinking you... You have two choices learn to exploit/animation cancel, Deal with it.

Okay, let me actually reply to this as a player mainly focused on PvE, but not exclusively. I like good balanced and fair fights - but I am casual when it comes to PvP. I enjoyed some of the fights I had in Hourglass at the start but bounced off it for the following reasons...

1. Supplies - Not what you think, but rather the opposite. It's like an arms race of whoever has the most supplies, instead of being about the actual fight. If they could find a way to standardise the amount of supplies you can bring into a fight, that would help a lot.
2. Duration - Fights don't seem to be worth it in terms of time-investment. I really don't want to loss farm, I refuse to. But trying to win a fight can often take upwards of 20, even 30, minutes and it's just not worth it for the reward - win or lose. They need to find a way to limit the duration of battles.
3. Cheats - I've been a defender of Rare on this in the past, knowing they do actually have anti-cheat in the form of Azure's own server side solutions... But it's quite clear since Season 8 that it's lacking. I'd prefer they deal with the alt account problem than introduce anything kernel level but, either way, something needs to be done.
4. Matchmaking - It's obvious that the current SBMM doesn't really work to create balanced fights. I don't know if I dive if I will come up against a total swabbie or a hardcore sweat. That doesn't make me want to bother to find out.
5. TDMers - I'm not great at CQC, but I'm good enough at naval. Dealing with TDMers is not something I want to spend my time in the game doing.

I also think that introducing more modes could help the appeal. Now we have 6 ships on a server again, 3 v 3 fleet battles could be an option.

@lordqulex
I'm no PvP enjoyer for sure, but I'm still grinding out my Athena's Blessing. 73 or 74 in Guardians currently, and hoping to get to 105 for the Legendary Curse. Probably won't touch it much after I get that, because you're right, the people in the mode currently are all way better than I am. I play on Xbox Only servers and they are mostly double-gunning TDM spawn-camping sweatlords. It's rough, because I want the curse and access to the new area of the hideout, and I always try my best in the fights, but it's been getting harder and harder to get any wins, which makes the time spent in the grind feel worse. I can't imagine trying to get both curses (which is fine, because I basically don't touch Reapers stuff at all anyway).

@lordqulex

I can only really speak for myself and others like me. Those are my main problems with the mode and why I have no real motivation to play it, despite thinking about it.

I don't have any objections to taking part in PvP (I used to play a lot of COD in my 20s and early 30s), even in Adventure... as long as it's balanced and fair. Often it's not in Adventure though.

I loved the idea of an opt-in mode with actual skill based matchmaking because it seemed like the perfect solution to what I wanted. But it hasn't worked out that way at all.

I don't have the curses, and probably never will. Neither appeals to me aesthetically, so I'm okay with that. I'd rather play the game to have fun and the thought of doing Hourglass under the conditions I mentioned, seems like the least fun thing I could ever waste my time on.

@ix-indi-xi said in Hourglass Suggestion re Falling Playing Count:

@foambreaker What changes would you like to see be implemented into Hourglass that would spark more interest instead of more rewards between levels?
They streamlined a lot in HG since release, my only constraint is starting supps on galleons. especially for higher MMR crews. But would love to hear from others who don't grind PvP/Hourglass what their main concern is.

I think that's the question that people who don't enjoy HG should answer. What they should change/add.

For me personally, since I seldom even liked playing hourglass after slogging through it with several good/uncoordinated crew and feeling like the MMR since day 1 of the update had treated me extremely poorly (getting matched with crews ladder launching as my first ever brig HG fight, constant sweats that out skill me at every angle and deplete all of my supplies, etc.), I genuinely, really want them to just revamp CQC entirely. Get another studio to work with this part of the game or something, because the combat stops becoming fun/do-able the moment you're boarded, and you can prevent it all you like (until hit-reg has something to say about it), but I want every aspect of PvP to become approachable, and CQC as a whole, just isn't. Naval is fine and I can put blame on myself for any mistakes I've made in combat, but the boarding difference changes up so much that when you do meet a skilled crew, and your skill isn't even that great overall, you're more helpless than you really should be.

@peteloaf777 this would make more people, including those sweats, sink anyone and everyone to farm numbers.

I have been playing HG since season 8 came out and i have to say it has been getting pretty bad. It seems the player count has gone downhill and it has become more and more frustrating to play each day. I am not gonna talk about the cosmetic rewards, alliegiance gain etc., since i think those are smaller problems compared to what is really killing this mode. The lack of SBMM (i know it exists and there aren't enough players for it to properly work) combined with cheaters and bugs make for a really unfun experience. You either get matched with people way below your skill level or way above, and on very rare occasions you might get properly matched with another player.

@ix-indi-xi said in Hourglass Suggestion re Falling Playing Count:

@nex-stargaze Ok,
So if they did say make an overhaul on CQC, what makes you think that sweats just won't get harder to kill if theres more skills to master resulting in a higher skill gap?

In the case of an overhaul, I think I want to remind some players about launch day, or day 1s of about any new activity that comes about, Insiders withheld.

No one truly knows what they're doing or how things work initially.

When people don't know how things work, anything that works is valid. The old Skeleton forts back then relied on people not knowing what they were doing to have the hilarious and fun chaos back then.

Every activity in SoT is homogenous and accessible. It plays the same, there's very little way to do things faster outside of just not dying/getting hit, and there are no unique or special ways to tackle a challenge differently. That is a model the weapons in particular do not fully follow. Animation cancelling is accessible to everyone, but very few know how to do it, or master it, and compared to the Sword Lunge Jump - while both are easily negligible, one practically guarantees instant losses, while the other, less so.

The goal of the overhaul is to remove the skill gap that was clearly not seen during the development of the weapons, and put them in place so the skill gap isn't as wide, and so that anyone can do what the weapons can do. Alternatively, refining and officially promoting advanced tech for the weapons also go a long way for the overhaul.

The payout isn't worth the effort. I have Spinal and Bonechiller if I wanna skelly up.

What I think Hourglass needs is a regular bonus time akin to Gold Rush. Have extra hourglass XP and Gold every weekend, perhaps? Then we’d have spikes of activity every now and then.

I need 3 more max killstreaks for green bones and Im not touching HG again til something new is added.

Its no longer fun, just a hellacious grind trying to achieve something where you cant even enjoy winning unless you get 4 in a row. Even more caustic than the rep grind, where days go by losing at 3 and you can have a 6 or 7 or 8 hour play session with -nothing- to show for it. Sitting in queues for 20+ minutes trying to get matches is not helping.

Blargh.

@lizalaroo said in Hourglass Suggestion re Falling Playing Count:

I think having a good crew is half the battle.

I do think that is what makes this end-game activity much more difficult. It's automatically going be heavily advanced, with everything you've learned in your level grinding and defending against pirates being put to the test, and well...

It's very clear far too many fail to keep up,while destroying spirits, it's increasing crew expectations, and maximizing frustrations within a fair chunk of the game's community. Finding good crew for an activity like this, and similar to Arena in a sense, is extremely difficult, and because of the nature of borderline competitive PvP, you'll probably see why people don't enjoy HG.