@wailingclock794 There is a sort of matchmaking, but it is based on recent wins and streaks (a modified ELO system as is used in chess tournaments) because there is no good way to determine someones skill in this game. That is because of varying crews and the multitude of ways to secure a victory. Matchmaking is also dependent upon the available pool of players in your area/server/node - if not enough players are participating in Hourglass battles you will be matched with players that may be much better or much worse than you. The alternative of having strict matchmaking protocols would result in much longer wait times or no match at all.

@wailingclock794 There is it's just awful. I've discussed this in great detail before but I quickly learned people on the forums REALLY like to criticize the mode more than actually play it. Like most people who will comment on this chances are did not even hit 100 yet in both factions or yet alone even one of them a feat that some players who actually enjoy the mode finished within the first week for comparison.

In short skill based matchmaking in a game mode that requires win streaks to climb was a TERRIBLE idea. I should not even have to explain why this does not work, but some people still don't get that in games with MMR you SHOULD have about a 50% WR. Even the best of the best players in other games w/ MMR have about a 50% WR because that's HOW MMR WORKS. Now you should see the problem being that getting on a win streak while playing against people that are about your skill level would be incredibly slow.

The next set of problems all lead to each other being that since win streaks are SO important to climb. If you felt you were being matched against a ship that you had no chance of beating multiple times killing your win streak you would stop playing, which as a whole reduced the population. Reduced population amongst lower tier players meant that naturally higher tier players MMR would naturally low., as they would have less people below them to beat. Now the previously high mmr players who are now low MMR would be paired into ships they could not beat continuing the cycle. In addition newer players who would try HG would now be matched into the previously high MMR players who were now low MMR keeping the mode hard for new players to join into. And this cycle just continues.

This low population with ever increasing skill floor + server stamps and no same faction battles for way to long further lowered the population and as a result the queue times increased. Rare adjusted for increased queue times by it increasing the range of players it can pair you against till MMR was no longer a factor just to get players into games to keep the mode alive. This lead to players being paired into games they had no chances of winning against further worsening the cycle causing more players to quit HG, lowering the population more, and further worsening the cycle.

All these problems all tie back to how important win streaks are in this game mode to progress which is an inherently terrible idea. Even if rare made MMR stricter players would just drop their MMR a tonne on purpose to get into games and be able to win streak to progress. Win streaking is a terrible metric of skill and does not reward better players with faster progression it just causes the terrible cycle as discussed above where no one is winning. ALL OF THIS could have been avoided if Rare did not listen to the players who DON'T EVEN PLAY HG and made an actual ranked mode. Having a mode that rewards players more progress in leveling their allegiance based on their rank would have made it so that players would be happier to be waiting in slightly longer queue times as they would then be guaranteed a fair match and a fair amount of allegiance. With the amount of allegiance earned per win/loss scaling with rank would incentivize everyone to climb to progress faster, but not make it impossible to progress allegiance even with a lower rank. A system like this would literally make the game BETTER FOR EVERYONE OF ALL RANKS. Everyone would progress faster and people would be put into more fair games more consistently which would result in a more fun experience.

As a player who has beaten a handful of full NAL and LOT teams, and SOC winners on gally in HG I would make the argument I am decently above average and can promise that people at higher rank would gladly wait longer in queue times if they were rewarded the appropriate amount of allegiance for achieving such a rank and were climbing faster than people a lower rank then they were while also being guaranteed good and fair games not ships that sink to us sending out a single boarder to 1v4 them while the rest of us play shanties on the ship waiting.

Now people will start making the argument below that ranked mode has no place in SoT by players who I can promise have probably done less HG games in their whole lives than I have in a single day. Players so passionately argue against a ranked mode with no actual good reason else than potentially being afraid that a ranked mode would show players they are not as good players as they thought they really were. And to be clear people have been warning of the system being tied to win streaks since the VERY BEGINNING and how it would inevitably kill the mode. Unfortunately a bunch of players on the forums criticized the proposed changes while never even caring about the mode and simply wanting it to fail from the beginning, and Rare of course listened to them instead of the people who actually cared about the mode succeeding leading to where we are today...

So yeah, why is there no matchmaking that's based on skill?

No such thing. Its not all skill. Some people just have a nack for it and others dont.
You may sink a ship and they think the same thing (Man those guys are sweaty/or these guys are skilled)

ALSO!
Hourglass is not a Matchmaking skill mode. It just a way to find another player/crew who also wishes to do battle. Instead of sailing the open sea, this cuts that out.
I wish people would understand this and stop complaining about "skill"

@wailingclock794 I think that gold and glory weekend allowed the matchmaking process to work as intended since the player base doing hourglass skyrocketed. I felt that it was very balanced this weekend

All they really have to do is increase the xp and gold they give out as the higher levels in HG battles give very low amount and for an average player to gain more than 2 consecutive wins in a row is probably a rarity vs being the norm and currently the only way of receiving considerable xp at around level 70 and so on is with consecutive wins.

I also think they need to change the mechanics of having a ship filled with gold while going in to HG battles since i have yet to encounter a foe with a single piece of treasure on their ship. Maybe getting half of the gold that you had onboard if you sink vs loosing everything you collected in an hour in mere minutes sometimes even seconds?
Or some other strategy element to make it worth while to go in to battles with gold on board.

@gaudierpuppy866 Correct but makes no sense for an average player to go out of his way to collect gold for an hour or so only to lose it in mere minutes. If you ask me it's not worth it and other players seem to think so as well otherwise why don't they carry around any treasure?
Not just me saying, check videos of other players that win and their opponents never have anything onboard or even them. So some other function of treausre onboard should be added and not just xp and gold but thats just my opinion.

@eva1977 Hahah this actually reminds me, me and my friend were on a sloop (this was about 5 days ago). we had done lots of skullforts, fort of fortune and the skeleton ship event. We had TONS of loot. Then as we're sailing towards an outpost my game crashes and my friend who is left alone is immediately put into an HG battle seemingly being forced into it.
Turns out he had accidentally voted for it so when my game crashed it threw him in asap and we lost about 300k+ worth of loot, i imagine the guys who sank him (since i was stuck on the ferry of the damn when i loaded back in) had a blast demolishing a "solo" and getting all that treasure.

@eva1977 said in Why no skillbased matchmaking in hourglass battles?:

@gaudierpuppy866 Correct but makes no sense for an average player to go out of his way to collect gold for an hour or so only to lose it in mere minutes.

...

That's the game though?

Like I'm not mistaking here, Hourglass is a PvP-dedicated activity for people that like to engage in PvP, and those that consistently engage in PvP don't... really care about treasure like that. If they lose treasure that's just a shrugged shoulder and they move on.

Additionally this happens in Adventure normally, those who fail to watch the horizons or are unable to defeat the enemies approaching them before turning their treasure in, will find themselves losing loot they could have turned in sooner (if applicable).

Not just me saying, check videos of other players that win and their opponents never have anything onboard or even them. So some other function of treausre onboard should be added and not just xp and gold but thats just my opinion.

Most Hourglass players are diving, and if they're not diving, they got invaded before collecting loot/diving. Hourglass is all about winning fights, if you can't do that consistently (I know I can't) then it's probably better to detract from Hourglass until you have the confidence to go again under the function of its ruleset and matchmaking.

@wailingclock794 said in Why no skillbased matchmaking in hourglass battles?:

@eva1977 Hahah this actually reminds me, me and my friend were on a sloop (this was about 5 days ago). we had done lots of skullforts, fort of fortune and the skeleton ship event. We had TONS of loot. Then as we're sailing towards an outpost my game crashes and my friend who is left alone is immediately put into an HG battle seemingly being forced into it.
Turns out he had accidentally voted for it so when my game crashed it threw him in asap and we lost about 300k+ worth of loot, i imagine the guys who sank him (since i was stuck on the ferry of the damn when i loaded back in) had a blast demolishing a "solo" and getting all that treasure.

I think your crewmate should have been matched against another solo, so it might be worth to submit a support ticket for that (https://support.seaofthieves.com/requests/new) or you shouldn't have been stuck at the Ferry.

As for the 300k loot you lost - that's on the both of you, you probably had enough opportunity to make a stop (or two) at an outpost to turn in.

@lem0n-curry

Well like i said, we were on our way to an outpost as we had amassed a pretty nice haul.
Thats when my game crashed and it instantly put my teammate into the hourglass game. He was stuck solo against 2 people and i couldnt get on from the ferry since it said i had to wait for our ship to sink before being allowed to respawn.

Its no big deal anymore, just a bit weird for rare to put the hourglass on the table where im sure alot of people have accidentally voted to que for it and gotten f**ked for it.

@wailingclock794 said in Why no skillbased matchmaking in hourglass battles?:

@lem0n-curry

Well like i said, we were on our way to an outpost as we had amassed a pretty nice haul.

My advice, turn in more often.

Thats when my game crashed and it instantly put my teammate into the hourglass game. He was stuck solo against 2 people and i couldnt get on from the ferry since it said i had to wait for our ship to sink before being allowed to respawn.

Hence my advice to make a suppot ticket; apparantly there is a mismatch between how many people are allowed on the sloop and in which queue the ship ends up in (solo sloop or duo sloop) after a disconnect.

Its no big deal anymore, just a bit weird for rare to put the hourglass on the table where im sure alot of people have accidentally voted to que for it and gotten f**ked for it.

It's hold a button to vote, not press - IMO enough opportunity to realise what is going on and either release or choose cancel afterwards. A remove after some time might be helpful; again when you submit a support ticket you make Rare aware of such issues.

@nex-stargaze Basically nobody is using that function and reason why i would like it to have some other strategic function or use aside from giving you gold and xp only.
Some form of advantage in hg because you are taking the bigger risk as the higher reward you already receive is not enough as incentive for it.
But thats just my opinion.

@eva1977 said in Why no skillbased matchmaking in hourglass battles?:

@nex-stargaze Basically nobody is using that function and reason why i would like it to have some other strategic function or use aside from giving you gold and xp only.
Some form of advantage in hg because you are taking the bigger risk as the higher reward you already receive is not enough as incentive for it.
But thats just my opinion.

Reasonable opinion, but I think the way the devs designed it was to prevent potential PvE cheesing if the matchmaking system is not what players prefer to deal with.

The big con to being a defender is getting matched at all - if you're in a 6/6 ship server, you're going to have to find a boat then make them leave the server, just so you can get matched up with an opponent and gain extra value out of your faction stash should you win. If the calculations were done right, you should be getting more profit having a strong streak and a Level 5 Faction stash over diving. However, since you can't get battles on-demand through defense, especially since you're stuck to a 15-20 minute cooldown between fights in order to resupply/gather loot, it's not at all a good function for being rewarded the most in the "shortest" time, it's just a self-imposing challenge to loot stack and get constant super tough fights in between.

There's not much I would want to change other than reserving a 7th ship slot to at least 1 hourglass diver coming to fight.