If you put a grindy but unique curses behind the most unfun gamemode possible, and people still do it, it isn't a sign that people like the gamemode. Sell it on the shop and watch how quick the player count for hourglass drops to 0 and your matchmaking takes like an hour. It's a dare for rare. I promise you it will go in the gutter. So, so much faster than arenas ever would be
for the love of god, make pvp fun before you put curses behind pvp. there's a reason people with like 33 million gold still play this game and go looking for treasure. ive never seen such a miserable slog before in my life. the fights take so long if both people haven't looted anything before starting the match and out of every match ive had ive only encountered 1 group of people with the requisite curses to show that for some reason they enjoy sitting and fighting people for 20+ minutes and thats a generously short match length estimate.
Don't take hourglass player counts as a sign that people actually enjoy hourglass
With respect I understand where you might be coming from, however I have to politely disagree, I like PVP hourglass as a thing to do when I'm board, not because it has a curse (Though the curse is cool), and it's not just me I have experienced players with the gold ghost curse and they still do PVP for Athena (before you could level up Athena to 500.) just for fun. So if Rare did remove the curse from PVP, yes the player count will reduce but the match making will still be as quick as it is now.
Also sorry I didn't address this in my original response but it doesn't take 20mins in-fact similar to a skeleton sloop you can; (and I have before so it does work) sink a player solo sloop with 10 cannonballs total. But not everyone needs to like it, just because you and some others you found don't like it doesn't mean that everyone hates it
![alt text]@shadowseas6979 said in Don't take hourglass player counts as a sign that people actually enjoy hourglass:
With respect I understand where you might be coming from, however I have to politely disagree, I like PVP hourglass as a thing to do when I'm board, not because it has a curse (Though the curse is cool), and it's not just me I have experienced players with the gold ghost curse and they still do PVP for Athena (before you could level up Athena to 500.) just for fun. So if Rare did remove the curse from PVP, yes the player count will reduce but the match making will still be as quick as it is now.
If you were to take a gander at forums regarding feedback for this gamemode you'd see that my complaints about the hilariously obnoxious match length compared to the grind are seemingly nonexistant and ill tell you its 100% because everytime I see one in recent posts on reddit and elsewhere the mods just remove them less than 3 hrs after someone gives this sort of feedback. Rare needs to accept that this sucks and we need other options for increasing this rep rank. Anything faster. God, even a temporary weapon specific to hourglass, like a boarding axe you can use to make holes in a ship once you board. It's so slow that people loss farm, devise cheese where they sail you out of bounds or stick to the usual unfun experience of spawn camping and I'm guilty of it too but its just a sign that it isn't fun period
also, yes, if you encounter someone who bails no water, repairs no holes, and basically afks the second they get into the match, you can sink them with 1 cannon ball. if you encounter someone who has more than 10 pieces of wood, you aren't sinking anything with 10 cannonballs objectively 98%+ of the time. I'm smart enough to know that isn't true
Alot of people taking part already have the curses, you see plenty of complaints about hourglass stating unfair match making, "I keep getting matched against skelly curse sweats". So no I don't think removing the curses would stop the small group taking part from playing.
What stops the majority of the playerbase jumping in is the lack of reward, lack of variety and lack of the PvPvE/risk vs reward gameplay that makes adventure so popular.
It needs daily deeds, first win bonus, defensive to be more relevant and some form of PvPvE event tied into it for more to take part.@a10dr4651 said in Don't take hourglass player counts as a sign that people actually enjoy hourglass:
Alot of people taking part already have the curses, you see plenty of complaints about hourglass stating unfair match making, "I keep getting matched against skelly curse sweats". So no I don't think removing the curses would stop the small group taking part from playing.
What stops the majority of the playerbase jumping in is the lack of reward, lack of variety and lack of the PvPvE/risk vs reward gameplay that makes adventure so popular.
It needs daily deeds, first win bonus, defensive to be more relevant and some form of PvPvE event tied into it for more to take part.ive encountered a single person with the skeleton curse after like 5 days of trying hourglass and absolutely no one with the fortune curse. i can win matches where i try just fine, but 90% of the time if i try even a little bit it takes like 20-30+ min per round. I just got out of one with some guardians of fortune where it lasted like 40+ minutes because they would sail as far as possible anytime i hit their ship so they could bail and repair holes. they had the most god awful aim i'd ever seen, predictably only used blunders, and never tried to board, not even once. they had no loot, no incentive, just constantly waste time, spend time sailing around a limited circle and stay out of range. rare will add 2 brand new weapons after how many years that are god awful for pvp rather than add anything at all that helps sink a boat. a dollar store sword you can throw and a pistol with twice the barrels and 1/3 the punch. why in the world didnt they consider a boarding axe or some kind of tool to damage ships by boarding even if it was just specifically for arena type fighting? why not make the HG arena shrink after 10 minutes? where the hell is the hourglass part of hourglass? how tf is this fun actually?
is anyone who has approx 3 hours a day or less of any leisure time just not meant to play this game? why?
@legatus-crow There is a way to stop the enemy from running, it's called a chainshot, take down there mast and keep it down. (I'm assuming your talking about solo slooping HG but if not then send a boarder over to anchor the enemy ship), yes hourglass is a time consuming thing that you WILLINGLY put your self through however there is something to be said if your HG battles are taking soo long, people running away is a way for them and you to repair and it just means they aren't good, good players based off of experience keep the pressure on you at all times, no matter the number of holes they have (which tend to be zero as they keep hitting you off your cannons) with the occasional disengage but they barely ever run . And if you don't have chainshots use cannon balls to hit their mast it is possible.
Also yes the new weapons rare added aren't good by any means but a breaching axe wouldn't be a fair thing to add to the game either as the only way for a ship with no holes to start sinking while you are on it, is the firebombs, and firebombs are fair because they allow the player to extinguish the flames before they start making holes, it balances the game. As a tip, to win most battles you NEED to kill the other player, either by one-ball or you going over to board but either way in my experience killing the enemy while doing any battle is a game changer no matter the ship.
If you've not got a lot of hours in it you may be coming up against people closer to your MMR. I've got both curses and still play because I like it and have fairly recently been playing with multiple people with the curses, I also see curses fairly regularly in matches. I do agree matches can get unfun quickly when you encounter people that constantly go for full resets after a broadside or just decide to run away for ages once they figure out they aren't going to win by fighting or running out of supplies, I wish they would add some match timer for the zone to start shrinking to counter this, but I suppose this also takes takes away from players choice in tactics, and rare always say tools not rules. I really hope they don't put the curses behind something easier to complete because I like the sort of status they have, as someone who missed out on lots of time limited or removed items because I was a late comer and played very casually for a while I was really happy to get something that not everyone will have the patience to achieve, it would be unfair on lots of people that grinded hard for them
When I first started to play HG I found some of the matches to take long as well but as you get paired with better players you’ll encounter less running and the matches should take between 10-20 minutes. Obviously there are some games that take 45 minutes but then there are other games that take 5. These are solo matches, and imo duos are longer.
I also have both curses and now on my last 10 levels to 200 for Servants. I’ll probably keep playing well after that because I enjoy the naval combat in this game and it warms me up and takes away my blood thirst on the high seas.
Massive Sponge and Erin Stirling are the best resources for both duo and solo hourglass; you’ll see a huge difference in your ability to close matches if you follow their advice.
Personally, I think the hourglass system is flawed. and I don't think that a change of attitude from the some players is enough. OP has a point: some players are just doing Hourglass matches for the curses, the only way of becoming a ghost or becoming a customizable skeleton without emporium items.
To be honest, I just got my ghost curse and legendary curse, and I don't see myself joining the guardians of fortune ever again. I don't have any motivation to keep doing Hourglass PvP. I am at 105 and it will remain there for the rest of time I have this game. And I am happy with the Dark Warsmith costume I got during an emporium sale. Hourglass was unfun for me, and perhaps some people feel the same way.
Hipotetically, if at level 100 you didn't get the curses, but rather get a hat or a jacket or even a ship set I would have never ever touched the hourglass ever. I really don't care that I got slightly better at naval PvP, I prefer to simply sail away and avoid other players instead of fighting them. I don't even play High Seas that much, I only do it when I want some extra gold or reputation, and when I do I will go to the Devil's Roar so I can avoid everyone else. I simply got the ghost curse for the sake of being a ghost, it was never my intention to be flex the curse or to show off I am good at PvP. I touched the hourglass this last gold and glory weekend because I still have a long way to go for the reapers lair, but it reminded me why abandoned it after I got the legendary curse.
I haye how the current system will never take into consideration the time invested, the effort I put or how close I was to sink my opponent. If I lose I will always get thay tiny bit of xp, it's demoralizing and makes me feel that it is not worth my time just for a cosmetic in game. I didn't want a trophy, I just wanted to be a ghost because there is no other way to be a ghost aside from being in the ferry of the damned.
I dislike the idea of hourglass using streaks, specially when battles can be long. I feel like it is like a capture the flag game mode, except the enemy can uncapture flags you captured, and going back to 0, and with no time limit. It down didn't encourage me to improve at PvP, I feel like it encouraged me to win fast or lose fast, or else I am wasting my time. And I don't feel like trying to improve at PvP will solve the problem about how I feel at hourglass. In order to win, someone else must lose, in order for someone to progress at a decent rate, someone else has to get that tiny bit of xp. For every winner there is a loser, and I think just trying to not be on the losing side isn't enough to sustain the game mode, it isn't enough to have a healthy player pool. The losing side needs motivation to keep trying despite those losing streaks, or else they will abandon hourglass and never show up again. I don't think that trying to improve at hourglass is the definitive solution to make the playerbase increase or at least stay at the same number.
When I lost constantly, every level felt so distant. And it was even more frustrating knowing that I gave everything I got and still lost just to get that tiny bit of allegiance. I can clearly see why loss farmers exist. Some players just want to finish the match as quickly as possible, and they are not confident enough to win. You could say that you should try to win, and improve at PvP, but that still doesn't solve the issue that one side must lose always and thay side must always get the tiny bit no matter how hard they fight. Just being on the winning side doesn't solve the problem that someone in the match had to endure the pain of having wasted time only to get that tiny bit, the same tiny bit that other achieve faster by just dropping anchor. Losers need more motivation to keep trying, even if they know they are going to lose.
Perhaps the skeleton curse will not get a huge ammount of customizable parts unless a bigger part of the playerbase adquires it. So far we got the level 100 reaper parts, which was made for reapers in yhe same update every trading company got an extra costume at level 100. Aside from that, the skeleton curse has not recieved more parts since it was introduced in season 8.
I wish hourglass was much more casual friendly, and it would alleviate losses a bit more than that it does now.
I don't like when people compare the gold curse to the ghost and skeleton curse, because I don't like the grind for the shores of gold tall tales either. I enjoyed the story line, I really did, but to repeat it 5 times? I think that is artificial replayability. Redoing the tall tales because the game tells me to do it, instead of repeating them because I want to do it on my own will, I think that was a mistake, and thay prevented me from going for the gold curse. I don't like how the gold curse looks, and I don't care for the status symbol that others want from it. (Ironic that a PvE focused player lile me went for the ghost curse but avoided the gold curse). The Heart of Fire tall tale was a huge improvement imo, because it had less sailing around and more time enjoying the tall tale itself with the fire traps, and it had three different paths choosable by the player, you could try to check each path out of curiosity so there was another reason to repeat it aside from the game telling the player to do it. And Pirate'a life and Monkey Island tall tales are fantastic because the reason to replay them is for finding the side objectives and optional easter eggs, but the tall tales didn't ask to repeat the tall tales many times.
I don't like comparing the gold curse with the ghost curse, just because a less enjoyable design was made before does not mean they have to do it again. And when losing it felt so grindy for me, that even the next reward, the title at each ten levels, felt so distant. Until the curse there are five figureheads which look similar, and ten titles, which you cannot see yourself unless you open the menu. I don't think the titles and figureheads are enough motivation to keep trying.Anyway, just my wall of text of thoughts. Perhaps hourglass will never change, the quest board didn't change either and it is a permanent addition that didn't recieve any change since the season it was introduced.
How do you make pvp fun or unfun?
You find a random pirate, you fire cannons, sword fight, shoot guns and sink ship
Everything that happens during is up to the player to make fun or unfunIf you remove the curses, what is left is those leaving hourglass and going out into adventure more and still doing the same thing. Besides, not everyone is playing just for curses, that just a side bonus.
I like them to add a new rule. Nobody wears costumes or curses in hourglass matches.
Let see what excuses people come up with instead “I keep fighting skeleton overlords”. Still thinking having a curse means skillIt's the exact opposite of my style but that's why it's easy for me to relate to the people that play it all day.
My play style is rare, very time consuming, rewarding, and at some point just becomes a major part of the story and socializing around the community.
It's their way of playing in a rewarding way based on their personalities and it's their way of participating in the community.
Most people aren't interested in playing how I do, most aren't interested in the daily hg grind. That's the point of the game overall, having an environment that supports a lot of different ways to play and enjoy the game.
People playing this game in entirely different ways is what makes the adventure game a stronger experience.
They should keep the cosmetics behind hourglass imo, but revamp it or add more to it to spice things up. As well they should revert their restriction on third party rep if they ever do revamp.
What hourglass needs imo is an in world thing that you dont have to dive for, that possibly focuses on third party rep, like returning the fort beacons and tying them in, or including the upcoming burning blade in hourglass some way.
I'm right there with you, honestly. The Hourglass grind is honestly the worst slog I've ever experienced in any game, and I've SLOGGED in WoW's PvP.
Credit where it's due, I have gotten better generally speaking at my PvP skills - it does translate to adventure. The issue is that the gap between hourglass players, and regular adventure players is just astronomically higher, it feels like. The last six sailing sessions with my crew, we've not sank once - we've DONE the sinking of other crews.
But the second I jump on to hourglass, I'm getting dumpstered and it feels awful. I already got my Ghost Curse back when S8 first dropped, and that was bad enough even with a larger pool of players. But trying to get my skeleton curse now feels SO much worse. Embarrassing to say, but I can barely get a 2 streak. Granted I play solo usually, but still it just feels so bad.
I want to be done with this egregious grind so badly, but playing Hourglass is just simply not fun in the slightest, when I'm consistently paired against people who clearly main this mode (no disrespect to them, either). Just feels bad getting paired with someone leagues ahead of me, and no amount of coping and "learning from my losses" is going to make a notable difference against someone who plays this mode constantly.
Maybe if Hourglass had more rewards to earn, daily play bonuses, etc to make the grind more meaningful, it wouldn't feel so bad.
@hiradc said in Don't take hourglass player counts as a sign that people actually enjoy hourglass:
I for one will be sad to see you go once you have your curse and miss out on all those free wins.
That was so cold 👀🤣
@legatus-crow said in Don't take hourglass player counts as a sign that people actually enjoy hourglass:
If you put a grindy but unique curses behind the most unfun gamemode possible, and people still do it, it isn't a sign that people like the gamemode.
You don't think hourglass is fun? Fair enough, that's your opinion. Personally, I still enjoy it as it's pretty much the only thing I do in the game. I've had both level 1000 gold curses for about a year now and still play even though there's nothing to work for regarding commendations or cosmetics (except the titles at 9999 I suppose).
I promise you it will go in the gutter. So, so much faster than arenas ever would be
Arena and hourglass are just two completely different things man. Arena was a separate mode, whereas hourglass is integrated into adventure. No matter how much the hourglass population fluctuates, it probably won't get removed as it's just a feature within the standard game mode. With that being said, I'd love to see them make some improvements to hourglass, such as adding more incentives to play it, as there's not really enough to convince the average player to even consider putting the time into it at the moment.
the fights take so long if both people haven't looted anything before starting the match
I mean if you dive without even crating the outpost quick, how do you except to win in a reasonable time frame? That seems like an issue you can fix on your own. Don't get any chains or captaincy food didn't work when you bought it? Just dive to another outpost and stock up before queuing up.
Everybody is dunking on the OP but people are willing to pay obscene prices just for the old promo cosmetics on ebay because they wanna look cool. Imagine how much you could charge for a fully customizable ghost or skeleton player model with its own separate cosmetic shop? So many live service games these days fight for your time/money and you know damn well time is more valuable if the person has the option to pay up instead. Anybody i know who still plays SoT is not playing Hourglass just like how they werent playing Arena unless they happen to be a twitch streamer in which case of course theyre going to play, its their job more or less.
The fact that Hourglass has seen no major shakeups to its mechanics or rewards after this long is not a good look. It made a horrible first impression on me at launch so i never looked back even with the minor changes it got post release. Im sure im not the only one considering how rarely i actually see other players with these curses in my sessions even before the influx of PS5 players.
@legatus-crow said in Don't take hourglass player counts as a sign that people actually enjoy hourglass:
@a10dr4651 said in Don't take hourglass player counts as a sign that people actually enjoy hourglass:
Alot of people taking part already have the curses, you see plenty of complaints about hourglass stating unfair match making, "I keep getting matched against skelly curse sweats". So no I don't think removing the curses would stop the small group taking part from playing.
What stops the majority of the playerbase jumping in is the lack of reward, lack of variety and lack of the PvPvE/risk vs reward gameplay that makes adventure so popular.
It needs daily deeds, first win bonus, defensive to be more relevant and some form of PvPvE event tied into it for more to take part.ive encountered a single person with the skeleton curse after like 5 days of trying hourglass and absolutely no one with the fortune curse. i can win matches where i try just fine, but 90% of the time if i try even a little bit it takes like 20-30+ min per round. I just got out of one with some guardians of fortune where it lasted like 40+ minutes because they would sail as far as possible anytime i hit their ship so they could bail and repair holes. they had the most god awful aim i'd ever seen, predictably only used blunders, and never tried to board, not even once. they had no loot, no incentive, just constantly waste time, spend time sailing around a limited circle and stay out of range. rare will add 2 brand new weapons after how many years that are god awful for pvp rather than add anything at all that helps sink a boat. a dollar store sword you can throw and a pistol with twice the barrels and 1/3 the punch. why in the world didnt they consider a boarding axe or some kind of tool to damage ships by boarding even if it was just specifically for arena type fighting? why not make the HG arena shrink after 10 minutes? where the hell is the hourglass part of hourglass? how tf is this fun actually?
is anyone who has approx 3 hours a day or less of any leisure time just not meant to play this game? why?
So you’ve tried hourglass “for 5 days” and now you’re telling everyone what the pulse of HG is? I encounter curses all of the time, but I’m guessing that it has something to do with however the matchmaking works since I have both curses, 200 in guardians, nearly 400 in servants, and I HG frequently, so perhaps the matchmaking works in some regard.
When I first started doing HG my matches tended to last longer as well. The reason for this was simple, I was not very lethal and neither were my opponents. If both participants aren’t great at sealing the deal then the matches will go longer. This is doubly so when playing solo since solo play is inherently less lethal as it is. As you improve you’ll be able to sink your opponents faster, and the matches you get will probably be versus other opponents with better abilities. This is a you thing. Keep at it and your HG matches will go quicker because you’ll make them go quicker.
My entire guild does HG regularly and we have a variety of skill levels and faction ranks. They love it, otherwise they probably wouldn’t do it; which is totally an option btw, you don’t have to do HG, but you want the curse and so you do.
I’ll be completely frank with you, this post reads just like some of the other HG post on these forums read - you don’t actually like it but you want the curse as quickly as possible. You want HG changed to suit you, not to improve HG, and I’d wager that after you get the curse you’ll never look back, leaving us all stuck with the changes you advocated for even though you don’t even like HG.
We aren’t all entitled to every curse, you don’t have to get every curse. I want the shores of gold curse but I really don’t enjoy doing tall tales, but I don’t come on the forums asking for Tall Tales to be quicker. That would be a disservice to those who do like tall tales and have taken the time to complete them.
People do like HG, and some people don’t, that’s normal, you are not an authority on who does it for what reason, especially not after trying for “5 days”. Get better at PvP, which HG will inevitably do for you, and your matches will become quicker. I don’t know what my average HG match time is but I’d wager around 8 minutes. Some longer, some shorter. I play on NA West and the queue is healthy.
I’m all for ideas on how to make HG more rewarding , especially from 0-100, but not on the basis of “I can’t sink people quickly please change HG”.
@hiradc said in Don't take hourglass player counts as a sign that people actually enjoy hourglass:
I for one will be sad to see you go once you have your curse and miss out on all those free wins.
i know you think this is a clever response that's meant to hurt my feelings but i want you to know i dont care about how good you think i am at this game, because i know you dont get paid to play it and neither do i so your efforts and achievements are totally intangible and worthless; what youre tacitly admitting is you would prefer if the people you fight didnt fight back at all because youre presuming im a loss farmer who never tries (which is funny, again, because it proves my point. both that you encounter these types, and that you dont enjoy hourglass enough to admit that pvping against people who dont try is preferable). i do try, sometimes, but when i do, the bottom line is that it isnt fun; mainly because it takes so long, but honestly because i dont like the pvp loop in this game and would prefer it to be arena style if i was going to do it rather than a potential hour long battle of attrition. sometimes i do just play suicidally, like ram my boat and try to get a kill, and sometimes it just ends up with both ships sinking and the result being a coin toss but this is the preferrable outcome to me because i literally dont want to play against people who are willing to sit there for 40+ minutes to secure a win.
there are so many ways to make the hourglass grind reasonable and less of an obnoxious loop, and PvP in general and they basically havent come up with anything to spice it up in the entire time this game has been out because the weapons they just released are dog and everyone uses the same 2, maybe 3. they could have made the arena shrink over time, they could even add weapons available specific to this gamemode specifically so that sinking takes less time once an entire crew is dead and youve boarded so you dont have to resort to spawn camping and fire bombs so much. boarding axes have shown up a pretty large chunk of times in the search results, i get that they might be a bit much when youre considering how easy it should be to ruin and profit for yourself off of 2-3 hrs of someone elses collecting loot, but in a PvP gamemode i am pro sinking ships and less spawncamping and people staring at the holes i put in their ship nonstop and bailing constantly. my commentary isnt even 100% specific to hourglass either, its commentary on pvp in general. spawn camping is boring, chasing people is boring, getting chased is boring. the weapons feel good to use in pve, and horribly, awfully imbalanced in pvp and the usage rates are undeniably, objectively and inarguably skewed. it is bad design
@capt-greldik said in Don't take hourglass player counts as a sign that people actually enjoy hourglass:
@legatus-crow said in Don't take hourglass player counts as a sign that people actually enjoy hourglass:
I’m all for ideas on how to make HG more rewarding , especially from 0-100, but not on the basis of “I can’t sink people quickly please change HG”.
Ok, but unfortunately that's what my suggestions are, because my feedback is that HG sucks because it takes too long, and there are incentives in it to be obnoxious, sail away and drag it on for 40 minutes almost as if you hope your opponent will go to sleep in order to work the next day before it's over so you can get some rep. 5 days is a decent amount of time to me, and im using others experiences, where their forum and reddit posts get deleted, to show that if you dissent they silence your opinion even though its an extremely common experience and common suggestion/feedback that HG matches should be shorter because they simply take too long. That included with the earlier poster said, someone has to lose and get basically nothing. Of course I want the curse. If you think tall tales take too long then I don't even know what I would say because its basically guaranteed with the inclusion of safer seas and you could probably complete all of them in less time than it takes to get to 100 tbh. What I'm insinuating is that the pulse means nothing because a valuable curse is locked behind it and I am throwing in suggestions but if none of them make the matches less grindy or decisive, then no, sorry, I think that HG sucks and that's my feedback lol. Maybe if it was based on time spent in a single match I could get behind it, then the guardians i killed yesterday would have left with something after 40 minutes of fighting rather than it being a gigantic waste of time to them, and loss farming wouldnt be lucrative because if you spend 3 minutes and then die youll get less
@fiberfrag said in Don't take hourglass player counts as a sign that people actually enjoy hourglass:
I mean if you dive without even crating the outpost quick, how do you except to win in a reasonable time frame? That seems like an issue you can fix on your own. Don't get any chains or captaincy food didn't work when you bought it? Just dive to another outpost and stock up before queuing up.
i dont expect to win, i expect to increase the amount of times i am able to even get into a match and complete it per night because i dont have that much time to play in the first place. i try to win, but i usually make it quick and its usually an attempt at a high risk high reward maneuver and thats really it. if me and the person i was fighting against didnt loot the island, one of us would run out of cannonballs or wood. that would be the ideal to me because it would at least go by faster. the general experience for me is that ill put a ton of holes in someones ship each time i have an angle on them and theyll just fix them and bail every time by sailing away, sometimes theyll even have it fixed if i shoot holes and then board. the fires spread very slowly and barely do any damage as well, so its usually a slow burn of spawn camping and me eating all their food to waste it. not really my idea of fun pvp. id have actually engaged with arena pvp if the reward was a skeleton curse, id have done it for fun from time to time too if the resources were a little more scarce as well, nevermind streamers or whatever, but id still be here talking about how there's an obvious weapon imbalance that nobody at rare ever seems to care enough about to touch
Everybody is dunking on the OP
im absolutely not the only person who feels the way i do, ive seen threads and posts just get deleted by mods before for criticizing hourglass like i said. if people are doing it, its not an indication that people enjoy it.
also putting "git gud" through chatgpt isn't considered dunking to me and honestly it's kind of sad that there's even an expectation amongst players to "do their homework" on the intricacies of a game that seems to be designed to be extremely simplistic and has so many immense and obvious pvp issues like the imbalance i previously mentioned. people constantly asking for more safer seas stuff in spite of Rare having gone on record saying they don't want to do that is a testament to how little people care because of how much they can see themselves enjoying almost every other aspect of the game with their friends alone. id at least rather there be some kind of economic reason for a game to waste such an immense amount of time if the obvious lack of foresight wasn't bad enough
@legatus-crow said in Don't take hourglass player counts as a sign that people actually enjoy hourglass:
@hiradc said in Don't take hourglass player counts as a sign that people actually enjoy hourglass:
I for one will be sad to see you go once you have your curse and miss out on all those free wins.
i know you think this is a clever response that's meant to hurt my feelings but i want you to know i dont care about how good you think i am at this game, because i know you dont get paid to play it and neither do i so your efforts and achievements are totally intangible and worthless; what youre tacitly admitting is you would prefer if the people you fight didnt fight back at all because youre presuming im a loss farmer who never tries (which is funny, again, because it proves my point. both that you encounter these types, and that you dont enjoy hourglass enough to admit that pvping against people who dont try is preferable). i do try, sometimes, but when i do, the bottom line is that it isnt fun; mainly because it takes so long, but honestly because i dont like the pvp loop in this game and would prefer it to be arena style if i was going to do it rather than a potential hour long battle of attrition. sometimes i do just play suicidally, like ram my boat and try to get a kill, and sometimes it just ends up with both ships sinking and the result being a coin toss but this is the preferrable outcome to me because i literally dont want to play against people who are willing to sit there for 40+ minutes to secure a win.
there are so many ways to make the hourglass grind reasonable and less of an obnoxious loop, and PvP in general and they basically havent come up with anything to spice it up in the entire time this game has been out because the weapons they just released are dog and everyone uses the same 2, maybe 3. they could have made the arena shrink over time, they could even add weapons available specific to this gamemode specifically so that sinking takes less time once an entire crew is dead and youve boarded so you dont have to resort to spawn camping and fire bombs so much. boarding axes have shown up a pretty large chunk of times in the search results, i get that they might be a bit much when youre considering how easy it should be to ruin and profit for yourself off of 2-3 hrs of someone elses collecting loot, but in a PvP gamemode i am pro sinking ships and less spawncamping and people staring at the holes i put in their ship nonstop and bailing constantly. my commentary isnt even 100% specific to hourglass either, its commentary on pvp in general. spawn camping is boring, chasing people is boring, getting chased is boring. the weapons feel good to use in pve, and horribly, awfully imbalanced in pvp and the usage rates are undeniably, objectively and inarguably skewed. it is bad design
@capt-greldik said in Don't take hourglass player counts as a sign that people actually enjoy hourglass:
@legatus-crow said in Don't take hourglass player counts as a sign that people actually enjoy hourglass:
I’m all for ideas on how to make HG more rewarding , especially from 0-100, but not on the basis of “I can’t sink people quickly please change HG”.
Ok, but unfortunately that's what my suggestions are, because my feedback is that HG sucks because it takes too long, and there are incentives in it to be obnoxious, sail away and drag it on for 40 minutes almost as if you hope your opponent will go to sleep in order to work the next day before it's over so you can get some rep. 5 days is a decent amount of time to me, and im using others experiences, where their forum and reddit posts get deleted, to show that if you dissent they silence your opinion even though its an extremely common experience and common suggestion/feedback that HG matches should be shorter because they simply take too long. That included with the earlier poster said, someone has to lose and get basically nothing. Of course I want the curse. If you think tall tales take too long then I don't even know what I would say because its basically guaranteed with the inclusion of safer seas and you could probably complete all of them in less time than it takes to get to 100 tbh. What I'm insinuating is that the pulse means nothing because a valuable curse is locked behind it and I am throwing in suggestions but if none of them make the matches less grindy or decisive, then no, sorry, I think that HG sucks and that's my feedback lol. Maybe if it was based on time spent in a single match I could get behind it, then the guardians i killed yesterday would have left with something after 40 minutes of fighting rather than it being a gigantic waste of time to them, and loss farming wouldnt be lucrative because if you spend 3 minutes and then die youll get less
I don’t use reddit and I don’t see forum post about HG getting closed on these forums, so I don’t really know where you’re coming from on that.
It sounds like you don’t think tall tales are too bad, that’s great, and I think that HG is really fun. It’s just a difference in opinion. I don’t care for tall tales but I don’t think they should be quicker just to get me the curse faster. I’m 25/45 out of shores of gold but hit a mental block, I also did them all on high seas with almost no interference so changing seas doesn’t make a difference to me, I’m just not into it. My point is that changing HG so that someone who has admittedly only played it for 5 days, and admittedly doesn’t like it, is not good for HG, it’s just good for you. And again, once you become more efficient at sinking people your match lengths will decrease, even as a solo. I almost always play with a group these days but the majority of my HG matches are still solo overall.
The take-away here is as you get more lethal you will without a doubt have faster matches. Competing against other humans always has a learning curve to overcome or at least get acquainted with.
@legatus-crow hurt your feelings? I think you're overthinking it. Your original post had no purpose as far as I'm concerned. A whiny title and a request to move a reward you need to work to earn behind a pay wall. I disagree with this on every level. Hourglass could definitely do with some improvements to increase engagement but yours wasn't a request for that (at least not originally)
@legatus-crow said in Don't take hourglass player counts as a sign that people actually enjoy hourglass:
![alt text]@shadowseas6979 said in Don't take hourglass player counts as a sign that people actually enjoy hourglass:
With respect I understand where you might be coming from, however I have to politely disagree, I like PVP hourglass as a thing to do when I'm board, not because it has a curse (Though the curse is cool), and it's not just me I have experienced players with the gold ghost curse and they still do PVP for Athena (before you could level up Athena to 500.) just for fun. So if Rare did remove the curse from PVP, yes the player count will reduce but the match making will still be as quick as it is now.
If you were to take a gander at forums regarding feedback for this gamemode you'd see that my complaints about the hilariously obnoxious match length compared to the grind are seemingly nonexistant and ill tell you its 100% because everytime I see one in recent posts on reddit and elsewhere the mods just remove them less than 3 hrs after someone gives this sort of feedback. Rare needs to accept that this sucks and we need other options for increasing this rep rank. Anything faster. God, even a temporary weapon specific to hourglass, like a boarding axe you can use to make holes in a ship once you board. It's so slow that people loss farm, devise cheese where they sail you out of bounds or stick to the usual unfun experience of spawn camping and I'm guilty of it too but its just a sign that it isn't fun period
also, yes, if you encounter someone who bails no water, repairs no holes, and basically afks the second they get into the match, you can sink them with 1 cannon ball. if you encounter someone who has more than 10 pieces of wood, you aren't sinking anything with 10 cannonballs objectively 98%+ of the time. I'm smart enough to know that isn't true
Drop mast, put 9 holes in, 1 ball and camp you can absolutely sink someone. I’ve boarded straight away and sunk them with no cannons. Either lock down the ship and spawn camp with fire, slam their ship into an island or rocks, or sail them out of bounds.
The game mode is still fun to me. The thing is MOST People go into this like is a High Seas fight, it is NOT, it couldn’t be further from a high seas fight and if you treat it as such you’ll probably sink quickly. The game mode is intense and can be quite frustrating when you lose but how do you celebrate a hard fought win? Ecstatic right?! That’s the point of this mode.
Also a ton of super high level HG players exist and this is the only mode that they play, should we delete it because YOU don’t like it?
@legatus-crow I think that newer players to PvP are so adverse to sinking that they rep IMMEDIATELY and pull out of the fight. It is something that needs to change, but it’s ultimately that player’s decision and right. What if they are on a large streak and wanna keep it going?
I am VERY against a shrinking circle. This isn’t COD where you can sit stationary, the ships continually move, what if you demast and board that ship but then the circle moves to where the anchored ship is but now you sink because you are outta bounds? It is not a great method. I would support a time limit if no damage has been done in x amount of time.
To echo what others have said
I do find that when fighting newer crews or players matches take much longer than experienced crews. Experienced players will generally toss hands and stay in it. Newer player get his a couple times and immediately move to reset.
Yes chains work here, but not every player has mastered them and I get their woes as every time they get close to a win someone pulls out and drags the fight on another 20 min.
I don't often try to do Hourglass because, as a solo player, the matchmaking and the grind both have issues. An even bigger issue is that there are zero tutorials or practice areas where you can improve without getting dunked on for months.
If we look at the history of piracy, almost all pirates were sailors, merchants, or naval soldiers before becoming pirates. They all had some semblance of skills at sea before they decided on a pirate life. SoT does not offer that sort of training. I wish they did, though. A practice course or moving "target dummies" would help so much with learning naval combat.
I would like to have some of the skeleton cosmetics, but as a solo sloop player, that will probably never happen. Yes, I could join a guild and make friends, and I likely will, but that's a big ask for people who want to play a game in their free time. Especially when the game requires you to go do Discord (or elsewhere) to even find a guild.
Hourglass could be fun, but right now, it's only fun for really good veteran players. Everyone else seems to hate it.
If I could buy the Skelly cosmetics, I would barely ever play Hourglass—at least not in its current state. PVP is not where I find my enjoyment in this game, but I can see how it could be fun. Even if we want to try PvP in HG though, we get dunked on so mercilessly that we can barely even practice.
That being said, I'd still like to play it to improve my PvP, but it needs to do a better job of matching us with players of similar skill.
@v1ne6 I earned both curses predominantly solo slooping. Duo sloop HG is probably the SWEATIEST mode. It can be done and you will lose until you get better with the meta. Totally doable though. I’m no sweat lord
@legatus-crow said in Don't take hourglass player counts as a sign that people actually enjoy hourglass:
i dont expect to win, i expect to increase the amount of times i am able to even get into a match and complete it per night because i dont have that much time to play in the first place.
So if that's the case, wouldn't it be more effective to just raise anchor, dive, and loss farm? It's not meant to be an easy grind that every player completes. There are just some things that the average casual player won't be able to get done in certain games and I think that's fine. It'd completely take away any reason to grind if the rewards were just handed out like participation trophies.
Somewhat related I suppose, but it makes me think back to all the players who chose to abuse the hourglass exploit and got their level 1000 gold curses within a few days - not only does it ruin it for people who did the grind legit, but it makes it worthless to them as well. Afterall it's not a sprint, it's a marathon.
@legatus-crow
HG really isnt funny, I totally agree. I did the lvl 1000 athena, but I wont ever go for the reaper, simply because its not funny.absolutely!
i have got to level 80 and I'm so done with this. i don't know why but i've started to get unreasonably upset when i lose because i did everything right, and still lose.
what can i do when i get one balled, masted and boarded by a sniper blunder god with a hale dozen blunder bombs?
sure i win some, but i can tell they don't like losing any more that me and i don't like doing that to the poor newbz.and why is it so hard to be cursed with the most lore common cures in the game anyway? Are we to believe every bounty gold skelly is a high ranking member of the Servants of the Flame? Or the phantoms of the sea forts are Guardians of the sea?
