Better HG fight rating system

An algorithm could be created that collects metadata during HG battles, such as combat time, distance traveled by ship, number of cannonballs fired, number of hits on enemy ships, number of frags, amount of ship damage repaired, amount of water pumped out, etc

Loss farming 2.0
Spending good hour and working together to achieve high amounts of exp.
Or if you sink sat within 10 seconds….how much exp does the winner and loser get? Maybe I sunk because of a third party?

To the winner go the spoils. If loot was the reward the winner would also take all.

That being said, I feel that any modifier to the experience gained based on actions would quickly be abused to net more allegiance for the fight.

Imagine for a second you face off against a crew significantly better than you but instead of sinking your Galleon they just continue to fire 100s of cannonballs into upper deck holes because the more cannons they fire the more experience for winning they will get. If the experience modifier was based on pirate kills, then they just camp you. If the experience modifier was based on time in match, then we would have ships perpetually running without fighting because the longer the match goes the more experience they will get when they eventually lose.

Alternatively, assuming that in a perfect world nobody abuses the system highly skilled crews that are quick and efficient with sinking opponents would net less experience. Loss farmers would actively hurt crews looking to fight.

Maybe there is a metric that can be tracked that will not actively make the experience worse for one or both parties, but I do not know what that is. Under the current system boats are incentivized to be as quick, efficient and consistent in each battle.

I understand this as most have felt the frustration of long drawn out fights that could go either way ending in loss and feeling worthless.

The issue is, if you implemented this, considering you have people who loss farm or run in the hope their opponent gives up...you may see an increase in behaviour where their sole goal is to extend the duration of fight in order to maximise rep.

This absolutely would not be worth the trade off.

@BurnBacon
@trainowns
@HiradC

The phenomenon of farming already exists. Every 4-5 battles, a solo galleon sails out and immediately gives up the fight. It's not a good approach to dismiss every solution through the lens of dishonest players with malicious intent.

It's not without reason that I mentioned an algorithm, not a strict stat boost. The experience gained would be a component of all data received during combat, specifically to prevent dishonest player practices.

@lusandar

How does Rare differentiate between an inexperienced player trying to learn and someone dishonest trying to game the system? If I never fire a cannonball but only sail ships out of the circle will that be recorded as dishonest play? What if I run out of cannonballs and am trying to collect barrels from an island? The situations presented and available in each battle are wildy different and trying to determine what is intentional or just happenstance is an unreasonable request to code into any system.

While a solo galleon sailing out and sinking within moments is something all hourglass pirates will deal with at some point it is a quick encounter that is over immediately. Any metric that I can personally think of that could be used to add additional experience to a win or loss would also involve a longer drawn-out experience by either the winning or losing ship. You may not want to view your suggestion through the eyes of a dishonest player, but the fact is as you stated above every 4-5 matches you get a free win. What if instead every 4-5 matches we get a ship that runs to drive up the time? A ship that camps you to farm pirate kills? A ship that intentionally doesn't sink you to rack up cannon shots?

Alternatively, you did not address the other concern I brought up which is overly efficient, and skilled crews would net less experience for quickly sinking an opponent.

I am all for increased rewards or anything that would "freshen up" HG play to bring a larger portion of the player base to it. What I do not want is a deterioration in the quality of battles which could drive participant numbers down even further.

Under the current system players are rewarded for being as quick and efficient in battle as possible. Anything added on that rewards a player for not being quick and efficient I personally think will be a negative for the HG system and end up delivering lower quality battles either through dishonest practices or ignorance.

IMHO a win is a win and should reward the crew with the same amount of rep, no matter if the fight took an hour and hundreds of hits or the opponent scuttled at the start of the battle (including the apparant bug/exploit that sometimes the scuttling crew does it so quick the opponent does not get any rep).

If Rare could determine the effort of the losing crew somehow fairly (a combination of time spend, number of hits/time, number of fixes/time &c), I would not be against a certain amount of bonus rep instead of the current rep of losing a battle. This should however be not even close to the amount the winner gets, perhaps double the current rep a crew gets for losing.
They can ven add more restrictions, as you should have an emissary flag up.

No effort and losing should reward even less of a reward as it currently does.

The only thing I think you get wrong is awards/tracking for player kills. It would incentivize spawn camping, which outright doesn't get a ship sunk. Players would anchor you and continue to kill you until you scuttle, not doing ship damage so they can get as many points for player kills as possible.

@trainowns If they keep only hitting your upper deck, they aren't going to sink you, and no one in galley HG repairs uppers anyways. If you are repairing uppers in galley HG you are wasting time and resources. If they keep only hitting uppers, you just have to hit low and you are guaranteed to win...

@hiradc Time alone would not be the determining factor for XP though. Time would be one of the factors, but it would not be significant enough on its own to mean anything. Obviously the real XP gains would be in things like cannon shots hit, demasting, bailing and repairing. Things relating to the actual combat elements. Imagine you get 5xp per cannon hit, but if you get multiple hits in a row it adds 5 more xp and gives a multiplier. Sure, 5xp is nothing, but if you hit 10 shots in a row, suddenly its 500xp. (1 hit being 5xp x1, 2 hits being 10xp x2, 3 being 15xp x3, so on). Time would be one of the lowest weighted factors honestly, if its even factored at all.

Well in the end,
Hourglass is just a Tool for Pvp

Win or Lose, you are signing up for pvp and getting what happens during actual gameplay: 1) Someone fights back 2) someone runs from a fight.
Start trying to turn Hourglass into some Comp battle ground will just scare off more players. (Point based system)

@lusandar Loss farmers exist because of the current system which does not make players feel as though their time is respected.

@potatosord Hence why I sued hitting uppers on Galleon as an example for unsavory behavior when potentially farming experience if "cannons fired" were some type of modifiers for HG experience rewarded.

As @Worst-TDMer stated so well "Some of you were never farmed for silver in arena and it shows."