Make it EASIER to GET BASE CURSE or MORE WAYS to get ALLEGIANCE levels

@ogron2358 said in Make it EASIER to GET BASE CURSE or MORE WAYS to get ALLEGIANCE levels:

@lordqulex Mostly I was responding to "Therefore, the only mode locking content behind one specific thing is HG" which is just plain false.

I don't have data on players and numbers so its hard to know anything for sure, but my experience with the community is different. While I will agree that there are fewer PVP players, in my experience, the PVP players are often the ones that invest much more time into thew game. So in terms of number of people, yes PVE is greater, but I would say its likely much closer in terms of playtime. There was plenty of excitement around S8 when it released. If you watched twitch at all, you would have seen that. There were so many people into it, some smaller streamers started to really grow this season. "the community in general barely tolerates PVP" - I wholeheartedly disagree with this based on my experience. (Thats why they are adding the inability to red sea loot, the community likes the pvp and thinks its bs)."

There are problems with pvp that you listed, but there are also things that make this game so unique and fun with PVP. I play a lot of PVP games. What I love about this one is that the skill to become good takes a lot of practice. There is a huge learning curve to get good. That makes this game so fun. Unlike switching from Apex to COD (which are both shooters) it doesn't take someone experienced in one to get the hang of another fairly quickly. This game takes a lot of practice to master, and there are still tons of things to learn and improve upon. Also, the team dynamic is so important, so you can't necessarily just hop in solo and clap everyone. Thats why I love the PVP in this game so much.

In general, I think the hate in S8 isn't that high. I think that they launched those statistics on twitter on 12/2 shows how much life this mode has breathed into the game. I think interest in streamers like Mino and Mixel show how much interest there is in the content. Its been fun to see, and its been my favorite season so far. I think the season is just winding down and I think lots of people over played because it was so fun and we have some burnout.

I deal better with data, claims like its a dumpster fire or there is a lot of S8/HG hate just don't do much for me without seeing much backing it.

Fair enough, but remember twitch is an echo chamber. "People who watch twitch streamers love the streamer's content" gets a well duh from me. Of course there's going to be lots of accolades for the content they're creating from their fans. Some of the big streamers are already off hourglass, and that speaks volumes to me. Even the content creators are in the "get cursed and get out" crowd which doesn't bode well for hourglass' longevity.

I read the forums, I read reddit, I watch streamers, and honestly, cumulatively, it seems hourglass was not well received and interest is dwindling. They didn't retire arena because it was a bustling bastion of activity, they retired it because it saw 3% of playtime. Mods wouldn't anchor nearly daily requests for PVE or private servers if the community loved PVP more than getting dumped on by a more skilled crew.

But your right, this is all anecdotal observations and gut instinct until Rare releases numbers. All the publicly available numbers on steam and on tracker sites are tangential at best. 🤷‍♂️

@ogron2358 said in Make it EASIER to GET BASE CURSE or MORE WAYS to get ALLEGIANCE levels:

If you say legend of the veil is PVPVE, because PVP can happen on it, fine. BUT that also means HG is PVPVE because loot stacking to increase your bonus is part of it as well. PVE happens on it.

Hourglass is PVE theoretically but not practically, that I think is the difference. Yes, you can collect treasure. Yes, you may get invaded. Yes, if you win you get more allegiance.

But

Collecting treasure without fighting over it gives you practically no allegiance. Defenders take hours to get invaded because of various reasons: ship position prevents invasion, server population prevents invasion, MMR prevents invasion, and invader vs. invader being prioritized by the match making engine prevents invasion. And don't forget, you get zero bonus allegiance if you collect treasure from three world events and lose. Yes, defending is technically PVE, but practically not feasible.

The same goes for the veil. Yes, it is technically PVE because you are fighting NPCs. Yes, it is technically PVP because people can come and try to steal your chest of legends. That makes it PVEVP.

The difference is, in my experience, veils are PVEVP because a majority of the time you do have to fight for the chest of legends at the end as it is a highly coveted reward with commendations for stealing them. But hourglass is not PVEVP because the PVE side of it is so broken/inefficient/out of the player's control that it's not reliable.

Veils are reliably PVEVP, and hourglass is effectively exclusively PVP.

@ogron2358 said in Make it EASIER to GET BASE CURSE or MORE WAYS to get ALLEGIANCE levels:

@lordqulex I agree that twitch can be an echo chamber, however, I tried to use examples of streamers who gained a ton of fans when this season came out because of the new content. But again, I see your point.

Also, there is a solid point with the comparison to arena, however, I think how this was implemented makes it a bit different, mostly because you can switch back and forth because you are always on a live server. You can dive to match, sink a ship, now suddenly you see a FOTD up and can go get involved, then after that, you can defend, etc. I think what hurt arena was the fact that was completely separate and a lot of lobby playtime. BUT I could be completely off on what the playerbase likes, you could be dead on, and this mode could die over time.

The most sound argument on this dying is that the main game and natural pvp are still more fun. We could see players get their curses and never revisit it. I thought about this and it is likely what I will do (but it will take me ages to get to 1000 for each). I just like the randomness that happens in the main game. I think they can create reasons to revisit it though. I never thought I would revisit the ledger or fly any emissary once I got all the rewards from it, but they keep adding leger rewards every season, so I keep revisiting it for instance.

Agree, agree agree. I hate playing submarine (dive, dive, dive). I want hourglass faction treasury to work so bad, that would be my preferred playstyle. Vote HG, do a few world events, get invaded, rinse, repeat. Good mix of PVE and PVP with rewards/purpose.

The problem is, defending just can't work in this paradigm. Four other ships on your server? Can't get invaded. Parked at an island so a ship can't spawn in front of you? Can't get invaded. No one near your MMR? Can't get invaded. Without the "on-demand" part of hourglass, on-demand PVP just doesn't work. They don't reward defending nearly enough to make it worth the risk, and even if they did the matching engine seems to prioritize invaders versus invaders, unless the criteria to invade a defender are just so tight it doesn't happen.

I'd say maybe one out of every twenty matches I invade a defender, and that's either because no one is defending because it's not worth doing, or the restrictions on invading defenders is just too tight. Please make this work Rare...

@shenlongkazama said in Make it EASIER to GET BASE CURSE or MORE WAYS to get ALLEGIANCE levels:

@pumpa-cat Most of the complains have valid points though. If you never encountered toxic players or cheaters that's quite an achievement. Competitive games always attract people that use any means necessary to win.

Big reason why I started moving to Xbox for multiplayer games. Much less of that.

Still can't get used to the gamepad controls for SoT though.
That and how settings are shared between Xbox and PC when I don't want them to be, so when I go to play with my crew on PC I need to change my PTT settings.

@soulstinger2k20 said in Make it EASIER to GET BASE CURSE or MORE WAYS to get ALLEGIANCE levels:

Loads of well-spoken views here.
Many people are unhappy that the immensly cool new curses are locked behind not only a playstyle not everyone enjoys, but a fairly immense amount of it.

Even more so for Skeletons, already constrained to a very small selection of cosmetics, already quite costly in gold terms, already have to be unlocked after hitting 100, you have to go on to get hundreds more specific sinks, killstreaks, and additional exhaustive pvp grinding in order to access any additional pieces

On top of the fact that some of the new cosmetics are behind commendations that are currently impossible because the player has zero control over which faction they fight, and the meta is turn in at or before champion status. 🤣

Rare was simply waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off in their estimate of how much people would want to play hourglass versus get the curses in the most efficient way possible then go back to adventure mode. They need to think long and hard about how to better integrate hourglass into adventure mode because as it stands, half the content is inaccessible due to low participation.

@skadiwu said in Make it EASIER to GET BASE CURSE or MORE WAYS to get ALLEGIANCE levels:

Don't get me wrong, the pvp system should still be the sure way to earn the most points. Streaks + Loot makes it the most viable way to do so already.

I want it to be, but that's not the case. I've spent hours as a grade 5 faction treasury and not been invaded for one reason or another. Defending has high potential but at the moment is an utter waste of time.

@skadiwu said in Make it EASIER to GET BASE CURSE or MORE WAYS to get ALLEGIANCE levels:

@lordqulex said in Make it EASIER to GET BASE CURSE or MORE WAYS to get ALLEGIANCE levels:

@skadiwu said in Make it EASIER to GET BASE CURSE or MORE WAYS to get ALLEGIANCE levels:

Don't get me wrong, the pvp system should still be the sure way to earn the most points. Streaks + Loot makes it the most viable way to do so already.

I want it to be, but that's not the case. I've spent hours as a grade 5 faction treasury and not been invaded for one reason or another. Defending has high potential but at the moment is an utter waste of time.

Yeah I agree. There also doesnt seem to be many who get full on loot and go submarine either. So it would be nice if defenders were rewarded better for offering to be targets in the first place. So ideally they should be earning a bit of trickle points for doing events/voyages.

That's because you don't keep loot when you go submarine. The only thing you keep are supply crates and flags. You lose your faction treasury if you dive.

@ogron2358 said in Make it EASIER to GET BASE CURSE or MORE WAYS to get ALLEGIANCE levels:

@crowedhunter I also have no problem with the PL curse (the one with glowing eyes from season 1) being a reward not tied to pvp. In my early early comments (months ago), I was uninformed and knew they added it to the game, but I was unaware that they tied it to PVP when they added it back.

There are issues with the mode, but they are doing a fantastic job addressing them. The mode is vastly improved after I took my 7 week break. Queue times on central and west coast for all boat sizes is very small. I have openly voiced my complaints with the mode.

There isn't a problem with the main issue being discussed here. The main issue being that they have pvp exclusive rewards. This is a PVE and PVP game. To expect the developers to only have rewards for doing one of those things because you don't like the other is absurd. There are two types of players and even if one is bigger than the other, it doesn't mean that rewards for one shouldn't exist. I voice this because I really enjoy the new mode and hope the developers do not cave to players complaining about the mode they don't like.

"To expect the developers to only have rewards for doing one of those things because you don't like the other is absurd." as we have mentioned before none of us have a problem with this- it's the specific rewards they chose to lock behind it (the one that the whole player base has been wanting for years) this is a dream come true for pvp players, but for those who can't- well that's probably worse than it not even being in the game since when it wasn't players could hope for it to come, that is no longer the case since it is already in the game. now, for pve players there is no hope to obtain it anymore.

@ogron2358 said in Make it EASIER to GET BASE CURSE or MORE WAYS to get ALLEGIANCE levels:

@crowedhunter There is plenty of PVE only content. You have to do PVE to get gold curse, you cannot avoid it. You may get some PVP during the content, but that doesn't make it PVP content. Just like me stacking loot for HG doesn't make HG PVE content. You are trying to spin this to be more complex than it is. It isn't. There are two styles of play. Some players prefer one over the other or do not prefer one at all. PVP has few rewards. Now it has some and people are throwing up their arms because they don't like the content.

I personally like when they are able to make content that does both, but they often don't. For instance, 50 ghost captain skulls for the sails. You can obtain these through PVP or PVE because they can be stolen. 100 veil voyages for the ancient sword, however, is PVE content. You have to do the veil to obtain it, and thats it. You cannot obtain it through any means of PVP. No matter how many veils I steal, I cannot obtain even one completion of this. I have to do PVE. I don't prefer this kind of content, but it exists and I understand that it is part of a game that has 2 types of players

Comparing this to something like the gold curse doesn't work so well as there is a major difference between the hourglass curses and the gold curse. That is simply that nobody asked for the gold curse! rare chooses to add it, they can choose how it should be earned and no one will mind. The hourglass curses have been requested forever, therefor rare shouldn't just go locking it behind something only a fraction of the playerbase can actually obtain.

@nex-stargaze said in Make it EASIER to GET BASE CURSE or MORE WAYS to get ALLEGIANCE levels:

@sir-sniffils said in Make it EASIER to GET BASE CURSE or MORE WAYS to get ALLEGIANCE levels:

The hourglass curses have been requested forever, therefor rare shouldn't just go locking it behind something only a fraction of the playerbase can actually obtain.

Oh? So just because you said you want it, means Rare should give it to you in a way that only satisfies you? Are the developers not allowed to make their own decisions on content distribution, or are you just upset that the bottom line behind the requirements of these cosmetics is a part of the game you refuse to participate in a healthy manner?

The main issue with the hourglass is that it heavily lacks balance with its own terminally small matchmaking pools (in NA), and the time investment required is a grind much more grueling than the entirety of the Hunter's Call grind, just to look a little transparent overall, or boney with limited cosmetics. Outside of that, the hourglass is accessible, just not enough players to balance out the matchmaking, because even the curses are not attractive enough to get the casual crowd into the hourglass gameplay.

I've said it in this thread before and I'll say it again, on-demand PVP simply isn't in-demand. Rare created hourglass to bring arena refugees back to the game and to appease content creators, and it was a massive success on that front. The problem is, arena refugees and content creators aren't the majority of players, hence the "terminally small matchmaking pools."

I know we've sparred in the past, but can we at least begin to meet in the middle by agreeing that 1) most of the players want the curses, 2) most of the players really don't care for on-demand PVP, and 3) perhaps these curses as the PVP reward was not the wisest decision made my Rare in that it alienated and irked most of its players?

I'm not sure what the percentages are but something simple like 100 wins or 200 losses to earn the curse? Dying for the cause should count for more. Or 200 wins or 400 losses, but even 400 losses seem like too much to grind. But you get the gist - a 1:2 ratio seems fair overall.

My crew mate and I try our best. But we lose about 70% of our matches. Honestly, I'm ok with the losses since practice, practice, practice, and I find the opt-in system is perfect and exciting. My crew mate sort of rage quits....lol saying it's "not fun"; that the match making is still not fair.

But if we got a bit more allegiance because we chose to "die fighting for the cause", I'd think that would sit better for those knowing they can't compete and may never compete since we are casual players.

@jj-h816 said in Make it EASIER to GET BASE CURSE or MORE WAYS to get ALLEGIANCE levels:

@sir-sniffils said in Make it EASIER to GET BASE CURSE or MORE WAYS to get ALLEGIANCE levels:

@ogron2358 said in Make it EASIER to GET BASE CURSE or MORE WAYS to get ALLEGIANCE levels:

@crowedhunter There is plenty of PVE only content. You have to do PVE to get gold curse, you cannot avoid it. You may get some PVP during the content, but that doesn't make it PVP content. Just like me stacking loot for HG doesn't make HG PVE content. You are trying to spin this to be more complex than it is. It isn't. There are two styles of play. Some players prefer one over the other or do not prefer one at all. PVP has few rewards. Now it has some and people are throwing up their arms because they don't like the content.

I personally like when they are able to make content that does both, but they often don't. For instance, 50 ghost captain skulls for the sails. You can obtain these through PVP or PVE because they can be stolen. 100 veil voyages for the ancient sword, however, is PVE content. You have to do the veil to obtain it, and thats it. You cannot obtain it through any means of PVP. No matter how many veils I steal, I cannot obtain even one completion of this. I have to do PVE. I don't prefer this kind of content, but it exists and I understand that it is part of a game that has 2 types of players

Comparing this to something like the gold curse doesn't work so well as there is a major difference between the hourglass curses and the gold curse. That is simply that nobody asked for the gold curse! rare chooses to add it, they can choose how it should be earned and no one will mind. The hourglass curses have been requested forever, therefor rare shouldn't just go locking it behind something only a fraction of the playerbase can actually obtain.

…. Sooo your WHOLE argument is because you didn’t ask for the Gold Curse they could make you kill 77 shrouded ghosts with a sword, but because YOU want to be a skelly or ghost and have for some time now that it should be put into the format YOU like so that YOU may obtain it easier. I’ll say it again. I have all the curses minus the skelly and the gold phantom. I HATE HATE HATE PVE but I wanted the curses and I hadn’t gotten good at pvp yet so I did the tall tales and got the curses. This is the part that you tell me it’s “easier” though. Is it?!?! It took me 2 months to get level 107 in guardians. It took me until January 1 of this year to get the gold curse.

Tall tales are subject to other crews interfering, megs, Karen, volcano, skelly ships, and glitches so it’s not super straightforward there are variables to it. The point I’m making is it was a long painful process for me to get them, the PvP was easier and was more engaging to me.

Now I’m not saying pvp is the only way to play, or the PVE should end, what I am saying is it is ok to have differences in opinions but to also remember that not everyone that plays this game like doing forts or event, or tall tales. So the PvP player base deserve some exclusive rewards

I'm saying that if every type of player has been requesting it for many years it should be available to every type of player. there can be tons of pvp exclusive content just don't go implementing something the whole community has been wanting, but for only one kind of player. That is all I am saying. Also, 2 months to get lvl 107 in guardians is really impressive, not something a casual player can pull off.

@jj-h816 said in Make it EASIER to GET BASE CURSE or MORE WAYS to get ALLEGIANCE levels:

I’m just saying it’s easy to look at something you dislike and name everything “wrong” with it when in reality it’s just something you don’t like and that’s ok. I’m just tired of pvp getting some love for once in many many seasons but now we are the villains

Only in the eyes of the beholder.

We are the villain, but it's Rare's fault. They advertise Sea of Thieves as a casual, family, open world pirate adventure game. Every time there is a post asking for PVE servers, it's "why was I attacked?", or "what PVE event was this?", or "I was trying to play with my child when..." Pirates don't understand this is a PVPVE open world pirate adventure game where you can be attacked at any moment, and that's not our fault. But that's part of what S8 and S9 were meant to fix! "You want PVP? Vote on the hourglass and stop pounding on the PVE'ers." "Want PVP? Go do that FoF or FotD and stop pounding on the PVE'ers." S8 and S9 were all about helping PVP'ers find other PVP'ers.

That being said though, I have to agree with @sir-sniffils sentiment. This was the #1 requested cosmetic since the inception of a game that is a majority PVE pirates. I'm not surprised at all they are coming to the forums to complain about the decision. I still believe making these the PVP prize was the biggest mistake of hourglass and irked a majority of their player base to appease the arena refugees and streamers. It alienated and disengaged their core players. 🤷‍♂️

@jj-h816 The pirate lord has always been a phantom, as was everyone in the legendary hideout. So technically phantoms have been in the game since day 1, but it took a while for anyone to see them due to the initial grind to PL.

I understand your point, but not everyone plays games to compete, reach peak performance, or be king of the seas. There are players that really like fishing in this game. There is so much more to adventure mode than PVP, and while I understand destigmatizing PVP is important, the place to do that is in the advertisements. By "forcing" players to interact with content they don't like, you're not encouraging them to become proficient, you're encouraging them to leave and find something else that is more fun for them. If what you're saying is true, then Rare isn't "failing to read the room," they are trying to fundamentally trade out their player base (or strongly encourage alliance servers).

In closing, hourglass is boring content for me and I'm not shy about PVP. I'm no sweat, but I'm no swabbie. I just don't like hourglass. So yea, make it easier to get the curses or more ways to get allegiance. Because repetitive PVP without loot on the line is just boring for pirates like me, and PVP in general is undesirable for most of the player base.

Call it what you will, but hourglass simply wasn't wanted by most of the community. Rare may be trying to change that, or rebrand it, but that's why queue times have been abysmal since S9 dropped—pirates have been so excited to do something other than HG that participation is in the gutter, and I don't really see it getting higher. I believe we're at the point we've all been afraid of where the only time we'll see mass participation is when people flock to it during Gold and Glory weekends to just grind out the curses they want. That's all the evidence I need to know that the curses were more desirable than the means to get them, and that's why I call it a mistake putting them there.

@a10dr4651 I just find it hilarious that S9 killed hourglass. New FoF loot that come will cool cosmetics! New, easier way to start FotD! New, easier way to server hop to look for FoF and FotD!

Even the PVP sweats are bored with HG and server hopping for new content (if the LCF on discord are any indication).

@i-jusa-i said in Make it EASIER to GET BASE CURSE or MORE WAYS to get ALLEGIANCE levels:

"I just find it hilarious that S9 killed hourglass"

Nope, it certainly did not. I've played matches and all of them started within 1 minute of diving.

"Individual experience may vary" I guess, but there have been more than a few "queue times are long"/"SBMM is broken" since S9 dropped and we all know why: low player participation.