The thing I guess I don't get is why the mode claims to have an immediate matchmaking option that just seems to be making people furious the whole time. The queue times and such seem to be largely insufferable, but I would argue that to be because they represent a sort of broken promise. I don't get why the system isn't basically that you turn the hourglass on and then go about your business and are automatically matched and put into battles whenever someone suitable gets lined up. Then some people would still just sit there and wait to be thrown into it without playing until being matched, but they would know that they're doing something as not intended so they wouldn't feel so ripped off.
The big issue for players who are pro the way the current mode is long term is what @LordQulex calls burning the candle bottom up (I've heard it referred to as Grognard Capture) which essentially means that unless players can be maintained in this play mode queue times are only going to get longer and longer as fewer and fewer players choose to participate and matches will get harder and longer as the remaining players are of more and more similar high levels. Unless your position is that the mode at the moment is perfect except you think the queue times are way too short, this should be something that, even if you don't like the solutions currently being offered, you should want fixed, and shooting down the solutions offered without suggesting an alternative is only going to eventually contribute to a mode you profess to enjoy decaying until either you don't want to play it or Rare don't want to support it.
Personally, I think there are a couple of issues, and I say this as someone who couldn't give a damn about the cosmetics (Pretty much the only cosmetic on my pirate I care about are my hands, because that's what I spend hours staring at). First is that its not so much the grind of the PvE version of the hourglass, its the grind plus stress of it. SoT is replete with grinds for achievements/cosmetics etc. often insane levels of grind, but flipping the hourglass to start grind puts you in the position of both grinding very slowly and being a PvP target. Its like if all company progress had to be made with an Emissary flag flying. If even a tiny amount of progress could be made quietly and with pure PvE grinding, then I think the response would be quite different. Like, if the mysterious stranger gave you an extremely incremental amount of progress for something pretty rare, like a chest of ancient tribute or something, then I think the feeling would be different, that its something that will happen by playing how you enjoy eventually, even if its very slow.
One of the other big issues seems to be that its really kind of just not much fun. It seems to be getting called grind by more people than most parts of the game, even by some people who like it. It seems to lack the epic-ness and interest that you might expect from the story and the background. It seems to be, hit the hourglass, wait for an excessive time, be in a quite arbitrary one on one scrap that has a chance of being too easy/too hard/too quick/too slow to be satisfying and very rarely generates an interesting story. SoT is so rich, broad and emergent that this version of play just feels relatively flat, and it takes a lot of the tools that the game gives you to curate your experience away. In normal play I can spot a sunken treasure map on a tall tale and go from what I thought I was doing, hitting a check point and then diving below the waves in a very free and freeing experience. With this, I hit the hourglass and wait, and wait, for one sort of experience that comes in one form. Maybe if it offered more of a breadth of options, like a solo sloop alliance against a high grade galleon, or an alliance on alliance match, then players could get an incremental level of reward from how their side does rather than just a flat win or loss. Then that idea of interacting with other players with things other than cannonballs could be paid out a little since you might actually chat with your alliance partners. Maybe if the PvP weren't just one sort of PvP? There are lots of potential ways to compete with someone on SoT, why is PvE a hundred parts of the game and PvP just the same part over and over? Ships can race, pirates can duel, treasures can need to be gotten to a certain point, PvP could be richer. I think a simple fix would be rewarding damage caused as well as simply winning or losing, that way marathon matches of attacking and patching up would be worth more than quick sinkings and valiant losses could be worth as much as easy wins.
For that matter, on the tools not rules front, if it just matched its description I feel like that would be a move in the right direction. I mean, on the blurb it says "Use the War Map to seek out ships of the opposing Faction." when I read that I thought, ah! When you hit the hourglass all other people who have opted in become visible, and everyone has epic, emergent, chases around the map, battling in hit and run! Oh, and the tunnel option from server to server makes so much more sense now! You hit the hourglass, see no-one on your server has opted in, and off you go, seeking action on the digital waves, that makes total sense. Then I tried it, and the war map isn't a map, doesn't use the in game structures, isn't emergent, can't build natural stories and is just a button you push to join that most epic and enjoyable of gaming experiences, a queue.
The mode just seems not part of the overall SoT ethos is the big thing for me.
