I fear the Hourglass mode is dying

Not really surprising. The PvP is not that fun due to various cheats and cultures, INVITE FOR THE WIN, and the rewards are not worth the hours of effort. It took less effort for me to earn all 3 ship types, those are ships, the curses, lol no, I bought spinal and walked away.

I did the grind long enough to get the ship cosmetics I wanted, ship milestone 30, and now I am done. Out of all the battles I'd say 1 in 10 was actually fun.

@burnbacon "Now, all the Casual players have touched and tried it. The rewards for it are tempting but it a long grind, Which in on it self is something so many do not want....idk why people are so against "Grinding" for long terms. It keeps you in the game longer."

It's not the grinding, it's that the amount of time doesn't match the value of the rewards, not even close. Especially on the Reapers where really seen one skeleton seen them all. I'm not into the phantom green but at least that shows the players cosmetics.

For the effort those curses should have been in the 50 range. The 100+ should have been something like a cool ship.

Based on what I make IRL, for that amount of effort, I could do a contract and buy a REAL BOAT.

It is a milking and we were supposed to be the cows.

@coffeelight5545 said in I fear the Hourglass mode is dying:

I have been playing with a group of people. They were playing almost every day but recently they aren’t playing anymore. Many of them have both curses and have customized their skeleton curses to their liking. Now that they are finished, I fear they won’t return until there is something new to acquire.

I think this is the most common sentiment toward hourglass, yes.

In the beginning we had ambush alliances. Players farming wins for the curses. After Rare fixed it players are now boosting on sloops. You got 2 solo sloops matching and one inviting the other to their ship so both can get the win. While I don’t mind people playing this way, it will only happen as long as people don’t have the base curses.

I'm really haven't seen this work. I honestly believe it's a scam pirates use against noobs who don't know it doesn't work.

The gold variants of the curses aren’t enough to keep people interested in getting to level 1000. I feel there needs to be something interesting past level 200 in both factions.

No it's not. I am quite confident that they are going to slowly release cosmetics for every hundred levels, but it takes time to make those so they're just not released yet. The challenge is I can't really think of anything that is going to have the mass appeal that the curses have. So I agree the mode is dying, because most pirates are going to get the curses then never touch hourglass again. The challenge is that PVP is remarkably unpopular for reasons, so if Rare didn't put the curses as the first reward most pirates wouldn't even have tried hourglass once, myself included. I know there is a chunk of players that hated PVP, tried hourglass for the curses and liked it. So success there. But yes, for the most part hourglass will go the way of arena (less than 3% play time) once most pirates that want the curses have them, yes.

I think the numbers are going to be so bad that in season 10 or 11 they're going to boost allegiance or find some PVE way to earn it so the curses can be earned by all the pirates that hate PVP.

I'm in agreement with the notion that almost all involvement in hourglass is because of rewards and not because players are enjoying it.

If they were playing for fun there wouldn't be rampant exploits and cheaters.

I only play HG when I come onto the seas now.

Been there and done it all x-times in adventure mode and quite frankly was getting very bored of it all to the point where I all but stopped playing for a year+

And no, I'm not a pvp player at heart. Was always happiest off earning gold and rep. But eventually, you max out and have zero goals.

This mode has been welcome for me. Without it, like previous seasons, I wouldn't bother playing. Adventures were a massive mistake. Pointless waste of time and resources. Would've been much better making them tall tales that remain in the game.

@faceyourdemon

I can vote to join a battle. From the moment I dive beneath the waves I'm almost always unable to even look inside a barrell before I'm surfacing for battle.. No shortage of participants on Xbox servers. Not in my region (Uk) anyway.

@dragotech123 said in I fear the Hourglass mode is dying:

And the thing that worries me the most is that this is the peak, this is the time to shine for this mode. It is the shiny new toy, the novelty. This is the season when it was released, and from here the interest will slowly diminish as the future seasons take away the interest with new content.

People told me "Don't worry, the curse are here to stay, they are a permanent addition" and I know that the game mode is here to stay, but I don't think the interest from other players will be there to support it. Look at the Quest Board, it is a permanent addition, it won't go away, but players barely interact with it. Not many people use the treasuries or shrines anymore. And unlike those additions, I need players to battle against, I have to have at least one other player or else I can't fight.

Will this mode be populated exclusively by top PvPers and Loss Farmers?

No, loss farming is inefficient. This mode will be populated exclusively by top PVP'ers and dice rollers, and more so on G&G days.

@zig-zag-ltu said in I fear the Hourglass mode is dying:

@dragotech123 I think it really depends on Rare and how will they keep players interest going in the upcoming months.

I'm nearing the level 100 and then will go for 105 to get legendary curse.

Since we don't care much for the skelly curse, we shall probably leave hourglass to finish off our sessions playing as reapers to make a use of the remaining resources. So it will become a long term goal for the activity to reach 100 with servants.

Could imagine a lot of players will behave in similar fashion, some incentives from Rare would be needed to gather interest from casuals to keep MM ques short. XP Boosts? Friday night double xp or similar. I just hope that the people for who this mode was designed for, will have enough players participating.

Yes, it will see the same 3% play time as arena. Maybe 5-10% if they're lucky.

@zig-zag-ltu said in I fear the Hourglass mode is dying:

If I may predict...The arena had 2% of players actively playing it, this one will probably have about 5-15% once people finished getting curses (if nothing is added or changed). So people who want to fight, will they really wait long times to matched with someone? What would keep a steady number of 30-50% playing this I don't know can only attempt to suggest or guess.

I think hourglass defense is what many of us want, but it seems broken rn because invader versus invader match making is prioritized, or because only 5 ships are allowed per server I can't be invaded while I'm defending.

I think my ideal play session (as a 75/75/75/75/50/28 veteran) would be raise HG, do a world event, maybe a sea fort, get invaded, fight over the treasure, then repeat if I have time. I like the PVE, I don't mind the PVP when it has gravitas, but treasureless PVP is boring for me as is uncontested PVE. Defending is my future and that's where I hope they put some attention.

@soulstinger2k20 said in I fear the Hourglass mode is dying:

Iirc they plan to add new curse cosmetics with each season, but I would say there ought to be a way to gain small amounts of Servant/Guardian rep outside of hourglass.

Say some sort of PvE voyage that pits you against an AI fleet of the opposing faction that grants perhaps an un boosted win, or even a loss, amount of rep upon completion.

Defending does that: you can turn in a faction treasury grade 1 and get a little allegiance. The problem is it's simply horribly inefficient if your goal is the curses. You can do a world event and turn in a grad 5 treasury, that's worth almost a win. But if you spend an hour doing the WE then lose the HG match... well that pixel of allegiance you get just feels remarkably terrible.

Edit: the best way I have found to do this is to conquer a sea fort/we, put all the loot on the dumb waiter, raise HG, put the treasure on your ship for faction treasury, then drop HG as soon as possible. I don't recall how much allegiance it gets you, but diving is certainly more efficient.

@soulstinger2k20 said in I fear the Hourglass mode is dying:

@lordqulex
Treasure grade grants you a bonus to rep gained after succesfully winning an invasion by HG, only.

Not unless they changed that with the last update. I have turned in an HG with faction treasury and gotten allegiance for it with a zero streak.

@lordqulex said in I fear the Hourglass mode is dying:

@soulstinger2k20 said in I fear the Hourglass mode is dying:

Iirc they plan to add new curse cosmetics with each season, but I would say there ought to be a way to gain small amounts of Servant/Guardian rep outside of hourglass.

Say some sort of PvE voyage that pits you against an AI fleet of the opposing faction that grants perhaps an un boosted win, or even a loss, amount of rep upon completion.

Defending does that: you can turn in a faction treasury grade 1 and get a little allegiance. The problem is it's simply horribly inefficient if your goal is the curses. You can do a world event and turn in a grad 5 treasury, that's worth almost a win. But if you spend an hour doing the WE then lose the HG match... well that pixel of allegiance you get just feels remarkably terrible.

Edit: the best way I have found to do this is to conquer a sea fort/we, put all the loot on the dumb waiter, raise HG, put the treasure on your ship for faction treasury, then drop HG as soon as possible. I don't recall how much allegiance it gets you, but diving is certainly more efficient.

There should definitely be a substantial reward for risking a lot of loot as a defender I think, even if you lose.

People could cheese it that way but I think it's still more rewarding to the community as a whole if there's actually a flow of loot involved.

Following the discussion of people missing the commendation for stealing commodities I would do commodity runs with the hourglass up if I was rewarded for doing so.