The frustration with hourglass PvP

@gh-harlan unfortunately the queue is a roll of the dice. It does its best to match you with crews of a similar mmr rating but if you’re waiting too long, it expands the range, and if that sweeps up a sweat or two, then sadly that’s gonna be the case.

In your situation it wasn’t a git gud, you’ve been matched with someone outside of your skill bracket. Not your fault, but the game would rather give you a fight than make you wait ages and ages. This is what people complained about before hand. It’s just about Rare finding the balance.

@gh-harlan if you are looking to develop your PvP skill, try pvp in the open world, you should run into much less experienced pirates that you can acctually fight for a bit. or possibly try to queue against your friend for a fight to develop skill fighting them (if you are similar in skill)

1. just because they have the curses doesn’t mean they are any better. Curses doesn’t amount skill but they played enough/grind to unlock them

2. since hourglass seems to be a slow burn and now dying out. All the people who you would match with (same win rate/lose) have dropped out. So you get the next best which is sometimes always those with more wins

Nothing can be done at this given time.
Decide what you want. If the curses what you seek, don’t worry about winning a lot and just play/grind. Win or lose you get enough exp

The lucky few who unlocked the curses were the alliance players, the ones who got exp for helping but doing nothing else on a ship. Those players have either stopped playing hourglass or don’t care for it, leaving just the pvp try hards. :)

@scuciusrgala read my original response to OP and you’ll understand why.

I think the OP has credence to this, honestly. I understand how the system works, in that it tries to match you up with players of similar MMR, but I think the MMR ratings should be... expanded, because it feels like to me, personally, that the rankings seem too general and cast way too wide of a net. Competitive games such as multiplayer online shooters and whatnot, sure, they have rankings of "bronze, silver, gold, etc." but they also have subrankings within those rankings, like "private, corporal, sergeant, captain, etc." before it progresses to a new "tier" such as bronze, silver, gold, and etc. like mentioned before. The way it feels like, at least as of current, in Sea of Thieves, is something like it just jumps you between five or so tiers. And quite frankly, I don't think that's enough. I think there should be more.

I'm aware the population of the PvP mode is somewhat low, but this small tweak might honestly be enough to bring people back, because at the very minimum you'll be matched far more closely to someone of your skill. And if you aren't, you at least will have that number adjusted accordingly to make it a bit easier on your crew, and place you back around the same skill level. Worst case scenario, we have the same situation again because the matchmaking has to cast that wider net anyway, but I feel like under the hood at least, this could be fixed to be more in line with proper matchmaking so it's enjoyable for all.

@d3adst1ck said in The frustration with hourglass PvP:

@thelostsentinel The system already works as you describe; it looks for players around your skill level and then broadens the search until it finds a match. If you're getting matched with players outside of your skill range, that means that no one else is available.

The alternative is having you sit in the tunnel forever until an appropriate skill range crew is available to match against, and that isn't going to bring anyone back to the hourglass mode.

You missed my point - Sorry if I wasn't clear on it, lemme explain; I think the system itself is fine. I'm aware how it works. I'm saying that the system needs an expansion in skill numbers.

For example, it feels like the current system puts you in say, MMR tier 1, MMR tier 2, MMR tier 3, MMR tier 4, and MMR tier 5.
That set amount of numbers are way too broad to categorize people in in a PvP matchmaking system. I think it should have something like 30 levels of MMR tiers, not just five.

Another example. If you were, say, MMR Tier 2, or something. You would be matched within your tier. But when it expands, it goes to Tier 1 and Tier 3. And if it can't find anyone on either of those, it jumps to Tier 4. The difference between Tier 2 and Tier 4 is an insane skill jump. And that lends me reason to believe that the number of tiers or rankings, whatever you want to call them, are too few in number. There need to be more.

I could be wrong, I do not know the actual numbers underneath SoT's hood, but that's definitely what it feels like when if I perse, get one win, the next crew I face is much more on their game than the last crew, so much so, that I think the number of MMR tiers is very low, instead of being much higher which most other competitive games have.

@d3adst1ck said in The frustration with hourglass PvP:

@thelostsentinel Adding more tiers won't make a difference if there is no one in any of them except at extreme ranges. You're just sub-dividing the already existing gaps into smaller pieces but the end result will be the same.

In my first post, yes, I'm aware that that could be a problem. But improving matchmaking is how you bring people back. If PvP matchmaking is fixed or improved, and people are made aware of that, I guarantee you players would be willing to give it a second shot. I know I sure would.

It could not hurt, is what I say. It either brings in more players and fixes the skill-based matchmaking, or the problem remains the same from the number of people staying the same. I would not call it a wasted effort, I think it would be at least worth Rare's time to work on, as it would help improve the game. They have two teams now, both a content team and a polishing team. Maybe it's something that the polishing team could work on.

@lordqulex said in The frustration with hourglass PvP:

@thelostsentinel Sorry but I have to agree. The problem with hourglass is that the only pirates left playing it are the PVP loving chads.

The PVP enthusiasts got their curses, and have moved onto S9 content—fighting over FoF and FotD. The mediocre PVEVP'ers (like me) took about four months to unlock both curses, and are now working on commendations for the Servants to get those interesting cosmetics. Frankly, the two boosted allegiance days that were close together recently got me over the hump. I earned 50 levels for the Servants on Community Day. There is one cosmetic I want that is level 130 in Servants, and I'll just grab it over the next Community day or Gold and Glory Weekend.

While I agree that PVP hourglass was designed to be long term, end game content, I feel the way it was implemented does not hold the majority of the player base's interest once they obtain the "base" curses. There are only a handful of pirates on these forums that say "yea I'm grinding my way to 1000!" Most of us are already back into adventure mode.

The problem with hourglass isn't a shortage of tiers, it's a shortage of pirates. Said another way, on demand PVP isn't really in demand with this player base. So you're being matched with the pirates that are available in hourglass—the ones that play the game solely for PVP. And yes, they're good at it.

I'm just providing a solution for the OP that I feel would work. IT IS possible it would not change anything, you're right, it could very well just be a shortage of pirates doing PvP. But there is still pirates out there, like myself, and the OP, that did not do PvP for one reason or another, and one of those reasons was wild matchmaking.

I agree with you, that there is a shortage, but I think that it's at least worth implementing said system just to spruce it up a bit, and hopefully, bring people (like myself) back.

@lordqulex said in The frustration with hourglass PvP:

I think there could be a lot of sprucing up to do, but unfortunately even if there were 100 tiers, if they don't display it how will we even tell the difference?

Last I read, the actually MMR system Rare uses is a pseudo-Elo system based on W/L ratio. So let's say there are 100 tiers: MMRs [0, 0.009], [0.01, 0.019], [0.02, 0.029], etc...

Let's say you know your MMR is 0.36 (that's what mine roughly is based on what I can see from my captaincy milestones). If you get paired with a 0.19, followed by a 0.81, followed by a 0.47, are you going to be more, or less encouraged to enqueue again? I think in this case, Cypher was right: ignorance is bliss.

It's one think to feel like the SBMM is broken, and a completely different thing to know it is when it pairs you up against some PVP sweat with an 80% win ratio. If I were a Bronze Captain and get matched with a Platinum Corporal, I'm more likely to think "F this, I'll try again when they fix this thing." Or, like the rest of us, "F this, I'll just play during the next boosted weekend."

True, and very fair assessment. I did say it was "what it felt like", and admitted, No, I don't know how wide or narrow the set amount of numbers they have are, so I suppose it is kind of moot to try and debate over it when we don't actually have hard figures. I figured that we might be able to tell the difference if it did change, but again, could very well be correct that if the population just isn't there, then no, we wouldn't be able to see a difference.

Perhaps it is better to just, try, try again. It's annoying, but I would think if a pirate were determined enough to see themselves become incorporeal, then by golly, they'll get there. It's just a matter of time.

@lordqulex said in The frustration with hourglass PvP:

@thelostsentinel

If you want my advice, remember what you're playing against. Not who, what.

Perhaps it is better to just, try, try again. It's annoying, but I would think if a pirate were determined enough to see themselves become incorporeal, then by golly, they'll get there. It's just a matter of time.

I posit there are two types of pirates in hourglass: PVP lovers, and those who want to "get cursed and get out." Your above statement makes me believe you're a part of the later group. Same as me. You're playing against the clock, not against the other pirates. Your goal is to maximize the allegiance:time ratio; earn as much allegiance in as little time as possible. Roughly 180 wins or 600 losses to get cursed. During Community Day, I'd ram the other ship and board it. One of us sank in under 5 minutes. Short match, tons of allegiance. Just put on Spotify, second screen Netflix, and grind grind grind.

If you're near an outpost, drop every win. Turning in a one-streak is about a loss and a half of allegiance. That's some nice time savings as long as you're nearby.

Above level 70, you need ~3.5 wins or 18 losses to get a level. (I measured with screen shots and a protractor.) During community weekend, it was like 1.5 wins and 4 losses. That's insane! The goal is to get cursed with as little time investment as possible because banging your head against the hourglass wall is just a sure fire way to get burnt out by the game. Just play adventure mode. Only touch hourglass during boosted weekends. Seriously, my goal was one level a day. Small, reasonable goal, achieve the curse in like three months, and play adventure mode for fun. But grind the ever loving heck out of those boosted weekends. I got 50 levels in one day. You're not going to get better than that.

I pretty strongly appreciate your advice, thank you. You're correct! I think the grind is a little... high, for something that was greatly requested within the community for years, and then placed in a part of the game that I would consider a fairly niche part of the game. Knowing statistics does seem to help. I might just gun (aha) for it, whenever I can. :)

Massively unlucky. Shouldn’t have happened sure, but people with gold curse tend to roll everyone in the que and match maker just gives them what it can find.

You can always tell when there really isnt anyone queuing, you get people outside your bracket (upwards or downwards) and will often see the same people over and over

@gh-harlan
The queue tries to bring skill-based matchmaking; if there aren't enough ships, it sends you against better sloops and even against the same opponent's flag (Athena vs. Athena, Reaper vs. Reaper). I also tried meeting a duosloop while playing solosloop today; their systems weren't working well.
Just saying the ghost curse is a grind for everyone means everyone can get it. It simply takes time.

First of all, i don't think it's always "not enough pirates online". When you have queue times of less than a minute and get matched with lvl 1000 players. So there's that.
No idea how the match making really works, but i does not work for me. You should always also consider the number of matches played or the level in the faction you're fighting for and then the win/lose rate.

But lets be constructive. How can you make loosing less frustrating?
My idea is simple: Let players keep their ressources. The enemy can still loot them, but you will also respawn on a new server with them.
At the moment, when you lose a 5 min fight, you're stuck in a black screen for 2 mins (so you can think about how much fun that was) and then collect/buy sups for at least 10 or more minutes. Because let's be fair, going in with basic sups will not grand you a win. Just keep the frustration as low as possible, so people can queue again right away.

Another idea would be disabling "getting invaded". Both crews have to dive and will get the same sups. That's one thing arena did right: Equal chances at the beginning of a match.