Allegiance system

@dragotech123 The problem is that they already tried that in arena, and it lead to spawncamping to get as much as possible of those 'performance indicators'. That turned off a lot of people and lead to very toxic behavior. There is a reason that Rare didn't do that again when they introduced the hourglass mode.

The main problem with hourglass though is that you only get a reasonable amount of allegiance when you are on a 3- or 4-streak and before that the amount is just very tiny. And for a loss it also doesn't matter if you where already on a 'streak' or if it was your first match after turning on the hourglass. This also makes it so people often have to cash in their ourglass very early (after only 2 wins for instance) and therefore can't get the good streaks. Because if they try to go for that longer streak they most likely will be losing and turning in a 2-streak hourglass earns you way more allegiance then a loss after that 2-streak. For average players the decent/good amount of allegiance per match is just very hard to get. This creates a situation where they just figure that loss farming for them is a quicker way to get allegiance.

Possible solutions:

• Change the multiplier so that the change to the multiplier is not the biggest after the 3rd and 4th win, but after the 1st and 2nd (especially after the 1st win). So that casuals for who it is difficult to get streaks are being rewarded more for actually winning.
• Make it so the streak multiplier also applies to losses. So if you lose you won't just get the basic loss amount, but that loss amount is multiplied with the multiplier from that streak. This would also make it siginificantly better to take a loss after a win then to just farm losses because you think you can't get pass 1 win.
• Remove the allegiance you get from turning in the hourglass (this only discourages average/casual players from even trying to get longer streak, because the risk is just to big for them. Also it makes it so champion encounters are realy rare, since people lower the hourglass at the point or before that) in favour of a higher allegiance per match and the higher multiplier you get after a 1- or 2-streak and losses while on streaks. Make it so turning in the hourglass now only affect the gold you get and the worth towards the ledger.

@viskeleris said in Allegiance system:

@super87ghost

I think the best way is to simply make another way of gaining allegiance within a company so the PVE'ers don't go into games and sails straight for the shroud, and ruins the experience for those who want to PVP.

No, it's a PvP reward, lets not give it out for killing brainless NPCs.

Also this problem is exaggerated to say the least, after about 40 the gains for losing are so tiny it would take a hundred years to get the curses.

@d3adst1ck I don't agree with that, since then casual players won't even have enough with a 4-streak, but they need at least a 5-streak. I would rather just make it so that you got it with every mutiple of 4. So if you keep your streak, you would earn a 2nd one if you get a streak of 8, a 3rd one with a streak of 12, etc.

@d3adst1ck I don't get why they added them either. I would have made more sence if they had a 1, 2 and 3 one, with the champion as top (so basicly a commendation for every win streak up to the champion rank). And then they could have made grades for them too, just like with emissary flags.

The fast majority of players will never get a 10-streak. Not just for the reason of being able to actually win 10 in a row, but also because the time needed to get 10 wins in a row is much more then most people even have to play the game during a session.

@viskeleris said in Allegiance system:

@super87ghost

I think the best way is to simply make another way of gaining allegiance within a company so the PVE'ers don't go into games and sails straight for the shroud, and ruins the experience for those who want to PVP.

I have to agree.

Hourglass was designed to be "PVP on demand," and what it turned into is "pirates who want the curses more than they want PVP." I don't disagree that hourglass PVP should have exclusive rewards, but I think it was a mistake making them rewards with universal appeal; I would have recommended ship cosmetics because those can be seen through the spyglass as opposed to pirate cosmetics that may not even be seen at all during an hourglass match, but that ship has sailed as it were. So here we are, pirates who don't want to participate in good faith PVP but want the rewards are degrading the experience for pirates that actually want PVP.

The compromise as I see it, which I define as the solution that everyone hates equally, is that allegiance can be earned via PVE activities up to level 100 (and only up to level 100), and losses stop rewarding allegiance. PVP'ers will hate that the curses are no longer exclusive rewards, PVE'ers will hate how long it will take to get them. PVP'ers will like being matched with only good faith PVP participants, and PVE'ers will like being able to get the curses in adventure mode.

Anyone have any better compromise? 🤷‍♂️

Ahoy matey, I wrote few suggestion in my topic "Season 8 Houglass" if you are interested have a look. Ye probably will find something to your taste.

@dragotech123 said in Allegiance system:

Yeah, I only do hourglass for the curses. If they had chosen any other reward I would have never ever touched the hourglass at all.

That is unfortunately the fulcrum of the problem.

Their messaging is primarily PVE: "Sail the Sea of Thieves: dig up buried treasure, share a grog in the tavern, defeat loathsome skeletons, face the terrifying kraken!" I posit that most of their player base is PVE due to this. There was a thread a few days ago where a pirate didn't understand the ship that sunk them was a player and not an NPC. There are some players who have the game that literally don't understand it's a multiplayer sandbox! I posit this is also why we see daily requests for PVE servers: Rare's adverts really do make it seem like this is a casual game and it simply isn't

That's why Rare needed to put a reward with universal appeal behind hourglass otherwise a ton of the player base wouldn't even have looked twice at it. But this is what you get for putting a highly desirable reward behind an unpopular playstyle: dice rollers and invite peddlers (1).

Footnote 1) I don't meet straight up loss farmers anymore. Pirates raise their sail and ask to roll for the sink or ask for an invite onto your ship, but I haven't matched with anyone who doesn't try this or just sails out of bounds in weeks.

@mrestiercol That's fair, but we've heard from more than one pirate in these forums "I really hated PVP but after playing hourglass I've gotten better and kind of enjoy it now, I don't shy away from PVP in adventure mode anymore" and that's a really good thing.

It's also far from the majority...

The challenge as I see it is two fold. Firstly, anyone who wants the curses and doesn't want PVP is going to do most of their grinding during Gold and Glory or Community Days. Hate the activity, get as much out of it as possible, so they're probably not enqueueing right now. Second, season 9 just dropped. FoFs are worth fighting over even more so and FotDs are easier to start so people who want PVP (if the official Discord LFC is any indicator) are server hopping for forts. That's why SBMM doesn't seem to be working—low participation.

I don't know if HG is going to pick back up after the sweats unlock the new cosmetics... Most of the PVP'ers I've played with will be more interested in stealing FoFs and ruining other pirates' days than going back to playing submarine in HG, but that's just a guess. Try again during this upcoming Community Day, SBMM will almost certainly work better.

@mrestiercol

Oh no matey, level 36 is easy peasy lemon squeezy. Allegiance rewards scale with rank! At your level it takes like two wins and nine losses to gain a level. At level 80, it takes four wins and 18 losses.

You're still in easy mode my friend.

@dragotech123 said in Allegiance system:

@mrestiercol said in Allegiance system:

@lordqulex

That is what I will do, exactly what you say. I like PvP, farmed every arena commendation and wasted 2/3 of my total playtime playing arena sloop, but that mode was funny, cluncky but funny.

HG is not, I am 36 right now on athenas and loosing a match gives you like.... 5% of level. Is not worth it, I´ll work on curses just on Community Days an double exp weekends because this is literally a nightmare. I can´t understand how Mino has 1200 levels on every faction.

I totally agree with you, Señor Manure, and I've seen many posts on reddit and youtube where they state that arena was better than hourglass. A tiny portion after a long hard battle and losing feels really frustrating. If I knew the outcome of a match, I would drop anchor and get sunk quicker since it rewards the same xp.

That's a little disheartening because I feel that one of the main driving forces behind hourglass was to reclaim the arena refugees... This was what Rare came up with to replace arena in the hearts and minds of us pirates... I fear it is even more unpopular than I had originally thought...

some days ago i've wrote a post here about the experience problem. if rare puts a some reward for everything you're doing in the match, maybe people wanna try to fight. like the PVP mode only games like battlefield for example, where you bring xp points also capturing Sectors, helping teammates, build fortification, and of course, by killing enemies and winning the match. if Rare add a similar register of what in the fight you have done, like cannonballs hits, mast cracked, anchor dropped, enemy killed, teammates reivived, maybe even me, that i am not a good player in SoT PvP i wanna try to do something, and receiving more xp, but in the current state i have to do resources, search pepole, maybe i'm doing the best fight in my life, i'm giving all myself in it but it happens a kraken , meg, another ship coming to attack me while i'm fighting and i lose, i'll gain the same Ammount of xp that i would get if i instat sunk my ship without even try...why all that? it' obvious that a person who isn't confident in his abilites try to use lose-farm or the invite from the other one to increase xp.

@viskeleris My opinion should be both PvP and PvE ways to grinding Allegiance level...you like PvP ? OK go to hourglass and get fight to your opponent... you more like PvE ? No problem, go to some world events rutine grinding, but if ppl don't like PvP - they do not gonna play in this...that why there is a lot of ppl who just try to farm this hourglas

@foambreaker пишет в Allegiance system:

@viskeleris said in Allegiance system:

@super87ghost

I think the best way is to simply make another way of gaining allegiance within a company so the PVE'ers don't go into games and sails straight for the shroud, and ruins the experience for those who want to PVP.

No, it's a PvP reward, lets not give it out for killing brainless NPCs.

Also this problem is exaggerated to say the least, after about 40 the gains for losing are so tiny it would take a hundred years to get the curses.

You can't just kick PvE players out of the game because they just can't do PvP lol this game is for everyone and there must be other ways to rich the goal. Besides, just imagine if PvE gamers have been got a long boring PvE grind for that curses which might not be possible for pvp players which might even out the effort for receiving rewards from both sides in both PvP and PvE.

@mrestiercol пишет в Allegiance system:

@lordqulex

That is what I will do, exactly what you say. I like PvP, farmed every arena commendation and wasted 2/3 of my total playtime playing arena sloop, but that mode was funny, cluncky but funny.

HG is not, I am 36 right now on athenas and loosing a match gives you like.... 5% of level. Is not worth it, I´ll work on curses just on Community Days an double exp weekends because this is literally a nightmare. I can´t understand how Mino has 1200 levels on every faction.

1000% agree with you

@fedted998 yep, this will greatly improve the situation.