HG Battle Stalemate Timer

But aren't long matches between equally matched crews a good thing? I'm asking this quite seriously.

I for one consider hourglass a means to an end—I participate to get the curses and that is all. In my case, if a match is taking to long, I stop repairing and stop bucketing and start playing hyper aggressive. This match ends now one way or another because this is beginning to decrease my grind efficiency. If you feel the same way but are more concerned about winning than allegiance efficiency, then I totally understand your suggestion.

But the pirates who will give you backlash are the ones that actually want PVP on demand, the ones who hourglass was built for, the ones who play it for fun and not for profit. Those pirates want close matches between evenly matched crews. Those pirates want a good scrap that pushes them to their limits. Those pirates don't care how long a match lasts because the match is the end and not a means to an end. Those pirates are the ones lamenting about how dice rollers and invite peddlers are ruining their hourglass experience.

@tesiccl said in HG Battle Stalemate Timer:

Timed matches were good in arena because we all knew someone was going to be first place out of 5 possible positions. But this is a 1v1 and it’s down to you to end it as quickly as possible. If you’re just circling and firing off cannons with no boarding, chainshots, curse cannonballs etc then neither side is gonna win until the other runs out of supplies. Too many crews tip toe around the fight, be brave, get stuck in, force the enemy to nose dive you, throw fire, cause chaos. Aggressive gameplay is how you win, otherwise you’re inviting to get sunk or spend an hour plus getting spammed with cannons.

Yea hyper aggressive is the solo sloop meta, you have to. Sloops are tanky and easy to keep afloat, you need to risk boarding or a favorable ram or just keep pounding with cannonballs to win. I think that's why boarding is so good/popular: it uses less cannonballs. Though honestly most of the games I win via boarding I end up sinking, but at least I don't sink first...

I frankly just don't like solo hourglass. I think it's best on a brig.

The root cause is "healing is over powered" by that I mean a competent crew can out repair most damage so the match can go on indefinitely.

The problem is how could they change that without messing up the rest of the game, especially for smaller crews.

I've played games where the area starts to shrink, eventually ending the battle, but that seems to be unpopular so not sure what the solution is.