How to improve hourglass matchmaking.

@tastystuffing I don't think players should be punished for doing well. I say this as someone who does ok but absolutely doesn't go on massive streaks or anywhere near the top level of the game.

Rather than 'punish' success, why not better reward risk. Give decent bonuses to the champion battle option against larger ships to actually have incentive other than bragging rights.

To be honest from what I've seen the top players don't enjoy steam rolling anymore than the players on receiving end. They are in it for the fight so would rather take the better balanced close fought battles.

@tastystuffing It's better to find a match against a strong player than to find no match at all

@tastystuffing Not only for the strong players tho. I remember the 25+ min queues at S8 release. That was nasty.

@tastystuffing I don't dispute that. What I dispute is that it would be better for new players to wait for a long time in order to only give them fair matches. The system already tries to give fair matches to all. The widening of the search happens when it cannot find one.

You could argue that the matchmaking should wait a bit longer than 2 minutes but then you should say how much seems reasonable. Honestly I don't think that will change the fundamental issue : outside of G&G there aren't enough new players for them to match with.

The sweatiest solo players should be fighting other sweaty solos and average to decent duo sloops not beginner to average solos.

How would you match these people up? One "sweaty" player could of be having a lucky streak that ends at a certain time.

You have individual player ratings thus you have crew ratings too.

Which change on a dime every few seconds.

Crews in the top x% of their crew size category should be fighting one size up crews with roughly the same or a slightly higher crew rating.

Isn't that what were doing from the W/L ? and when the game can't FIND a crew/player of the same w/l, to make finding players quick. It drops you into the next player in the pool.

This change should help all players find a more suitable match when diving or defending.

Not really. Were still in the same problem. What if there is no other crew/player in my 1/2000 skill range and the next closest is 1/1000? What if that one player who is horrible and never won a match once, can't find another?

Long wait times is the big No no.
and sorry, the BIG confusion with Hourglass is people think its a Pvp matchmaker. No. Its a TOOL to find like minded players who wish to do battle. Sure it tries to find other players with the same W/L but that gape is mainly gone with so many high L players stopped playing and all that remains are the high W players.

@tastystuffing said in How to improve hourglass matchmaking.:

This is to reduce the occurrences of a new to average crew being matched against an extremely sweaty crew repeatedly.

That's commendable of course !

But to be honest, it's not their only problem. I'm far from being as competent as the top guys in HG. They usually end up sinking my crew and I under 5 minutes while never being in any real danger (we got the tanking figured out tho, but we can't repel 3 skilled boarders indefinitely). However, what they do to us, we can do roughly the same to newcomers and casual players. The skill ceiling in this game is that high.
Honestly, I feel like if your aim is to make newcomers fight as few better crews as possible, it would be better to give them a mode of their own, advertised as such, that feeds into the current HG mode.

I have to strongly disagree here. I’m a good player, I won’t hide that, but I’ve been rekt by two average players simply because they had the numbers. All it takes is a cannonball to the face and then my ship is exposed until I get back, by then, I’m de-masted, I’ve got multiple holes in the ship, and no doubt I’ve got one on board with my anchor is dropped with the other still firing cannons into my broadside. Now, that’s a sure win for the other crew, and not very fair on me.

This is why I love the fact that it’s an optional thing once I get to Champion because then if I want the sauce, I can have it against another ship type even if I’m solo. It’s so much fun to go sloop vs galleon and watch them panic!

Making this a forced thing that may happen would suck the fun out of Hourglass for a player like me. No thank you.

@tastystuffing I’ve always advocated for newer players to learn the tough way. Go against the veterans and learn from the losses they experience, and if they get lucky or turns out they’re really good, then they’ll win against the veteran. This is how we all get better at the game and increase our skill.

@tastystuffing

Personally I think the players I see streaming hourglass a lot wouldn’t mind the challenge of beating a crew with one extra player rather than matching against a loss farmer.

This may be your own personal opinion but I’m not inclined to agree when the mechanic to go up against a higher skilled fight is literally already in place.

What happens to the average solo crew that’s suddenly up against a two man ship and is forced to fight against them when they don’t want that?

@tastystuffing still doesn’t sound fair to force me and other higher skilled players to play against a crew of 2 when solo if we don’t want that.

It’s literally about choice, hence why we have the choice to go up against bigger crews once Champion.

I’m sorry that newer players may be going up against more experienced players, but that doesn’t mean we should be punished because of that. This is the last I’ll say on this too as I don’t think you’ll be convinced otherwise.

Happy sailing pirate!

@tastystuffing
Hourglass can use some improvements, but it was botched from the beginning and that's why basic changes won't work. The lack of cross-stamp migration from the start was a major fail, which lowered player retention. The streak system was a major fail, because it encouraged elo tanking and forced early players to play against those not at their skill level (which continues to plague the mode). This makes a negative feedback loop, which incentivizes elo tanking and dunking on newer players. All this has drastically lowered the pool of players willing to spend their time on hourglass. The only thing keeping hourglass alive is the rewards. I know many pirates who aren't amazing at PvP but are willing to put many hours into it, dealing with the problems for the promise of a curse.

To fix hourglass matchmaking, the only thing that can be done is to get mid-level players back in the mode. Most have quit at the moment, and basic matchmaking changes aren't going to bring them back to give same-skill players someone to fight against.
I think the only way to bring those who have quit back is to remove the streak system. As some have said, if you are fighting others at your skill level, you should only win 50% of the time. You should get more allegiance, not from higher streaks, but from being at a higher skill level.
If hourglass was treated like a ranked mode of the game, Rare could keep newer players in lower rank matchmaking, mid-level players in average rank matchmaking, and throw the curse players in with each other. This would provide all players with consistent allegiance progression based on their rank, which could bring low to mid-level players back into playing hourglass rather than having to loss farm to be consistent. The sweaty players would still earn more allegiance than anyone else, but wouldn't have to sink newer players to do it. It would actually be detrimental to elo tank.

That's not all it needs, but a stable platform with consistent progression for all is what will keep the low and mid-level players coming back and keeping things fair for players new to hourglass.

The problem with the matchmaking is simply that there's not enough people playing it, much like Arena in it's latter days.

Getting players to come back to the mode or try it out for the first time should be a priority for RARE but nothing much seems to be happening. Reaching level 100 for the first real reward seems like a mile away to the average player and therefore only the truly dedicated PVP players will grind it out for that long. There needs to be good rewards between level 0 - 100 if we want to see an uptick in players, and giving more XP per fight wouldn't hurt too - losing an hour long fight just feels bad when you know a 5 minute loss would've gained you the same XP.

For matchmaking to function better you need the investment of the casual player as well as the "sweatlord", and right now the casual player doesn't go near hourglass.

@goofythescot casuals don’t go near hourglass because they want the cool curses and cosmetics without having to do the grind so have opted not to do it. Or, they loss farm and become fodder for the sweats, of which they’ll still complain they sunk at or make posts on here how they aren’t levelling quick enough…

There needs to be good rewards between level 0 - 100

10 really cool titles and 5 variants of a figurehead that you get to keep all 5 of is pretty good!

giving more XP per fight wouldn't hurt too - losing an hour long fight just feels bad when you know a 5 minute loss would've gained you the same XP.

Xp is balanced pretty well. Again, it’s supposed to be a grind, there is no need to rush it.

@tesiccl said in How to improve hourglass matchmaking.:

@goofythescot casuals don’t go near hourglass because they want the cool curses and cosmetics without having to do the grind so have opted not to do it. Or, they loss farm and become fodder for the sweats, of which they’ll still complain they sunk at or make posts on here how they aren’t levelling quick enough…

There needs to be good rewards between level 0 - 100

10 really cool titles and 5 variants of a figurehead that you get to keep all 5 of is pretty good!

giving more XP per fight wouldn't hurt too - losing an hour long fight just feels bad when you know a 5 minute loss would've gained you the same XP.

Xp is balanced pretty well. Again, it’s supposed to be a grind, there is no need to rush it.

So you genuinely don't feel changes are needed? It's got Arena 2.0 written all over it.......

I enjoy the pvp in SoT yet i genuinely can't be bothered with the hourglass grind. I have around 1k hours in the game so i'm not exactly a casual player either. If people like myself aren't playing it then surely changes are needed to gain/retain players or the gamemode will die.

@tastystuffing 2 levels for one win is too much, but I'd be cool with that, then I'll get level 1000 in a week.

@tesiccl said in How to improve hourglass matchmaking.:

Xp is balanced pretty well. Again, it’s supposed to be a grind, there is no need to rush it.

Xp might be balanced very well when you win most of your fights. But it isn't when you lose most of it. The progression experience is massively different between those two extremes. Someone winning 60% of the time will progress more than twice faster compared to someone having a 40% winrate, for instance. The winstreak system and the over reliance on it for progression was a really bad idea for lower skilled participation : as it punishes the loser way more than a simpler system, it is a huge factor of discouragement for newcomers and casuals. That's why we see a huge spike in participation when xp is boosted, they feel it's not worth their time otherwise.

10 really cool titles and 5 variants of a figurehead that you get to keep all 5 of is pretty good!

It's a matter of taste I guess. They could have put no reward at all and I wouldn't have seen the difference, even accounting for the trinket you forgot to mention. :')