To begin this short essay I will immediately address the undeniable fact that the quality of gameplay of hourglass pvp has sharply declined over the last few months. The current schedule is, load into the game, immediately queue for hourglass, wait 20-60 minutes for a match, and then exchange cannon fire, often for over 45 minutes or even an hour. Today I played 3 hourglass games. It took 2 hours and 47 minutes. The worst part, the only people who still play the mode are sweat lords and I lost each time after an hour of us cycling between shooting and running away to bilge. To understand why, we need to understand that the majority of players aren't going out of their way to do this. Firstly, the mode feels extremely unrewarding, you spend tons of time doing seemingly nothing and don't get rewarded for doing it, excluding the titles you get every 10 levels that are all basically the same and not exactly the most tangible. Even though the Servants of the Flame route offers some post-curse progression, some of it so ludicrously hard to get that it doesn't feel worth it, especially considering you can piece together sets where the progression is insanely far apart. Instead, simply make some of the more out there commendations to more fun requirements that fit the theme of the item, to me, those have been more fun to get (ie, ashen bones, mechanical jaw or whatever its called). This goes tenfold for the Athena route which has absolutely no progression between 100-1000. (I do think the golden curse variants are fair to remain at 1000 allegiance). Another major reason is the length of the fights. I don't think matchmaking is a problem, I just think nobody is playing it anymore because it just doesn't feel fun, which sucks to me because I had some of the most fun ever playing HG PVP on a brig during season 8 and 9, so its sad to see its nearly impossible to even level up anymore to get the cosmetics I want for the skeleton curse, and overall just feels like a burden to play. To fix this, all that's needed is to add a storm like Fortnite where the zone you fight in shrinks over 20-30 minutes, keeping the battles brief but still long enough for a lot to happen. To get players who aren't as good at PVP to play it, all Rare needs to add is a skill based matchmaking system, which is often criticized for whatever reason even though it makes games so much more interesting. So to summarize, add more cosmetics and make them all relatively in line with their difficulty to obtain, add skill based matchmaking and a storm, and please Rare just shorten the animations of everything. Maybe advertise it a bit better too, give some special chests or something to get more people interested.
Hourglass PVP is dead. Here's how to fix it.
If more people engaged in HG the queue times would sort themselves out.
Better reward pacing, fleshed out rewards post-curse, more skelly cosmetics (1 per season at least! It cant be that hard!) first win of the day bonus allegiance...
I honestly feel like it wouldnt take much to bring a ton more people into/back into HG
Hourglass isn’t the hot new thing right now. The Skull of Siren Song is and so yeah you could definitely run into longer queue times when diving lately.
Here’s a good time to remind everyone that you can vote on an hourglass faction without voting to dive on the war map and instead opt to wait for a crew to invade you. At least in this case you won’t be stuck underwater unable to do anything to progress your session in any meaningful way while you wait for a match.
The biggest problem with hourglass though is that allegiance progression is to slow.
People that find it really hard to win a single fight aren’t going to put up with having to win over 100 fights to get one base curse.
Part of the problem is that the players who are not PvP sweats are not using hourglass so you end up getting matched with skilled PvP’ers who likely already have the curse making winning that fight that much more difficult.
I think players should get a minimum of one whole allegiance level per hourglass victory with streaks offering even more allegiance.
Something like..
First win - 1 level of allegiance
Second win in a row - 1.25 levels
Third win in a row - 1.5 levels
Fourth win in a row - 2 levelsThen to make hourglass progression not to fast during gold and glory and community weekends simply only offer a 1.5x multiplier on allegiance gains during those special events.
So yeah increasing instant allegiance gains per hourglass victory IMO is what is needed to get the less diehard PvP people using the hourglass more when a special event that boosts gains isn’t going on.
@pithyrumble said in Hourglass PVP is dead. Here's how to fix it.:
If pvp could just magically become fun lol.
Anyway, tried to sink in hourglass to give away supps. Happened upon a solo squeaker (affectionate) who couldn't hit me standing still. Ended up taking 30 minutes 😂
Not sure I’d call intentionally losing “PvP”. Maybe try again with the PvP part and see how you like it ;)
You missed the part of the story where I was trying to get off for the afternoon and wanted to gift someone 2.5 stacks of balls and a stack and a half of boards and a level 4 or 5 Athena flag. (Forgot which...)
Only thing HG is good for is gifting supplies and flags for me.
Fair enough post but please break up the text into pqragraphs, it makes following what you are saying a little easier.
Sweat lords are all relative but i do like rhe idea of a shrinking circle. I also think HG should priorities invasions. Too often i do not get invaded. Increasing the rep for defending may also help this out.
@pithyrumble said in Hourglass PVP is dead. Here's how to fix it.:
You missed the part of the story where I was trying to get off for the afternoon and wanted to gift someone 2.5 stacks of balls and a stack and a half of boards and a level 4 or 5 Athena flag. (Forgot which...)
Only thing HG is good for is gifting supplies and flags for me.
Fair enough. I’m sure they appreciated your humble gift.
@tiglekk probalby couse we love to shoot, sink and trash each other for last 4000 years so EU que is allways full!
But:
First win of the day allways granting one level for each faction would help a lot for regions with long ques.@ghutar Well, the fact that there is little online in region is not the developers’ fault, so making a fix specifically for players like he is not only not profitable, but also strange. I'm sure there will be guys who will boycott such a fix.
The main problem is there is no rewards past LV 200.
My friend is trying to get his Guardians level high enough to get the Ship cosmetics. He is tired of the hourglass mode and can only dedicate a certain amount of time before he looses interest.
I have no interest in the gold curse and have all the cosmetics associated with the hourglass mode in both factions. Until there is new cosmetics or commendations to be earned, I have no incentive to play the hourglass mode.
@soul514y3r said in Hourglass PVP is dead. Here's how to fix it.:
There is an sbmm,but it is bad and does not work. I think they should make some kind of update so I don't have to sink beacuse everyone playing is better than me. It drives me so crazy i'm even considering cheating!(won't do it beacuse hackers don't deserve to play).
There is no SBMM, there is only a win/lose ratio. With SBMM that W/L would be around 50% for all, so using a W/L is per definition not SBMM.
@ghutar said in Hourglass PVP is dead. Here's how to fix it.:
@tiglekk
First Win of the day would be a normal part of Hourglass like existing stash bonus ;)Problem is dat lower skilled players hardly get any wins, so this wouldn't help much to get those back. They already have the experience of losing almost everything, so they will just think/recognise they won't get that bonus, so it wouldn't attract them. This would only help the more higher skilled players who actually can win matches.
If you want casuals back, i think you would need to remove the streak allegiance bonus (since that would only help the higher skilled) and as compensation just make the base allegiance (both for win and lose) much higher.
I totally agree, and the win/loss ratio might explain some things. I usually loss streak while watching YouTube, so my mmr goes down, but it is awfully slow, and after like three matches, I get Qed with hackers again. Removing or reworking the streak system might fix it. Like instead of having how many wins in a row, you can have a wins per day/week that boosts alligence. then even people meeting hackers and then meet noobs can get boosted alligence.
