Hourglass need dedicated servers.

@zimited8670

I mean, in my opinion hourglass is already as dead as arena so I don't see a problem with this. But there are good reasons why Rare integrated on-demand PVP into adventure mode and one of them was to reclaim the unused arena servers and apply them toward adventure mode. You're asking them to dedicate hardware to a dead game mode again and from a business technology perspective that's a bad idea.

But I do want to echo your problem statement: I sail a fair bit and spotting other ships that don't dive is an unwelcome rarity. When ships are cyclically joining and leaving servers, how do we get a good ol' fashioned Sea of Thieves organic experience of PVEVP?

@lordqulex said in Hourglass need dedicated servers.:
But I do want to echo your problem statement: I sail a fair bit and spotting other ships that don't dive is an unwelcome rarity. When ships are cyclically joining and leaving servers, how do we get a good ol' fashioned Sea of Thieves organic experience of PVEVP?

I tend to agree with Lordqulex, I don't think they need dedicated servers. The reason some of us aren't getting organic PvP is because we are being placed onto a server that then becomes a HG server. This last week when sailing my crew has said many times "oh we must be on a HG server" then low and behold an HG fight pops up close. I think because of the current cap on ships is why we are all feeling it, 2/5 (with potentially one fresh spawn ship) is drastically different to 2/6.

I don't know a solution or how the HG servers are found. Maybe it can be looked into that once a server has had a HG fight it can't be used again for X amount of time 🤔 That might then give the opportunity to a boat that is likely to stay on adventure and PvPvE?

Eliza!

@coffeelight5545 said in Hourglass need dedicated servers.:

@theelizabot @lordqulex @zimited8670

There is something that you all need to know. The Arena died because it had dedicated servers.

I think it died due to lack of interest. Dedicated servers would be worthwhile if more than 3% of player time was spent there.

The Arena lacked the sufficient player base and suffered from toxicity and long loading times. As it stands now, the hourglass mode isn’t doing any better. The reason why hourglass can survive is because there isn’t any dedicated servers that Rare needs to pay to maintain.

Agreed.

The reason why the Sea of Thieves seems dead is because of the lack of player base. I only see the servers decently populated is during Gold and Glory days or during Community weekends where reputation and Allegiance are doubled. This is because there are players who still want the base ghost and skeleton curses and are burned out from hourglass.

I don't think this is the case. When a ship queues to join, a slot on a server is found and the ship is placed. The matching engine probably uses a combination even-load/FIFO model where it tries to ensure every server has at least three ships, then four ships, then five ships before spinning up a new server. Server merges happen when servers have less than three ships and a merge is possible to get them to three, four, or five ships. (This is how I'd write it.) So to suggest I'm alone on a server because there aren't enough players is either suggesting A) that the matching engine uses an even-load algorithm exclusively, trying to spread the player base across every available server before adding a ship to a server that's already got one, which is counterintuitive to the intended gameplay, or B) I am the only person currently playing in my stamp, which is preposterous.

With any luck, Safer Seas will bring in a new generation of players. Most likely they won’t leave Safer Seas but hopefully a few will venture into High Seas and the servers will be populated again.

🤞

HG can get their own servers.
So long as they can't use Captaincy or Guilds, and only get 30% of the rewards.

After all; The supposed real game is High Seas, sailed by the 'big boys'.