You shouldn't get xp for losing in Hourglass..

OverWatch, CoD
Win/Lose I earn Exp.

I don't play Overwatch but I can tell you that there's no such things as loss farmers in CoD, although you gain xp for losing.

Having to grind a pvp challenge for a curse that been requested for nearly 4+ years is quiet Unhinging. Nobody asked for such a thing. I would of loved other means but here we are.

I don't see how putting a curse behind a grind, PVE or PVP, is unhinged ? Quite litteraly the case for all the curses available in the game.

So you rather have majority of the playerbase quit HG just so you can play against players better than you.

You're misinformed if you think loss farmers make up the majority of the playerbase. I just want people to engage in PvP with me in the 1v1 PvP mode and widen the playerbase by forcing the loss farmers to actually improve or give up on the curse all together.

I say, for those who reached 1000lvl, (or once unlocked the curses) they should be put against themselves those same people.

I wouldn't mind that.

BUT...you be again may face against lose farmers. Since unlike yourself, some people are just bored or have already unlocked the curses, reached max lvl. What then? Your gonna face against players who farm loses with no endgame. Just to do it. ^_^

Once again, misinformed. Do you really think capable players are out there loss farming because they're bored ? Please share HG levels.

@gotszu said in You shouldn't get xp for losing in Hourglass..:

@burnbacon

First off, I'm not comparing loss farmers to cheaters and I do enjoy fighting sweats.
Let me throw back a question at you. Can you name me a single multiplayer game where "loss farming" is a thing ? I explicitely gave an example of a major studio (Zenimax) taking actions against such behaviour in their game.

Loss farming is not "taking the longer route", it's giving up on walking the route alltogether because the game allows you to, albeit in a frankly sad, long and pathetic way. I do not enjoy fighting AFK boats.

Do you realise how bizarre the whole premise of loss farming sounds ? Getting a PvP curse by losing all your matches is unhinged.
This was clearly not intended nor wished by the devs.
Coming from someone that still plays HG despite having unlocked both of the gold curses, my experience would be improved if loss farmers weren't a thing. I'm also sure that if loss farmers couldn't, well, loss farm, they'd also find great satisfaction in improving their PvP skills.

I can go suck at Halo Infinite and get xp and currency.

I can go suck at CoD and get XP.

I can go suck at Dead by Daylight and get xp.

Should I continue?

@pithyrumble

You shall not. I asked for games where a subset of the playerbase engages in loss farming, not games where you get compensatory xp for a loss.

@gotszu

Yep. All those games I get credit for losing. Even 0 kills feeding the opposite team the whole time.

Maybe because most of the playerbase of those games don't find the pvp mode akin to a molar root canal.

Have you looked into those game's communities?

@pithyrumble I play COD, and DbD (also lurks on forums there), did play a little Halo infinite.
In none of those games have I seen players actively farming losses.

This would be a way to just kill off hourglass entirely. It needs to be more accessible, not less. I really don't see the issue with people who want to go through the pain of loss farming, let them do them. In all the time I spent in hourglass on the journey to both curses, I maybe encountered loss farmers between 5 and 10 times. I think I encountered cheaters more.

@a10dr4651 How does removing people that weren't participating in Hourglass fighting to begin with kills hourglass exactly ?

@gotszu the players who play it now won't stay forever. It's very repetitive. New players come along, you make the grind even harder than it is now, less are likely to stick around. Fewer people take part, quicker everyone gets bored. Its already relatively low on participation numbers.

The best way to stop loss farming is to give people a reason to fight. Defensive mode is the key to that. Introducing new invasion events using the hourglass that make people fight over something.

@a10dr4651 Let's take a different perspective.

Mike is currently loss farming in HG. Mike decided that Hourglass was not for him, but still really badly wants the curse. Since improving in PvP is tiresome, Mike decided that he would just AFK on his boat and loss farm.
Mike gets his ghost curse and never touches HG again.

Now, Carl only gets compensatory XP starting from the lowest possible streak (1). Loss farming is no longer an option. Carl is a relatively new player and is faced with a choice : Improve and learn or give up on the curses.
Carl choses to improve and grows fond of PvP in the process by seeing all the progress he's made.
Carl now plays HG regularly.

Removing the option of loss farming only acts as an incentive for people to play the mode. Loss farmers don't provide anything to the HG environment and will abandon the mode as soon as they can.

The entire HG system is broken, and gating real progress behind winning consistantly, and 'at all costs' produces a toxic environment most of the time.

With all the server issues, glitches, bugs, and cheats, SoT is not optimized for hardcore competative play like you see in HG, so a system that minutely rewards participation, like the daily deeds suggestion, would definitely help.

On the flip side, loss farming does not harm you, the one getting roughly 5 or 6 times the benefit in allegiance from a first win, and even massivly more than that on a streak, so I dont see any reason for your vitriol other than gatekeeping 'losers' from the curse and cosmetics you had to fight to earn.

I have every servant of flame and reapers bones commendation completed and grade 5'd, gold bones, and it took such a massive commitment and time involvement that trust me, the most a loss farmer might ever realistcly get is the base curse

Hourglass needs a LOT of things right now. This is not it.

@soulstinger2k20 If you cannot see why having a seizable amount of the HG playerbase being essentially AFK is an issue for the long term heatlh of the mode, then there's not much to talk about sadly.

I'm not "hurt" by loss farmers, nor am I gatekeeping, I don't even use my gold curses. The demand for the curses is real and that's great. Having x % of that demand being converted into people loss farming is also a loss on potential long term HG players, which is a shame.

Are you really arguing that getting a "base" PvP curses without engaging in PvP is a good thing? Wild take

@gotszu why do you care?

@sweetsandman nobody wanted to play arena as Rare intended it to be played. in the end players just wanted team death match on an island. thats why they shut it down. why is it so hard to please the pvp crowd?

@qu1etone I main hourglass, I don't like fighting loss farmers and I'm always sad when I see them.

@gotszu thats humans my friend, they take advantage of anything that makes stuff easy. but some of us will try to do the right thing and your proposal effects those that try.

@phantaxus i just want everyone to be happy. but humans suck for the most part. especially pirate ones...

Saw a few different ideas in this thread and here's my 2 cents:

Arena rewarded rep for crews who placed #2-5.

And while CoD does reward xp after losing a match, this is usually scaled to the amount the player participated. If you play the objective, or kill opponents, or even try to kill opponents (assists), it doesn't matter if you win or lose, you will be rewarded a corresponding amount of xp. One can't simply load in, go AFK, and expect to get xp. You will get booted for lack of participation. Hell, even if you're not intending to go AFK, and you linger too long in the menu while editing your loadouts, you will be kicked from the game. I think this is good for any competitive game, because it helps retain honest participants.

So, I disagree with those who say that eliminating AFK/loss-farmers will somehow worsen the HG experience, because these players are not adding to the HG experience to begin with. In a game that requires participation, "losing" non-participants isn't really a loss.

That said, I agree with those who say eliminating loss-xp is detrimental. Because it doesn't only dissuade AFK/loss-farmers. It also dissuades casual players from bothering to try. @Gotszu, let's take CoD for example again. They already have a system in place to boot AFK players (even potential ones), but lets say they changed the xp system so that no one is rewarded weapon/operator/battle pass xp unless they win. What impact would this have on the playerbase and game's health? Do you think it would see more general/casual activity, or less?

I think, rather than eliminating loss-xp altogether, Rare could employ something like CoD's system, which rewards effort (whether resulting in win or loss) but dissuades laziness. I'm not sure what that would look like in HG. Maybe a minimum number of cannons fired per X-length-of-time? Holes repaired? There are multiple ways in determining whether or not someone was genuinely trying; and a good system would need to account for all of those ways.

I also like sandman's idea. The "daily deeds" and "win of the day" type stuff would bring in more casuals & I always upvote those ideas. More rep for defense-based HG would help too.

@schwammlgott I meant sad for them, sorry you misunderstood.
If people grind losses rather than try, it's not a "me" problem, it's just a problem. Sorry

@qu1etone said in You shouldn't get xp for losing in Hourglass..:

@sweetsandman nobody wanted to play arena as Rare intended it to be played. in the end players just wanted team death match on an island. thats why they shut it down. why is it so hard to please the pvp crowd?

TDMing was more rare (pun?) than people make it out to be. Yes, it happened...but even on the worst days, it was maaaaybe 5% of matches where you saw every ship flocking to the nearest fort for some good ol' TDMing...and if you didn't want to be a part of it, just take your W and leave that lobby for a new one.

That's not why they shut it down, though. They shut it down (mostly) for contractual reasons...remember, Arena was an outsourced and separated product. It had less to do with the time that players spent playing it despite what that last podcast made it out to be.

If they were really hellbent on removing things that garnered less than 5% of the playerbase's playtime, Shrines, the quest board, etc. would have been removed ages ago.

Arena had its flaws, for sure. But it was a solid foundation that should have been built on...not destroyed and replaced with a ground up (and worse) product.

@schwammlgott said:

this is a YOU PROBLEM

In theory, it interferes with genuine participation. Whether or not someone sees it a problem is up to that individual.

I say "in theory" because participation is already so low, that they're not having as significant an impact as they would if HG was flooded with players. If there were people waiting unreasonable times in queues because their potential spot was taken up by a loss-farmer, that may be their problem as well. And I wonder if at that point, Rare would see it as a problem too.

But that's not why queues are dead. Queues are dead because there's a long list of things that Rare needs to fix in order to make HG appealing, and I doubt "loss farmers" are anywhere on that list.

@theblackbellamy said in You shouldn't get xp for losing in Hourglass..:

@schwammlgott said:

this is a YOU PROBLEM

In theory, it interferes with genuine participation. Whether or not someone sees it a problem is up to that individual.

I say "in theory" because participation is already so low, that they're not having as significant an impact as they would if HG was flooded with players. If there were people waiting unreasonable times in queues because their potential spot was taken up by a loss-farmer, that may be their problem as well. And I wonder if at that point, Rare would see it as a problem too.

But that's not why queues are dead. Queues are dead because there's a long list of things that Rare needs to fix in order to make HG appealing, and I doubt "loss farmers" are anywhere on that list.

Bingo. Loss Farmers are not the problem with Hourglass. The entire progression system and battle design are the problems with hourglass. The sub-problems of those 2 things are a mile long. Loss farmers are so far down the "problem" list that they might as well not be on it.

To be clear, my stance on loss farming is that it's the silliest thing I've seen. This is a video game...the intent is to have fun...if you're not having fun, why on earth are you playing it? Spending hundreds of hours loss farming your way to a curse is not going to suddenly make the rest of the game more fun. It just isn't. It's a check-box...people need to stop playing games like it's work, and start playing games for fun.

@sweetsandman said:

To be clear, my stance on loss farming is that it's the silliest thing I've seen. This is a video game...the intent is to have fun...if you're not having fun, why on earth are you playing it? Spending hundreds of hours loss farming your way to a curse is not going to suddenly make the rest of the game more fun. It just isn't. It's a check-box...people need to stop playing games like it's work, and start playing games for fun.

Poor things prob just want to run around as a skeleton lol. Silliest thing I've seen was Rare locking curses that were more appropriate for some PvE/story thing behind a PvP grind.

Hopefully they take some of the feedback I've seen from you & others into consideration. If HG is made more appealing to the PvE(vP) & casual crowd, some of those loss-farmers might be able to plan something more fun for their evening.

@sweetsandman said in You shouldn't get xp for losing in Hourglass..:

@qu1etone said in You shouldn't get xp for losing in Hourglass..:

@sweetsandman nobody wanted to play arena as Rare intended it to be played. in the end players just wanted team death match on an island. thats why they shut it down. why is it so hard to please the pvp crowd?

TDMing was more rare (pun?) than people make it out to be. Yes, it happened...but even on the worst days, it was maaaaybe 5% of matches where you saw every ship flocking to the nearest fort for some good ol' TDMing...and if you didn't want to be a part of it, just take your W and leave that lobby for a new one.

In my experience, more than half the games I played in Arena had two crews doing TDM. Some of them then started to shoot one of the ships in the last part of the "contest"so they could farm points from cannon shots so they won as well besides farming their gun or sword kill commendations.

There were few contests that had all ships actually fighting each other. Lots of times crews would leave before even setting sail, perhaps they had some people tired of waiting or were AFK, but probably also some who wanted to TDM but were the only one.

That's not why they shut it down, though. They shut it down (mostly) for contractual reasons...remember, Arena was an outsourced and separated product. It had less to do with the time that players spent playing it despite what that last podcast made it out to be.

Not seen any evidence of this, so this is just speculation.

If they were really hellbent on removing things that garnered less than 5% of the playerbase's playtime, Shrines, the quest board, etc. would have been removed ages ago.

Arena had its flaws, for sure. But it was a solid foundation that should have been built on...not destroyed and replaced with a ground up (and worse) product.

Oh, it was fun until TDM became the norm.

@lem0n-curry sounds like our experiences with Arena were far different. Maybe regional? Maybe time of day? Who knows.

The "speculative part" that you pointed out comes from multiple SOT partners spoken as fact. Sure, that's not straight from the horse's mouth, but it's as close as we'll get. If you don't buy it, that's fine. But I'd still point out that there are things in Adventure mode that consume resources that are far less popular than Arena was. Meh. RIP Arena.

Maybe someday hourglass will live up to its potential. The foundation isn't terrible...but it needs a substantial amount of love.

@sweetsandman well my understanding of the death of arena is mostly anecdotal. i played with the biggest sweat lords a few years back and they gave up on arena before its demise because players were not playing the game, just tdm-ing in normal arena. there are a lot of things in this game that rare should be making a note of the communities view. but alas... a dedicated pvp mode seems an easy thing to implement if only they listened to the community. personally the only time im pvp-ing is when im backed into a corner. haha

End with this.

Bottom line: Hourglass at is core will always be this.

• Device used to skip the long sailing around the map looking for a ship. (That may or may not fight, sounds like farm losing) & find like minded players. Curses were there to get 'more players' to join it which backfired.

Lose farming is like finding a random ship out in the world and sinking it. NOBODY! cared beside the one getting sunk, the one attacking did it because its a pirate game. So the whole idea Lose farming is 'bad' baffles me, when I know these same pvp hungry players would of just sunk players out in the world without a care.
You gained free Exp, Loot, resources without taking damage to your ship, which helps you in the next battle you will find.

Take the Win and move on. If you dislike the Lose Farming, leave HG and get back into Adventure, sail around until you see a ship and attack it.