Hourglass is Dying

@grumpyw01f said in Hourglass is Dying:

@thamb0 said in Hourglass is Dying:

@lordqulex Ya, try telling that to my crew XD. I literally said the same thing about go in fast and just sink or swim. My two brig mates had to always buy full supps and then spend 5 minutes running the outpost filling up the storage crate, AND then cooking every piece of meat before we can dive XD. I do base supps in solo, but even then it's sometimes toxic because many are just runners so my cannonballs dwindle fast every time they run away XD. Oh well.

Wow. That's dedication. I've always just bought captaincy supplies and a cannonball crate. Sometimes I grab some chain shots from the island while I cook 2 pieces of meat. On a bigger crew I might storage crate the island though.

For me it's just grab 10 cannonballs and fruits from the tavern, not even the barrels around the merchants and shipwright. I always raised emmissary flag just in case I got a win so I could get some extra gold.

Hourglass' design feels like it encourages finishing fights as quickly as possible opposed to fight very well to the very end. Sure, you can improve by practicing in hourglass, but considering that some players stated that hourglass PvP and adventure PvP feel different and considering that the game is also full of bugs or unplayable parts I guess the skill roof is not as high as I thought. At least I'm lucky I never ran into any cheater.

@valor-omega I would kove to get arrna like voyage where crew opt in for voyage in smillar matter like first arena.
Every crew get same X mark a tresure maps. Every one is visible on map. Everyone have to sell in one place. Biggest pile of loot sold win voyage.

Outsail, outgun, outtdm your oponents.

Excellent thread.
It as been suggested under several forms, but everyone agrees, the Streak System is very bad.

I wouldn't put it as "HG is dying", but the content of the post is absolutely right.

@grumpyw01f My experience in fight nights was the same as Gold & Glory. I had a bigger variety of opponents, and I fought most of them, sometimes I just decided to sink fast when I recognized my opponent was a very skilled one, had a couple of loooooong matches, and found a handful of loss farmers and dice rollers.

I noticed that the majority of my opponents want to end matches quickly. The clock is ticking and most of them don't want to waste the boost in a long match. I was playing hourglass as a solo sloop exclusively and sold my hourglass value at every win, no streaks for me as I was not confident on the mixed bag of opponents I had, so as soon as I won a match I sailed to an outpost to sell flags and hourglass value. Most of the time I was doing the right call as the next battle would be a tough opponent, so I wouldn't be able to make streaks like this.

But trust me, I'm not touching hourglass until community weekend. I already have the ghost curse, but I will finish my hourglass business at community weekend, because I refuse to deal with the grapple gun in hourglass. I have to finish my stuff before next season.

I still hate how a long hard battle will give you the tiny xp portion, so I don't have any reason to even try if I see my opponent is more likely to win. I don't feel encouraged to win, I feel encouraged to finish my fights as soon as possible. I improved my PvP skills compared to what they were in season 8, but I don't plan to become an ultra sweat lord and live in hourglass the rest of my lifespan in this game. I rather do other activites I actually find fun. I am doing this just for the curses, if there was another method of obtaining allegiance I would have done that instead.

You know, I've seen people in other social media asking for Fight Nights to become a regular event.

I think if Fight Nights were something like once a month, I think it could help hourglass slightly. I feel like one Fight Night weekend per month is just the right balance for it to sparkle a bit of interest, without giving away too much or give very little.

@theblackbellamy said in Hourglass is Dying:

@dragotech123 Pretty sad that the only carrot worth dangling in front of the majority of the playerbase is double-XP.

I have two buddies who acted as my "anchors" to this game. Regardless of how far I drifted, they pulled me back in for the occasional HG sesh. Even they don't want to play unless it's double-XP now.

Our reasons are different from the issues addressed in this thread though. The number of cheaters we have run into in recent months (including fight night weekend) has seemingly climbed after the initial dip that came with EAC's release.

So now my buddies are only willing to risk fighting cheaters if there's double-XP lol. And I don't blame them, honestly. Even with the boosted allegiance, it's just not worth my time. I'd rather spend it on CoD.

And yes, while CoD isn't devoid of cheaters, when you run into one, you can just leave and find a new lobby. There's no time invested in stocking up, or waiting in line to get into a match first. The playerbase isn't so thin that you're likely to run into the same one again. It essentially comes down to being much less risk for a level of return.

Anyway - I'm 100% behind Grumpy's suggestions here. I've made my own on how the allegiance rewarded per match can be scaled better, to appeal to more players.

But at this point, I think the most important thing for Rare to focus on is tightening the security again. Unless I hear about any improvement there, I probably won't be joining my buddies for the next Fight Night, if they'll even want to play.

I don't blame anyone for doing that outside of boosted events either. I mean, let's be logical, community weekend, good and glory and fight nights offer a better xp for the time invested. So outside of that, the playerbase with lower skill levels will not touch the hourglass. Which leads to the exact same graph that Grumpy posted 4 months ago in this thread.

The majoritiy of players are doing this for the curses, only a smaller group are doing hourglass for the love of PvP. As I said previously, Hourglass is the only way to obtain allegiance.

I don't like comparing the allegiance grind to fishing or tall tale grinds, but rather the other trading companies grind. Tall tales and fishing are commendations, which are specific actions. Meanwhile xp bars like reputation from trading companies are from selling different kinds of loot based on different kind of voyages or world events. Hourglass is the only method of obtaining allegiance. A player can obtain the Trading Prosperity costume by delivering chickens, raiding sea forts, recovering merchant items from sunken vessels, selling commodities or delivering cargo. How do you get the curses? Just pure hourglass, just sink opponents, nothing else. Therefore I think that's why I think many players expressed how repetitive it is. I even dare to say that the shores of gold tall tales have more variety in puzzles, but again, I don't like comparing the journey to the gold curse with the journey to the ghost/skelly curse.

Yes, it is indeed sad that extra xp is the carrot worth dangling in front of the majority of players, but also it is unsurprising because people want to optimize the xp/time ratio. Cheaters in certain servers, and the game having some stability problems are not helping either.

@jon-sea-nah

I forgot to thank you for your help. Your guidance made me a better hourglass player.

When I started in Season 8 I was horrendous at solo slooping multitasking, I barely hit my cannon shots and had terrible angles with the wheel and sail.
While I made some inmense improvements in hourglass, I don't think I can get any better. It's like being at certain mid rank in a competitive MOBA game. My wins have been 109 out of 230 matches, so I think I am average. I don't think I can get any better at this without stop playing casually, but I'm happy I managed to improve my skills at the game.

Thanks for your help, captain Jon.