Hourglass matchmaking should show names of pirates on opponent ship

i don't think this is a bad idea, however I think it would be better to use on the players that run rather than fight.
HG is meant to be PvP on demand, but most people see it as just the 100ft wall you have to climb to get the skeleton/ghost curse, because that grind is awful, so some players will just loss farm to get the curses. I know it sucks when you are trying to do PvP and everyone runs away, but you need to remember that the majority of people who engage in HG are only after the curses.

HG also is only really enjoyable when there is that mutual respect of one another in the form of constantly engaging. I did the grind for both curses and I can honestly say that the worst players i've ever had the displeasure of meeting were the ones who tried to get me to quit out of boredom, who i refer to as time wasters. I appreciate it is a videogame. But wasting anyone's time is just bad manners. when i encountered cheaters, the match was over in like 5 minutes max and I could move on. You can't do that with time wasters. I wish there was a way to report these players and that they get banned from engaging in HG, because they are only going to do this in HG. It's not some kind of innovative technique, it's a waste of other peoples time who would be so much happier dealing with other people. I actually nearly quit the gamemode entirely because these were the only players I met one day it was so frustrating

@theredhead5271 said in Hourglass matchmaking should show names of pirates on opponent ship to counter loss farming exploiters:

i don't think this is a bad idea, however I think it would be better to use on the players that run rather than fight.
HG is meant to be PvP on demand, but most people see it as just the 100ft wall you have to climb to get the skeleton/ghost curse, because that grind is awful, so some players will just loss farm to get the curses. I know it sucks when you are trying to do PvP and everyone runs away, but you need to remember that the majority of people who engage in HG are only after the curses.

HG also is only really enjoyable when there is that mutual respect of one another in the form of constantly engaging. I did the grind for both curses and I can honestly say that the worst players i've ever had the displeasure of meeting were the ones who tried to get me to quit out of boredom, who i refer to as time wasters. I appreciate it is a videogame. But wasting anyone's time is just bad manners. when i encountered cheaters, the match was over in like 5 minutes max and I could move on. You can't do that with time wasters. I wish there was a way to report these players and that they get banned from engaging in HG, because they are only going to do this in HG. It's not some kind of innovative technique, it's a waste of other peoples time who would be so much happier dealing with other people. I actually nearly quit the gamemode entirely because these were the only players I met one day it was so frustrating

So you think hourglass matches should show names of pirates on opponent ship to counter HG runners? I think that's a matter of whether or not running is allowed as a legitimate technique. And with runners, you can see their names when you eventually catch them.

With loss farming exploiters who alt+f4 whenever they're not matched against their friend or whoever paid them to feed levels, you can't see their names at all because the match is cancelled when they all alt+f4. So just when you think you matched, you emerge at an outpost with anchor down, we raise anchor and dive again, black screen and emerge at an outpost again, and repeat. They ruin hourglass matchmaking. And they're not reportable because their names never showed up on our screens.

OCE keeps getting more strange ways to do things. It's so fascinating to learn about them because it's more unbelievable how it actually works...

@nex-stargaze said in Hourglass matchmaking should show names of pirates on opponent ship to counter loss farming exploiters:

OCE keeps getting more strange ways to do things. It's so fascinating to learn about them because it's more unbelievable how it actually works...

This.

People will do anything to not have to actually play this game sometimes I swear.

Have to commend them on their creativeness with these exploits, though.

just because you know there name doesnt mean much. Multiple account uses have strange names.

@super87ghost said in Hourglass matchmaking should show names of pirates on opponent ship to counter loss farming exploiters:

@sweetsandman
Is that surprising? Since cheesing happens in every game and you could almost say it's part of gaming nowadays.

Cheesing as a term is a lot like "toxic" in gaming. It gets thrown around a lot and is often used to describe things that they really aren't.

Cheesing is using throwing knives against an ashen lord, or heading to Tribute Peak to get some treacherous plunder.

What OP is describing is a blatant exploit akin to the Hourglass shores of gold exploit where it is actively negatively impacting the intended experience of other players.

@super87ghost without needlessly getting hung up on semantics, what OP described is basically "boosting" in other games like CoD. CoD lobbies are not easy to manipulate nowadays, but back in the day, it used to be possible to join a match and be placed on the team opposing your friend. So people would join their friends as opponents and give them free kills.

It was "cheesing," and exploiting, and outright cheating. And people were appropriately banned for doing it.

SoT players, who cheat to get free wins by playing against friends that are guaranteed to lose, should also be banned imho.

It's one thing to loss farm to cheese/boost a friend.
It's another thing to loss farm while preventing other players from getting a match.

If they proceed with the match even when they're matched against not-friend, then it's fine. They're boosting without exploits.
But as it is now, they cancel the match when they're matched against not-friend, so it's not fine. They're boosting while exploiting the DC mechanic. They ensured they don't lose their win streak at the cost of preventing other players from playing.

Their loss-farming/DC exploits make it harder and more time-consuming for normal players to find a match. The server indirectly becomes reserved for loss farming exploiters.

@super87ghost It's actively abusing an exploit that causes an unintended gameplay experience for others. It's a straight up bannable offense in other games as @TheBlackBellamy mentioned.

Quick swapping was a gray area. It was something that a lot of double gunners were not intentionally doing and largely didn't even realize they were doing. It was just a part of organic movement when deck fighting. It bordered on a happy bug more than an exploit for a lot of players.

Ultimately, it's up to Rare on how they want to handle it, but it's not unprecedented in gaming to punish boosting aggressively.

@super87ghost said in Hourglass matchmaking should show names of pirates on opponent ship to counter loss farming exploiters:

@sweetsandman said in Hourglass matchmaking should show names of pirates on opponent ship to counter loss farming exploiters:

Quick swapping was a gray area. It was something that a lot of double gunners were not intentionally doing and largely didn't even realize they were doing.

Hahaha, sure.... And i'm the king of England...

You need to time things right and know what you are doing, otherwise you would fail in it and most people won't be able to do it correctly.... But those double gunners magicly get it right by accident all the time and don't know they are actively doing it...... That might be the most unbelievable defence of cheating i ever heared.

I'm not sure what your play style is or what your skill-set in SOT is, but ...

If you are a high mobility bunny hopping double gunner, you 100% without question were sprint cancel quick swapping before the changes whether you know it or not. That's just how it was designed. That's why it was such a negatively received change... because it made deck fighting for people that weren't intentionally quick swapping feel worse. They didn't know why, but it just felt...worse.

That's why... because it killed sprint cancelling. Which a lot of people were doing without even knowing it.

Another example where pre-match list of pirate names would be helpful:-

So I experimented with my local Asian servers, which is also well known for cheaters.

While my crew did ok (win some, lost some) in a handful of brigantine matches, there was 1 match where we got obliterated so quickly. Nonstop accurate cannon aim at wheel/masts/cannons from the very start. Then, both masts down, and 2 pirates killed at nearly the same time. Then, our ship sunk. No chance to see any names the enemy pirate crew. Even if we observe this same pattern across matches, there's no chance of reporting them even if they cheated because their pirate names aren't visible. Since meeting the same crew over and over again is common, and it's tiresome to setup again, we stopped playing at this point.

If there were pirate names at the start of the match (or a scoreboard at the end of the match, probably an impossible task), maybe we'd be able to identify these highly skilled pirates/cheaters - to either learn from them or report them.