BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT:
I propose a permanent no-invasion hourglass defending option with reduced allegiance gains.
DISCLAIMER:
I think it's important that I emphasize I am absolutely not proposing this in order to make allegiance gains quicker, for anyone. On that note, here's a little bit of my SoT history. I'm around 1k total allegiance between both factions, I started in March 2023 and within a month decided I wanted to improve my survival skills, so I went head first into HG and got stomped over and over, gradually improving. I played through the flying keg droppers of season 9 and have seen all manner of hilarious and demoralizing hacks. I've helped multiple pirates reach HG goals and it's rare that I play a session without doing a little bit of HG, usually diving, sometimes defending. These days, I don't grind HG but I still have goals, I'm 17 champion streaks away from verdant bones, for example. My typical play session is usually a duo sloop or a brig, and we cruise around immersing ourselves with PvPvE content, going from event to event to FotD or to whatever else looks good. If we get into a battle, good. We call this sailing with intent. I appreciate that SoT has many things which are difficult to achieve, I value my HG allegiance and downvote every idea I see which essentially proposes making the curses easier to get. And that's what it's always about, someone wants the curses but doesn't want to do what is required to get them. If the curses became easier, they'd likely never touch HG again after they got them, having advocated for HG changes which suit them, then never looking back. Not a fan. I hope to have the Shores of Gold tall tales completed someday, but I dislike doing tall tales more than once each, you'll never see me asking to make them quicker.
TLDR:
This is an idea that popped up in another thread under the discussion category. With invasions/diving currently disabled, I think some pirates might be dabbling with HG in ways they hadn't before, or at all.
A no-invasion defender option assumes less risk. If a pirate plays their cards right they could probably avoid encounters the vast majority of the time; however, there is no safe space in SoT, there is always risk, and I think it's reasonable that a reduced amount of reward is given based on the small amount of risk a no-invasion defender would assume.
HOW DEFENDING WORKS:
Most of you probably already know how defending works, if that's the case, please move on to all the words below.
Defending is simply HG without diving. You "raise" HG from your captains table, and play how you see fit. You can be invaded by another HG participant who is diving/queuing at any time after raising HG. Loot acquired while HG is active goes towards a loot score called "faction hoard". You can see what faction hoard level you have from the HG on the captains table. You can reach a maximum of level 5. You can turn in your faction hoard at the faction liaison (make sure to turn in before removing loot from your boat) and receive allegiance in that faction. You receive allegiance regardless of if you got invaded, in other words, potentially getting allegiance without having to fight for it. You can can drop HG no sooner than 15 minutes after raising it. The best part about defending, in my opinion, is that if you get invaded and win, you will get an increased amount of allegiance based on your faction hoard. I don't have the exact numbers, but lets just say if a 1 streak win gets you 50% of a level, a defense win with a level 5 faction hoard will get you a full level.
Turning in a level 5 faction hoard without having defended it will get you around a quarter level of allegiance. I don't claim to be the fastest loot gatherer with the best methods, but I'd say for most people you're probably looking at about 1 level of allegiance within 3 hours. I'm sure some crafty pirate might be able to get a level 5 faction hoard and manage to turn it in at an outpost within 15 minutes, but I have never come close to accomplishing that. I've been doing events the last couple days specifically for the faction hoard and I'm looking at like 45 minutes round trip, event, loot, turn-in.
Defending is a risk versus reward decision. If you play in at active region, you are almost certainly going to be invaded, and if you're someone who doesn't reasonably expect to get some wins, defending is not for you. You'll just be making your loss that much more painful since you spent time looting just to get invaded and kerplow sunk. I think that most people, including myself, have concluded that defending is not a great option for increasing allegiance. You'll probably average significantly less allegiance based on your time input. Even if you're someone who wins most of your fights, you cannot be invaded until 15 minutes after your last fight ended. Which means even if you cruised around with a level 5 faction hoard all day, winning all of your fights, you'd only be able to get a fight every 15 minutes at the earliest, and you probably won't be getting fights immediately after the 15 minutes expires, thus adding even more in between time. I still like defending, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who is just trying to gain allegiance.
ALL THE WORDS:
If I see a boat sailing around with HG up, I'm going to raise the opposing faction and attack them, assuming I can based on what emissary I have up at the time. There are exceptions of course, if it's a sweaty looking galley and I'm solo, I'll probably stay clear, but usually this scenario leads to an organic HG fight for me and my crew. Not everyone is like that, a significant portion of the player-base would probably not want anything to do with the ship clearly looking for PvP versus willing participants with a competency level above the average pirate. Point being, even if invasion is not possible, risk is involved. You can certainly take all the steps to avoid a fight. You could have no emissary and do shipwrecks in the Roar, get your level 5 faction hoard and go turn it in after 45 mins or so, but even there, you can be found and sunk. Shipwrecks in the Roar were my bread and butter when I first started, and I certainly got found and sunk, and that was before diving made it easier to find ships. Currently, turning in a level 5 faction hoard gives you about a quarter level. My estimate based on my own experimentation with faction hoards is that you'll probably be looking at 1 level of allegiance per 3 hours, and that's assuming you didn't end up fighting a couple ships for an hour at a FoF like I did last night. I'm sure someone can do it faster than that, but I think 3 hours per level is a reasonable estimate. Even if you somehow managed to get to level 5 and turn it it within 15 minutes, rinse and repeat, you'd be getting 1 level per hour. Not great, or possible in my opinion, but there are some efficient pirates out there so I wouldn't be too surprised if someone managed to do it. So that's 1 level per hour and lets say you're playing SoT a lot, so 5 hours a day, 7 days a week. That's a curse in 3 weeks acquired with some insane gaming routine accomplishing what I consider an impossible 15 minutes level 5 faction hoard turn-in all day without interference. Lets go ahead and conclude that this scenario isn't happening. More realistically, you're getting a couple levels a day at most with current allegiance gains. If efficiency is your goal and you're willing to play that much optimizing one thing over and over, you should devote that time to simply diving, getting gains from losses and wins, and improving your survival skills. Diving would be faster, more fun, and you'd get better at an important aspect of the game, staying afloat.
HG diving is disabled and pirates are likely out there experimenting with faction hoards. I think the allegiance we get at the risk level we assume when raising HG, without the possibility of being invaded, isn't too terribly high right now based on the time required to acquire and turn-in a faction hoard, but I do think it should be lower. Lower to an extent which someone who gets paid to decide, decides. I guess I'd say half off the top of my head, but lower is all I'm concerned with. A lot of pirates don't want PvP encounters, at least not frequently, but every pirate assumes risk in SoT, allowing the option to defend without the possibility of invasion would open the door to a lot of potential HG participants who would otherwise shy away from HG. They're already out there assuming risk, gathering loot, why shouldn't they also be representing their faction of choice while doing so? I think this would give HG a boost as previously reluctant players dip their toes and get a little taste of the allegiance addiction, and maybe eventually take the leap to a faster riskier approach to HG. If they don't ever get into diving or being invaded, that's fine, they're still participating and can still be sunk by opposing factions for allegiance. If a crew is cruising around sinking HG participants, guess what, they were probably going to cruise around and sink you either way.
In my opinion as someone who values the effort I and others have put into getting the allegiance and commendations we have, I think this idea is a reasonable approach which will foster inclusion and offer a lowered amount of allegiance to those who are assuming a lower amount of risk.
PROS:
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Increased HG participation. Even if nobody ever decides to go beyond defending without the possibility of invasion, they'll still be participants who can be sunk for allegiance, or defend and win.
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Increased organic PvP and to some extent increased consensual PvP. Pirates are gonna pirate, so I'm not suggesting that a crew isn't still going to sink you because they want your 3 chain shots. However, if I see two ships, one with HG up and one without, I'm cruising past the non-HG ship full speed towards that allegiance. The impact here would probably be minimal, but impactful nonetheless.
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Less post on the forums proposing ideas to make allegiance gains easier. This offers players a way to get allegiance via assuming an amount of risk comparable to what they already assume on any given session.
PROCON:
Probably fewer loss farmers. Many people don't like them, many people appreciate a free win, whatever your thoughts might be, I'm guessing there would be fewer of them. I actually haven't even noticed loss farmers in a while, their impact or lack thereof would probably be minimal.
CONS:
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Someone finds a way to cheese it to death. I think the potential impact here is minimal as I mentioned in all the words above. Even if you somehow manage to get level 5 and turn-in within 15 minutes, rinse and repeat, you're still looking at a slow gain in allegiance. Also, I don't see how anyone would manage to do it, especially consistently without interference.
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Potential negative impact to queues. I don't think this would happen, and actually I think if more people are participating in HG in whichever way they choose, it's a net positive eventually. But... it's possible that defending without the possibility of invasion could take players out of the queue or out of the possibility of being invaded. With that said, I hardly ever invade someone, and if I do it's usually not because they were collecting loot, it's because they spent too long at the outpost doing whatever after finishing a fight or initially raising HG. I think this idea would be a benefit to queues, but it's difficult to be sure.
CONCLUSION:
In 2023 I experimented with all the ways to get 200 in each faction as quick as possible, which was my goal at the time. All experimentation led to the same conclusion, diving is the answer by a longshot. With HG diving disabled the last few days, I've been able to revisit that experimentation but without the possibility of invasion, and once again concluded that even without the possibility of invasion, simply turning faction hoards in is not an efficient way to gain allegiance. The last few days I've been able to consider whether the allegiance we're currently getting is too high considering the reduced risk we're assuming, and I think the answer is yes, but not by much. We are indeed assuming risk out there, but sneaky pirates could mitigate that risk quite a bit. Nonetheless, risk is assumed, so reward shouldn't be out of the question.
