Hourglass battles should not begin with an Ancient Megalodon present

Emergent PvE threats (skeleton ships, megalodons, etc) are supposed to be disabled within the bounds of hourglass battles

Never heard of that.

You’re still part of the open world. Someone can be doing a fort and use the extra kegs and cannons. It all part of the thing.
Hourglass: instant pvp tool

@capt-greldik In the early days of hourglass i believe they stated you won't come up in a storm after a patch, but you can be close enough it still comes over.

And that's for invade vs invade.

I don't think invading someone defending has any limits they can be doing world events or whatever.

Op has a point ancient megs are frustrating. I guess the main issue is if people figure out a way of being close enough to them to not aggro so it's always the invader getting attacked that something should be done about it. Other than that just an unlucky frustration.

The specific match where this occurred the other day was a mutual invasion. It was not someone defending in an area where there was already an active Ancient Megalodon.

The prospect of a crew intentionally using an Ancient Meg to assist with defense would be concerning too, but that's not what happened in this specific case. I suppose that a crew could park in shallow water at an island beside an active Ancient Meg, facing it, in order to guarantee that it would aggro to a crew if a defensive match begins. Not sure if the game would allow that, and not the basis for the original post. That doesn't seem appropriate for hourglass either though IMO.

RE: Battles Within A Storm, that was patched in 2.8.2

RE: Emergent PvE threats in hourglass, I don't remember where I first learned about that, and haven't found a citation for it yet. However, the sum of my captaincy stats for hourglass battles completed in both factions is 3280, and I cannot recall a single instance of an emergent skeleton ship or megalodon spawning during an active match. I very much doubt that is a coincidence.

@burnbacon it’s kind of true, you cannot have emergent pve spawn on you when you’re in a fight. It can only spawn due to others coming in or world events

@captain-knyt

So a very rare chance happened once and OP is upset?
I kind of wish they would spawn up during those fights if need. Or if players defended more often for theses to happen a lot more.

As far as frequency of the issue repeating, I'm not sure how common it is, but I don't think it's all that rare. All you need is to match onto a server with a Hunter 5 and an Ancient Meg, and there's a chance the battle location could overlap. My frequency of hourglass gameplay dropped off significantly during S15 compared to past seasons. In conversations on other channels with several other hourglass players, others have experienced the same.

Considering the precedent of emergent PvE spawns being disabled from spawning on players in an hourglass battle, this seems like a bug to me.

@d3adst1ck that's correct, and considering how much less serious of a threat those are compared to ancient megs and that the devs already disable those, areas of the map with ancient meg should be excluded from the matchmaking pool. Hourglass is supposed to be PvP, so the game should not spawn the battle in an area where PvE is liable to immediately throw the fight in favor of one crew. Recall the aggro behavior of the ancient meg -- it exclusively focuses on a single crew.

@d3adst1ck There are a few reasons that I think maintain the possibility that this is a bug. Although, this is getting into a semantic argument separate from the original problem.

• The state of the server prior to the invasion (ancient meg present or not?) is unknown
• The implementation details of the server/matchmaking code would be unknown outside of development team members as far as whether they already attempt to exclude regions where there is an ancient meg present, or not
• On other occasions, I've spawned into a PvE dive quest at a small island, and within seconds, two other ships spawned within megaphone range for a mutual invasion hourglass match. This makes me suspect there could be a race condition in the matchmaking code in which whatever suitability check for a given location could pass, but then the state of the server changes between the suitability check and the beginning of the match, leading to an hourglass match beginning in a location that would fail the suitability check.

@cebesius said in Hourglass battles should not begin with an Ancient Megalodon present:

@d3adst1ck that's correct, and considering how much less serious of a threat those are compared to ancient megs and that the devs already disable those, areas of the map with ancient meg should be excluded from the matchmaking pool. Hourglass is supposed to be PvP, so the game should not spawn the battle in an area where PvE is liable to immediately throw the fight in favor of one crew. Recall the aggro behavior of the ancient meg -- it exclusively focuses on a single crew.

@cebesius If Hourglass were meant to be strictly PvP, it would likely exist on its own server like Arena did. But Sea of Thieves is inherently a PvPvE game — other players can jump in, and so can PvE threats. That unpredictability is part of what makes the experience unique.

@uluckyhitreg the point of this thread is not to argue that hourglass should be strictly PvP. Hourglass mode already tunes specific aspects of gameplay somewhat more in favor of PvP. Besides that emergent PvE encounters are disabled as I mentioned earlier, there is also different mermaid spawning behavior specific to hourglass as of 2.9.0.

Players who find themselves in the sea during an Hourglass of Fate Battle will now find that the mermaids appear much sooner and closer, helping them return to their ship more quickly.

This helps players popcorned overboard to have a somewhat better chance to get back onto their ship (which is likely stationary or circling a relatively small area), and gives boarders more options for choosing whether to continue a board during the medium distance broadsides that often occur in hourglass, or to return back to their ship.

The tuning of specific gameplay functions within hourglass to favor PvP gameplay is evidently an established aspect of the mode's design, and excluding map areas with ancient megs present from matchmaking eligibility would fit well alongside.

A matched HG battle (AKA non-invasion), right now in game by design, does not encounter:

• The storm
• Thick fog
• Megalodons
• Skelly ships

If you've encountered these, you've encountered a bug just like encountering the Ancient Megs is absolutely a bug. Anyone saying otherwise simply doesn't play much hourglass or they would know that.

Hopefully this eventually gets fixed, but it's probably low on the list (rightfully so if I'm being honest).