Implement hourglass 3rd party protection

No.
Hourglass is a tool to find open world PvP. Not a 1v1 mode.
And, like any open-world PvP; There's a chance of a third party coming along and joining in.

And add to it the fact that people are able to server hop via quest with the hourglass up and actively hunt for these battles to prey on!

Uhh...A person would have to server hop, then sail around and hope to find an HG battle to slide into.
You make it sound like they can teleport at-will to an HG battle. They can't.

They never match into their own hourglass battles, they just server hop over and over to find other people's to third party for easy streaks with almost no danger to themselves or even remote levels of fairness.

No one does this. It's so random that it's not worth doing.

But allowing people to lurk like vultures and ruin the integrity of the system feels like a huge step too far.

What 'integrity'? The weird rule players have made up about 1v1 battles?

If this isn't prevented/discouraged ASAP, the upcoming Fight Night Week will be disastrous.

And there's the 'You must do as I say or everything will be ruined!' doomposting people do to try scaring the devs into acting without thinking.

First off, hourglass is not a tool to find "open world PVP." It is intentionally designed to find you another crew of equal size, relatively similar win/loss ratio, and put you off in an isolated part of a server so you can have as close to a fair, 1v1 experience as possible. While I fully agree that allowing 3rd parties to intercede makes it a livelier and more dynamic experience, to say it is INTENDED to allow 3rd partying to be so abusable is wrong. All the evidence points to the experience being intended to be a fast, fair(ish) way to engage in PvP. Not an open world chance encounter experience.

Second, server hopping does require an element of chance to find what you are looking for. Everyone is well aware of this. I'm not saying you can at will teleport to an hourglass match someone else is having. But you CAN hop servers every 90 seconds and finding a server with an active hourglass match (especially with the upcoming Fight Night Hourglass week) is significantly easier than should be acceptable to be allowing 3rd parties to interfere with such an overwhelming advantage.
-For those who are going to lie and say hopping every 90 seconds is not possible, it is, here's how: Vote to dive to the lowest tier Gold Hoarder Treasure Map quest. You will emerge at a small island with two dig points. Tap each dig quickly, don't bother digging up the chest completely. As soon as both dig points are hit, the quest completes and the cooldown on diving is removed. If what you are server hopping for isn't there (Fort of Fortune, Burning Blade, or in this case, an active Hourglass match), you just vote up the same quest and dive again. It takes all of 1 to 2 minutes at most to complete the entire process.

Third, to say that nobody is lurking around and waiting to third party hourglasses or bothering to server hop and hunt them down, I say this: It has happened to ME PERSONALLY three times in a week. Different crews each time. It is absolutely happening and its a method that is spreading insanely quickly. That's why I made this post, because it needs to be addressed immediately before it completely ruins the Fight Night week. It is 100% safer and more effective to farm hourglass reputation by taking a brigantine, finding another hourglass match, and waiting for one ship to get de-masted before swooping in and easily cleaning up both ships. You get two wins towards your hourglass streak, have a major advantage in the fight by doing this, and have literally 0 risk of being contested because neither ship in the hourglass match can leave the circle to come deal with you and you cannot have another ship spawn on you for having your own Hourglass up because you are in too close proximity to an active hourglass match! No risk, all reward, and all it costs is a few minutes of patience.

All I'm saying is this: If this is the intended experience, then you better believe I'm just going to go ahead and abuse this instead of actually trying to engage in Hourglass properly. I'm going to use it to ruin Fight Night duels the entire week, which will in turn cause a massive outcry in the community and destroy the reputation of Hourglass even further. And you can't hold me accountable because you wanted it to work this way. And I fully believe based on how Rare has programmed and designed the mode that this in NOT how they want things to work, thus why I bring this to their attention now instead of it rearing its head when the entire player base is dipping into Hourglass during the event.

@danegotiator792

First off, hourglass is not a tool to find "open world PVP."

Except it is.
The devs have said it is.
Are you saying you know better than the developers what they intended for the mode they made?

It is intentionally designed to find you another crew of equal size, relatively similar win/loss ratio, and put you off in an isolated part of a server so you can have as close to a fair, 1v1 experience as possible.

It's designed to find a quick PvP match. Hence it starting as 1v1; It's easier to find 2 people who want to fight at the same time instead of 3+.

While I fully agree that allowing 3rd parties to intercede makes it a livelier and more dynamic experience, to say it is INTENDED to allow 3rd partying to be so abusable is wrong.

They INTENDED Hourglass to be a fast-find open-world PvP tool. That's literally what it is.

All the evidence points to the experience being intended to be a fast, fair(ish) way to engage in PvP. Not an open world chance encounter experience.

All the evidence points to the experience being intended to be a fast, fair-ish way to find PvP. In the open world.
Evidence:

• It exists in the open world.
• Other people can attack players in it.
• The devs have said so.

@danegotiator792 said in Implement hourglass 3rd party protection:

First off, hourglass is not a tool to find "open world PVP." It is intentionally designed to find you another crew of equal size, relatively similar win/loss ratio, and put you off in an isolated part of a server so you can have as close to a fair

I'm gonna have to disagree on the isolated part of the server, you either are invading or are invaded meaning the battlefield is wherever your match was found, however it does try to prevent invasions when other ships are too close.

Don't get me wrong, i hate 3rd parties as much as you do, maybe more, but it's just something we have to suffer. You can always ask your opponent if they wanna team up against the 3rd party, no harm asking and even if you can't go out of the ring, you can wait and force them to enter it if they wanna hunt you so bad.