This is a long read, as it touches on numerous problems. [mod edit]
Hourglass improvements
I pretty much agree with everything you've said. One thing I would add is adding a fix, so that megs, skeleton ships, other PvE cannot interfere with an ongoing battle.
I lost a 5 streak during Gold and Glory, because the Feared Redmaw was swimming around the battle zone, and exclusively attacked our galleon over and over again. Before this had happened, we had the enemy galleon at mid decks, and ALMOST won, but 5 consecutive bites to our galleon ultimately won them the battle, by a hair.
This absolutely should not happen.
Hourglass battles are meant to be intense
Not for me. They more just a way to please my pvp needs. Regardless how fast or slow it takes.
Smaller Starting Battle Circle
How small until it becomes to small?? What if the circle is created so small both ships can’t reach each other because of large island.
So far from what I read. All these issues is what makes hourglass what it was meant and intended for.
Having issues or complaints because things didn’t go your way because of the game itself. Isn’t way to go about it.Hourglass is what it is. Pvp on demand, in an open world where I don’t wanna sail around looking for a fight. If I sink by player or world itself. That part of the game.
Turning hourglass into arena isn’t the future I look forward too and hope it doesn’t. You think it bad now, :pWhile I do agree that chainshot can be a powerful tool, I find that I still often win fights with my mast down because I keep good angle and keep applying pressure. Chainshots should be purchasable at the shipwright though.
I don't think the circle should start smaller, but it definitely should shrink. The only issue I see is that they would have fix the current system for spawning matches, since it often spawns you in places where there are islands, so it could reasonably squeeze two ships into an orbit around an island, or a sea fort, which would make it harder to finish a fight.
I get that with a small circle you wouldn't want to be sailed out, but to not be allowed to use ship controls would just feel cheap, and what even decides that timer? If I board, does it start when I'm on the ladder, or does it start when I'm on the deck? Does it reset if I get knocked off the deck? It would be beyond infuriating to not be allowed to use the controls or have them react sluggishly. It's a boat, it's the main gameplay mechanic. Yeah, being sailed out can suck but it's part of the game, especially with a small circle. The point of a small circle is to promote a faster end to the match. I don't think that the absolute focus on naval is necessary. You win how you win. I win a lot of matches in naval, but I also win a lot of matches by boarding and burning their boat down while I sword lord them repeatedly. The forced focus on naval ruins the experience for players who would prefer to otherwise not do naval, and as well, it even can ruin the experience for naval players. If I board your boat in the end game, I want to be able to crank your wheel so you lose angle. I want to be able to drop your sail if you're chopped so your mast falls. Disabling/worsening the use of basic ship parts would also stand to make naval strategies worse too.
The devs have INTENTIONALLY left hourglass matches open to be invaded and 3rd, 4th, 5th, and meg partied. It is one of the points of the game mode they intentionally detailed as important to the core of the game mode in the season 8 SoT TV stream where they announced the winner of return of the damned. We don't need a wall or barrier, that would force other players to have to sail longer to get around them, and not only that but it could also forcibly block access to specific islands. As well, I have had HG matches spawn INSIDE other active HG matches. How would the invisible wall work when that happens?
Fog disabling, don't spawn in the roar, what else? Should we also forcibly disable any nearby sea forts? What if a player is on the sea fort the HG match spawns next to? Do they no longer get loot access? Should we make any HG match also turn off skeleton fleets? Fights happen where they happen. The reason it's random spots and not set arenas is because HG is supposed to in part mimic the actual games PVP, but as a fully opt in thing. You are literally asking to have a fight.
Diving to a new HG match already fully repairs your boat. Your idea actually helps people who spam board though. If I can just leave my boat sailing in circles, I don't have to care if it hits rocks or if they got one hole on me before I board them and burn their boat down (or sail out for worse people) because when I win, my boat will be repped, I can just catch the next merm and know I'll be safe. I think you absolutely need to do the reps yourself. It kinda makes it baby mode if your boat is insta full rep because you win.
@potatosord Some valid points, but I'm a little confused. What are you doing on SoT if you aren't interested in naval? xD
I do agree though that the barrier could be a hindrance to other players who might have voyages or other things they need to go to where an HG match is happening, so that part might not work.
And it is true that HG essentially is nothing more but PvP on demand, the whole point of the document is that it might be more fun + more players might participate in it, if there wasn't countless risks of randomness screwing you over (Lets not even get into wait times due to of lack of players)
I'm also confused about the instant repair on winning section? it takes literal minutes for holes to open by fire alone, if your ship hits a rock shortly after you board mine, I'm honestly not sure mine will sink before your own does.
@deebee2464 We have been talking about this for ages now, yet hourglass was not changed since Season 8 (its release date)
I don't think they care about PvP side of Sea of Thieves too much, I am maybe a little pesimistic, but I think Hourglass will end up having same fate as Arena did, and we all know how that ended (Although Arena was way less repetitive and it had way more interesting playstyle, hourglass is one same strategy all over again for years now, nothing changed)
@deebee2464 How was that your takeaway from what I said? I never once said or even implied I dislike naval. What about " I find that I still often win fights with my mast down because I keep good angle and keep applying pressure." or "I win a lot of matches in naval" or ". If I board your boat in the end game, I want to be able to crank your wheel so you lose angle." says that I don't want to do naval? I clearly do naval. Instead of inventing a fake argument to attack, address my real points.
Aside from stopping players from using enemy ship controls, how does literally anything you talked about make it so that spam boarding is less viable? Most of your ideas actually make it BETTER for spam boarders, and forcibly disabling/reducing usage of enemy ship controls would harm the non TDM experience of HG as well since it's good practice to board and crank the wheel to force your opponent to lose angle and expose their other side.
None of this also takes into account that people can always be invaded, and that means that the match happens wherever that person is. And that might end up forcing the circle to close around an island and choke both players boats out. Someone could take advantage of that to make it so as long as they park in a specific spot then move to a different spot after the invasion, the circle will forcibly choke their opponent out of the match, since the area is defined by where the boats are, not the players.
The one issue with the shrinking circle idea is that it doesn't fix players stalling for time, it actually makes it more beneficial for them to do it in the off chance they're able to anchor or disable you outside of the zone once the circle gets small enough to force a winner. You'll see this all the time in Battle Royale games as players camp or hide until the circle gets really small.
I'd rather just see a time limit that would send ships that arrived via dive back into the tunnel, both ships get loser XP. Crews that currently run until the other ship quits wouldn't be able to do that any more, the game wouldn't be picking a winner like a shrinking circle and other points-based solutions would be doing, and it would be slower than loss farming (meaning that running out time is not worth it either).
@d3adst1ck So you just made loss farming even lower effort, also what do you do if the match is really close or you are about to win and the timer runs out and both players get told they lost, despite one being moments away from winning? The timer idea would steal more wins than it would help. Also who decides how long an HG match should be? I have matches that end in 3 minutes and matches that end in 43 minutes. But they still end.
For starters, it's nice to read a post that's so well thought out and well written. You've come up with a lot of ideas and clearly taken the time to put some thought into the pros and cons and how to overcome issues that may arise.
I think with a lot of the points you've raised, the ideas themselves are not bad, and it's not that they wouldn't achieve what you're hoping for, but I think (except for your first point about hourglass runners) there's a deeper, more fundamental issue which you maybe haven't considered (if you have considered this, then my apologies, this is just the impression I get from what you wrote)
It feels like you haven't considered the fact that, from the devs'/ game designers' perspective, the events and features that introduce randomness and prevent a more skill based match, are not issues that need to be fixed; They are fully intentional and carefully balanced aspects of the design of the game.
All video games carefully decide where they want to strike a balance between skill and luck/randomness. Too much randomness, and you lower the skill ceiling, and skilled players stop playing because their skill doesn't count for enough. Not enough randomness, the game becomes purely skill based and struggles to attract new players who quickly feel overwhelmed and stop playing because they never win.
It sounds like you don't like where Sea of Thieves has decided to strike it's skill/ randomness balance; you want a game that's more skill based, where the most skillful player always wins. Honestly I think Sea of Thieves just isn't that game and never will be. Yes skill is rewarded, but so is luck, grinding, preparation, ruthlessness, creativity, adaptability, caution, emotional resiliance, strategy, determination, deception, patience, and a whole host of other traits.
I'm not saying you shouldn't ask for the changes you've asked for, or that you shouldn't want the game to be more skill based and less random if that's what you want, as long as you remember that the balance, as it is now, has been carefully chosen, and shifting it one way or another will have consequences. For example: decreasing randomness for a more fair and skill based game, may have the long term consequence of discouraging new players and result in longer hourglass queues and decreased overall game health.
It's very hard to disagree with the points raised in the inital post. A refresh of any sort to hourglass would be nice. I think the rewards should also be looked at. Encouraging more people to engage, can only be a good thing. More people = better match making and potentially more support from the development team. From level 1-100 you get some good titles and a few figureheads, its ok. 100-200 is where some of the best rewards are. Guardians have some clothing and shipsets and Servants have some skelly parts (more parts would be nice). This is the time people start getting a lot of the commendations as well that unlocks various items. 200-1000 is where it's pretty rough. Servants have a few skeleton parts up to 500 (that require adventure coms) that are ok, but there's nothing for Guardians. I think it's fair to say that a lot of people get to either 100 for the initial curses or 200 for the other items then quit the mode forever.
Now my idea will likely upset some people, but add the Arena sets + old legendary weapons to Guardians 200-1000. Maybe flesh the sets out with wheels/capstans/cannons etc. so anyone who already has them also has something to work towards. Unlocking a part every 20 levels or so would at least feel like progress. If the weapons and equipment weren't in the process of being added to the gold shops, I'd throw them here also. I know its controversial, but for better or worse these parts are desirable by a lot of people and using it to drive people to a potenitaly struggling game mode is more important than locking them away forever in my opinion. I'm not saying just hand them out, make people work for them and earn them. Good Boy set unlocking between lvl 900-1000 for example. Keep the GSD/TSD stuff locked away if that would be a satisfactory compromise.
For servants there is a multitude of bone cosmetics. There was a thread recently here where someone made some great mockups. I like the idea of Silver + Bronze bones. Maybe one of each of the FotD skelly colours. There are way more creative people than me who can certainly come up with more.
@potatosord said in Hourglass improvements:
@d3adst1ck So you just made loss farming even lower effort, also what do you do if the match is really close or you are about to win and the timer runs out and both players get told they lost, despite one being moments away from winning? The timer idea would steal more wins than it would help. Also who decides how long an HG match should be? I have matches that end in 3 minutes and matches that end in 43 minutes. But they still end.
Not sure how you came up with loss farming being lower effort. Nothing about a time limit changes it.
If time runs out then I guess time runs out. It has to end at some point. 15-20 minutes should be enough and would encourage engaging rather than peeling out because you're going to get loser XP either way, might as well go for the win. Players would cycle through the queue at a quicker rate, leading to more matches, less tunnel time waiting for available players, etc...
There was another idea that XP should work on a scale, where a base loss is A experience and a win is worth B experience and based on your effort in the match (tracked by repairs, cannon hits, boards, etc...) you'd get some amount of EXP above the loss value (A + X that is less than B). That would fix any issues with the timer running out if both ships are engaged for the entire time and unable to get a definitive win and be another strike against loss farming.
Fog disabling, don't spawn in the roar, what else? Should we also forcibly disable any nearby sea forts? What if a player is on the sea fort the HG match spawns next to? Do they no longer get loot access? Should we make any HG match also turn off skeleton fleets? Fights happen where they happen. The reason it's random spots and not set arenas is because HG is supposed to in part mimic the actual games PVP, but as a fully opt in thing. You are literally asking to have a fight.
I don't think asking for fog disablement is too bad but instead it could be that your opponent's ship silouette is made easily visible in the fog so even if you can't see what's happening on their ship, you can see the thing you are wanting to aim for better. The alternative being during an hourglass match the involved ships simply dont see fog which would put 3rd parties who sail into it at a disadvantage but the former would seem the more fair way to approach the complaint of fog really.
There was another idea that XP should work on a scale, where a base loss is A experience and a win is worth B experience and based on your effort in the match (tracked by repairs, cannon hits, boards, etc...) you'd get some amount of EXP above the loss value (A + X that is less than B). That would fix any issues with the timer running out if both ships are engaged for the entire time and unable to get a definitive win and be another strike against loss farming.
Honestly, milestones to aim for in each battle would drive people to do less loss farming and reward the effort made on both sides more. You get your base exp for win/loss and then bonus exp either side can earn for achieving battle goals like destroying the mast, get a certain number of tier 3 holes on the enemy ship at the same time. Achieve the first kill. land a number of hits without missing in a row. Stuff like that not too much so people can't sit next to each other and do literally everything to easy farm, maybe there would be like 3 random objectives to aim for each battle or just a cap on how much bonus exp is earnable but designed to still make trying to win and losing a much more valued experience and probably dissuade sailing out of bounds more gently by encouraging naval combat to get that bonus exp.
@thedrakyle winning should be the max XP, only the losing side should be able to get above the minimum by participating otherwise you end up with the farming problem that occurred in Arena.
If you're good, your objective should be to win as fast as possible. If you're outmatched, you should get rewarded for at least participating and not farming losses.
@d3adst1ck And if you play for 45 damn minutes and the match ends with you losing, why would you ever want to play the game properly again? If you loss farmed for 45 minutes instead of losing one game, you would have made MORE xp than if you had won that game after 45 minutes. This is the reason people loss farm. The game does not have respect for the players time, so the players will just do as little as possible and then still get rewarded. If you win 50% of your matches, and all of your matches take 20+ minutes, by the math, it would be faster to just queue, anchor, and reset over and over.
7 out of 16
