Problems I have with HG/Hourglass as a returning Arena player and possible fixes/improvements.

You start every session buying supplies and looking for cursed balls/chain shots, and you have to do it again every time you lose.

I ask you. Who forces players to do these things?
Nobody. You don’t have to get extra supplies or spend time finding the extra stuff.
You do this if you wish.

You didn't have to win for Arena to be rewarding and fun

Yeah. Yeah you did.
Then again. Same can be said for hourglass. Win or lose, you’re rewarded with exp that goes toward you to unlock rewards.

Arena matches were quick and had a set duration

Too quick as most wouldn’t even touch the chest until the last few seconds and deliver it at the hot mark. Made it stressful when your own crew got mad at you when you alone tried to get the chest and they wouldn’t pick you up, rather have naval battle :/ and lose because “man short”

Hourglass fights can take forever.

I finished my own match in 2min each time. (Lose farm) XD and yet people are upset. Not because of the free win or quick match. But fact I give it to them. What gives?

What on Earth are these HG spawns? Sometimes you spawn into a rock. Sometimes you spawn on an active ghost fleet or skeleton fleet that hits you with cursed balls

Muhahaha. That is open world tactical play. You can dive for hourglass and fight someone who is defending, who happens to be to doing a world event or near one. Those my friend are best excited matches you can have. The world is against both you.

@feedingfrenz

I tend to agree most with your second point. I think HG's biggest problem is that it has a big return on investment issue. For all the time and resources that can be sunk into even just one match, the points you get for losing can feel almost punitive. I think the system they've developed actually works really well when engagement is up, but the current point system feels too much like a ranked game mode which is going to alienate a large portion of the player base, make the stakes way too high, and ultimately drive down engagement.

I think a low effort but high impact change they could make would be to create (or re-orient some existing) deeds towards earning you allegiance rather than seasonal points. I think if they added engagement-based, allegiance-rewarding deeds on a per match, daily, weekly, and monthly basis then people would be much more liable to engage with the mode. They would still get bonus rewards as long as they actually engaged with the fight, even if they lost. And obviously they could cap these so they don't get exploited like they were in Arena. These deeds could range from hit x number of cannons, to bail x number of times, to kill x number of enemy players with a weapon from your boat.

I'm torn on the spawns. I don't mind variety in terrain, but getting spawned into a ghost fleet seems totally antithetical to the entire streak system. I am pretty tolerant of losing, but I might have a minor crash out if I was about to have a 10 streak and I lost it because I spawned into a ghost fleet. Also, I'm cool with not spawning into fog. That is just a time waster.

@burnbacon

I ask you. Who forces players to do these things?
Nobody. You don’t have to get extra supplies or spend time finding the extra stuff.

No one's forcing it, but if you're really trying to progress, it'd be folly not to, tbh. Arena was at least fairly generous with base supplies. I do think a set amount of base supplies could be a good addition/QOL fix.

Yeah. Yeah you did.
Then again. Same can be said for hourglass. Win or lose, you’re rewarded with exp that goes toward you to unlock rewards.

Not entirely true - The comms for using the various weaponry, non-first place wins, etc all didn't require wins, and felt pretty rewarding to unlock. I remember doing the grind for the weapons and clothing especially! Was tons of fun, personally. Let's also be real, EXP gain on any time other than Gold and Glory/Fight Night/Week is pitifully low, and absolutely not worth the time/effort. Arena at least felt like you could make meaningful progress within a single match, and more respected the player's time.

I think hourglass could severely benefit from situational point accruement (cannonshots landed, player one-hit-KO's, de-masts, bullets landed, etc. Largest reason I see people make exodus from hourglass, or simply not bother is that time respect is next to none, and is very one-sided; win or lose, no room for in-between skill.

I finished my own match in 2min each time. (Lose farm) XD and yet people are upset. Not because of the free win or quick match. But fact I give it to them. What gives?

People get angry at the most benign things in this game lol. Probably because "muh effort, and you're not trying as hard as I am"

Muhahaha. That is open world tactical play. You can dive for hourglass and fight someone who is defending, who happens to be to doing a world event or near one. Those my friend are best excited matches you can have. The world is against both you.

I think that speaks for how oddly organized Hourglass is. Spawning into a rock and immediately having a disadvantage, while the other sails unhindered can be absolutely demoralizing. I don't mind third-partying by and in large, because you're correct - it's in the open world. BUT emergent PVE is what I absolutely take issue with.

As you say, the world SHOULD be against both players, but PvE rarely targets two separate crews. Personal experience from the other night - Feared Redmaw spawned on our 5th streak match, and z-targeted us the entire match. We absolutely would have won that match, as before it spawned, we had the enemy galleon at mid-decks. But the match changed in their favor, when it bit our ship multiple times in a row, setting our ship ablaze. We all know that on-fire galleons are a nightmare to put out, nevermind the 5+holes that these megs leave. It disadvantaged us long enough for the enemy to repair, bilge, and start circling us - there was nothing we could do.

Was so great losing a 5 streak to PvE, when we absolutely would have won if it hadn't spawned. Things like this are not fun, nor exciting.

...and sadly, only 2% of a player's time was spent there, causing it to be pulled. Hourglass is what we're stuck with now, and I think it's a dead horse at this point. They're not going to bother with it anymore.

@burnbacon said in Problems I have with HG/Hourglass as a returning Arena player and possible fixes/improvements.:

I ask you. Who forces players to do these things?
Nobody. You don’t have to get extra supplies or spend time finding the extra stuff.
You do this if you wish.

Sure, players can do whatever they want, but the fact that you can do this means you are putting yourself at a disadvantage if you don't. I've been solo slooping more in HG, and it's common for players (both my opponents and myself) to run out of supplies if they don't buy supplies before queuing, and the matches devolve into running away and boarding the opponent to drive their ship out of bounds or just quitting which I doubt is what the developers had in mind. Players in any competitive environment are incentivized to go for whatever gives them an advantage. A well-designed competitive environment makes gaining advantages and trying to win both fun and viable for the average player. Arena wasn't exactly great at this either because of the incentive to spawn camp, but at least losing didn't actively hinder you from doing well in your next match. Every match is technically a clean slate. HG doesn't just reward you less for losing. It punishes you on top of that. Winners win more and losers lose more.

Yeah. Yeah you did.
Then again. Same can be said for hourglass. Win or lose, you’re rewarded with exp that goes toward you to unlock rewards.

Well I can't speak for everyone, but my various crews and I still had fun fighting for 2nd place which still gave decent rep. Sometimes, we'd just decide to give up on winning and go for the commendations for other stuff like killing players or going for the chest. If you're getting spawn camped, you can always scuttle your ship to escape and try to fight another crew. You can even beat the strongest crew by 3rd partying them. There was always something else you could try to do if you couldn't win. 2nd place in HG is last place and gives you almost nothing, and there's nothing else to try to do as a consolation prize. Scuttling just means forfeiting, and then you have to start over again.

Too quick as most wouldn’t even touch the chest until the last few seconds and deliver it at the hot mark. Made it stressful when your own crew got mad at you when you alone tried to get the chest and they wouldn’t pick you up, rather have naval battle :/ and lose because “man short”

I'm sorry to hear that, but any game mode is going to be tough if you're not on the same page as your crew. The chest wasn't very important in the galleon mode anyways, which is why I liked the sloop variant more. You should try to join a crew who's trying to go for the same thing as you. If your whole crew wants to naval, but you want to go for the chest, then you'd probably want to join a different crew. But that's not an issue with Arena vs Hourglass.

I finished my own match in 2min each time. (Lose farm) XD and yet people are upset. Not because of the free win or quick match. But fact I give it to them. What gives?

That's the problem with HG. Purposefully losing is more rewarding than trying to win and then losing. I have nothing against loss farmers, but something is wrong if trying to win and failing is somehow worse than purposefully losing. That being said, I don't think anyone I've met would be upset with coming across a loss farmer. Also I don't get why you are defending Hourglass if you're a loss farmer. Clearly that means you're not a fan of the game mode either.

Muhahaha. That is open world tactical play. You can dive for hourglass and fight someone who is defending, who happens to be to doing a world event or near one. Those my friend are best excited matches you can have. The world is against both you.

That's what the Adventure Mode is for though. And that's my point. Arena wasn't perfect, but it offered something different from Adventure Mode. HG fighting is the same as Adventure Mode fighting which isn't designed for competitive, clean fights. It's a place for messy fights where you can win or lose just from luck. Arena was a nice alternative to Adventure for the reasons I mentioned above in order to get clean, easy, and quick fights, and replacing it with Hourglass removed those kinds of fights from the game and just replaced them with the same kinds of fights you have in Adventure.