Loss farming in hourglass

@brotherbong3819 and removing loss xe wild make this issue worse not better have you learned nothing form the epic failure of arena

@brotherbong3819 I can't say I know what the devs were wanting the world events to be, but as they mostly all involve killing npcs to end them and not players and do not need multiple crews to do them they aren't "just pvp". The hourglass yes definatley, but the others could be either depending on how folks want to play them. You can even dive now to uncontested world events, that sounds a lot more pve than pvp. I hope your hourglass battles get better for you though.

@zaknafien2003 here's some food for thought if they weren't designed to be fought over they would be playable in safer seas this was mentioned by big Mike in a video

@subject-18-jord arena was fun it's a shame it took so long to make matches and get games started I joined the game when it had already died and only got to play it twice due to waiting for an hour to end up playing a different game from boredom sooo..... no I unfortunately didn't actually learn jack from arena and its failures

@brotherbong3819 said in Loss farming in hourglass:

@zaknafien2003 here's some food for thought if they weren't designed to be fought over they would be playable in safer seas this was mentioned by big Mike in a video

You've clearly never spent any time in Safer Seas, then.

All world events except the Fort of the Damned and the Fort of Fortune ARE fully playable in Safer Seas, both as emergent events on the horizon you can sail to AND as raid events you can dive to on demand.

Just want to clarify something for some people. People who loss farm DO NOT gain XP when Scuttling. I was fairly certain of this and even tested it to prove that in fact they do not gain anything for doing such.

@beatngu1107 yep if they're scuttling it usually means it's an alt account trying to match their main to farm wins so that account is not trying to gain xp.

Amusing that some of the folks in this thread (y'all know who you are lol) defending loss-farming, were folks who detested TDMers for meeting at a remote island to fight each other in an Arena match.

What happened to the whole "they're not playing the mode how it should be played" sentiment, I wonder.

Truth is, if TDMers got 0 rep for playing that way in Arena, they still would have just for fun. If AFK/loss farming awarded 0 rep, I doubt that'd be a thing anymore.

And to the folks saying something to the effect of "I'd rather run into a loss farmer than not have a match," I ask: what's the difference? Other than you getting easy rep (too) of course, but is that why you're playing HG? Or are you playing to naval?

Oddly enough, I posted the following in a similar thread around the same time this one was created, which is probably why I neglected to respond in here too. But since this one is still floating around:

[...] I disagree with those who say that eliminating AFK/loss-farmers will somehow worsen the HG experience, because these players are not adding to the HG experience to begin with. In a game that requires participation, "losing" non-participants isn't really a loss.

That said, I agree with those who say eliminating loss-xp is detrimental. Because it doesn't only dissuade AFK/loss-farmers. It also dissuades casual players from bothering to try. Gotszu, let's take CoD for example again. They already have a system in place to boot AFK players (even potential ones), but lets say they changed the xp system so that no one is rewarded weapon/operator/battle pass xp unless they win. What impact would this have on the playerbase and game's health? Do you think it would see more general/casual activity, or less?

I think, rather than eliminating loss-xp altogether, Rare could employ something like CoD's system, which rewards effort (whether resulting in win or loss) but dissuades laziness. I'm not sure what that would look like in HG. Maybe a minimum number of cannons fired per X-length-of-time? Holes repaired? There are multiple ways in determining whether or not someone was genuinely trying; and a good system would need to account for all of those ways.

I also like sandman's idea. The "daily deeds" and "win of the day" type stuff would bring in more casuals & I always upvote those ideas. More rep for defense-based HG would help too.

TL;DR:

Rare desperately needs to make HG more casual-friendly. I have seen plenty of good suggestions in other threads on how to do this.

Re-work defensive/passive play; add a separate "battle pass" reward track; xp-boost vouchers; "win-of-the-day (grants 1 level)"; daily deeds; and finally: award more rep for a loss, scaled to the amount of activity in a match (cannons landed, holes repaired, ladders defended, etc). Doing so, 1) players who try, but lose, will be rewarded appropriately, and 2) they could justify making inactivity yield 0 rep.

@lordqulex said:

.. The official reason is that it makes no business sense to pour your resources (time, talent, money, and attention) to a game mode that only receives 2-3% of gross play time... The same goes for hourglass. Rare's got the numbers. If hourglass is worth investing in, they'll do it. If it isn't... well... 🤷‍♂️

I'm actually curious what % of playtime is put into HG.

Arena was, imo, better in a lot of ways for on-demand PvP. After it was abandoned and shut down, a lot of that crowd gave up on the game.

HG seemed like it was added to appease the remaining crowd, but even folks like me got burned out after having enough kegs air dropped onto them (and related nonsense). I'm actually amazed by the patience the regular HG crowd has. If Arena had Schrodinger's Mast and invisible interactables as regular occurrences, I imagine it would've received even less than 2-3% of playtime.

With EAC coming, I'll definitely be returning, although for not nearly the amount of time I was spending before.

It's pretty clear that the direction the game is heading in is less and less skill-based; more and more casual, nerfed, and streamlined.

I was surprised when they locked what essentially should have been PvE curses (imo) behind a long PvP grind. At least the Arena cosmetics made sense. Weapons and ship skins - that was pretty much it.

But now if Adventure Andy wants to make-believe as a skeleton, he has to grind 100 levels in the most lopsided Elo-based matchmaking I've seen in any game.

When folks were asking for Arena cosmetics (particularly the PL ones) to be brought to Adventure, I would've been okay with it if the existing cosmetics were given re-skins, and rewarded to only those who did the grind before.

Likewise, if HG participation is so low that Rare is putting fixes to game-breaking bugs on the back burner, and (as you say) they don't want to spend the time/resources re-working HG to make it more casual-friendly... then maybe it is time for them to say "eh, well, we tried," make the curses PvE-locked, and give exclusive weapons and ship sets to the folks who grinded it before.

Ultimately, I think on-demand fights are good for those who want to seek it. It's good practice for PvP for those who want to get used to it, or maintain their skill. And so, I hope it doesn't go away. But if the curses are separated from the mode, then at least the majority of the playerbase that doesn't prefer on-demand PvP won't experience FOMO, or have to resort to AFK/loss farming.

@lordqulex said in Loss farming in hourglass:

@theblackbellamy said in Loss farming in hourglass:

@lordqulex said:

.. The official reason is that it makes no business sense to pour your resources (time, talent, money, and attention) to a game mode that only receives 2-3% of gross play time... The same goes for hourglass. Rare's got the numbers. If hourglass is worth investing in, they'll do it. If it isn't... well... 🤷‍♂️

I'm actually curious what % of playtime is put into HG.

Me too honestly.

Arena was, imo, better in a lot of ways for on-demand PvP. After it was abandoned and shut down, a lot of that crowd gave up on the game.

Arena was, different, IMO. It was a sub-game in the game. Arena 1.0 anyway. Then they changed the rules, which changed the META, and made it toxic. I feel like Arena 1.0 was Sea of Thieves Battle Royale. It was the same cycle (dig up loot, fight for loot, turn in loot), but since there was only one loot, it was marked on the map, the map was a tiny bubble, and there were 3+ ships, it was a condensed, and more intense Sea of Thieves experience. Like Sea of Thieves is to Arena 1.0 as coffee is to espresso.

Arena 1.0 had maps with possible multiple treasures to dig up; Arena 2.0 had 1 treasure at one time (another showed up when one was turned in), marked on the map and in the sky (not bug free).

Nevermind, you probbaly meant the "It" in "It was the same cycle", to refer to Arena 2.0 not Arena 1.0 from the previous sentence.

@cptclapz How do you define the difference between a loss farmer and someone who just sucks? If a player loses 99% of games they play but it seems like they try, maybe they fire the cannons, try to board, etc, what metrics can you use to determine if they're a loss farmer or just bad? A large number of losses is indicative of both a bad player and a loss farmer, and if you really think about it, aside from the obvious ones like self anchors, there is almost no way to tell if someone is bad or just loss farming. Any metric you could use to define a loss farmer could also apply to a swabbie, and any punishments based on that could result in people who legitimately tried to get the curses, and just suffered through trying and failing 1700 times to get what they wanted to be punished. If someone fires the cannons and tries to board(with no real intent to hit), are they suddenly no longer a loss farmer, even if they only do those things for appearances?