Its Time for a new Hourglass, its dead

@tesiccl said in Its Time for a new Hourglass, its dead:

No. It’s not dead.

The ones who cry it’s dead seem to have an issue with playing the game any other way than their own, or are not playing at an appropriate time of day for their region.

I don't know why you say "cry dead" Hg has been heavily streamed since it was released and it's documented how many issues it has had since release, including participation in many "stamps"

I don't even know what "playing the game any other way than their own" means in regards to HG queue times and variety of opponents.

Lack of participation has been the main issue with HG since the beginning, including all the non-stop talk about cheating because so few people were playing that people were running into the same cheaters over and over again. Making it seem more widespread than it is/was.

At the end of the day it's an uninteresting 1v1 without many incentives, that was never going to be very popular in SoT overall, no matter the time of day.

"Expanding stamps" was something they were trying to do early on for a reason, lack of participation, even early on before the major burnout.

@tesiccl said in Its Time for a new Hourglass, its dead:

@wolfmanbush

I don't know why you say "cry dead"

Because it’s not. It’s like the people that go “dead game” when it’s clear and obvious it’s not. People are treating HG like it’s a separate mode like Arena when it never was. So claiming that it’s a dead mode etc is just stupid as well as ridiculous. It may not be popular, but that doesn’t mean absolutely nobody plays it.

Over exaggeration to make one’s point doesn’t carry much weight.

Sure but it also doesn't help that you popped in to dismiss it with 2 misleading examples while now acknowledging that it's not popular.

@a10dr4651 said in Its Time for a new Hourglass, its dead:

Lack of incentives seems to me to be the main sticking point. Daily deeds, buffs to defensive and maybe some alternative risk vs reward ways to obtain allegiance while voted in to HG would go a long way.

THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS!!!

@tesiccl said in Its Time for a new Hourglass, its dead:

@wolfmanbush there was nothing misleading about it, don’t twist what I said thank you.

Again. Not popular ≠ dead.

There is no "appropriate time of the day" It's content in a game that goes 24/7. Doesn't make any sense to imply it's the player's fault in a matchmaking system where they don't have control over the matchmaking. Content only delivering sometimes isn't on the player.

Even Rare acknowledged that by trying to implement cross stamp matchmaking. You're putting it on the player when it's been acknowledged as a content/design issue.

@theblackbellamy said in Its Time for a new Hourglass, its dead:

@wolfmanbush said:

There is no "appropriate time of the day" It's content in a game that goes 24/7. Doesn't make any sense to imply it's the player's fault in a matchmaking system where they don't have control over the matchmaking. Content only delivering sometimes isn't on the player.

Even Rare acknowledged that by trying to implement cross stamp matchmaking. You're putting it on the player when it's been acknowledged as a content/design issue.

Perhaps theres no "appropriate time," but there are better times of the day. Prime time (week day evenings) and weekends are probably the best bet to get fights.

Low activity in certain regions may also play a major part. I've seen Nismox complain about dead queues in another thread, and even if he's playing during his prime time, his region may not have the activity it needs to sustain dive v dives.

I've seen you suggest in other threads that Rare add an option to open up match-making across the globe, and I think this is a pretty good solution. The ping differences may cause frustrations, but if you're willing to dive despite all the other server stability-related issues right now, ping may be the least of your problems.

Since I've returned to SoT, I haven't really had "dead" HG experiences. But half my HG time has been spent playing treasure-defense during my prime time (NA-East) & weekends (EU); and the only time I had a dive sesh was over community weekend, when activity was going to spike temporarily anyway.

Other than global matchmaking, I won't beat a dead horse, but as always I agree with the sort of suggestions that @a10dr4651 made.

For the larger, casual playerbase, the 1v1s are stale and the rewards for participation are lacking.

I'll also add that even though it's less populated now than before, I've had 0 flying kegs and speed hackers break my streak. Feels like now I only take Ls because I'm washed. And I'm alright with that.

Global matchmaking + season 12 content could be huge for HG

@ixxxoloff said in Its Time for a new Hourglass, its dead:

At the moment hg has a few problems:

1. Fake redbeards. There is a group of hackers who are sending fake reports to support on those who play hg to get banned.
2. Server with ping 300+ for some players.
3. lack of rating.

The amount of times that people get wrongfully banned and then unbanned is a small amount the public space.

Nothing to ever suggest it was ever more than just a mistake here or there.

Narratives like that just cause harm to participation by making people worried about something that isn't gonna happen to them.

Random people have nothing to worry about by playing HG as far as bans go. Follow ToS (which most people do just fine) and there isn't anything to worry about.

There are regulars in the community that have done nothing but rob pirates for years, pirates that have played HG non stop since released, they don't get banned because they aren't doing anything against ToS. When people get banned it's almost always because of what they were up to, very few cases where players were wronged by a ban.

@eva1977 said in Its Time for a new Hourglass, its dead:

Might not be a COD lobby but it definitely is not dead.
But i do agree it needs something else to keep more players engaged.

If the new season brings a lot of substantive fixes/improvements in performance it might see a solid bump in season 12.

People are gonna wanna show off with the new weapons, have lots of fun and practice, if HG is in good condition then that will be a good spot to get/find it.

There will be a new player content push for a while. Montages, clips, shorts, the whole thing.

Even if nothing changes but game performance (improvement) I think 12 still could help HG quite a bit.

If players like @TheBlackBellamy are enjoying it then that will be an improvement. Veterans players that are open to returning/participating as long as it's running alright and as long as they feel more confident with the new anti-cheat that has been implemented.

Something that I think is undeniable is that 12 and 13 and largely being viewed as a dub for SoT. How it will perform we don't know but I think there is enough interest/excitement there to help HG.

New weapons is a pretty big deal on the pvp side, I think Hg will see the most benefit from that.

Eh. Does it have a lot of problems? Yes. Is it dead? ...No, not really.