Thoughts on throwing in AI matches mixed in with real player boats for Hourglass (similar to Fortnite and bots)? Not suggesting the majority of matches, but only when the region have a few boats (5 or less). I feel like sometimes you keep fighting the same crews over and over (at least on PC). We even experienced this during Gold and Glory this past weekend, which seems like prime time for grinding curses. It's not that I don't enjoy tough fights, but it does become a lot of back and forth sinking when you have a decently matched crew making it more challenging to get the streaks. Disclaimer: I am on PC which will inherently have less players in queue. I play HG usually during the boosted events. This time, it felt less populated than prior events.
AI matches in Hourglass?
Seems like a massive undertaking and I can already think of a hundred questions on top of my head:
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Obviously AI exists in terms of Sloop/Galleon skeletons/ Burning Blade. So it's not an impossibility. I just think this is very unlikely.
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Let's take the AI galleon, how many AI would be on it? 4 AI characters just like how the player gally is like? How good will these AI actually be?
Yet alone how actually hard would it be to actually make it work technically, setting up path routes for the AI, having actual AI know how to balance between shooting cannons and going down to bilge. ACTUALLY putting up a decent challenge in fights. Once again, It will have to be an army of skeletons crewing these ships right? -
Will it be actual NPC's or skeletons? How would it fit into the game lore?
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If I do board, does the AI just suddenly break apart and purely focus on me, thus sinking in record time? Why bother with all this work outside of a LAZY excuse of filler content?
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Again, to me this just sounds like a pipe dream that will never ever happen.
I feel like sometimes you keep fighting the same crews over and over (at least on PC). We even experienced this during Gold and Glory this past weekend, which seems like prime time for grinding curses.
Ahhh so instead of tacking on a solution, why not suggest tackling the rotten root of the problem in the first place, which is:
How do you get more people involved in playing Hourglass?, thus... Bringing in more diversity in player encounters and reviving Queue times?Lots of suggestions have been put out there, but looking at RARE. Uhhh yeah, seems like they do not care.
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@veronik5682 I was hoping the new season commendation grinds would potentially bring in more folks wanting the curse, but queues weren't filling with a lot of different crews. Who knows, maybe consistent Fight Nights will help.. I do agree with you about tackling the root issue, though.
@pathsmalls Imo respectfully.
Fight nights aren't enough to bring players back to Hourglass in droves as it once had.
Matter of fact I think it will keep being on a decline.
Unless they do something DRASTIC to the gamemode, which we know they don't have the guts to do so.It's just been in a very stale spot for the past year with little to zero hope.
Right now, I got my skeleton curse mostly because of the commendations for all those seasons that required the skeleton curse despite being unrelated with Hourglass.
Most of the time I'm playing SoT for the open world experience and not for the constant PVP, so I rarely touch hourglass because half the time I would be fighting against a full sweat crew and have little growth in my PVP due to how short my interactions are with the opposing crew.
And last time I stopped playing Solo Hourglass it was basically boarders paradise with people leaving their boat running and trying to defeat by pirate vs pirate using all possible exploits for easy boards I rarely feel the will to play it.
Outside of trying to level up my friend only reason for me to go back to hourglass in force is if they launch a season where the phantom curse is required to unlock commendations.
TLDR: the gamemode feels like a sweatfest where you're fighting against crews with 10x times your supplies and using iffy methods to beat you.
The biggest issues I see are difficulty scaling and adding abilities. Either they would need to make a new NPC unit that walks around the boat like a player, or make it so skeletons(or phantoms) can bail, deal with anchor, rigging, etc. At the moment there is no NPC unit that can do sails, or anchor. If you hit them with an anchorball you would be guaranteed a win.
As for difficulty scaling, the AI would have to compensate for their skill. Would that skill be determined the same way fights are, with an SBMM system, or would it be determined by your HG rating? If it uses SBMM rating, would players be able to loss farm themselves to a super low rating then win farm NPCs to get easy rep and streaks? If it's based on your HG level, that's not necessarily fair either since HG level isn't a measure of skill, just a measure of how much time you have put into the game mode. You could loss farm yourself to 9999 if you really wanted to lose 170,000 matches in a row. What about streaks, supps, and flags? Does an NPC ship that wins get your supps and flags? Does it gain a streak? Does it level up? Does it dive to another match? What happens to the ship when all the people in its skill range log off, does it keep its stuff or does it just despawn it?@burnbacon said in AI matches in Hourglass?:
So in an open world, you want AI bots to fight?
Just find a skeleton ship sailingSigh will you please re-read the post for once.
The post is about hourglass dude. You’re not gonna be getting any rep from sinking skeleton ships.
@astralenigma totally agree. Outside of events, I normally just play Adventure. Just felt like the game mode was actually dead this G&G.
@potatosord all great points you make there. I dont have the answer for all of them. I think the AI should scale with HG levels. If you want to loss farm to 1000 (which i dont think majority of SoT community does), go for it but the fights will inherently get harder no matter if you loss farm or not so likelihood of sinking is higher. I don't think scaling should be affected prior to level 100. Most folks just want to get to 100 anyways. As for what happens with the AI boat if you sink to it, I'd be happy if it went either way. Everything disappears with it if you sink or it continues in match making until let's say 4 matches (4-streak), then resets to 0 if no one sinks it. This would be a massive undertaking and likely buggy as heck, but maybe Rare will think of something creative to re-light the HG lantern.
This would propably require a lot of recourses and could backfire immensely.
If players find a region that doesn't have many players, they would go there and farm as many NPC boats as possible to get free levels.
In addition to that it just doesn't make sense to add PvE fights to a PvP mode.Ps: PC servers aka crossplay servers are mostly more populated then console or PS5 servers.
@dermasterbob Cross region match making is coming in the next update so that point is gone, as for the other, yeah. HG was touted as "PvP on demand", so looking for PvP and getting PvE just won't do it. That's not the game mode.
@potatosord a dit dans AI matches in Hourglass? :
@dermasterbob Cross region match making is coming in the next update so that point is gone, as for the other, yeah. HG was touted as "PvP on demand", so looking for PvP and getting PvE just won't do it. That's not the game mode.
People are complaining about ping, I can't wait to see more complaints about this.... ^^
@dermasterbob a dit dans AI matches in Hourglass? :
This would propably require a lot of recourses and could backfire immensely.
If players find a region that doesn't have many players, they would go there and farm as many NPC boats as possible to get free levels.
In addition to that it just doesn't make sense to add PvE fights to a PvP mode.Ps: PC servers aka crossplay servers are mostly more populated then console or PS5 servers.
And players who go to other regions of the world (Regions like Oceania, Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand and sometimes Brazil) where there are fewer players already exist... Including among the big PvP players (I know a lot of them)
Like someone else said, cross-region matchmaking is coming soon, which should help with low player numbers. Hourglass is a PvP event — it’s not going PvE.
Honestly, it’s best to wait for Fight Nights when there are more players and double XP, so matches feel fuller and you get better rewards whether you win or lose.
Don't think we'll see something like this in-game. HG is intended as PvP, thats what makes the levels mean something.
You would cheapen the experience by letting people fight skeletons crews, who are MUCH easier to sink, on account that they cannot bucket.Not to mention Rare would need to model, program and bug-test a new brig skeleton ship. Assuming that is what you meant.
You can still gain HG rep without fighting, you just need to gather treasure while the HG is active, and lower while the treasure is onboard, some suggest you can do it before you get invaded.
