So...About Hourglass...

  • SweetSandMan
    Lord
    Insider

    OK, so the day that Hourglass diving was disabled, servers were a blast that day. More lively and fun than they've been in a long while. My initial thought was, OK, it's just because of the fishing event, surely. Must be an anomaly.

    However, every day since then has been equally lively and fun. I've not seen so much interaction on the seas and so much general engagement amongst crews (not even just combat, true interaction and high jinks on the seas) in years.

    Is it time to just keep Hourglass 1v1s separate?

    "But what would we do about defending and troves?" Keep it as it is today. You can raise hourglass and collect a trove, but you can't be invaded and you can't dive. Your goal as a defender is to...well...defend your trove from the rest of the server. But, if you sink, you get merged off the server. Or maybe you get one shot to reclaim your loot and go back? It'd need some tweaks, but basically, turn "defending" into ultra high risk high reward loot stacking.

    "But what would we do about the actual 1v1s?" Make it a main menu option and make them on their own safer seas type servers. That way, those battles could have a base set of equal supplies and it would probably make the Hourglass experience better overall...

    "But isn't that why they got rid of Arena in the first place?" Well...no. Arena was on its own game instance that ran on its own maintenance schedule not in parallel with Adventure. Hourglass could sit on a Safer Seas type server, and since that's just a regular server with a few toggles flipped off, there's no issue with it being effectively a completely separate game instance to maintain. Obviously, some different toggles would need to be flipped, but you get the point.

    Seriously, Hourglass being disabled has been the most fun SOT experience in quite some time.

    I loathe it being fixed and having the experience go back to what it was before.

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  • RockSinclair
    Ship Mate
    Insider

    @sweetsandman I agree, but all the hg players are going to leave high seas the second hg comes back up, me included

  • SweetSandMan
    Lord
    Insider

    @rocksinclair said in So...About Hourglass...:

    @sweetsandman I agree, but all the hg players are going to leave high seas the second hg comes back up, me included

    Which is a real shame. Not only will those players who like engaging with other crews effectively vanish, but all the diving and effective wasted server space will come back. It's a double whammy.

  • L0cke547
    Ship Mate
    Insider

    yeah but sweating on hg is more fun than memeing on adventure for me. yeah theres great adventure servers once in a while but most of the time they are not.

  • SweetSandMan
    Lord
    Insider

    @l0cke547 said in So...About Hourglass...:

    yeah but sweating on hg is more fun than memeing on adventure for me. yeah theres great adventure servers once in a while but most of the time they are not.

    I'm not saying get rid of hourglass. I'm saying keep it off regular High Seas servers.

    "great" adventure servers is a relative statement. If you're looking to absolutely sweat in Adventure, yeah that's few and far between. Always has been. But, if you're looking to have silly pirate fun, meme, and enjoy the game for what it set out to be, that seems to be every server since hourglass was disabled.

    Look, I love sweating in SOT and enjoy hourglass once in a while...but I love having fun and engaging with other crews way more.

    This game is way too busted to take seriously as a competitive sweaty game. When I'm sweating in solo hourglass, I'm fighting a busted game as much as I'm fighting the other player who is likely also fighting a busted game.

  • WolfManbush
    Champion

    Personally I think the community passes around narratives that they want to be true and then they enjoy the game more off the hype when something slightly shifts in a direction they support.

    One of those being that HG on adventure servers makes adventure less fun.

    Disabling HG didn't change anything about annoying or cheesy metas, it didn't suddenly make fights more competitive, etc etc

    A highly aggressive boat still runs or resets if they take any return fire at all. Over...and...over...again.

    It's still a game of mind numbing bully pvp when larger ships are involved.

    There are still servers full of people that view this game more as a chill farm game than a risk filled adventure game.

    Experienced players still do weird stuff and have the mentality of "follow the non-existent rules that I try to enforce" about the game.

    People are still salty constantly whether they win or lose. Literally everything will get someone called a cheater or accused of wrong doing in SoT.

    It didn't suddenly make crews more pleasant. Egos are as wild as ever about the goofy pirate game.

    I think the game is stale in a lot of ways so whether it's the counterproductive flooding of rewards in the events or a shift in HG it is creating a false hope about what the game can be again, based on popular narratives that are passed around.

    It does increase the chances of a fun server but not by very much when all the above is going on. HG is already a fomo nightmare, I don't think isolating them even more will be great for HG players, imo.

  • SweetSandMan
    Lord
    Insider

    @wolfmanbush My "revitalized fun" experiences aren't based in PvP or combat, really. Sure, I still have been getting into battles, but that's not why things have felt notably more "fun" for me.

    It's been about interaction and engagement with other crews. I've had more genuine positive encounters the past bunch of days than I have in a while. And it seems to be consistent. Crews having a good time. Crews working together. Betrayals. Sneaky plays. Creating experiences and stories. Maybe I'm in the minority with a general positive shift in experience since HG was disabled?

    We only have 6 ships per server...if 2 (or more) of them are in a 1v1 battle, that dramatically decreases the possibility for interaction on a server. Relegating HG 1v1s to their own servers would - at the very least - have the positive impact of not having wasted server space with HG fights and crews stocking up for 10 mins only to dive to an HG fight and waste server space on a different server.

  • WolfManbush
    Champion

    @sweetsandman said in So...About Hourglass...:

    We only have 6 ships per server...if 2 (or more) of them are in a 1v1 battle, that dramatically decreases the possibility for interaction on a server. Relegating HG 1v1s to their own servers would - at the very least - have the positive impact of not having wasted server space with HG fights and crews stocking up for 10 mins only to dive to an HG fight and waste server space on a different server.

    And HGers are running on 2+ years of neglected content. We've all seen what HG does to SoT players, especially ones that are taking a lot of L's or stuck in the solo nightmare of chasing around a pvper that thinks it's funny to run all day.

    It turns a disheartening piece of content they have some people hooked on into even more isolation. A piece of content with very little adventure into something with no adventure at all.

    I think the social experience of HGers has to be heavily factored into this. I don't think forced isolation is good no matter how unpopular it is. If it exists it should be a part of adventure in some way just as a QoL priority. Many if them already feel pretty separated while sharing servers because of how the content is designed. Completely isolating them will have negative effects on people that play it a lot.

  • SweetSandMan
    Lord
    Insider

    @wolfmanbush said in So...About Hourglass...:

    I think the social experience of HGers has to be heavily factored into this. I don't think forced isolation is good no matter how unpopular it is. If it exists it should be a part of adventure in some way just as a QoL priority. Many if them already feel pretty separated while sharing servers because of how the content is designed. Completely isolating them will have negative effects on people that play it a lot.

    Will it? I feel like I see way more posts/comments about people hating getting 3rd partied when they're in an HG battle than I do of people saying they love it.

    Sure, there's the handful of us that use it occasionally as a unique way to server hop to actually find fun Adventure content, but...I'd say those are few and far between.

  • WolfManbush
    Champion

    @sweetsandman said in So...About Hourglass...:

    @wolfmanbush said in So...About Hourglass...:

    I think the social experience of HGers has to be heavily factored into this. I don't think forced isolation is good no matter how unpopular it is. If it exists it should be a part of adventure in some way just as a QoL priority. Many if them already feel pretty separated while sharing servers because of how the content is designed. Completely isolating them will have negative effects on people that play it a lot.

    Will it? I feel like I see way more posts/comments about people hating getting 3rd partied when they're in an HG battle than I do of people saying they love it.

    Sure, there's the handful of us that use it occasionally as a unique way to server hop to actually find fun Adventure content, but...I'd say those are few and far between.

    Because they aren't posting it as feedback. The only way to enjoy Hg in any sort of balanced way is to incorporate adventure into the activity. Spend time with random crews, see and talk to people once in a while outside of the HG mindset while participating in the content.

    We are talking thousands of fights, hundreds and thousands of hours, already pretty isolated away from adventure in the game. It's sacrificing the experience of some to give others a chance of finding a server they enjoy more.

    If HG is a part of this game then I think we gotta ride with HG and they gotta ride with us. Because an adventure game really stinks without adventure, and that's what we would be removing from HG, any and all chance of adventure.

  • SweetSandMan
    Lord
    Insider

    @wolfmanbush said in So...About Hourglass...:

    If HG is a part of this game then I think we gotta ride with HG and they gotta ride with us. Because an adventure game really stinks without adventure, and that's what we would be removing from HG, any and all chance of adventure.

    Maybe the real answer is getting rid of HG altogether 👀

    Naahhh......they wouldn't do that (again).....would they?

  • WolfManbush
    Champion

    @sweetsandman said in So...About Hourglass...:

    @wolfmanbush said in So...About Hourglass...:

    If HG is a part of this game then I think we gotta ride with HG and they gotta ride with us. Because an adventure game really stinks without adventure, and that's what we would be removing from HG, any and all chance of adventure.

    Maybe the real answer is getting rid of HG altogether 👀

    Naahhh......they wouldn't do that (again).....would they?

    My concern is that it gets stuck in a loop of getting disabled and then taking longer and longer to return.

    Some people would enjoy that on the adventure side, it might even get more people to play it when it returns as even more fomo.

    Hg has become a lose, lose, lose situation where the people playing it and the ones that want to grind for the rewards are gonna have a tough time no matter what direction they go.

    Personally I think it's wild that they have the record they have with contrived combat, and we are still headed into another season of contrived combat.

  • Drgn SOT
    Marauder

    @sweetsandman said in So...About Hourglass...:

    OK, so the day that Hourglass diving was disabled, servers were a blast that day. More lively and fun than they've been in a long while.

    Really? It was pretty slow for me.

  • QuietXans
    Rogue

    @sweetsandman
    It's not wasting server space if the two people are getting put in a server that has empty space to begin with and then one dies and the other dives right after now your server spots are open again.

    It's also not a waste if those two players WANTED to que into hourglass
    It's just a valid as someone wanting to do hunters call and not interact with anyone you wouldn't say that's a waste of server space.

  • TheBlackBellamy
    Champion
    Insider

    @sweetsandman said:

    ... Make it a main menu option and make them on their own safer seas type servers. That way, those battles could have a base set of equal supplies and it would probably make the Hourglass experience better overall... Arena was on its own game instance that ran on its own maintenance schedule not in parallel with Adventure...

    Do Tall Tale instances like the Monkey Island maps have their own "maintenance schedule, not in parallel with Adventure?"

    I'm asking out of ignorance here. I never understood why Arena had to be updated alongside Adventure servers.

    Arena could have just been a staging area (Tavern) with various maps (instances) that just never change. Bug fixes and maintenance as needed, sure; but then you wouldn't have to alter them as Adventure morphs over time.

    DeMarco should come back for Hourglass 2.0, where the Guardians and Servants are battling over the SotD.

    Give us a staging area with various maps/modes in the SotD, separate from Adventure. Objective/chest based (like Arena 1.0); a naval FFA (like how most played Arena 2.0); 1v1s; and for the love of God add a TDM map this time, so TDMers have a space where they don't have to hear whining about them TDMing.

    A pipe dream, perhaps.

  • Th3 Tater
    Marauder

    Just say you want 3rd partying blocked and no pve allowed 😆

    But only get 1/3 of the rep since risk is being reduced...........

  • TheBlackBellamy
    Champion
    Insider

    @wolfmanbush Regarding the isolation issue:

    If the defend-your-trove/passive option is still available, then those who want a more social HG experience are able to have that.

    Vote up, defend from the server, turn in, get your rep.

    Instead of dumping 1v1 HG fights into Safer Seas, if HG was updated to have a staging area with various maps/modes, that would: 1) add meaningful HG content, and 2) give HG players a sense of community that Arena players had.

    Turn off text/voice by default, but allow players to turn it on voluntarily. As Rare (hopefully?) continues to improve the in-game reporting system and methods to auto-detect harassment/unsportsmanlike conduct, this would create a social space that is more chill than the Arena Tavern was.

  • RockSinclair
    Ship Mate
    Insider

    @sweetsandman yeah, "sweating" is really just brig double boarding and yelling incoherently into our mics about where to find the lizard island. Really all I want

  • Ultimate Powa
    Master
    Insider
    Founder

    @sweetsandman
    I actually noticed more hostile ships than normal since it's been disabled.

  • QuietXans
    Rogue

    @ultimate-powa
    Well obviously if the pvp mode is disabled more people will be looking for it on adventure mode

    This includes myself as all i've been doing is emissary hunting and fof fighting

  • Ultimate Powa
    Master
    Insider
    Founder

    @quietxans
    Indeed.
    Thought I was countering OPs point, though after re-reading his post it appears to be saying that is a good thing that people are more aggressive in general, whereas I do not.

    If the flow of the game has me fight other players, so be it.
    In other words; I need to go to a specific island, and since I don't trust the pirates already at the island, Imma sink them and voyage in safety.
    However, I'd rather not be subject to the wrath of players who only want to PvP, unless I queue for HourGlass.
    Then I'm fair game.

    I love the current HourGlass design as is, other than the broken queues of course.
    Just wish Megs, Skeletal Ships, and Krakens wouldn't spawn on you while the HourGlass is active even outside of a battle, or at the very least make it very rare.
    Maybe have Skelly ships start spawning at somewhere between 30-60 minutes of fighting.

  • Capt Greldik
    Master

    Considering how many people complain about PvP in the PvPvE game, I’ve always considered an active HG as somewhat of a benefit to them.

    When I first started playing I was frequently on Aussie servers with an old Aussie gamer friend. The Aussie servers were more aggressive, and my Aussie friend attributed this to Aussies being tougher gamers or something, I eventually concluded it was just because that was the only way to get PvP since their HG is typically really slow.

    I certainly don’t mind having to fight for things more frequently, it’s how the game is intended after all, but I also don’t mind those who don’t like PvP in the PvPvE game getting a break.

  • QuietXans
    Rogue

    @ultimate-powa
    I agree with you entirely,
    Hourglass separates players who are extremely good and want to be competitive out of the pool for High seas and allows players especially new ones to breather better on high seas regardless if they are aware of that or not.
    It has its place and is a cornerstone for the game in my opinion as it also allows for a way to reliably practice naval combat and various game mechanics.

  • Veronik5682
    Castaway

    Hourglass just like Arena:

    Has built a NICHE community from it.
    Also a competitive community, is it big? I would argue it's less then 200 players and has stagnated around there.
    It's STILL active and kicking.

    Once you feel done with adventure, a lot of PvP players just move on to main Hourglass because adventure PvP becomes a joke of a time waste, or heck start the game by just maining PvP only (SnowyFPS did it).

    @SweetSandMan

    I feel like I see way more posts/comments about people hating getting 3rd partied when they're in an HG battle than I do of people saying they love it.

    I have yet to meet anyone who says they love getting 3rd partied in a 1v1 fight in Hourglass since release, NOT ONE.
    The one defending it are usually when it tilts into their favor (Enemy gets ganged up on).

    Or ones who like to pretend to like it, since they never actually PvP themselves in the first place.
    Or the ones who ''dont mind it'' but realistically rather it didn't happen in all reality of it.

    I get that HG is taken place in Adventure, it's a battle set up for 1v1 (Athena vs Reapers) yet the outside influence/PvE muddy's it a bit imho. NOBODY likes to be having a fun equally skilled fight just for another ship to roll by and tilt the favour heavily into one side.

    Which is also why competitive crews in HG, just out right stop and sink the intruder before continuing on...

  • Wardog84447
    Rogue

    No offense mate, but a lot of people enjoy hourglass. Honestly the game is not the same without it. It’s a different way of fighting in a game, that’s why it’s so popular. If they don’t bring it back soon most players will quit

  • Wardog84447
    Rogue

    Also, people like hourglass because they don’t enjoy fishing all day long for a lame title. Pve is alright until it gets boring, then people want action which is hourglass. Plus hourglass should definitely stay in high seas because it makes hunting faction ships so much fun.

  • a10dr4651
    Commander
    Insider

    Been playing HG as it is now and honestly I'm having a blast. Fought 2 ships today, both with HG raised and the fights felt really organic except they can't return after they sunk. The rep is slower than diving but that's the trade off for not getting into the fight instantly.
    Honestly hope Rare might consider removing invasions on passive because I can see a lot of people sailing with it raised when sailing.

  • Capt Greldik
    Master

    @a10dr4651 said in So...About Hourglass...:

    Been playing HG as it is now and honestly I'm having a blast. Fought 2 ships today, both with HG raised and the fights felt really organic except they can't return after they sunk. The rep is slower than diving but that's the trade off for not getting into the fight instantly.
    Honestly hope Rare might consider removing invasions on passive because I can see a lot of people sailing with it raised when sailing.

    I posted this idea regarding no-invasion defending: https://www.seaofthieves.com/community/forums/topic/178272/proposal-permanent-no-invasion-defender-hg-option

    I got the idea actually from the discussion you and I had in a post within the discussion category. My idea post faded into oblivion, though, so I get the impression nobody was that enthused. Nobody trashed it, though, which is saying something, I guess

    Basically I proposed no-invasion defending with lowered reward. Players are assuming some risk when raising HG, even if they can’t be invaded, so it makes sense to me that some amount of lowered reward be permitted when turning in a faction hoard.

  • Fysics3037
    Marauder
    Insider

    @capt-greldik hg is a PvP tool. No invasion defending is strictly against that. I think they should fix defending and make it a real thing but only through ensuring more fights for the defending player and increasing the payout dramatically.

  • a10dr4651
    Commander
    Insider

    @capt-greldik I remember, one of the reasons I brought it up XD.

    @Fysics3037 whilst yes HG is a PVP tool, it clearly isn't a popular tool and won't receive large resource towards it to keep it updated. Arena is proof of that. The more people participate, the more resource Rare would provide to updates and cosmetics for it.
    Removing the invasion still provides a risk and you can only get the large amount of xp through wins. If you sink with it raised you move server. The faction trove xp drop at grade 5 is minimal. You'd get more by loss farming but it opens hourglass up to those who want to play organically.
    Realistically, how many people use the passive HG with invasion. I'm betting next to zero. I'd wager that figure has gone up significantly this past week.

    I just think it's time to lower the gates on hourglass, make the invasion 1v1 like people want like OP said, remove invasions on passive.

  • Ghutar
    Legend
    Insider
    Founder

    @a10dr4651 i think that it's right angle that makes me and otger engaigin at least meaningfull target.

    I allready have all cosmetic that I enjoy (probably cause we lack good sailorish cosmetics) so I don't care about loot.

    In that way I can score and drop something meaningfull I that ol year one vibe.

  • Fysics3037
    Marauder
    Insider

    @a10dr4651 realistically you will only ever be invaded once, right after voting up defending HG. People specifically don't use it because the rewards aren't worth it and because its boring. Which both stem from the fact that you never actually get a match past maybe 1. If a majority of players were just dying to defend if it also meant you didn't deal with invasions, then they would already be doing it. Defending right now vs what defending was a month ago is effectively the exact same.

  • Poetniknowit
    Master
    Insider

    "Keep it as it is today. You can raise hourglass and collect a trove, but you can't be invaded and you can't dive. Your goal as a defender is to...well...defend your trove from the rest of the server. But, if you sink, you get merged off the server. Or maybe you get one shot to reclaim your loot and go back? It'd need some tweaks, but basically, turn "defending" into ultra high risk high reward loot stacking."

    You're quite literally describing Adventure Mode- pull loot, defend from server, sell. That's not really the meta for running hg. Leveling would take forever-you already CAN defend that way, and only have to survive in 15 minute increments before lowering and cashing in on your stash grade.

    The ability to dive is what drives the hg community. A lot of them want nothing to do with the pve in the game or raising their stash grade, they want to accumulate levels QUICKLY by either winning then diving or sinking then resetting.

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