Hour Glass skill based PvP gone wrong maybe

@skeleton-cap239 so in a nutshell, because there aren’t enough people in your queue, it’s having to widen the net of players it will match you with, sadly they will be higher skilled ones sometimes, and because it doesn’t want you waiting for ages for a fight, it matches you against them and you can begin the fight. Is it fair? Not always. Does it save you waiting for a match for hours on end? Yes.

yes but unfortunately like @Tesiccl said there isn't the player base required to do skill-based matchmaking and more often than not skill players are in queue and normaly on a regular based unlike your hg trial crews just giving it a go but hourglass has shown the community the skill gap and it is very hard to achieve there skill without just trying to sink them again and again

the skill based Matching system

What skill based matching system? It’s based one win/lose
And if the game can’t find someone close enough to your own, it just find the closest one. (Which at this point is anyone who even plays HG)

Correct; it is not skilled based, its only win/loss.
Though I do believe its an aggregate of everyone on board, you are still at the mercy of who else is queing in your area...

Honestly one of the only ways to address this is to make HG appeal to more people. Get a higher percentage of people diving and you will have a wider selection of opponents to be matched against.

I went from a new player who accidently voted for hourglass, to someone with NAL sails the next once lol

Unfortunately due to cheaters, bugs, server issues, lack of rewards, exploits, etc. Hg failed to keep players engaged. The few people that still play it aren't enough for SBMM to work properly. Not only that but even if it did work, that would mean that you should have around 50% wr and for a mode that is designed around win streaks that isn't enough.

@burnbacon said in Hour Glass skill based PvP gone wrong maybe:

the skill based Matching system

What skill based matching system? It’s based one win/lose
And if the game can’t find someone close enough to your own, it just find the closest one. (Which at this point is anyone who even plays HG)

Not quite. The team has said they use a variant of Elo, which is by definition a ranking of relative skill.

Yes, it's win/loss based, but WHO you win and lose to matters in an elo system. It's not a pure rato comparison.

@crowedhunter
I agree that streaks have a sense of accomplishment, but that makes the mode inaccessible to the majority of the player base and it's one of the reasons why there are so few people playing Hg. It should be something extra for skilled players and not the main way to progress the mode. Hg feels such a letdown tbh and everytime i think of ways it can improve i end up on the same solution. Bring back Arena!

@gosva5434 Bringing Arean back wouldn't fix the problem. Arena was taken down due to lack of participation. People just need to understand that the only way to get better is to continue will HG even though you're currently losing. If you talk to successful HG crews and they are being honest the win/loss ratio is like 70/30 or 60/40. What side of that ratio you are on can change daily, heck even hourly. We have sank the same ship several times in a row only to sink to that same ship on the next match. Just keep grinding and don't give up. I always ask random that join us for HG if they play sports. Why? Because if they do then they won't have the expectation that they are suppose to win every match. Life doesn't work that way.

@druid-chef
You are missing my point though. A mode designed around streaks is very inaccessible for new players, casuals, and propably the majority of SoT players. The only people who can make progress with that system are really skilled players. Which brings me to my next point. Hg as a mode doesn't have the rewards nor the variety in terms of gameplay to retain even the successful players. Arena at least had a better design and progression compared to Hg, but ultimately failed for the same reason Hg might fail too, which is not getting updated.

I don't mind how hour glass currently stands, but I know there is a lot of sailors winning through dice rolling, duels, or just loss farming. It can sometimes highlight how community oriented the community is, and how intense a equally matched fight can get, but I would like to see a skill based matchmaking system that works off of players wins/losses.

I know the rep gain also gets criticised often, but it's actually very giving when you're in the higher streaks. The part I don't understand is how it's currently serving as the main way to gain guild rep.

HG cannot have Skill Based Matchmaking, not enough users play to make it an effective system.

If that existed, you wouldn't see streaks of 40+ and even close to 100 consecutive wins.

The only value HG has right now, is fast farming Reapers and Athena emissaries for monthly rewards, because the Gold Curse has lost all value since there are hundreds of players exploiting the game and rushing 200 levels per day.

Solo Sloop is a festival of cheaters, runners and AFK farmers, Brig has more cheaters than normal players since the release of S10 and Galleon I don't know, because I don't play on that ship ever. Trying to farm the levels right now is dooming yourself to early baldness.

Even being the fastest method to boost the guild, it's not worth it because of the infested mode and the server problems, in many occasions an equal fight (very few, but there are some) turns into a RNG fest and the victory is decided by luck, not skill.

They took away the arena, to give us this trash of a mode.

From the outset I have disagreed with how HG progression is tied to streaks, consecutive winning bringing out the worst in people.

Its a highly competative game mode in a game that is clearly not optimized for competative play, with all the glitches amd server issues, hitreg and cheaters.

They are making progress on some of that, but with the allegiance multiplier and commendations linked to always winning multiple matches it has always struck me as a poor way to structure pvp in a game marketed to younger and/or a roleplaying vibe

@soulstinger2k20

Yeah, if the ELO system is working as intended then every opponent I play gives me about a 50% chance of winning. The chances of me winning 5 times in a row with those odds are 1/32. I don't see why the developers see this as some kind of aspirational goal when by definition the odds are against me. The odds of me completing a FoTD with all of the loot is much higher and the payout is better, but it's not my style of gameplay.

As a longtime, fairly competent player, I wish that Hourglass functioned in a way that would reward me with something fairly unique based on my performance instead of cosmetics that are based off of 'allegiance'.

I'm more than happy to receive something in game that actually ties back into Adventure mode—giving me a piece of loot with a value based off of the ELO of the crew I sunk in HG would be pretty cool. The appearance, rep, and gold value of the loot can change with the ELO bracket as well (think bronze, silver, gold with a SoT twist). This would mean that I can actually gift this loot to others, or post it on the map board, instead of just handing in immediately for a gold prize.

Something like this is also pretty hard to exploit, I think. Players that want to go on loss streaks to provide streams of loot will eventually lower their ELO so that they don't produce good quality loot anymore, players that want access to better quality PvP loot will try to get better at the game.

Cosmetics and permanent rewards can be centred around this loot since it ultimately doesn't even require players who dislike PvP to obtain it, they just need to convince decent crews to help them out once they spot them in a server—I've given away a Chest of Legends to crews who don't run when I approach them, but that's not a PvP reward.

My two cents. HG still functions as a way to get into the action quick but the rewards and tie-in to the main game just suck.

... that sounds terrible. Loot and gold only matter for a very short time in the lifespan of a SoT player's 'career' before they become redundant and obsolete, whereas customizeable curses are a far more long lasting and impactful reward.

(Sparking the entirely different debate on the game needing new alternative, repetative, and HEFTY optional goldsinks to keep PvE and gold relevant)