Hourglass revamp coming in 2026? Suggestions

Forcibly equalised supps would make the game mode too boring. Sometimes you need variety. I think players should be able to get a set amount of supplies, but at no point should it delete the supplies you already have no matter what. If you lose on supplies, you had a coin toss that you were probably gonna lose anyways.

Third parties are part of HG and, have always been part of HG, and will always be part of HG. HG taking place off of adventure servers would suck. I would quit hourglass if it left main servers. Having hourglass on a private server would also remove the mechanic of stacking faction loot to increase XP. I enjoy this mechanic and it has helped me feel a lot better about my progression in HG. They also can't make "HG servers" that are still usable as adventure servers, otherwise you could just play adventure and as long as you avoid the areas with hourglass arenas, you would never be bothered by anyone.

I think the opponent should be merged out faster too, that is a good idea. Auto repair is not the right call though. You are still on an adventure server, you should still have to play by the rules of adventure. If you died before you won, but your boat had terminal damage, that's just how it goes. Sometimes you sink while you're on the ferry.

HG dives should not remove any items from your inventory or crates. The other side of this is if you play for invasions, you have a distinct advantage because you wouldn't have the dive mechanic to delete them. Anyone who dives at that point is putting themselves at a disadvantage.

No, just no. "Remove the drive for players to want to be better at the game" is a wild take. Otherwise people will just infinitely lower on 1 streaks. You also get more XP for sinking someone on a high streak. Removing bonus XP would remove yet another mechanic from the game mode.

I win per level indefinitely? Why? As someone who is actively grinding towards gold bones (Servants 418) I don't see the XP rate being too low. In fact, if the XP rates were 1 win per level, I would already have gold bones because on 2x xp that would make it 2 levels per win, plus lowering bonus, plus selling emissary flags. You would get 3 levels per win on double XP, lowering on 1 streaks and selling a grade 1 flag. "My favourite streamer doesn't have gold curse so you should make it easier because someone I don't like has it" Hourglass levels are not a sign of skill, respect, regard, or community reputation. The only thing HG levels show is how devoted you are to the game mode.

I don't think it's enough of a problem to need auto dive but I can ignore that feature, I prefer player choice to not having it, as long as it's a choice and not forced.

Wow, what a take. We all want cheaters gone dude. There is no one in the community who is pro cheating aside from cheaters.

There it is. I suspected when you talked about wanting to move it to private servers you would eventually say to remove invasions. I like invasions, it's a good feature, and because of the ability to do invasions instead of only diving, you get a chance to interact with game mechanics that are fun and otherwise would be unusable. I like having a chest of bones/reapers chest on my boat, I like defending loot piles. Having invasions up is more than just an hourglass thing, it's a literal marker that you WANT someone to mess with you while you're doing something, whether thats fishing, or a world event, and having invasions means that you can tell the game, making it easier for you to get the PvP interaction you want.

Fights ending on time limits would be boring and would feel SO unrewarding. You win by default! Wow! Winning on timer would also incentivise running and turtling as viable strategies. You just wait until the timer is 90% done and then backboard to run them into a rock or light them on fire. What about if they just run until the timer is up? How is a winner decided if they run and no one takes any damage the entire match?

Man, you really hate fun don't you. You just want to min max the fun out of the game mode so you can complete it as fast as possible. Number go up is not a good way to enjoy a game. I use this feature all the time. I push myself with it to get better. You don't always get to control the encounters you have, so when you do get to it's nice as practice. I have had times as a solo sloop where I queued against a bigger boat and got a galleon, and I sunk it. Plus it's ALWAYS funny as a galleon in HG to have a sloop come up to fight you.

Why not just make it in open waters? And why not also remove waves, ocean rocking, cannon firing deviation, and make it so that the cannonball always goes in exactly a straight line so you can always hit your opponent and don't have to worry about high waves? Because removing all of that and what you talked about would be BORING. I'm not queuing up for hold R press left click simulator. I want a fight, and I want it to be fun. I'm not playing just to make the number go up, I'm playing because PvP in this game is fun.

Yeah I actually agree with this one. I'm 3 flags away from "Pathetic Tokens" grade 5 but the issue is that 80% of my fights are against reapers as a reaper, and the 20% that aren't don't have PL so they can't raise Athena flags. Having to sell 100 athena flags and sink 500 enemies is hard enough when 4/5 fights can't count towards the comm and the last 1/5 of the fights which MIGHT be able to have an 80% chance of not because they don't have PL.

I honestly think most of this would leave hourglass in a worse state. It would make the wins feel less like they were because of your effort and it would remove several good game mechanics, many of which are optional, and you do not need to interact with them if you don't want to. You don't have to get invaded ever. You don't have to stack faction loot. But don't try to say that I shouldn't be able to because it's something you don't wanna do, that no one is making you do.

@PotatoSord

No, you do not need supp variety in an on demand PvP mode. That is what regular adventure is for, because you never know what you will encounter. That in itself has problems sometimes but largely speaking it's ok. You absolutely should have equal supps at all times. The time sink that goes into gathering supps over and over if you lose repeatedly is a buzz kill and will cause anyone to log off. You either do that or you just dive and you're already at a disadvantage.

Ok good because you're probably the type of person that would do the third partying if you think that's fun. Spoiler: it isn't. I didn't say put it on a private server. I said put them on HG dedicated servers. This isn't you playing with your friends. Your opponents are still from a pool of "all" players. This isn't a call for a private server.

No. If you win, you win. If some toxic player boards you with a sword and manages to get on and abandons his boat because he is going to sink no matter what and he swords you down because you had SOME pressure, that is not fun.

They absolutely should. Losing to bonecallers and curseballs is not fun.

Remove the drive for players to want to be better? What are you even talking about? I didn't say give bonuses on 1 streaks. I said only give lower bonuses (XP) on 6+ streaks that remain static in the amount they give after 6. You do not get more XP for sinking someone on a high streak. You are making that up. After you become a champion your XP per win remains static. If I sink someone that is on a 100 streak, I am not getting any extra XP. They just lose. What are you saying? Upping the XP per win more than compensates for that. If you upped it to 1 level per win, it would still take 1000 wins for each faction to reach gold curse and 10,000 wins for each faction to max out. That is an insane amount of time already. Not everyone has the time to dedicate their lives to the game. I have 11,000 hours played and I am telling you right now it is too much. You are servants 418. I am Guardians 1700+ and Servants 2300+. I am beyond extremely aware of what this grind is and what it looks like and the shortcomings with this game mode.

I didn't say to force people to auto re-dive after a loss, lol. And how would that even be a thing anyways? Even if that's what I argued, which it clearly isn't, why couldn't you just log off? I'm trying to save people's time. Every little thing counts when you are re-doing the same actions over and over again.

What are you even arguing about cheaters? I'm not even sure you're comprehending half of the things I'm saying. I'm acknowledging that cheaters are a problem but they will probably continue to pop up. I'm advocating for changes to the game mode that nullify their impact on the enjoyment of people who want to continue to engage with the game mode. What are you even saying? Really?

Defends absolutely should be removed. 99.99% of the playerbase is not engaging with this feature. Just because you seem to be the one guy that allegedly sometimes does doesn't mean that it's being used by the wider community. It isn't.

I literally suggested why a closing circle might be an issue and that nobody wants to end a fight by a circle closing. But no, giving people infinite time to run away is not fun. Nobody is suggesting anyone win by default and nobody is suggesting that the circle close on one person that gives the other person an auto win. It's a complicated issue. Re-read what I wrote.

No, I don't hate fun which is why I'm trying to cut out all the unfun parts. You apparently take joy, or pretend that you take joy, in all the unfun parts. Congrats? People aren't getting champions as solo and diving for gallies and laughing and having a great time doing it. What are you saying? This is not reality. People aren't using this feature like you claim. It's straight up not happening. Once in a blue moon. It's not common. I am suggesting replace it with something, not just simply remove it. How is replacing something that people largely do not engage with, with something they would engage with, me wanting unfun things? What?

PvP in the game is fun. Looting supplies simulator is not fun. Again, I have 4000 hourglass levels in the game. You seem to have around 400. Get back to me after you reach double gold, if you ever play that long.

It definitely wouldn't. My suggestions aren't perfect as nothing ever is but I can tell you in no uncertain terms that the barrier to entry (in reality - not this surface level dive with basic supps argument) is far too high if you want to progress in the game mode in any reasonable amount of time. The game mode has been out for 3 years and not a single soul, even the people that play it all day every day, has hit 20k levels. THREE YEARS. There are less than half a dozen legit players that have hit 10k in any one faction. I doubt there are 200 players who have more time in HG than me. They definitely wouldn't all agree with me, as people never do. But they definitely wouldn't agree with hardly anything you are saying.

@swabbie-john

Yes, you do need variety. I'm not playing hourglass to be a left click and hold R simulator. Orbitals forever is boring.

No, I don't 3rd party. I let people have their matches and the fact that you would assume I play like that because I hold an opinion is telling of how you're going to address every point I've made.

If you win and sink after you've won, you still get the win and the win XP. I also agreed with you that people shouldn't be able to be sore losers and sink you after they lost, but this is a game of time and inventory management. If you get enough pressure to not be able to manage, you should still be able to sink regardless of if you win or not. I'm not saying people should sink you after they lose, everything I have said is against that. I said that if you win and die with enough pressure to sink before you get back, that's just the game. I've had games where we both one ball each other at the same time, and I won, but still sunk because I was on the ferry. That's not doing anything wrong, I feel.

I can't say I agree. Losing to them feels exactly the same to me as losing to firebombs or blunderbombs.

Yes it removes the drive. What are you talking about in terms of removing bonuses for streaks if not making it so the XP is the same per win on a 1 streak vs a 10? "Not everyone has that much time to dedicate to the game." Literally the next line: "I have over 11000 hours in this game". And I have less than 2000. What is your point? 600+ levels or 4000+ levels, you know I know pretty much the same as you about this game mode, at a certain point, around ally 500, you run out of things to learn about this game mode. You are also saying this as a top 0.1% player. Based on your logic, they should also remove HG levels past 1000 because those grant nothing to the player. Give the 9999 title at 1000 instead and lock it there. What reason do you even still have to play in HG with double gold? If you don't like the game mode, stop playing it. It really does seem like the only reason you still play HG is because you want number go up and the title, as a member of the completionists. You clearly do not enjoy the game mode, you want most of the features of it removed.

Who mentioned auto redive on a loss? What?

You're advocating for removing half of the game mode to "minimise cheater impact" when what it seems like you actually want is to have HG levels faster. If no one interacts with those features, including you, how do they impact your experience? Why should they be removed if you and supposedly no one else cares about them? It would take more work to get rid of them than to leave them there while no one uses them.

Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it should be removed. There is no reason to make the game worse because you and most people you interact with don't use the feature. It doesn't affect you at all if its left in the game, you can entirely choose to not interact with it like you already do.

I would rather have the circle close than have the match end because of a timer. If I lose, I refuse to lose in any other way than by sinking. It would be wildly unsatisfying to just have a match end and force you to a dive screen. That's something you didn't talk about too. If they did do a timer, how does the match actually end? Does it force dive both ships to a new server? Does it force dive one of them? Does it just lower hourglass? Does it lower hourglass at all? Could it be used as a method to farm XP similar to what the end of Arena was like?

You say those parts are unfun, but I don't. Your suggestions seem less like they are geared towards making the experience more fun and more like they are geared towards making it more consistent and easier to gain levels. I understand how badly you want the 9999 titles, as someone who is grinding to double gold. But that's the thing, it's a grind. They didn't put those titles there because they wanted it to be easy to get them, in the same way they don't make shrouded easy. If you want them, you put in the time. You grind.

PvP is fun! Glad we can agree on that because it seems like you want to get rid of a lot of the PvP in the sandbox simply to gain levels faster. Looting supplies only really takes up time to a point. If you're on a 10 streak looting all the supps from every boat, the time waste is your fault. You'll have enough supps. I have over 600 total, you have seemingly forgotten that there are two hourglass factions, and I'm playing them both. Flexing the number of levels you have doesn't make me think your opinion is any more valid. You've been playing the game mode longer than me. You have 10x as many hours as me. If I had played for as long as you have, I too would have double gold. As it stands, I'll probably have double gold before I hit 2000 hours. I don't have to "get back to you" after reaching some arbitrary milestone with no meaning, you don't have more knowledge of the game mode than me. We are essentially equal in that regard. After around ally 500, you've learned the overwhelming majority of things about the game mode. This is not the flex you think it is. Hourglass levels are not a measure of skill, they are a measure of how much time you've invested into the game.

Lets do some simple math. If it takes 5 minutes to queue, sail, dive, start a match, anchor, and intentionally lose, you could lose 12 matches an hour. It takes about 1700 losses to reach level 100, totaling just under 150 hours to get it. Your 4000 levels would take about 6000 hours to get to, loss farming. Your numbers aren't a flex. If you spent 100% of your hours loss farming, you'd have 2x as many levels. Stop trying to flex as if it makes you know more. It literally only means you have spent more time doing it than me.

I have a rather radical idea: get rid of the hourglass!
Why? Because it has only caused frustration and an invasion of cheaters! Yes, there have always been cheaters, but don't tell me I'm lying here: since the hourglass arrived, it's gotten worse (and that's an understatement)! Even in the arena, it was infinitely more bearable!
The HG killed the game!
By forcing players to fight hundreds, thousands of battles in order to receive a curse that many players wanted from the moment the game was released, and all because the arena closed...
And I'm not even talking about all the bugs...
And I'm not even talking about the fact that, despite popular belief, the hourglass is by no means popular with the majority of players, and here too I am basing my opinion solely on statistics!

We, the players, have been suggesting changes to the hourglass for years, and we've been ignored for years. And given the developers' recent decisions in the ‘normal’ game, frankly, you'd have to be crazy to believe that the improvements... will actually be improvements...
This game is at the end of its life, the stats show it. It's sad, but that's how it is.

Good points exept the 6th.
Changing the awarded allegiance would only work, if all levels from every player were changed retroactively, according the new system.

@swabbie-john Alr john since I diff you on solo sloop I feel comfortable to speak on this, I think you are missing the joy of hourglass and I'll get to that in a sec. First, I'll just make a quick comment on your ideas.
1: I agree we need to cut down the sup time in hourglass, but I don't agree with equal sups just because a lot of people like to use the hg option interchangeably with adventure. Ik once I got passed 3k levels I started enjoying finding servers through hourglass, just because its an interesting way to get sups, interact with folks, and find good fights while exploring servers. This transitions pretty well into the third party argument. I understand where you are coming from, since god what was 2022 I spent my time exclusively on hg. Most of the time I hated third parties, but they grew on me. Consider for a second, the times when you teamed with your opponent to sink a third party, when they sacrificed their boat for you, or you for them. What about when you had to fight them both, but because they were both bad for obvious reasons (can't remember a time a good player didn't pause) you had to really get invested. We have played thousands of hours of hg, particular solo. We have so many levels that only serve as bragging rights, but we keep diving to get better, find good fights, and (at least for me) because every once in a while this game gives me an unapparelled experience with people who have agency in their decisions. That agency can make things unfair sometimes, it can mean we lose fights to people we would normally drag through the mud, but it also means we get unforgettable fights. My constant fear from the competitive community is that in our search to perfectly min-max everything about this game we will inadvertently kill what makes it great. Will I ever third-party, bonecaller, or curseball? No. Will I be nice to them when I win? No. But I will never throw away that high when I sink a guy who tried every trick, just because I might drop a 20 streak to some guy who throws a desperate curse and lands it. Its not just our game, even when I didn't do pve for a year I never thought the right choice was to isolate hourglass and insulate our community. If we try to design a safe space for only the competitive community I guarantee all you will be left with is "gg" or "rodl". I can't imagine why I'd keep diving.

Alr I think I was gonna start with your points before writing that but its fairly clear I got carried away. I'll detail what I do like about your post rq.
I love number 11, I barely use that feature, it should be replaced with a real game mode other than just a sink race gimmick.
I agree that we need some kind of better base sups
I think 10 covers my biggest concern with the shrinking circle, Hg isn't Fortnite and your boat can casually drift away without player input so I like your solution.
12 makes sense, I don't think arenas should just be open sea but they could do with adjustments.
7 is good just so long as our flag is reset back to 1.

Some I don't love but aren't that important
For 3, I kinda enjoy talking to folks for a sec after I sunk or won. It's rare that they can get on board so I don't think its necessary to remove that time.
6. I don't like this. Maybe its the ego because I want my levels to mean something but I think the grind is sufficiently challenging and rewarding. Making it easier for some folks who still don't have gold after a few years seems unnecessary. At this point they just don't want to grind for it, which is fine.

@itzeggward

Man 90% of the time a third party comes I'm the one getting attacked first because I'm the bigger threat (usually)

The other 10% of the time it's a player close to my level, on my level, or better than me that we team up usually and sink the third party and all that happens is all of our time got wasted. Third parties are almost exclusively used to sink the better boat. Almost always. It's not fun to take a random L because some rando came along.

You can keep curseballs, you can keep third parties.. I don't care. But sinking to random uncontrollable nonsense in a situation that I have zero chance to run because I'm trapped in a circle needs to be less punishing. A huge supp boost for HG is needed and I should never be at an immediate disadvantage going into a fight because I didn't spend 20 minutes supping my boat, which is exactly what happens if I don't.

In any event, almost everything I dislike about hourglass specifically would be substantially better if they completely solved the supps issue and I don't see them doing that when it's still tied directly into adventure servers because of the excessive amount of supplies it would create within adventure servers.

Give me supps and get rid of streaks having value and we have far less issues. I don't feel like losing hours worth of progress and far worse than that, having to repeatedly supp up again, because I sink to a bunch of third parties and curseballs and supp diffs. That isn't fun.

I think they could replace dive for a bigger boat with a TDM mode where your boats are parked and cant take damage or something like you are asking for, a race mode. Something. Anything different.

HG is a massive uphill climb for people who aren't in the top 10-25% of the heap and between that and supps they just stop playing the game mode. I would rather them see get more progress per win and stick with it.

1000 wins to reach gold is still a hell of a lot of wins for people that have a 50% win rate or less. That is an insane time sink. Even with bonus weekends.

@keylessword4029 lol they arent gonna remove hourglass for lore purposes

I support all the listed items whether they are individually picked or a combination of them.

The turnaround in hourglass between whether win or loose is too long and repetitive. Any improvement made to fights turnaround would greatly improve enjoyment of this game mode and reduce the frustration as well as any griefing possible in this mode specifically the cheating which no matter what will always be there and is an extremely costly fights.

What I am curious is that Rare team stated they are planning to re-approach this game mode which is great as it has been over 3years without a single change. However, I hear Rare wants to listen etc.. if that is the case then it would be bery appreciated to have input/ plans / objectives and list of intended changes from the Dev right at start of working on it to review with community and see if these changes are heading in the right way.

This game mode is not healthy at all currently for any type of player. In its current states it has been pushed to all its limits.

Rare should use this mode to try things out and meta. Small adjustments can make big difference and changes. For sure there will always be a meta but the key is to make the meta evolve changes every 3-6 months. It would be great that every season a little twist comes in this mode.

Bring back the horizons, look back at previous release features and upgrade them.
Small twists can go far along. No twist will be wrong and can all time be adjusted the key being to keep it afloat and moving.

I would believe and hope that among these list of proposed twists most of them are not huge development cost.

Edit: I would also add to the list an adjustment to the weapon range mainly the pistol. Most duo sloop fights are primarily a fight with snipers and pistols more than canon to be honest. I would considerably drop the range of the pistol bullets to prevent the use of gun over canons as well as maybe add a mechanism of damage drop with distance.