New hourglass changes are amazing!!

Players now have bigger reason to board the ship, hunting for that crate. So i ditch it after placing everything in barrels.

Win/Lose, I often still see the flags left behind in open waters.

Only good thing I like is the "ReQueing" after awards.

I still feel the need to go out into the world, find a few Bone callers, curses (thanks Garrisons) just so i can listen to the "Stop! Using those things! Coward!" xD

But also, I make a straight line for the Middle of the Field and drop anchor, my farm losing has doubled thanks to the quickness of rejoining fights.

Other than im still getting the bug when harpooned i can't pull out weapons it has landed really well, made hg more accessible to the masses. Hard to tell as it has been double rep whether the queues will remain good but fingers crossed.

Absolutely. Hourglass has felt much much better with these changes. Supplies are decent, but the instant requeue is the best thing. Plus the shrinking circle stopping the runners is tremendous. I did have a few fights where they mustn't have got the message and they tried the running thing. One particular fight I took great joy in locking them down while the circle shrunk around them. Perhaps they were just going for the final circle deed.

I still have a small problem with with the double demast situation with the shrinking circle. I've both won and lost due to do it, which isn't great either way.

The only other thing I think we need is more rewards between 200-1000. It's a long way, but some incremental rewards every 10-20 levels or so would really feeling rewarding.

@shadowfox327533 I can't in good conscience agree to call this a "season" honestly, despite the hourglass changes being fantastic.

The boring fomo event and hourglass changes (not even LSS until A3) is not enough for a season, and gutting kraken was a major disappointment.

This season is still better than the last because of the quality of the update. They actually addressed an issue with one of the game's features and made some serious improvements to it. I honestly couldn't give two hoots about the Kraken because in my eyes it's just another 'raid / world event'.

A good feature/addition to the game encourages thinking and experimentation with outcomes that make the player feel empowered or well rewarded; while world events do that, they just encourage the same thinking and have the same outcomes as their predecessors.

I won't miss it at all.

@burnbacon Why can't you just say you liked the update? Ofc the only thing u like is requeuing, you loss farm! Thats a you thing, not the update.

@burnbacon

If you're loss farming what difference does it make if they board the ship and take the crate?

Childish.

I just wanna chime in and say - outside of the great HG update, boy do I appreciate the return of regular bottles lol.

In one day I've managed to finish the remaining 3 shrines (collect all the journals) and 1 treasury, and finally get the sunken sorrow curse. Don't know why I've kept postponing this for ages, but once I've decided I could maybe grind for this, smugglers dropped and I didn't pursue it afterwards.

Until now. So cheers for that! 😄

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The visual red boundary was fantastic. No more checking the map to see where we are in relation to the border while in a dynamic fight.

So much this 💯! Omg.

The team behind this did an outstanding job.

Indeed. They're on the right track. Hope they keep it up!

I came back to play after a long hiatus. I think it was a good update for hourglass. The supplies give quick requeues, the battle bounds never made me feel like it was unfair, it actually was comforting that I could never lose too much time on a single fight. The lower the barrier to entry, the more incentive less skilled players will have to join. And that just makes the mode better because then everyone gets more fair fights.

My only issues with these changes are that you're going to run out of food quick unless you gather more food before a fight, and it took Rare WAY TOO LONG to do this. Players like @TheBlackBellamy and I have been calling for changes like this for years and only now are we getting something...

I haven't played Sea of Thieves for much at all in the past few years, partially due to the cycle of never listening to what the community wants and partially due to the continuously dwindling amount of rewards for playing the game. Such as the fact I come back after a huge hiatus and I still have green check marks on the last page of almost every shop in the outpost. Tangent aside, I'm glad that something finally changed, too bad none of my friends care about this game enough to try it out! I hopped on merely to get my jacket and that was it. It's nice to have something to go along with my Victorious Sea Dog Blunderbuss and TSD title in my favorite colors. But it just feels like a wisp of a long-forgotten promise.

Thanks Rare for doing something at least.

After going through a few hours of hourglass galleon and brigantine battles, I'd say I appreciate the hourglass changes a lot.

Even after we lose, going next / rematching is so much easier than before. Doesn't take a huge amount of coordination to get adequate supplies. So we can chill a lot more.

More naval. And less TDM from those exploiting the dagger tooth outpost / kraken's fall / shark bait cove / pirate life shrine / etc spots! > These could be a separate event/quest really, for TDM-enjoyers (not me).

I could still use more wood crates in the bottom deck when we vote to rematch as a galleon crew, and would like water collision on crates be gone again (so as a bilge, I have a shot at helping my crew survive a top deck wipe).

But overall, good changes to hourglass indeed.

I don't know how effective this will be in attracting new players. But it should help in retaining regular players over time.