How could the Hourglass be improved?

@letifer7533 The most obvious improvement could be reducing play area size over time.

After all, it is called “hourglass “. Time should be running out!

1. An option to stay on your ship or enter the GSDT lobby when you're looking for matches. Most times the match times are quick, but when it's 5-15 min timers I would like to chill with other players like in the past instead of running laps around my ship forever.. Say I was a solo slooper and I opt to enter the tavern lobby, I might find a brig crew and a galleon crew all waiting there as well and we can hang out until an opponent is found.
2. Daily tasks/incentives for level boosts, regardless of winning or losing that match.
3. New cosmetics for levels 1-100. Should be clothing/items unlocked every 5 levels until level 100.
4. Quick queue lobbies where if you select it, it puts your ship against another stock supplies ship. If you sink, it gives you the option to immediately requeue or end HG session during the screen with your ship sunk. The quick queue can only be done with fresh/stock supplied ships, that way if you opt to requeue after sinking, you can immediately dive knowing your opponent will have the same supplies as you and you won't feel the need to go buy more supps, gather crates and fill up a storage crate. Rare could also include having your last emissary flag being auto raised again and having barrels filled with extra automatic supplies for 10-15k every time you requeue.
5. New game modes or rotating game modes, like KoTH, with 3-5 ships, FFA with 3-5 ships, Capture the Forts with 2V2 ships, etc. You get a certain amount of XP for where you place in these modes, plus some extra XP for how much you participated.
6. A short Tall Tale that introduces players to HG. It can explain the factions, have a little story, and then have the player/s battle an NPC crew that follows set parameters to showcase some things, like getting into a good radius, taking down the mast, death spiraling, what to focus when bilging, etc. The player/s could have an NPC helm that commands them the first time, and then after the player/s win the first battle, they have to do another one without the NPC helm, and they basically go at it until they win a battle vs a skelly NPC crew and complete the Tall Tale.

Here's the best solution, not just endless arguments - https://www.seaofthieves.com/community/forums/topic/172226/hourglass-2-0-time-limits-and-score-system/

@letifer7533
Fair loss XP, ledgers, and ranking systems being the source of XP rather than just streaks.

https://www.seaofthieves.com/community/forums/topic/168966/hourglass-is-dying

Best way to change the hourglass would be change the war map from being just a toggle to dive, to be a popup menu and add more options to dive for such as team ship battles or some sort of raid that both players have to fight for such as a siren skull where both pop up at the other map. My 2 personal favorite ideas would be adding the magpies wing as another man o war, and having a brawl with that and the burning blade, giving both athena/reaper rep and hourglass for that side, as well bringing back the ghost fort claiming beacons for a more passive play style that could be enticing to steal for your rep.

As well maby cutting out the rep reduction you get for the first 100 levels that you dont have after that point. Its a bit forced.

I stand by adding Deeds for Hourglass that give bumps in Allegiance for actual participation in the vein of taking down a Ship (Hit Enemy Ship with X Cannonballs, Drop a Mast, Destroy a Helm, Destroy a Capstan, Apply a Curse to a Crew/Ship, etc). I feel like this would probably help more than shrinking boundaries in trying to get people to at least just try because if they lose they still get all their Daily bumps so you get more people coming in and trying once a day more than fast loss farming or running as that is likely to take much more time and award much less as a result of Deeds.

Also a fan of bringing back the Capture the Sea Fort Mechanic as a part of the Defend side of Hourglass, gives something to do on that end beyond just gathering Loot (you can grant Allegiance bonuses for Hourglass wins for the number of Forts pledged to your Faction on the server). This would also increase server investment a bit a better blend Hourglass with Adventure since they are part and parcel technically.

You could bring Emergent Hourglass Battles as well if you bring in the Sea Fort situation, so if you come within a certain distance of someone else running Hourglass on a server it triggers a Battle for those two Ships. This would play very nicely with adding more encouragement to doing the Defend side of Hourglass with the idea above. It could also get battles going over the state that the Forts will be with Servants and Guardians potentially duking it out over bonuses for their Faction.

I also really love the idea that @WolfManbush just brought up about dropping a Map for something like a CoF that doesn't stack (similar to Emissary Voyages) and requires you to keep Hourglass active while doing it so you can still be invaded potentially and not just close Hourglass and then go more safely claim your prize. This also does a good job of blending the two back together and adds another little carrot to dangle to encourage people to try and win their fights and not just run (so it mixes even better with the Deeds idea).

I think that would do a fair bit to inject a little more life into Hourglass, and would also work wonders to make it feel like there is an active war going on in the actual game itself thus reinforcing the lore of the game and where we are with things.