One of the main things I see with hourglass is that is not only PvP on demand, but also the only way to unlock the curses.
Allow me to explain myself, the curses are the rewards for being level 100 in allegiance in any faction (aside from being pirate legend or reaper 75) so it is a reward for leveling up. Look at the rings and distinctions, or the companies set, most of the items are rewards for leveling up, however each trading company has multiple methods of leveling up, for example, look at the merchant alliance, you can level up by doing commodity runs, catching animals, doing a lost shipment voyage or deliver cargo, each activity is different from the rest, it offers a variety to level up this faction and unlock the cosmetics at the representative.
So this brings it to my first point: how do you level up allegiance with the guardians and servants? You have to do hourglass fights, sure, you may raise hourglass, grab a loot haul and lower the hourglass, but it is quite possible that someone will emerge from the water and fight you, so you need to defend yourself and win the fight or else all your loot haul will be lost and moved to another server. I can't confirm this as I haven't stacked a haul myself with hourglass active in a long time, but it seems you don't get any allegiance if you sink while defending, you'd get allegiance for winning a defense but not losing. Again, I can't confirm that since I don't defend but I rather dive. If that's the case then people would feel less encouraged to defend and would dive instead: attacker vs attacker.
That leaves us with the only option that is diving and face a duel with another ship. And it seems people feel this is the only way to level up allegiance, as stacking loot comes with the risk of being invaded and losing, and it is much more riskier than any loot stack since you actively mark yourself for PvP, while other methods of stacking outside of hourglass can be safer by sailing with stealth, avoiding certain paths and even avoid raising emmisaries, you can even stack tons of loot in the Devil's Roar without finding a single ship on the horizon.
So, what are the methods of leveling up allegiance? Only activating the hourglass and dive, again and again. Not even the Hunter's Call is like this, you can go to shipwrecks, sea forts, buy captaincy meat or go fishing yourself to level up the reputation for Hunter's Call. I dare to say that in theory you can even get the Legendary hunter of Sea of Thieves title without taking out your fishing rod once as you may be lucky and find rare fish in shipwreck barrels (I once found a Shadow Stormfish in one of them) or sink someone who was carrying treacharous plunder or steal their fish from their food barrels.
Hourglass? No, just dive and dive, the only method for it. It would be nice if they added additional PvP gamemodes for earning allegiance to shake the monotony a bit. Who knows? Perhaps two players locked in a closed area, and use sword only and win sword duels (the best out of 5 rounds) and after the winner is decided they can go back to their ship with extra allegiance gained. Perhaps make 2v2 boat fights, perhaps make players have to race towards an island and dig one piece of treasure with a difficult map to understand, the first one to dig the spot wins and the loser has their ship scuttled like hourglass our of bounds and sent to another server. I don't know, just wild ideas but my point is that multiple methods of earning allegiance would be fantastic. These are the only progress bars that have a single activity in the game aside from commendations themselves.
For my second point: Hourglass is not about skill actually, it encourages win fast or lose fast. It doesn't matter how many cannonballs you landed, it doesn't matter how many boarders you repelled, it doesn't matter if you broke their masts multiple times, it doesn't matter how long you managed to survive in the fight or if you avoided going to the ferry once, and it doesn't matter if you clutched a win after being close to be sunk. The only thing that matter is who wins and who loses. Win xp for one side, lose xp for the other one. So this encourages to finish fights quickly because both sides will get a fixed ammount of xp. The winning side may get increased xp due to streaks, loot aboard and emmissary, but those things are factors outside the fight itself. You could be hoarding a big ammount of loot, while having a streak of 3, and you may be paired with a loss farmer, that winning xp will be the same as if you won against someone who fought back. Activity inside the fight does not affect your xp gain. That's why loss farming exist, for those not confident enough to win, they rather make their losses quickly as possible. In fact, I think certain number of quick losses can get more xp than a single long win depending on how much time you spend on it. None of the activities during the fight matter, but it is the factors outside of it that affect winning xp. For losing it is even worse, as the losing xp is always the same, always, even if you had emmisary V, a high streak, some loot, and so on, if you lose once you lose everything, absolutely everything and it will give you that minuscule ammount of xp.
This brings me to my third point: losing is demoralizing, like a lot. This gamemode is seen as it is being filled only by sweats, because average and below average players may feel demoralized and discouraged to continue. If you managed to fight pretty well but sink you get a tiny portion of xp, if you manage to repel a boarder but still lose you get the same tiny portion, if you survive long enough in battle by bucketing and repairing, you get the same tiny ammount. It doesn't encourage players to look at their mistakes and check which areas of combat they need to improve and which ones to reinforce, it only makes players feel more obsessed with winning without explaining how or where to start, or just give up entirely and see it as a waste of time. And that is an important thing: time. Both players should feel they are making good use of their time, both sides winners and losers. Other games with PvP can give better rewards to a losing team who fought well compared to a losing team who barely did anything, but in Sea of Thieves hourglass is the flat loss xp, it is demoralizing, and made some players quit already and not try ever again. It is a PvP mode, which means one side must win and one side must lose, there will always be a losing side, and the losing side needs to feel encouraged to try again, to comeback and improve, not be demoralized by the system. Because if the playerbase for a gamemode gets reduced then it happens what you just explained in your graphic, and the low tier goes away, the middle tier becomes the new low tier and the cycle continues while the playerbase for hourglass gets reduced more and more. I can see why some players decide to touch the hourglass only during gold and glory and community events while avoiding it the rest of time.
For my fourth and final point is: the rewards themselves. And what I'm about to say is going to be controversial and it is going to anger a lot of people, so I apologize in advance as it is not my intention to start a fight. The rewards are curses, and curses are seen as status symbol, and all that stuff. The problem is that the skeleton curse and ghost curse are not trophies of displaying skills, but rather commitment, perseverance and patetience just like the gold curse is for the shores of gold tall tales. It is possible to get the curses with losses only, in fact it was already achieved this way before by someone on Reddit who helped to count the ammount of losses required. And loss xp existed from the get go, just not for out of bounds losses as that was added a few months later. So the curses could be achieved by people who only lost, that means that the curses never had that skill display trophy value as some people want it to be. It is just what it is, a cosmetic that makes you look like a ghost with a green filter or a customizable skeleton costume, with its own emotes, and that's it, cosmetics awarded for reaching level 100, and level 100 can be achieved without sinking a single ship, it just takes a long time. I went for the ghost curse and got it because I wanted to look as a ghost, and I'm happy with it in safer seas, I don't go around showing off my ghost curse, I just use it for myself to look like a ghost for the sake of being a ghost, if a blue ghost curse existed in the emporium I would have bought that and not bother touching hourglass once. And perhaps that's why people are angry at the stone curse being in the pass, because they want the curses to be a status symbol, a trophy. For me, I think the stone curse looks great and I don't really care if other will mock me for having the stone curse. I customize myself for me, not for impressing and flexing on strangers on the internet. (I don't think I'll bother to get the skeleton curse as I already have the dark warsmith costume). So how does this relates to my fourth point? Well, I think a few players want to be skeletons, or be ghosts, but feel the journey to get the curses is too much and demoralizing. While other players want to gatekeep the curses and keep them as PvP trophies to flex on them. Imagine if hypothetically the rewards for level 100 in allegiance was something different, like a hat, a jacket, or a ship set, and the ghost and skeleton curses were achieved differently. Personally I would have gone for that other activity depending on what it is rather than try to get 100 allegiance for the hat, jacket or ship set. I went to hourglass for the sake of looking like a ghost, not for flexing I have a cosmetic earned in PvP. I stopped caring about status a long time ago due to a large ammount of reasons. So back to my fourth point: perhaps some players just wanted the same, perhaps. They just wanted to have a customizable skeleton, or have the ghost filter in the living world, but they get demoralized by the game mode, and give up early, keeping the playerbase small. This also connect to my first point that there are no other way of obtaining allegiance, so that's why people in hourglass meet players who are loss farming or simply not interested in fighting but want to get the curses. I see loss farming as a consequence rather than a cause. It is a consequence of how demoralizing is losing, and how effort does not matter in hourglass, only results.
I have some questions:
- We know that certain cosmetic categories have one or two items in total like masks, knives or rings. So imagine a cosmetic category that only has two cosmetics available, one that looks super amazing and stunning, it looks good with almost everything but it is easy to get and everyone can adquire it in a few minutes, and the other cosmetic is very ugly and it is very hard to combine it with stuff you equip to look decent however it is very hard to obtain, very difficult as it requires a lot of dedication and persistance, and also a lot of time and knowledge on the seas. Which one would you equip? A good looking cosmetic easy to get or an ugly cosmetic hard to obtain? Please don't answer with "I would want something that looks good AND is hard to obtain" as I'm asking of a category with only these two. I ask this because I want to know how much people value looks and how much they value achievements.
- Second question: For those saying that Hourglass is made for quick PvP on demand, and curses don't matter. Would you be fine if the curses were moved to something else and the rewards for allegiance was a different item? If the ghost curse and skeleton curse were achieved in a different matter and the reward for level 100 was a hat, and level 1000 was a jacket. Would you be fine with moving rewards to different things?
- Third question: What is the first thing you see on the horizon? The ship set the other players have or the curses they have equipped? Wouldn't the ship set be the first indication of how the future interaction with those players will go?
- Would you be fine if they added different methods of earning allegiance, either by doing a quest or adding more PvP modes? (I bet everyone will say only extra PvP modes, no PvE)
- How would you encourage someone who is not good at PvP to keep trying? How would you boost their morale and help them achieve their goal?
- What do you really think is the cause of the bad state of hourglass? or if there are multiple causes, what are they?
- Do you think there is something that's absolutely fun for everyone? Something that nobody can dislike in this game?
- Do you think it is a good approach to try to make something more appealing to everyone, or things must fill a specific niche?
Honestly, I don't know anything at this point. Personally I don't feel like hourglass was very well designed, and I'm glad I got the legendary curse at 105, but I don't feel like continuing playing that mode is worth it. Personally, I feel happy for finally looking like a ghost, and I don't plan to flex that to anybody, but rather repeat the third Pirate's Life Tall Tale with the ghost curse solo because I find it funny to be ghost fighting other ghosts. I will keep avoiding player interaction on the High Seas when I use it to get gold. Everyone has their own motivations and goals, and I think the biggest problem not only with Hourglass but the whole game of Sea of Thieves is the clash of ideologies from differents parts of the playerbase. Sea of Thieves perhaps is not a game for everyone as much as the trailers make it look like. I find it fun sometimes, but there is stuff that I can't simply like. And fun is subjective as something I find fun others may dislike and viceversa. Just look at the Infinite Pirate Generator, some people like it and will defend it while others dislike it and want a normal character creator. Look how some people wanted safer seas restrictions lifted and some wanted safer seas restrictions to be harsher. Look at how some people love not having skull of siren song not being contested and how some want it to have PvP encounters every time. Hourglass is the same, some will love it, some will hate it. And while some people will defend hourglass design others will dislike it and criticize it.
Anyway, don't take everything I say as a fact, all I said is simply an opinion from a guy with certain point of view, and can only speak from what he experienced. Also, big apologies for the wall of text or saying something I shouldn't.