Hourglass problem

  • I was doing hourglass with a friend and we sunk our opponoment and then when we sunk them another ship came immediatly and they sunk us the moment we finished hourglass, why the actual freak we cant have a special server for 1v1 so no others ships disturb the fight because this can happen and while you fight which is worse. PLZ FIX THE GAME RAVE

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  • @lordofterror06 Nope, hourglass is not a 1v1 server... its still normal adventure mode with all the perils adventure brings. Divings only intent is to save you time from hunting another PVP motivated ship... You dont have to dive to play hourglass if you don't like the trade off of the circle to save you the time of finding an opposing ship quickly.

  • @artie yeah, but hourglass is not like a normal pvp, its a specific game mode that you earn rewards based on how many ships in a row can you sink, and it literaly has a circle that you cant get out so why other people should go in when it is literately a 1v1 mode

  • @lordofterror06 it's not a 1v1 game mode, I don't think anyone has ever officially stated that, that's just what you determined it was. Hg is a PvP on demand tool with special rewards for successful plays, it was intentionally based in high seas so rare wouldn't have to run a separate server for quick PvP that would take up more resources then they deemed necessary and to encourage player interaction. Being 3rd partied is very munch intended and part of the high risk, high reward play style HG matches have

  • @rotten-rocko Which I find to be a terrible idea. Imagine a game mode, where two players have everything to lose, while people with literally nothing to lose can come in and if they sink, they can beeline it back to the circle and rinse and repeat. After getting both curses, I still find the HG game mode to be lazy and incompetent, like many others in the PVP community that I see share my sentiment across multiple SM platforms. The excuse for not wanting to separate servers is also crazy. As an example, instead of having 1 PVP server and 1 adventure server, they would rather have 2 adventure servers with a subpar HG system that players can interact with that haven't voted on an HG faction (and this third party system is honestly the very least of the concerns for HG). At the end of the day, you still have the same amount of servers, more or less. Seems wild to me, and I know I am not alone with my sentiments, hence why you see it being brought up in threads constantly here. Going off only the Steam charts (which I know is not accurate for the entirety of players), considering that the all time player count was 66k and the avg 24hr peak is 8k players, I find it so very hard to believe that they can't handle separate servers for a PVP mode.

  • The ability to be third party in hour glass not only frustrating but also an exploit. Your opponent can team up with other ships in the server and have an overwhelming advantage than they wouldn't normally have. I understand it's not competitive game mode but there's competitive play nonetheless. Why not make circle impossible for outside parties to enter during the fight? Once the fight is over then we can engage the other players!

  • 1 hourglass isn't a game mode, it's just pvp on demand.

    2 I think the actual issue is that they can third party without joining either side, I think if you enter the circle players should be encouraged if not made to flip their own hourglass so they have the same stakes.

  • Calling it a game mode, on demand PVP, or an emergent encounter system is just semantics. The main point of contention is the fact that Rare needs to make some huge adjustments and/or changes to HG.

  • Making ships invisible on the map until the battle is over would help a bit, but making a server dedicated to this would break the functionality of the hourglass.

    @Thamb0 The Arena only ended up being dedicated servers, okay that the hourglass is something different, faster matches, no waiting lobbies and a bigger audience, but I don't think it needs dedicated servers... it works, it's rare for me to have an encounter with crews outside of PVP. The hourglass needs changes, but I don't think this is one of them.

    About a player with nothing to lose vs a player with everything to lose, this already happens in normal matchmaking, just yesterday a guy with an alt account, without a flag and only interested in spawnkilling found me 4 times in a row in pvp, he didn't care about sinking, since I had 7 streaks to protect. An outside ship is more likely to have more to lose than such an adversary.

    The change needed is a higher reward after losing streaks, perhaps half the xp that the current amount of streaks give.

  • @thamb0 well they did have a competitive PvP server and not enough people played it and the majority of the complaints rare received about the game came from that side of the game because people just don't like losing and complain whenever they do, sadly arena is gone now and HG is all that's left. The entire game is exactly how you described the majority of the time one crew has everything to lose whilst another crew with nothing to lose try steal it, that's what makes it fun.

    Of all the problems HG has I don't think being 3rd partied is one of them tbh... The majority of the time it's just high seas players that are quite frankly just bad

  • @thamb0 said in Hourglass problem:

    Calling it a game mode, on demand PVP, or an emergent encounter system is just semantics. The main point of contention is the fact that Rare needs to make some huge adjustments and/or changes to HG.

    It's not really tho is it, that's what they made it as sold it as and advertised it as, weather people agree or not rare are the ones that made and defined it

  • @thamb0 said in Hourglass problem:

    Calling it a game mode, on demand PVP, or an emergent encounter system is just semantics. The main point of contention is the fact that Rare needs to make some huge adjustments and/or changes to HG.

    IIRC, in the buildup to season 8 it was actually advertised as PvP on demand. And a big deal was made about how the encounters still took place in adventure mode.

    This was important because the last PvP "mode" (arena) was it's own separate thing on sifferent servers. Hourglass was designed with High Seas in mind, and having the fights take place with all the associated risks is a core aspect to it's playflow.

  • @habiki ya thanks. I'm completely aware of this fact. I have a good amount of time in the game. The point someone was trying to make and that I was agreeing with is basically that those entering the circle should have to vote on HG to also enter as a third party.

  • @lordofterror06 said in Hourglass problem:

    @artie yeah, but hourglass is not like a normal pvp, its a specific game mode that you earn rewards based on how many ships in a row can you sink, and it literaly has a circle that you cant get out so why other people should go in when it is literately a 1v1 mode

    If you CHOOOSE to dive. Diving is option for hourglass... and only there for the short attention span PVPers who can't be bothered stocking and hunting other ships. With the match on demand, you have tradeoffs... the circle traps you while you have to deal with potentially 5 other ships and any other PVE event that exists attacking you. It's not a 1v1 instance mode.... you are playing the wrong game if you want that.

  • Hourglass has the same problem every other feature has, it gets abandoned immediately after release. Arena didn’t fail because it wasn’t fun, it failed because they abandoned it and refused to balance it. When new stuff is added, aside from fixing a few bugs, they simply move on and don’t look back.

  • @tek-lt

    Arena didn’t fail because it wasn’t fun, it failed because they abandoned it and refused to balance it.

    Nice narrative, but it goes against what Rare has said.

    1. They just did not want to rebalance & update it every time there was a major launch. Which is kind of like what you said, but for a different meaning.
    2. Only 3% of global playtime was spent in it, making it a waste of resources to update and keep running.
    3. Even though only 3% of all playtime was in it; 50% of all toxicity reports came from it.

    So they had a game mode that was a nightmare to keep up-to-date, was barely used, and was incredibly toxic, causing a larger workload from the support staff.
    Which is vastly different from 'It failed because they abandoned it'. But I guess you could interpret it that way, if you sort of squint and tilt your head and ignore objective reality.

  • ... it's how Rare designed/created it to be.

  • @thamb0 said in Hourglass problem:

    @habiki ya thanks. I'm completely aware of this fact. I have a good amount of time in the game. The point someone was trying to make and that I was agreeing with is basically that those entering the circle should have to vote on HG to also enter as a third party.

    Absolutely not. if you dont want the circle.. Hunt ships normally and play adventure. You get to see those 4+ streak boats spawn in, go get them.

  • @lleorb I don't mind keeping HG on adventure servers. However I will concede that I would also not mind them being separate. I really don't care either way. I really don't think HG players contribute to adventure mode anyways, since when I play, I literally dive, fight, then get off after a session. Point being is that PVPers want better ping and less rubber-banding than someone doing a tall tale or completing a voyage might be inclined to deal with, so putting an HG circle on a live server just seems weird, because it can be influenced by everything else outside the circle. I totally get that HG is PVP on demand because Rare... but I think a lot of PVPers would rather it be a separate game mode. We'll never know on these forums, because most of the player base is not on here to weigh in, hence why we need feedback/polls at outposts or on the main menu.

    • Side note, I was looking back through my screenshots and I saw that you were in my crew when I got the Glitterbeard commendation in Jan 2023! Small world
  • @tek-lt 1000% so many players act like Arena failed because the players let it, when in reality it was abandoned by Rare. People can literally go look up videos from back then about the players complaining about easy, simple fixes that could've been introduced to make it better. I won't mention them here, because there is no point, but I agree 1000% that stuff like Arena and HG fail because IMO the corporates seem to just move on to the next thing and forget about the amazing content they already made. I do feel so badly for the devs in this regard, because I assume they would really love to keep updating and polishing stuff they create, but are probably told to move on to the next thing.

  • I wonder how it would work if instead of streaks it was some kind of loot, like an hourglass shard that you could sell to the respective factions for treasure.

    From a fundamental perspective it doesnt make sense to encourage streaks when it should be a 50/50 win rate.

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