1 crew vs 1 crew ship dueling is fun. Hourglass isn't fun at all.

  • The Old Soul800
    Marauder
    Insider

    Hourglass is structured awfully.
    On demand pvp is a great thing to have, but this is definitely not the way to have it.

    Whether the sbmm is kicking in for equal opponents or it's not for random opponents, either way you can only expect to win half your matches.
    By itself that's fine, 50% winrates are entirely acceptable, but in this case it means half your matches end in the gameplay loop that follows losses.
    A fresh ship, with nothing flagged.
    You have to manually reactivate hourglass, emissary, and resupply. It's a waste of time, effort, and money.
    Especially considering that if you only resupply using the outpost/captain resources, you might as well not resupply at all.
    Sure I've fought and sometimes won using just the fresh spawn supplies, but if you want to have a real chance you either need to be lucky enough to be against someone doing the same, or sail to multiple islands with supply crates to do a real resupply.

    Engaging with the on demand pvp component of the game should not mean having to repeat the fresh login part of the game over and over and over, nor should neglecting to do that be shooting yourself in the foot when going back into the demand pvp.
    It makes your playtime feel so devalued, and diminishes the fun of the mode.

    Also in the vain of devalued time, with how long fights can go, even during the double progress ghouls and glory that is currently active, progress is so slow it's insulting.
    It's as if you'd need the impossible 100% winrate to even begin to feel like you're actually progressing.

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  • BurnBacon
    Vanguard
    Insider

    You don’t have to resupply, or raise a flag. Those two things you can skip.

    Pvp on demand is working as it should. To make sure no body accidentally starts it. You have to activate it and sail out to sea. Once you sink, you do it all over. The same thing happens when you sink even if your not doing HG

    During a voyage, sailing around. If you sink, you start over from scratch in a fresh ship.

    If you don’t like hourglass, don’t use it. Very simple.

  • H0B0JO0E
    Seafarer
    Insider

    @burnbacon For once bacon is right but also wrong. Just skip supplies and emissary, that's what I do and my crew wonders how I make money from hourglass. From what I understand, you want to do tdm rather than the combo of tdm and naval in hourglass. I get that. Would be fun but at the same time wouldn't make sense.

  • The Old Soul800
    Marauder
    Insider

    @h0b0jo0e
    To be clear, I very much want the naval part of the fight, not just some tdm.
    I actually wish ship combat was more naval focused, less boarding dependent.

    What I want here is for the on demand pvp function to not include so much downtime back in regular adventure mode doing regular adventure fresh ship spawn things before getting back to the demand pvp.
    Arena was better than hourglass for reasons.

  • Captain Fob4141
    Commander
    Insider

    @the-old-soul800 i think 2v2 or 1v1v1 would be better personally.

    Also, I wish the ships spawned facing away from each other and had to turn into the fight. The initial engagement is seriously braindead.

  • The Old Soul800
    Marauder
    Insider

    Getting a good fight with another crew is one thing,
    That's what we'd enter arena for back in its day, when fights were the mood. Or just sail to marked events hoping to find someone else there.
    I can't believe they've made an "on demand pvp" mode that's only mechanically worth it if you encounter multiple loss farmers in a row.

    Yesterday, because of that happening, I got to streak 7.
    I had to stop there because a friend joined me, and wouldn't you know it, everyone I know who plays this game vehemently detests the pvp. Every. Single. One. I'm the only person in any of my friend circles that ever enjoys fights in this game.

    Reaching streak 7, being emissary 5, selling the flags obtained in those fights, and finally selling the hourglass, the amount of progress obtained from the time and effort, was still insultingly low.
    Progress amounts in HG are insultingly low in all forms, even streaking against loss farms. It's less bad that way than all the other ways, but the best way is still bad. Go figure.

  • Astralenigma
    Ship Mate

    @eastthread51441 said in 1 crew vs 1 crew ship dueling is fun. Hourglass isn't fun at all.:

    Every hourglass battle begins the exact same way.

    Both ships always spawn the same distance apart, sailing towards each other like a game of chicken.

    When every battle begins the exact same way it’s no wonder why the mode can feel extremely repetitive.

    If we had a few variations to how battles can start it would certainly make the mode feel less mundane.

    I agree that forcing a crew to wake up in the tavern after every loss and repeat the same steps over and over again is unnecessary. Raise a flag, buy/find supplies, raise the anchor, vote on the hourglass, vote on the war map.

    Most PvP games have like a maximum 30~60 second intermission between matches and they don’t make their players repeat a bunch of steps.

    Crews who lose a battle in hourglass should be given the option to rejoin the queue for another battle during the ship underwater scene if the crew decides to battle again the game will automatically reraise the same emissary flag that was up when they sank before and they will transition to being underwater waiting for another battle to start once the game selects a rival crew to match them with.

    Of course the biggest issue with hourglass is the massive disparity in progression between crews who win the vast majority of their battles versus crews who struggle to win battles but enjoy battling.

    In order to keep the hourglass population healthy and the queue full of crews who actually enjoy battling, allegiance progression should be based on how a crew performs in an hourglass battle not just who wins at the end.

    The ratio between how much a win is worth versus how much a loss is worth needs to be rebalanced. I would make a win worth more allegiance and I would also make it so the crew who lost can earn more depending on the number of times they hit the enemy ship with cannonballs, how many times they made repairs to their ship, how much damage they inflicted on enemy players etc.

    I had a ship spawn to my side the trick is don't dive for the PvP.
    My favorite one was when me and my swabbie defeated the burning blade while the hourglass was still up and we got invaded mid looting it the other guys did a 180 and ran. We defeated them with the bone callers when we got back the burning blade had despawned and we grabbed the treasure.

    I agree with @BurnBacon on don't bother resupplying, but I disagree on the don't bring an emissary flag.
    The more people that bring an emissary flag the faster progression is overall.
    I am of the opinion you should raise the related flag by just going to hourglass as long as you don't have another flag up.
    Another thing they should take a look at is the way the hoard mechanic works because it feels unrewarding either give us a feedback on the difference between doing the invasion or defending treasure or increase it more as it stands holding treasure waiting to be invaded feels less rewarding than actually invading.

  • H0B0JO0E
    Seafarer
    Insider

    @the-old-soul800 Ah, I understand. You want better base supps and spawn on ship to start faster rt?

  • FunnierCape8
    Ship Mate
    Insider

    I do think hourglass does need a change that addresses hour long fights. Either have rep scale with match length past a certain point (whether that be time spent, cannons hit, players killed etc.) or have some sort of soft time limit. Like a shrinking circle or sudden death with disabled respawns.

  • RikJaxx
    Marauder

    Seems to me a time limit with damage totals would be the easiest to implement. What is "right"? 20 minutes? More? Less?

  • The Old Soul800
    Marauder
    Insider

    Rep scaling with time, or the match being effectively a time limit with a shrinking circle or something are both ideas worth considering.

    But here's the main thing: choosing to participate in Hourglass needs to be mechanically & progression-ally worth the time, effort, and decision, no matter how it goes.

    Winning a match after an hour needs to be worth it.
    Losing a match after an hour needs to be worth it.
    Winning a match in 20 seconds needs to be worth it.
    Losing a match in 20 seconds needs to be worth it.
    Succeeding at win streaking needs to be worth it.
    Failing to ever win streak needs to be worth it.
    Running defender but being attacked before you can stack loot needs to be worth it.
    Getting faction stash 5 and winning a fight needs to be worth it.
    Getting faction stash 5 and losing a fight needs to be worth it.
    Running defender, stacking loot, and eventually selling without ever fighting because no invaders showed up needs to be worth it. It's not the defenders fault nobody invaded.

    Right now, they only version that's worth it, mechanically / progressing wise, is winstreaking with 20 second matches against loss farmers, and only during a boost weekend.
    It's just sad.

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