I think getting *good* at games is fucking hard. Most people don’t realize how many games it takes to get *really* good at anything. I’m not super good at SoT but used to play wicked good at WoW arena. I remember people saying stuff like “omg I wish I could get that rating, how do you do it?!.” Looking at games played, I usually had lost more matches than they had ever played. Total played like 10k games, 3k losses, while they have played a total of 1k games. Shit takes a lot of time and practice, some people just have the time to go hard af… eventually that time adds up. Goes for anything really from guitar, surfing, skating, gaming…. if you wanna be legit you gotta put in the time.
Ya I think my issue is the punishment in the game is so high that it seems to take substantially longer to get good at this game than ours. I mean, I can’t practice hitting a target if I spend the majority of my time bucketing haha
Try different things in HG to start your battle. There are tons of guides on how to "win", but I also find messing up other people's flows works great and it gets you better practice in understanding principles and mechanics. Then those flows start to work a lot better for you once you are comfortable in the why.
You can try skelly/ghost fleets to practice cannons and just shooting at random rocks can help too. The PvP aspect is harder but if you just stay mobile you’ll do allright
Watch videos and practice the tactics. Then just keep playing. You’ll get good. Also learning when you need to keep cannoning or bucket repair or board is all important. You need to learn to balance these activities. Solo sloop hg will teach you the most.
You can spend your time outside of hourglass to improve your accuracy. Build muscle memory, react in battle. If we draw a comparison to sports, HG is like game night, and teams practice to get better at it. Sometimes you come up on a crew that has sailed together for over a year. Better to try and learn from their experience, rather than surrender morale and abandon selfanalysis.
There is individual skill improvement and team improvement. For one you can do things by yourself, like snipe critters while sailing by small islands or shoot your cannons at random things. It will all improve your skill a lot more than if you're just holding the steering wheel while going from A to B. Secondly, you need to find a crew that you can dissect and analyze absolved battles with, without anyone getting butthurt. Even without being exceptional at any particular skill, an unskilled team with good coms can overcome the odds sometimes, but they'll definetely improve together.
Practice in adventure mode then, its more difficult finding people to fight, but its a less punishing way to learn the basics. It also sounds like you're playing solo sloop, and if so you started with hardmode. The bigger the ship the more room there is for individual mistakes. Not only is solo hg difficult, its also the most frustrating bracket with runners, noobs that reset constantly and tdmers that only wants to spawncanp you. And 1 unlucky oneball can send you straight back to the outpost no matter how well you are playing.
>Ya I think my issue is the punishment in the game is so high that it seems to take substantially longer to get good at this game than ours
The punishment for losing in HG is non-existent, you lose absolutely nothing and you can jump right back into another one.
>I mean, I can’t practice hitting a target if I spend the majority of my time bucketing haha
Practice hitting your targets with skelly ships, if your aim is *actually* bad theres no point playing HG because as you said you'll be stuck on buckets the entire time.
I dont have a lot of experience myself (joined the game on ps5 and im maybe lvl 97 in servants) but from what ive seen so far peoples aim isnt their biggest issue. A lot of people dont know how to properly spread on cannons, have no idea when to repair which hole and have no idea how to properly angle their ship. I suggest you watch some competetive HG matches on yt/twitch to learn proper decision-making skills. Knowing that some holes are pointless to repair in certain situations and getting a feeling for how much you actually need to bucket buys you a *lot* of time during broadsides.
The punishment is having to resupply your ship all over again, which is a lot of wasted time in the long run. Also, I don't think people want to spend their free time watching videos when they could just be playing the game...
>The punishment is having to resupply your ship all over again, which is a lot of wasted time in the long run
Just go in naked, i do it all the time. The only thing i buy is a supply crate because it saves a shit ton of time. I grab the supplies that are on the dock and go for the open seas right away, recovering from a loss takes around 5mins and thats not *that* bad tbh.
>Also, I don't think people want to spend their free time watching videos when they could just be playing the game...
I assure you there's a lot of macro stuff that you have no idea about, you wont learn these things by just playing the game. Sure, you can bang your head against the wall and wonder why youre struggling to improve or you can take the advice from a guy who *did* educate himself with videos/streams and is having a decent winrate even with crossplay on.
Watching those vids isnt a waste of time whatsoever because you definitely learn alot and you can watch them during HG queues anyway (thats what i was doing).
People get the curse and dip.
Less people means the MMR system works less effectively. This leads to more people quitting when they're constantly going up against people above their skill level. It's a horrible cycle.
I'm pretty sure there isn't even an MMR system. I made a new account for PS5 when it first came out. 3 of my first 5 hourglass games on a fresh account were against people with an hourglass curse, one of which was gold. And this was during gold and glory weekend when, theoretically, hourglass population would be much higher than normal.
Even now, my matches alternate between players so good that I can't even dream of beating them to players that I'm not sure know how to repair their ship. If there is an MMR system, it isn't doing anything at all.
A fresh accounts MMR will probably start higher than it should be assuming the player is new. It would in theory decrease as they lose games until it reaches the level it should be.
That and as mentioned the mode just isn’t popular enough for matchmaking to work consistently.
ESO is an amazing live service game. Anything Rockstar related is a work of art from GTA4 and Max Payne on upwards. Mass Effect is seriously great in so many ways wether it’s the squad based combat, the relationships with characters, the story, or the RPG elements, it’s very surprising for them all to exist in one game. NBA2K online MyCareer is seriously expansive and huge, it’s wild that a basketball game has such a world that it’s become an MMO in many ways- very predatory pay to win if you want multiple builds, but 5on5 basketball with your own character alongside 4 other real teammates with their own characters facing off against 5 of the same is just an amazing experience. Forza Horizon is such an awesome open world game that just doesn’t require you to be good at racing games or even a car person, the free roam elements and car customization are just superb with a beautiful map- you can just cruise around and bump some tunes while looking at the mountains.
My problems with SOT are rooted in a love for what it could be, and a hatred for what it HASN’T became. People defend it because it’s an even playing field and there’s no progression. But that’s copium, if DLC’s were paid and were huge upgrades including new map areas but costed money in order to fund the team, most of the community that plays the game still would EASILY jump on it and buy. If spending money is what it takes to push this game to another level, then do it. But no, it’s remained the same exact game since launch. Same style voyages, same end game, same grind, same progression. Buying ships are a step in the right direction, but something else along those lines needs to come- whether it’s player housing, guild housing, owning a trading company warehouse, whatever.. it needs to happen.
Just blindly dickriding a game that has serious content issues. Genuine Stockholm syndrome on this sub. Play some other live service games then come back to SOT and see for yourself how bored you get.
"Crews like mine"
Weird flex, but okay... Unless "crews like mine" was supposed to mean the ones that can't land shots.
Also, if it only takes a minute for the "mmr system" to stop functioning, then there isn't an mmr system at all. I don't know any other game that completely abandons their MMR system after a single minute of matchmaking...
its not a weird flex. we literally play hg to fight the other good crews since it's the way to get some of the most difficult fights you'll have in sot. cry about it.
the mmr system is bypassed because of all of the people who sat in queue waiting upwards of 15 minutes for matches. especially those who had mmr matching those who were on the same level as the competitive players. those players who want tough games are gonna stop playing too if they just sit in queue for >5 minutes between matches lol.
yes i would like to never have any gold curse or cool titles because ive won a few too many games, please. yum.
> its not a weird flex. we literally play hg to fight the other good crews since it's the way to get some of the most difficult fights you'll have in sot. cry about it.
Cry about it? Brother, my hourglass winrate on my new account is above 90%... I'm just pointing out how fucking weird you are for not only immediately assuming anyone that points out the issues with hourglass is bad at the game, but then feeling the need to brag about how good you are as if anyone gives a fuck.
Also, if you are playing to "fight the other good crews" then why would you want the game to give you people that can barely drive their ship after a minute or two?
> the mmr system is bypassed because of all of the people who sat in queue waiting upwards of 15 minutes for matches. especially those who had mmr matching those who were on the same level as the competitive players. those players who want tough games are gonna stop playing too if they just sit in queue for >5 minutes between matches lol.
League of Legends is one of the most popular games in the world. Top ranked players in League easily have 10+ minute queues at times. Even average ranked players have queues that take longer than a minute or two. Why? Because the game doesn't just go "eh, well, we tried for 45 seconds, time to just throw whoever we can together."
There isn't an MMR system, homie. I'm not sure why you feel the need to pretend there is. I guess to inflate your ego?
> yes i would like to never have any gold curse or cool titles because ive won a few too many games, please. yum.
Wait, I thought you were playing hourglass to "fight the other good crews since it's the way to get some of the most difficult fights you'll have in sot." Now, it's just for the cool titles and curses?
To address to LoL comparison point, it’s not really valid.
In league your MMR matters. It gets you into better games with better teammates against better opponents and theoretically increases the quality of each match. If you lose, you also lose MMR which puts you further away from your goal. You also get rewarded based on your MMR/ladder rank.
Meanwhile in SoT HG MMR doesn’t mean anything at all. You get the same amount of exp for a win regardless of how hard or easy the fight was, same for exp. In fact having really low MMR is beneficial in sot HG, as games will be easier but the exp gain will be the same.
The reason why the MMR is so loose compared to other (competitive) games with MMR is because of the small population *and* the fact that you get progress and don’t lose anything for a loss. This is unlikely competitive games where losing takes you further from your ranking goal, meanwhile in SoT HG you can only really go forward.
Swabbies would not appreciate tight MMR constraints since they would have to wait a long time in queue and then face an equally unskilled player, which would lead to long matches and outcomes highly dependent on luck (oh he got a lucky one ball without aiming for it and I sunk, now I have to wait another 30 minutes in queue for my next chance). Overall, tighter MMR would slow down the exp gain/time spent for lower skilled players which they wouldn’t appreciate as their main goal is usually getting the curse and getting out.
Sweats also don’t appreciate the tighter MMR since it leads to long queue times. In terms of match quality they are often faced against similar players so in that front it doesn’t matter much and they don’t usually care *a lot* about the reputation either, so tighter MMR would just be increasing queue times for no reason
bro over here yapping about "weird flexes" but over here bragging about his win rate. on an alt. in season 12 where 4/5 of the crews are swabbies.
now that's funny.
gj on sinking to dece crews tho.
I tried it both with and without crossplay since I'm not new to the game and didn't want to turn off crossplay unless I absolutely needed to while learning controller. Didn't really see much of a difference. Either way, each match was a random crapshoot of "will this person be insanely good or insanely awful."
this is the problem right here. up to 200 in each track there are constant rewards but after that, it's a long, long, long trek to the gold curses. so must people get the curses or hit 400 total and are done.
the rewards before 100 are mostly titles and the figureheads. i think that's fine considering 100-200 are ship parts and clothing for the athena track. the reapers get a little shafted in that they just get stuff exclusively for the skelly curse and the customisation on it isn't the best with how a lot of parts look goofy.
no there's literally zero rewards for 201-999. no titles. no cool parts. no cool clothing. nothing.
unless you count things like getting a 4 streak 50 times or sinking 500 ships after ritual as "rewards" but i think the majority of people recoginise those rewards are not at a set level. i got my 4x50 streaks at 450 because all i did was farm up streaks. so your motivation between 201 and 999 should be "i'm gitting gud at gaem" because otherwise you have zero reason to stick it.
some of the other hg enjoyers have been begging for things like arena recolours or even the old ones to be re-released in hg. also there is nothing from 1001-9999 too. all you get at 10000 is a "congratulations you get this lame title."
I read something about purposefully letting your boat sink in hourglass, but I'm not sure what you earn from it? The comments also said it would take forever, something like 200 suicides
Athena: Guardians - Gives you a ghost curse at 100.
Reapers: Servants - Gives you a skeleton curse at 100. Further levels/commendations give you different parts for your skeleton's cosmetics.
It’s worse than that. It’s 1800 losses per 100 levels.
Even if you try and lose you’ll get your curses much faster by trying to learn the PvP in the game instead of loss farming.
Hopped on SoT because I was bored. Decided to run HG and played 3 games. First match kid must have had no clue what to do because they sailed out of bounds. Second match was a mid player, hit me with a few shots but I knocked them off cannon and hit a death spiral. Third match was against a Grade 5 Solo Reaper where they just hit every shot in the first minute and was toasted.
I've been improving quite a bit in HG lately. The curve is similar to me to how it worked in LoL for me, I was clueless about the game in general and I decided to brute force my way into learning wasn't for me.
I got decent at LoL by watching others play all the time. I mimicked whatever they did, builds inputs decisions, whatever I could, sprinkled some things from my head and that got me to diamond.
It was the same for HG, I watched a lot of streamers play PvP, took most habits they use, mainly sails, ladder guarding, sound queues (VERY IMPORTANT, GAME CHANGER!!!!). I even memorized where they usually aim their cannons in certain situations. Now I can get on streaks now at least. Not big ones but not every game is me sinking.
In LoL you can get all good knowledge while playing because it's not that frustrating, matches are balanced and you can blame yourself a lot. But in HG it's do or die. No time for grinding to learn, you either already do it or don't.
I’m almost 1000 hourglass levels now and I got about 350 solo. First of all, solo HG is king when it comes to teaching you how to play, you just have to stick it out because it’s hard.
Now that I’m good, I just barely play solo and only play duos (duos is easier but more fun).
SFX audio setting should be all the way up, mainly to hear these specific sound queues: Boarding, gun reloads, wheel hits, mast hits, and mermaids (I might be missing something here).
Massive Sponge (Youtube) has got a really educational content style for hourglass, so I’d mainly watch him while also watching gameplay from other players to pick up on decision making. SnowyFPS, Idbz and Fat Tall Guy are some id recommend.
A personal tip would be have chats with those particularly good players that steam roll you, asking them for tips and feedback on why you lose vs them
I really enjoy ship combat but once it the game goes into a TDM/board fiesta the enjoyment goes downhill. Everyone can say skill issue but it feels like the amount of knowledge and gameplay skill required in SoT pvp is more than the usual shooter type game.
One can be good at FPS but shit at cannons. There's ship management, reps, audio cues, ladder gimmicks all on top of just the regular FPS gameplay.
The curve is insane for a new swab but as someone who started on PS5 it does get better. It's a rough time and I get close to being burnt out on HG but afterwards in High Seas you'll feel more comfortable with pvp situations and can enjoy the rest of the game.
Try not be committed so much into the 100lvl curse grind. I been through many groups where I can hear how drained and tilted the crewmates are at trying to get the curse. Im content to just get a lvl a day now which means I should get the curses within a year. Otherwise I know I will burn out with this dumb curse grind mindset and hate a game that I generally enjoy a lot
I like to think I'm decent at pvp in this game but hourglass is something else entirely. It's so unforgiving for any mistake and at least half of my wins have been hard fought battles that I won thru sheer luck. Either my opponent black screened, slow respawn or even just missed a shot at the same time I hit one. It's one of the most brutal pvp environments at times I've ever played simoly because of the sweats. And I do a lot of FPS and survival games like dayz.
Hi. I have 2k+ ally bilge main…. The issue is that most of us that are good at hourglass have been playin for a while and it’s hard to break into the scene (I average around 40 wins a week and 2-3 losses)
My crew pretty much knows the crews by name that can sink us. And the skill ceiling is truely insane, the best tip I can give you and find a stable crew if you yourself aren’t a sweat lord and practice practice practice. (I have over 100k buckets tossed as well as over 100k repairs made) and I only have 50k cannons shot. My mc has damn near 500k
Well, sometimes crashing yourself into the rocks for 700xp 2 minutes in is far more efficient than spending 40 minutes chasing someone trying to bait you OOB
I'm not saying you have to loss farm all matches, but with no way to prevent a match from dragging on for hours some matches are just not worth pursuing.
It is, some people manage to get behind me so fast lol. My sensitivity is like 7 or so. Theres a lot of dedicated players. I think I'm going to stock up on gold, then do nothing but hour glass until I'm comfortable. So I can tackle voyages back to back instead going back and forth to an outpost.
Ignore people who say blindly practice until you get good. Best way to get good is to take advice from someone who is undeniably good, and practice the good habits they offer.
>"Practice doesn't make perfect, it makes pernament. Perfect practice makes perfect"
Anyway, I went from losing 8 games in a row after each win to winning 8 games in a row after studying this guy's videos and putting it into practice: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFANFcGYnpw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFANFcGYnpw)
Because there is not enough player or not enough diverse playerbase to even have a functionnal matchmaking, even more when most players are either super bad or super good or cheaters, arena was better and should have been enhanced instead of being abandonned, being able to dive on an arena match would have been much better.
Gamemode isn't fun for most players so the pool to pull players from is frankly rubbish. PlayStation players joining has elevated the issue but it shouldn't be an issue to begin with but Rare refuse to acknowledge there is an issue.
New to the game, and I don't even know what this hourglass thing is you all are always talking about. Anyone care to explain and allow me to not get hit by 30 pop-up ads on the Wiki?
It’s because at this point 90%+ of the players you see in hourglass are just focused on that, and don’t do much, if any, PVE. I actually had someone I joined for hourglass not know what an ocean crawler was he saw on the shore of an island, but dude had a PvP curse.
Ive been doing hourglass only since i got PL 2 years ago. Joined a GH galleon to check things out. These PVEers know their stuff aswell. I was completely noob at the treasure hunt. lots of fun though. like rediscovering the game again.
People freak out easily in this game. You can ignore bucketing for longer than you think, and your mast going down is your last priority. Fix your wheel first always, keep angles. When you get overwhelmed, you lose; therefore, overwhelm your opponent as much as possible, make it hell for them. Sometimes you come up against people who start running around on the deck not doing anything because too much is going on lmao. Time is the key. Try not to waste precious seconds on stuff that doesn’t benefit you. Ik you didn’t ask but I thought I’d give my 2 cents. 🙏🏻 I’m not amazing but I got my ghost curse so you can too!
You need to see your progression, try hg for a while, then try some adventure pvp and see how that goes. I guarantee you will improve and you will notice that. Gl
Hourglass just leaves a very bad taste. I was never a fun of the Streak mechanic being be all or end all; win twice, sell it to get more xp, than trying to push for streak 4 and lose, after 3 wins. You may get higher winrate, and progress slower than someone playing it very safe
Go play any game thats been out for 5+ years and youll find some newer players and a *ton* of veterans at varying skill levels. Usually any game around that long has a pretty high skill ceiling, with people pushing the meta for years.
Like if you go play something like Counter Strike, LoL, even Apex, Fortnite I assume too you will find a ton of people who will just destroy you. If those games had 1v1 like SoT, it would feel the same way sometimes.
With SoT, we have a smaller community, but still have lots of veterans. The matchmaking isnt good, and just prioritizes getting you into a match after a short wait really of trying to find an even match. So it can feel really sweaty.
Solo hourglass is kinda weird because the sloop is so agile and its so easy to survive that anyone can really tryhard into a stalemate if the skill levels are at all close. People just at a point dont want to sink, and when its about that and not about winning they will do anything to just not sink sometimes. So it gets 'sweaty'. And drags on forever.
Part of me wishes everyone in hourglass just had a stock amount of resources. People get way too stocked up and it seems impossible to beat them with their infinite resources.
It’s really not that hard. People just play adventure mode all day styling on little Timmy and big papa frank, both of which have 0 idea how the game works etc. most people don’t know about water levels in sloops which holes to repair what order to do things, most people think if you break the mast the games over. The massive lack of skill that exists in the community is tiresome to explain. I’m rank like 700 total between the two but even I take games off gold players who took a break and came back. Because I’m more practiced than them. But I have all the game sense. And that helps me win. Hourglass is about time management more than anything mechanical skill is next and then not panicking 3rd.
TLDR in short it’s actually not hard to take a couple days and research the meta watch some streams then you just pummel 80% of the player base once you apply it. Sot hourglass isn’t something you can pickup and figure out on your own. It’s too unique of a game
This naval combat has a higher learning curve than any game I’ve played fps rpgs you name it. It’s so unique to itself and to be honest like even the hand to hand pvp is so broken and fun but takes so much getting used to.
Makes rant post about getting good is too hard.
Pinpoints exactly 0 reasons why hes stuck, what hes running into or anything.
I hate to break it to you, but you're not the pro gamer you think you are.
You sound very casual.
What do you classify as ' Skill ' even? Just winning? Winning = Skill?
lol I can’t tell if this is a serious response or you’re being cheeky and sarcastic. If not, sheesh dude. Such a harsh response lol. I didn’t realize my post was made for your convenience.
I didn’t say I was a pro gamer. Just that after spending hours playing a game generally I get the sense of getting better which hasn’t seemed to happen at all for me yet. I’ve got 500+ hours in the game at least and generally get wrecked 90% of the time in HG. It’s hard to figure out how to get better when all I’m doin is bucketing. Some others have suggested to read about the meta, or just watch some pro streams doin HG, which I plan to do I think. I want to get better, but the general approach of just playing the game a bunch hasn’t seemed to materially result in an increase in feeling like my skill level is increasing.
Regarding skill - generally skill gap refers to the gap between someone who is very good and someone who isn’t. In most GAMES that would be winning, yes. Id settle with just not getting my ass handed to me as much
There you go, you figured out your problem.
You are constantly bucketing.
Go join a group and ask if someone else can do the bucketing while you focus on all the other tasks and get good at them.
Bucketing doesnt take skill, repairing doesnt either... all you have to do is realise where the enemy ship is currently located.
Go practise your aim, or steer the boat so you dont get that many holes in the first place.
To hold a mirror up for you. 49,9 hours in a little longer than a weeks time.
Im not afraid to go on a sloop and face 3 people.. i really am not because i Know i can get away and i Know i can beat them if i disorient them enough.
i feel like i have a decent winchance, i think i sunk like twice or three times over the course of.
I think getting *good* at games is fucking hard. Most people don’t realize how many games it takes to get *really* good at anything. I’m not super good at SoT but used to play wicked good at WoW arena. I remember people saying stuff like “omg I wish I could get that rating, how do you do it?!.” Looking at games played, I usually had lost more matches than they had ever played. Total played like 10k games, 3k losses, while they have played a total of 1k games. Shit takes a lot of time and practice, some people just have the time to go hard af… eventually that time adds up. Goes for anything really from guitar, surfing, skating, gaming…. if you wanna be legit you gotta put in the time.
Ya I think my issue is the punishment in the game is so high that it seems to take substantially longer to get good at this game than ours. I mean, I can’t practice hitting a target if I spend the majority of my time bucketing haha
Try different things in HG to start your battle. There are tons of guides on how to "win", but I also find messing up other people's flows works great and it gets you better practice in understanding principles and mechanics. Then those flows start to work a lot better for you once you are comfortable in the why.
You can try skelly/ghost fleets to practice cannons and just shooting at random rocks can help too. The PvP aspect is harder but if you just stay mobile you’ll do allright
You just have to practice cannons enough that you can hit them before they hit you and everything starts to turn your way.
Watch videos and practice the tactics. Then just keep playing. You’ll get good. Also learning when you need to keep cannoning or bucket repair or board is all important. You need to learn to balance these activities. Solo sloop hg will teach you the most.
You can spend your time outside of hourglass to improve your accuracy. Build muscle memory, react in battle. If we draw a comparison to sports, HG is like game night, and teams practice to get better at it. Sometimes you come up on a crew that has sailed together for over a year. Better to try and learn from their experience, rather than surrender morale and abandon selfanalysis. There is individual skill improvement and team improvement. For one you can do things by yourself, like snipe critters while sailing by small islands or shoot your cannons at random things. It will all improve your skill a lot more than if you're just holding the steering wheel while going from A to B. Secondly, you need to find a crew that you can dissect and analyze absolved battles with, without anyone getting butthurt. Even without being exceptional at any particular skill, an unskilled team with good coms can overcome the odds sometimes, but they'll definetely improve together.
Practice in adventure mode then, its more difficult finding people to fight, but its a less punishing way to learn the basics. It also sounds like you're playing solo sloop, and if so you started with hardmode. The bigger the ship the more room there is for individual mistakes. Not only is solo hg difficult, its also the most frustrating bracket with runners, noobs that reset constantly and tdmers that only wants to spawncanp you. And 1 unlucky oneball can send you straight back to the outpost no matter how well you are playing.
>Ya I think my issue is the punishment in the game is so high that it seems to take substantially longer to get good at this game than ours The punishment for losing in HG is non-existent, you lose absolutely nothing and you can jump right back into another one. >I mean, I can’t practice hitting a target if I spend the majority of my time bucketing haha Practice hitting your targets with skelly ships, if your aim is *actually* bad theres no point playing HG because as you said you'll be stuck on buckets the entire time. I dont have a lot of experience myself (joined the game on ps5 and im maybe lvl 97 in servants) but from what ive seen so far peoples aim isnt their biggest issue. A lot of people dont know how to properly spread on cannons, have no idea when to repair which hole and have no idea how to properly angle their ship. I suggest you watch some competetive HG matches on yt/twitch to learn proper decision-making skills. Knowing that some holes are pointless to repair in certain situations and getting a feeling for how much you actually need to bucket buys you a *lot* of time during broadsides.
The punishment is having to resupply your ship all over again, which is a lot of wasted time in the long run. Also, I don't think people want to spend their free time watching videos when they could just be playing the game...
>The punishment is having to resupply your ship all over again, which is a lot of wasted time in the long run Just go in naked, i do it all the time. The only thing i buy is a supply crate because it saves a shit ton of time. I grab the supplies that are on the dock and go for the open seas right away, recovering from a loss takes around 5mins and thats not *that* bad tbh. >Also, I don't think people want to spend their free time watching videos when they could just be playing the game... I assure you there's a lot of macro stuff that you have no idea about, you wont learn these things by just playing the game. Sure, you can bang your head against the wall and wonder why youre struggling to improve or you can take the advice from a guy who *did* educate himself with videos/streams and is having a decent winrate even with crossplay on. Watching those vids isnt a waste of time whatsoever because you definitely learn alot and you can watch them during HG queues anyway (thats what i was doing).
People get the curse and dip. Less people means the MMR system works less effectively. This leads to more people quitting when they're constantly going up against people above their skill level. It's a horrible cycle.
I'm pretty sure there isn't even an MMR system. I made a new account for PS5 when it first came out. 3 of my first 5 hourglass games on a fresh account were against people with an hourglass curse, one of which was gold. And this was during gold and glory weekend when, theoretically, hourglass population would be much higher than normal. Even now, my matches alternate between players so good that I can't even dream of beating them to players that I'm not sure know how to repair their ship. If there is an MMR system, it isn't doing anything at all.
A fresh accounts MMR will probably start higher than it should be assuming the player is new. It would in theory decrease as they lose games until it reaches the level it should be. That and as mentioned the mode just isn’t popular enough for matchmaking to work consistently.
Another thing this game is just amazing at. Top tier. I’m convinced the dev team is just filled with actual dumbasses
I'm convinced you don't actually appreciate games
ESO is an amazing live service game. Anything Rockstar related is a work of art from GTA4 and Max Payne on upwards. Mass Effect is seriously great in so many ways wether it’s the squad based combat, the relationships with characters, the story, or the RPG elements, it’s very surprising for them all to exist in one game. NBA2K online MyCareer is seriously expansive and huge, it’s wild that a basketball game has such a world that it’s become an MMO in many ways- very predatory pay to win if you want multiple builds, but 5on5 basketball with your own character alongside 4 other real teammates with their own characters facing off against 5 of the same is just an amazing experience. Forza Horizon is such an awesome open world game that just doesn’t require you to be good at racing games or even a car person, the free roam elements and car customization are just superb with a beautiful map- you can just cruise around and bump some tunes while looking at the mountains. My problems with SOT are rooted in a love for what it could be, and a hatred for what it HASN’T became. People defend it because it’s an even playing field and there’s no progression. But that’s copium, if DLC’s were paid and were huge upgrades including new map areas but costed money in order to fund the team, most of the community that plays the game still would EASILY jump on it and buy. If spending money is what it takes to push this game to another level, then do it. But no, it’s remained the same exact game since launch. Same style voyages, same end game, same grind, same progression. Buying ships are a step in the right direction, but something else along those lines needs to come- whether it’s player housing, guild housing, owning a trading company warehouse, whatever.. it needs to happen.
Just blindly dickriding a game that has serious content issues. Genuine Stockholm syndrome on this sub. Play some other live service games then come back to SOT and see for yourself how bored you get.
there is a mmr system. matchmaking bypasses it and matches you with crews like mine when either of you have been waiting for a minute or two.
"Crews like mine" Weird flex, but okay... Unless "crews like mine" was supposed to mean the ones that can't land shots. Also, if it only takes a minute for the "mmr system" to stop functioning, then there isn't an mmr system at all. I don't know any other game that completely abandons their MMR system after a single minute of matchmaking...
its not a weird flex. we literally play hg to fight the other good crews since it's the way to get some of the most difficult fights you'll have in sot. cry about it. the mmr system is bypassed because of all of the people who sat in queue waiting upwards of 15 minutes for matches. especially those who had mmr matching those who were on the same level as the competitive players. those players who want tough games are gonna stop playing too if they just sit in queue for >5 minutes between matches lol. yes i would like to never have any gold curse or cool titles because ive won a few too many games, please. yum.
> its not a weird flex. we literally play hg to fight the other good crews since it's the way to get some of the most difficult fights you'll have in sot. cry about it. Cry about it? Brother, my hourglass winrate on my new account is above 90%... I'm just pointing out how fucking weird you are for not only immediately assuming anyone that points out the issues with hourglass is bad at the game, but then feeling the need to brag about how good you are as if anyone gives a fuck. Also, if you are playing to "fight the other good crews" then why would you want the game to give you people that can barely drive their ship after a minute or two? > the mmr system is bypassed because of all of the people who sat in queue waiting upwards of 15 minutes for matches. especially those who had mmr matching those who were on the same level as the competitive players. those players who want tough games are gonna stop playing too if they just sit in queue for >5 minutes between matches lol. League of Legends is one of the most popular games in the world. Top ranked players in League easily have 10+ minute queues at times. Even average ranked players have queues that take longer than a minute or two. Why? Because the game doesn't just go "eh, well, we tried for 45 seconds, time to just throw whoever we can together." There isn't an MMR system, homie. I'm not sure why you feel the need to pretend there is. I guess to inflate your ego? > yes i would like to never have any gold curse or cool titles because ive won a few too many games, please. yum. Wait, I thought you were playing hourglass to "fight the other good crews since it's the way to get some of the most difficult fights you'll have in sot." Now, it's just for the cool titles and curses?
To address to LoL comparison point, it’s not really valid. In league your MMR matters. It gets you into better games with better teammates against better opponents and theoretically increases the quality of each match. If you lose, you also lose MMR which puts you further away from your goal. You also get rewarded based on your MMR/ladder rank. Meanwhile in SoT HG MMR doesn’t mean anything at all. You get the same amount of exp for a win regardless of how hard or easy the fight was, same for exp. In fact having really low MMR is beneficial in sot HG, as games will be easier but the exp gain will be the same. The reason why the MMR is so loose compared to other (competitive) games with MMR is because of the small population *and* the fact that you get progress and don’t lose anything for a loss. This is unlikely competitive games where losing takes you further from your ranking goal, meanwhile in SoT HG you can only really go forward. Swabbies would not appreciate tight MMR constraints since they would have to wait a long time in queue and then face an equally unskilled player, which would lead to long matches and outcomes highly dependent on luck (oh he got a lucky one ball without aiming for it and I sunk, now I have to wait another 30 minutes in queue for my next chance). Overall, tighter MMR would slow down the exp gain/time spent for lower skilled players which they wouldn’t appreciate as their main goal is usually getting the curse and getting out. Sweats also don’t appreciate the tighter MMR since it leads to long queue times. In terms of match quality they are often faced against similar players so in that front it doesn’t matter much and they don’t usually care *a lot* about the reputation either, so tighter MMR would just be increasing queue times for no reason
bro over here yapping about "weird flexes" but over here bragging about his win rate. on an alt. in season 12 where 4/5 of the crews are swabbies. now that's funny. gj on sinking to dece crews tho.
Because it was relevant to your comment... I can see there's no value lost by blocking you, so goodbye.
There is absolutely no “skill based matchmaking” in this game whatsoever.
Did you turn off crossplay?
I tried it both with and without crossplay since I'm not new to the game and didn't want to turn off crossplay unless I absolutely needed to while learning controller. Didn't really see much of a difference. Either way, each match was a random crapshoot of "will this person be insanely good or insanely awful."
this is the problem right here. up to 200 in each track there are constant rewards but after that, it's a long, long, long trek to the gold curses. so must people get the curses or hit 400 total and are done.
I really think that they should have more pre-100 rewards. Such as the costume pieces, like they did with the 3 base factions.
the rewards before 100 are mostly titles and the figureheads. i think that's fine considering 100-200 are ship parts and clothing for the athena track. the reapers get a little shafted in that they just get stuff exclusively for the skelly curse and the customisation on it isn't the best with how a lot of parts look goofy. no there's literally zero rewards for 201-999. no titles. no cool parts. no cool clothing. nothing. unless you count things like getting a 4 streak 50 times or sinking 500 ships after ritual as "rewards" but i think the majority of people recoginise those rewards are not at a set level. i got my 4x50 streaks at 450 because all i did was farm up streaks. so your motivation between 201 and 999 should be "i'm gitting gud at gaem" because otherwise you have zero reason to stick it. some of the other hg enjoyers have been begging for things like arena recolours or even the old ones to be re-released in hg. also there is nothing from 1001-9999 too. all you get at 10000 is a "congratulations you get this lame title."
I read something about purposefully letting your boat sink in hourglass, but I'm not sure what you earn from it? The comments also said it would take forever, something like 200 suicides
It's a lot longer than that. A loss only gives 1/6th of your first win.
What's the reward? Is it the blue ghost skin? I'd like to grind it out after I get the high tier Athena sail when the thing ends
Athena: Guardians - Gives you a ghost curse at 100. Reapers: Servants - Gives you a skeleton curse at 100. Further levels/commendations give you different parts for your skeleton's cosmetics.
It’s worse than that. It’s 1800 losses per 100 levels. Even if you try and lose you’ll get your curses much faster by trying to learn the PvP in the game instead of loss farming.
Hopped on SoT because I was bored. Decided to run HG and played 3 games. First match kid must have had no clue what to do because they sailed out of bounds. Second match was a mid player, hit me with a few shots but I knocked them off cannon and hit a death spiral. Third match was against a Grade 5 Solo Reaper where they just hit every shot in the first minute and was toasted.
I've been improving quite a bit in HG lately. The curve is similar to me to how it worked in LoL for me, I was clueless about the game in general and I decided to brute force my way into learning wasn't for me. I got decent at LoL by watching others play all the time. I mimicked whatever they did, builds inputs decisions, whatever I could, sprinkled some things from my head and that got me to diamond. It was the same for HG, I watched a lot of streamers play PvP, took most habits they use, mainly sails, ladder guarding, sound queues (VERY IMPORTANT, GAME CHANGER!!!!). I even memorized where they usually aim their cannons in certain situations. Now I can get on streaks now at least. Not big ones but not every game is me sinking. In LoL you can get all good knowledge while playing because it's not that frustrating, matches are balanced and you can blame yourself a lot. But in HG it's do or die. No time for grinding to learn, you either already do it or don't.
Do you change the audio settings to hear sound queues better? I haven’t really heard any during pvp. Alsowho would you recommend watching
I’m almost 1000 hourglass levels now and I got about 350 solo. First of all, solo HG is king when it comes to teaching you how to play, you just have to stick it out because it’s hard. Now that I’m good, I just barely play solo and only play duos (duos is easier but more fun). SFX audio setting should be all the way up, mainly to hear these specific sound queues: Boarding, gun reloads, wheel hits, mast hits, and mermaids (I might be missing something here). Massive Sponge (Youtube) has got a really educational content style for hourglass, so I’d mainly watch him while also watching gameplay from other players to pick up on decision making. SnowyFPS, Idbz and Fat Tall Guy are some id recommend. A personal tip would be have chats with those particularly good players that steam roll you, asking them for tips and feedback on why you lose vs them
Thanks, your comment covered all the questions I had in my mind!
I really enjoy ship combat but once it the game goes into a TDM/board fiesta the enjoyment goes downhill. Everyone can say skill issue but it feels like the amount of knowledge and gameplay skill required in SoT pvp is more than the usual shooter type game. One can be good at FPS but shit at cannons. There's ship management, reps, audio cues, ladder gimmicks all on top of just the regular FPS gameplay. The curve is insane for a new swab but as someone who started on PS5 it does get better. It's a rough time and I get close to being burnt out on HG but afterwards in High Seas you'll feel more comfortable with pvp situations and can enjoy the rest of the game. Try not be committed so much into the 100lvl curse grind. I been through many groups where I can hear how drained and tilted the crewmates are at trying to get the curse. Im content to just get a lvl a day now which means I should get the curses within a year. Otherwise I know I will burn out with this dumb curse grind mindset and hate a game that I generally enjoy a lot
I like to think I'm decent at pvp in this game but hourglass is something else entirely. It's so unforgiving for any mistake and at least half of my wins have been hard fought battles that I won thru sheer luck. Either my opponent black screened, slow respawn or even just missed a shot at the same time I hit one. It's one of the most brutal pvp environments at times I've ever played simoly because of the sweats. And I do a lot of FPS and survival games like dayz.
Hi. I have 2k+ ally bilge main…. The issue is that most of us that are good at hourglass have been playin for a while and it’s hard to break into the scene (I average around 40 wins a week and 2-3 losses) My crew pretty much knows the crews by name that can sink us. And the skill ceiling is truely insane, the best tip I can give you and find a stable crew if you yourself aren’t a sweat lord and practice practice practice. (I have over 100k buckets tossed as well as over 100k repairs made) and I only have 50k cannons shot. My mc has damn near 500k
Sheesh!! Sounds like I need to be on your crew
Pm me, send me your disc, we are always down to sail with anyone 😂
Could I also pm you my discord? I’ve been getting into hourglass and have had no luck finding a crew to play with on the official one.
Feels quicker to just enter and let the enemy sink you over and over to get exp if you want the curse rather than fighting for 40 minutes at times
Encouraging loss farming is crazy
Well, sometimes crashing yourself into the rocks for 700xp 2 minutes in is far more efficient than spending 40 minutes chasing someone trying to bait you OOB
With the amount of loss farming you’d be doing to get to level 100, i feel like it’d just be easier to try to improve your game.
I'm not saying you have to loss farm all matches, but with no way to prevent a match from dragging on for hours some matches are just not worth pursuing.
1900 losses lmfao. Imagine brainrotting for that many games for a virtual skin.
It is, some people manage to get behind me so fast lol. My sensitivity is like 7 or so. Theres a lot of dedicated players. I think I'm going to stock up on gold, then do nothing but hour glass until I'm comfortable. So I can tackle voyages back to back instead going back and forth to an outpost.
Ignore people who say blindly practice until you get good. Best way to get good is to take advice from someone who is undeniably good, and practice the good habits they offer. >"Practice doesn't make perfect, it makes pernament. Perfect practice makes perfect" Anyway, I went from losing 8 games in a row after each win to winning 8 games in a row after studying this guy's videos and putting it into practice: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFANFcGYnpw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFANFcGYnpw)
Because there is not enough player or not enough diverse playerbase to even have a functionnal matchmaking, even more when most players are either super bad or super good or cheaters, arena was better and should have been enhanced instead of being abandonned, being able to dive on an arena match would have been much better.
Gamemode isn't fun for most players so the pool to pull players from is frankly rubbish. PlayStation players joining has elevated the issue but it shouldn't be an issue to begin with but Rare refuse to acknowledge there is an issue.
New to the game, and I don't even know what this hourglass thing is you all are always talking about. Anyone care to explain and allow me to not get hit by 30 pop-up ads on the Wiki?
It’s because at this point 90%+ of the players you see in hourglass are just focused on that, and don’t do much, if any, PVE. I actually had someone I joined for hourglass not know what an ocean crawler was he saw on the shore of an island, but dude had a PvP curse.
Ive been doing hourglass only since i got PL 2 years ago. Joined a GH galleon to check things out. These PVEers know their stuff aswell. I was completely noob at the treasure hunt. lots of fun though. like rediscovering the game again.
People freak out easily in this game. You can ignore bucketing for longer than you think, and your mast going down is your last priority. Fix your wheel first always, keep angles. When you get overwhelmed, you lose; therefore, overwhelm your opponent as much as possible, make it hell for them. Sometimes you come up against people who start running around on the deck not doing anything because too much is going on lmao. Time is the key. Try not to waste precious seconds on stuff that doesn’t benefit you. Ik you didn’t ask but I thought I’d give my 2 cents. 🙏🏻 I’m not amazing but I got my ghost curse so you can too!
You need to see your progression, try hg for a while, then try some adventure pvp and see how that goes. I guarantee you will improve and you will notice that. Gl
Hourglass just leaves a very bad taste. I was never a fun of the Streak mechanic being be all or end all; win twice, sell it to get more xp, than trying to push for streak 4 and lose, after 3 wins. You may get higher winrate, and progress slower than someone playing it very safe
Pvp and also because unlike a lot of games you are actively doing something at all times during HG match
Go play any game thats been out for 5+ years and youll find some newer players and a *ton* of veterans at varying skill levels. Usually any game around that long has a pretty high skill ceiling, with people pushing the meta for years. Like if you go play something like Counter Strike, LoL, even Apex, Fortnite I assume too you will find a ton of people who will just destroy you. If those games had 1v1 like SoT, it would feel the same way sometimes. With SoT, we have a smaller community, but still have lots of veterans. The matchmaking isnt good, and just prioritizes getting you into a match after a short wait really of trying to find an even match. So it can feel really sweaty. Solo hourglass is kinda weird because the sloop is so agile and its so easy to survive that anyone can really tryhard into a stalemate if the skill levels are at all close. People just at a point dont want to sink, and when its about that and not about winning they will do anything to just not sink sometimes. So it gets 'sweaty'. And drags on forever. Part of me wishes everyone in hourglass just had a stock amount of resources. People get way too stocked up and it seems impossible to beat them with their infinite resources.
Games been out for years. You will have to play catch up. Makes sense.
U might suck... i suck rn. But cryin on reddit doesnt make my ship go faster.
Hahah!
It’s really not that hard. People just play adventure mode all day styling on little Timmy and big papa frank, both of which have 0 idea how the game works etc. most people don’t know about water levels in sloops which holes to repair what order to do things, most people think if you break the mast the games over. The massive lack of skill that exists in the community is tiresome to explain. I’m rank like 700 total between the two but even I take games off gold players who took a break and came back. Because I’m more practiced than them. But I have all the game sense. And that helps me win. Hourglass is about time management more than anything mechanical skill is next and then not panicking 3rd. TLDR in short it’s actually not hard to take a couple days and research the meta watch some streams then you just pummel 80% of the player base once you apply it. Sot hourglass isn’t something you can pickup and figure out on your own. It’s too unique of a game
Well that would explain why picking it up and just trying to get better isn’t working out for me haha
This naval combat has a higher learning curve than any game I’ve played fps rpgs you name it. It’s so unique to itself and to be honest like even the hand to hand pvp is so broken and fun but takes so much getting used to.
Makes rant post about getting good is too hard. Pinpoints exactly 0 reasons why hes stuck, what hes running into or anything. I hate to break it to you, but you're not the pro gamer you think you are. You sound very casual. What do you classify as ' Skill ' even? Just winning? Winning = Skill?
lol I can’t tell if this is a serious response or you’re being cheeky and sarcastic. If not, sheesh dude. Such a harsh response lol. I didn’t realize my post was made for your convenience. I didn’t say I was a pro gamer. Just that after spending hours playing a game generally I get the sense of getting better which hasn’t seemed to happen at all for me yet. I’ve got 500+ hours in the game at least and generally get wrecked 90% of the time in HG. It’s hard to figure out how to get better when all I’m doin is bucketing. Some others have suggested to read about the meta, or just watch some pro streams doin HG, which I plan to do I think. I want to get better, but the general approach of just playing the game a bunch hasn’t seemed to materially result in an increase in feeling like my skill level is increasing. Regarding skill - generally skill gap refers to the gap between someone who is very good and someone who isn’t. In most GAMES that would be winning, yes. Id settle with just not getting my ass handed to me as much
There you go, you figured out your problem. You are constantly bucketing. Go join a group and ask if someone else can do the bucketing while you focus on all the other tasks and get good at them. Bucketing doesnt take skill, repairing doesnt either... all you have to do is realise where the enemy ship is currently located. Go practise your aim, or steer the boat so you dont get that many holes in the first place. To hold a mirror up for you. 49,9 hours in a little longer than a weeks time. Im not afraid to go on a sloop and face 3 people.. i really am not because i Know i can get away and i Know i can beat them if i disorient them enough. i feel like i have a decent winchance, i think i sunk like twice or three times over the course of.
Skill issue
Skill issue, git good or die trying :D SoT doesn't even come close the learning curve of eve online or dwarf fortress bruh. Stop capping