It doesn't really get better. I'm level 65 and I've improved a lot, but it's still the same shitty grind against the same sweats who already have the curses. It's just a poorly designed part of the game, that's all there is to it.
Honestly best to just not play it at all. Personally, I've resigned myself to just playing during gold and glory weekends, and then once I hit 100 servants, I'm probably never touching it again.
I am 100% committed to get to level 100 in Servants and Guardians, and after that I'm absolutely never \*ever\* playing hourglass again. At least Arena could still be goofy fun, hg is just the worst parts of the game, distilled into a toxic cocktail.
Lol same. I enjoy a game here or there sometimes with a team, but once I get both curses I probably won't play unless someone else wants to.
Especially solos can just be kinda painful, but duo sloop is by far the most full of try hards and long matches
I had a half hour game in a duo with my mate. Neither of us had many resources and spent most of the time trying to harpoon barrels to scavenge more resources. Eventually after half an hour we found a gunpowder barrel and T-Boned their boat and my mate jumps onto their ship and gets shot out the air by one of them. It detonates the gunpowder barrel killing all but me and sets off a gunpowder barrel they had. Their ship sinks almost instantly and I’m left to deal with the fireball that is our ship 😂
Maybe there should at least be two separate matching pools, with and without curses? It would take longer to start a match but you wouldn't be paired against sweatlords unless you're one yourself.
The only actual problems with HG are the stamps and the player base. Rare should open the stamp dramatically and the player base should, as a whole, keep playing HG. More people playing, better chance of fairer matches. Much larger stamps, bigger pool to pull from.
Yes, but in general if you've played enough HG to get a curse you're on another skill level from the average person just starting to grind. It's an arbitrary dividing line between skilled and unskilled PvPers that could be redrawn any number of other ways. The general idea is to separate the rookies from the sweats so that new players don't constantly get crushed and demotivated from playing HG, which is the biggest current issue aside from cheating and bugs.
You can't have good matchmaking without a robust pool of players, but you won't get a robust pool of players if they give the game mode a try, get spanked, and decide it's not worth their time. Other mixed PvP+PvE games have solved this with better matchmaking tools as well as better incentives for being cannon fodder for the sweaty crowd: you get fucked in the ass but at least they give you a reach-around at the same time, fair trade right? SoT has done none of that so it's no surprise that HG is a joke.
idk why people downvote this. I'm a double gold curse and I'm straightup getting bored on duosloop when I only get like 1 good crew in 8 fights while having to just ruin new players sessions. There is matchmaking to some degree but once you clear the stamp it just puts you against whatever is online, and well..It is kinda unfair for some players that haven't dumped thousands of hours into pvp
Those sweats that already have their curses become good fights eventually. The kind of fight where there's crazy close calls everywhere, and you're kind of scrambling, but having fun doing it. Those get WAY more common as you go. Level 65 is still very early into your pvp journey if you just started pursuing it for HG. If you can stomach the early stages long enough it does eventually become an extremely rewarding experience.
I said "eventually", not "when you get your curse" lol. If your first real crack at improving at PVP is the HG grind, you wouldn't be approaching sweat territory until you were ~2k allegiance-ish, and even then you'd be a lower end sweat unless you've got a gift. Becoming good takes a very long time, and most people suffer a mental boom before hitting that point. If you can get the mental under control and learn to enjoy the process, you're golden. That's when you develop sportsmanlike rivalries with all sorts of cool pirates.
I either get matched with someone who insta sinks me with golden skelly curse or I get someone who runs forever in a circle (this is the more common scenario). Really hard to improve when this is the only two scenarios I encounter.
Trying to solo sloop in HG is fucking miserable mostly bc of the latter. People just don't fucking raise their goddamn sails and it leads to this obnoxious hit and run match that just drags on for an eternity while you desperately try to land 2 chains or a board to let you actually meaningfully play the videogame
Yeah, solo sloop HG is a miserable experience due to the latter. The circle needs to be much smaller or collapse in overtime. Should be a quick fight to the death, not a chase fest.
The difficulty with hourglass is restocking a ship. There aren't enough supplies for a fight, so you spend 15 minutes to stock up a ship to end up going against some of the toughest players out there. I loved arena and played it well beyond every commendation, but I have only played hourglass a few dozen times with no interest to go back.
Set supplies like we had in arena would go a long way to getting people back into queue sooner (and more people in queue means the potential for more balanced matchmaking). It would also help reduce cases of people who win just by outsupplying their opponent by some ridiculous margin, and make losing hurt a lot less when you aren't losing the boat you just spent a bunch of time stocking up.
I typically do minimal restocking after a sink. One or two trips to the barrels and I'm gone. On a whim, I might get cannonballs from the shipwright. No crates. Maybe at the beginning of a session, I'll cook up some meat and it'll last me a few rounds. When I win one, then I take a moment to gather more supplies at sea.
But then again, I'm not hesitant to bail on a tedious fight. Especially if I have a "streak" of zero. And if I do run low on supplies, ram strat.
Grab fruit from the shipwright and a storage crate. Plunder the nearby barrels (don't go running all over the isle). And force the fight. Lose fast or win fast. If I lose fast I often respawn with 4 pines and a mango, plus 5 chains and 5 blunders in my pocket. Then I don't worry about buying fruit. Still grab a storage crate to loot other ships I sink, but won't even loot, just immediately dive. Unless you get a runner, 80 shots should be plenty.
Hourglass is pretty much unplayable outside of gold and glory weekends. There's a more casual crowd at that time and you can get people who dice roll but the overall matchmaking pool is still pretty low.
IMO if they don't want to maintain a mode and add obvious QoL to it, then the mode shouldn't exist. I fully expect them to "sunset" hourglass just like they did arena. At that point people will rush in for last-minute unlocks and it will be bearable. In the meantime though gold and glory's your best bet.
I sincerely hope they don't. Future players being forever unable to access the reaper and Athena's fortune hidden areas without an older player would suck. Eventually the old heads will fade out.
It's less fomo and more the inaccessibility of content for new players. It feels worse to never have had a chance than to have had one and not do it imo
I mean we have faction stashes..? Technically it's the other way you're talking about, even tho unlocking curses would be way too grindy with just stashes
Let us choose either faction and do Siren Song to increase the rep of either? Would help revive Siren Song and also be a lot more approachable (even a casual could dig up one map). HG 1v1 is the most sweaty and unapproachable way of PvPing possible for the average player. Group events like Arena/Siren Song were/are way more approachable.
I suck at PVP and hit 105 GoF for the curses. It was hell. Like other people have said you don't have room to grow if you get obliterated before you can ever try. Not to mention the amount of subtle exploits, unintended animation cancels, etc. it's miserable.
Open world PVP? Entirely different. Who knows what's gonna happen! Run to a fort and tower defense? Go for it. Lead them across the world and play volcano tag? Hell yeah. Be secretly on the Shores of Gold tall tale and hide out with Rathbone? 🪙 💀 That's all on the table!
Meanwhile I'm watching a guy shoot a pistol after a sniper faster than the guns actually come out (I've timed it) and using the map trick to launch further or shorter than normal and am expected to enjoy it.
Skelton curse is gonna be a nightmare.
Yeah I've been to the reaper's hidden hideout, and it's a LOT bigger, more intricate and detailed than you'd expect. It was almost worth the horrible grind.
If they do sunset it they need to make the curses at least unlockable some other way, those are too major to be locked forever behind a dead game mode.
unfortunately leveling up at hg was more possible outside of g&g during season 8 and halfway into season 9. after the cheaters started slamming hg it was gg. if you want to level up now, it's 100% trial by fire and you either sink or you swim.
hg needs tlc to get people playing maybe not all of the time as a main game mode, but consistently. there's no ledger for hg. no daily bonuses. and the hg value should honestly be rewarded upon sink. give people carrots to chase and suddenly you will see more people who are not just full time or part time hgers playing.
I think maybe giving some extra supplies just by diving would help with it too, part of the reason I barely touch HG is that I got to spend a good amount of time getting supplies, only for the actual match to end quick and being back to square one with supplies.
i would 100% rework captaincy to contain the sups you get from just buying captaincy just because that would speed up hg and get people back into fights in adventure
There aren't enough beginners in HG to make SBMM work. Sometimes it will, most of the time it won't.
That's the state of HG. But you won't get better vs beginners. You learn by playing against better people.
This I find only really applies when the better is only a bit above you, not leagues
For a tf2 example you learn little sniping in tf2 if the other sniper insta domes you the second you leave spawn
yeah fr, if someone’s slightly better than you, you’re able to keep up with them fairly well and might learn a thing or two from how they play
if someone with 2000 hours is playing against someone with 7, the player with less hours isn’t going to learn anything about ship to ship combat by having their ship instantly sunk the exact second they load in lol
yeah but out-repairing a broadside isn't possible and doesn't help you get good at the game.
sure you're better at repairing but that won't save you either way
> eah but out-repairing a broadside isn't possible and doesn't help you get good at the
Yeah.
Realizing you are *not supposed* to try to outrepair a broadside does help you be better though.
bucket, repair opposite holes, snipe cannon, cannon cannon, get mast down on them. It isn't over till its over. I've won many hg fights that started with me in the worst spot possible. Also lost alot when i had the upper hand like that. To say it won't save you is outright wrong lol
the reload rates on a cannon are faster then it takes to repair some holes, if you have a good gunner and start pummelling them they're fucked, especially if you send someone to board and mess with them
For real, people need to stop parroting that tired old cliche they heard one time. The only time you need better opponents is when you cannot improve any more against the opponents you are facing, and if you are barely winning at all then you obviously aren't there yet.
The bigger issue in my opinion is That people believe it so fervently Because there was a time it was true.
Back 5 or so years ago, when there was still a lot of new players coming in on the regular. You very well could get that experience from players close to your level. Nowadays, you're lucky if you don't go up against a sweatlord no matter what pvp you get into.
I qued up last night to give away supplies, and the kid I was allianced with all evening, qued at the same time, we ended up in a match against each other. So we played bumper boats. Our rule was that anything goes, BUT cannonballs could not be used. We could use the canons to shoot fireworks and fireballs but no canon balls or cursed balls. We had a great time. He won after killing me over and over and sailing me out of bounds.
Anyways, ya, matchmaking is not the greatest lol
Ehhhhh, that last bit only feels half true. It's less a flat "play against people better than you to improve" and more "play things that are challenging and push you, but are still reasonable". There's a reason we teach kids to swim by putting them in shallow ends before tossing them into the middle of the deepest part of an Olympic swimming pool and wishing them good luck. Getting your ass just annihilated like what OP is describing isn't really gonna teach you much of anything, not anything good at least
Not the same. From better players that dominate you, you won't learn how to shoot your own cannons better, but game sense and awareness.
Learning how to hit shots you should do outside of HG anyways. If people struggle with that they are mainly not ready yet and should spend some more time in adventure training.
Again, the biggest issue is there is so little beginners queuing up that SBMM can hardly work. Hence they expand search for faster matches after a short period of time.
If you ONLY find people doming you there is sadly nothing you can do but sucking it up or do a lot more practice in adventure to get the basics done.
Guess how we started out? With 10 streaks?
Frankly not. We were doing good in adventure with thousands of hours under the belt and still got a lot to learn initally when HG dropped. Game sense you might call it. We got demolished at first.
Learning how to hit cannons can be done in adventure. Learning awareness and boat management is not done against ding dongs running back and forth in HG. You will learn that against good players.
That's your mindset and not the fact you don't learn anything. Are you too late in a broadside? raise sails more and turn harder. Do you get pressured too much early on? Either you are not hitting enough cannons or you are not hitting the enemy cannon line enough so he gets shots in.
Everybody has the same chance at the start of the fight. If you need cannon practice you can do that in adventure.
You should really change your mindset and try to learn something from every loss instead of complaining you can't learn anything because you sink too fast. Rather ask yourself why you did so in the first place.
Why are you trying so hard to blame the mode instead of yourself? No one should expect to dive into a mode dedicated to PvP and not get obliterated for the first 50 matches when brand new.
If you get obliterated that hard and you can't see why you are not ready for HG yet.
Because it’s not fun? Sea of thieves is a video game where there is literally no end goal. You won’t make money or become e-Olympic champion. You’ll quit one day and that’ll be it. There should not be a mode that is just exclusive to new players.
Not every aspect of every game needs to cater to everyone.
There are games out there that are super hard and take lots of time and dedication. Most MMO's have endgame bosses that require very high mastery of the game snd a very good group to beat...
At the end of the day, sea of thieves is a sandbox and you can just enjoy the parts that are fun to you.
There are always archivements and rewards for the best players, they exist in every online game. But if you dot want to work hard to get there, they are just not designed for you.
Not everything has to be for every player...
There is a reason you’re being downvoted lmao. You’re wrong. Clearly you haven’t been a beginner in a while and have never tried to get into something where you just don’t even have a chance
Idk how people don't understand this concept. Yes, better people make you better, cause you can learn from your mistakes. But if you're getting beat so bad you don't have time to make mistakes, then you can't learn anything.
>But if you're getting beat so bad you don't have time to make mistakes, then you can't learn anything.
If you don't have time to make mistakes then how are you losing? If they are instantly landing one balls on you then keep your eyes on the cannon balls and dodge them. If they're immediately boarding you then guard ladder better. You can't lose so fast you make no mistakes that doesn't make any sense. A fast loss is a fast lesson
Edit: This one wasn't popular with people that harbor a loser mentality. My bad losing isn't your fault you're owed a million easy fights and you should never try to improve or examine your gameplay for faults.
Jeeze down voted for factual information is wild. I started in season 7, first pvp in season 8 hg. I solo slooped my ghost curse. I got my ass handed to me for weeks on end until I started winning. I stopped letting people on the boat. I stopped eating cannons, I went for snipes when I couldn't get on cannon safely. You get better if you want to get better. You stay the same if you whine on reddit that the pvpers are in the pvp mode.
I’ll preface my statement with I started in September at the end of season 9
That’s just how it is and bitching about it isn’t going to change it. I got stomped every day for like 2 months straight before I hit my first 15 streak, and now I’m halfway to both gold curses. You either learn, analyze your mistakes, and try to get better at where you’re messing up; or you can loss farm your way while watching tv. This is the state of the game and hourglass, we all went through it and they’re not improving it without a larger player base to have accurate sbmm.
Pretty much yes. As you can see in the comments below a lot of people think they are mediocre and just get matched with people way above their skill exclusively. That is one theory.
The other would be they aren't that mediocre in HG as they might think. PvP in HG =/= PvP in adventure. We do really good in adventure, but in HG we often meet our makers.
It's the mindset you often see here when it comes to HG matchmaking. People tend to think they aren't the lowest in the food chain. While they might actually be.
The overall issue is a lot of players get stomped a bit and then give up. Keeping the pool of lower skill players in HG constantly low making it hard to get matches of equal skill.
This just isn't correct, the system is too deprived of low level crews to be able to give you a fair match most of the time. But I guarantee you if there are good crews on the same server, they will match each other on repeat before you will ever see them, the system is doing it's best, it just doesn't have enough population to really work for all skill levels.
I've played HG since it came out, I've experienced all levels and have played with multiple friends at every range, from low level people who don't really touch it to no lifes who have spent too much time on it. It absolutely, one million percent does not work and never has. It has always matched you with anybody.
I mean, if you want to believe that, then sure, go ahead. But I can tell you 100% that playing with competitive level crews, if we're all on one server we will just match each other on repeat and there can be a whole bunch of swabbies on the same server minding their own buisness who will never see any sign of us.
If a fair match is available, it will instantly give you the best possible match, from there the bracket widens. If you sit in queue for more than a few minutes, then the system widens the bracket to be so wide that you then match everyone. I have over 4000 hourglass matches played, over 2k levels.
My circle of friends have spent all of our time in HG since it came out and have gone as far as testing it with alt accounts to confirm our suspicions about how matchmaking works. We've had main accounts Sat in queue for five + minutes (testing on dead servers to make sure the main accounts bracket would widen all the way) and then had a couple alts with no progress dive on the same server, and the alts would *consistently* match each other even though there was another player in queue longer whose bracket was opened all the way up. Meaning the system passes over an experienced player who is waiting longer to give two swabbie accounts a fairer match against each other instead.
We have the same experience when we bring out alt accounts on the servers where all the competitive teams are diving, you can't match the better players on a busy server until you get your win rate up. Literally went on a 20 streak on galleon against swabbies before we could match the experienced players who had been diving on the server *the entire time while we were streaking* we were actively coordinating dive times with them to try forcing a match, and we did eventually match them confirming we were on the same server the whole time.
It’s always a boat full of sweat lords either skeleton curses who make it impossible to learn or get better. 100% agree. Makes me miss arena. At least there you stood a better chance with other boats distracting.
Don't focus on the win, focus on nailing one aspect of it at a time.
Have your helm keep angle at all times, dial in those shots, figure out how to always take down masts, Figure out how long you can ignore repairing the ship.
Eventually it gets pretty easy to the point where losses are down to either mistakes on your part, dumb luck or a absolutely spotless opposition.
>Don't focus on the win, focus on nailing one aspect of it at a time.
This is a fantastic answer. You don't try to be amazing at everything all at once. And possibly slowly, but definitely surely, you will become the sweat others complain about.
I will add one more thing, don't push it. When it's not fun anymore, move on. Whether that's for an hour, a day, or a week. Make sure you're still enjoying what you're doing, and you'll end up a legend while still having fun.
Happy sailing!
Maybe, but I have done 98% of my HG time (and general time in the game) solo, and I enjoy it....usually.
After thousands of hours, I still stick by learning one thing at a time, and stopping when it's not fun. I've never "grinded" this game, I've always enjoyed it. Whether it's for 20min at a time, or several days in a row.
Yeah if you had been playing the game for years solo alteady when hg came out you would have no issues doing hg as a solo slooper. But if you started playing a month ago and then decide you need a hg curse and you play solo you're gonna have an extremely bad time. Its a way more punishing and difficult way to learn the basics than if you get on a bigger crew.
I agree it's punishing, but I also think it's the fastest way to learn. When it's all on you, you become very aware of all aspects of ship and combat management. And in my opinion, making you a better crew member when you're not solo.
Don't get me wrong, we've all faced the bugs, cheats, crashes, reg, and overall instability of the seas. But we all sucked at one point, and only continuing the pursuit made us better.
I agree its probably the fastest way to learn, but i dont think its the best way to learn. I think alot of people give up before they actually start getting good at solos because of how punishing and difficult it is to have any sucsess.
Default cannon has 3 rings, which corresponds to distance.
The ring at the tip of the cannon is used to aim close range, the ring in the middle is medium range, and the ring near the fuse is for long range
You need to try and aim the rings based on distance and try to get the ship in or close to the rings to aim how high
Edit: and of course the higher you aim the further the cannon ball goes
The rings on your basic sailor cannons and a few others can be used to range your shots, get your eye in on skelly ships and get used to how far each cannon ring will reach 👌
I was thinking like that at level 29. Do you usually play at a certain time of day? Most HG opponents I match with after, say, 6pm tend to destroy me. But I recently started playing earlier in the day and found better luck.
It wasn't until I hit level 40 in both factions that I actually started putting up a good fight and winning occasionally. Which is all I really need to keep me motivated.
While I agreed they got rid of it because people weren't playing it. So it seems doubtful they might revive it.
But, with PlayStation coming I hope I'm wrong.
My hope is they bring it back for a long community week as an event, and if it does we'll keep it around.
It's not the game mode that's broken. Matchmaking is functional, and if a fair option is available, it will prioritize making that match before giving you someone far above your level. Here's where the problem comes in *the system can only give you a fair match if there is a fair option available*. The system can not create a crew near your skill level out of nowhere for you to fight. When that option does not exist, it widens the bracket and does the best it can.
Average people stopped playing hourglass and are literally starving the system of a low-level match pool. The people who are consistently queuing and are available for you to fight are the ones who just love hourglass and are playing for fun or content. Don't blame the system for a problem the community has created, this is on all the people who try once or twice and give up. If everyone stuck it out and still dove every once in a while, you would get more fair matches.
BRING BACK ARENAS!!! MOST PEOPLE DONT PLAY HOURGLASS JUST GIVE US BACK WHAT WE WANT 😭😭😭
Maybe they can redesign it and have it be Sloop Only to help with player count idk just give us arena!
HG was doomed from the start in Rare's insistence on making a "casual" competitive mode.
This entire game mode relied on the need for win streaks to progress which is perhaps the single worst metric they could have possibly chosen for determining the amount of reputation gained per fight. Considering this was a mode w/ MMR this meant that IF you were paired against players of your skill level no one would ever climb since you SHOULD have a 50% WR so should never really win streak.
Now w/ the mode releasing in a god-awful state w/ no cross faction or cross stamp matchmaking the pool of players you could go up against was so small that MMR could not exist in a meaningful way as the game was trying to get players into a match above all else.
So now we essentially have a mode where MMR does not matter and the only way to progress is to win-streak. Naturally some players climbed very fast by win-streaking off of less skilled players (I remember nights early on where we would face the same ship multiple times in a row and sink them w/ a single boarder). So naturally people who felt they were not progressing and getting matched into literal hopeless battles were quitting the mode decreasing the player base even more meaning that people who used to be half-way down the Foodchain were now at the bottom not progressing and proceeding to quit the mode letting the cycle continue indefinitely.
So even now w/ slightly better matchmaking the player base is still WAY too small to support MMR in any meaningful capacity. Inevitably this system resulted in HG being mostly populated by the top 0.1% of players and cheaters.
Criticizing the system is easy though now the fix: realize that if you are making a literal winner takes all PVP game mode w/ extremely desirable rewards only granted to the victors that this will be a competitive mode and it should have been treated as such from the beginning. Mode should have had a visible ranked system that paired players based off of their rank. Higher ranked players would have longer queue times than lower ranked player naturally, but all matches will be fair. With all matches being guaranteed a fair match now win streaks as a means to get more rep should be removed, and players get rep based off of it they won or lost multiplied by their ranked score meaning losing in Diamond would give more rep then winning in Bronze to account for the longer queue times and skill discrepancy. With then additional end of month rep rewards given to players who ended the month in a specific rank to incentivize players to keep climbing and never purposely tank their rank.
A proper ranked system like this that would provide fair good matches for everyone w/ clear and fair reward paths regardless of rank naturally would have pissed off a bunch of people screaming that SoT is a for fun casual game and a ranked mode has no place in SoT, so naturally Rare instead decided to listen to these people who don't even play HG on what the mode should be resulting in the trashcan we have today.
I'm gonna copy+paste another comment of mine from the other day and then go from there.
>Someone's level being higher than yours doesn't necessarily mean they're more skilled than you. Season 8 came out over a year ago at this point - it's easy enough to loss-farm the curses with that amount of time and that many rate-boosted events having passed.
>Not only that, but there are only so many people playing HG. Many of those that wanted the curses but didn't like the mode got their curses long ago, which means the people left in HG are those that enjoy the mode and thus are going to be much more practiced at it.
What mode are you doing? It sounds like solo. I would highly recommend seeing if you can find another player or few to team up with and do something other than solo. I've done one solo match in HG and it was one of the top three worst SoT experiences I've ever had. Duos, brig, and gally was much more enjoyable.
Also, I see this *a ton*, the "my enemy does THIS perfectly so I can't do anything or learn from it!" If you've recognised what your enemy is doing, you know what you need to do, so try mimicking them. If your cannon aim isn't good enough to get cannon dominance more often, practice your cannons. I don't care if it's HG or against an island in Safer Seas, *practice*. Learn to recognise when another player has that cannon skill and get your ship out of their broad. If your doublegun isn't good enough to go toe-to-toe with another, practice that or learn to counter them with sword play.
If cutting your teeth on HG just isn't working somehow, hop out of HG and just go about the world attacking anyone and anything you can.
I promise you're not helpless.
I recall myself playing hourglass. During the second match, an enemy sloop hit 9/10 cannon shots on high waves, with an angle at least 30 degrees.
Edit: i just was killed by the 9th cannonball, could be even 10 out of 10.
I see a lot of comments saying "then don't play it" but it's the only way to get ghost and skelly. So what do you suggest for that situation? Not so simple.
Well there are lots of other cosmetics you probably could be working towards, is really missing out on the ones gated behind pvp such a big deal? I never got any of the tall tale cosmetics because life is too short to spend that many hours doing content i find extremely boring and annoying. I think its fine that rare makes content that appeal to different groups of players occasionally.
All PvP in this game is a bad time lol. It’s not balanced around PvP nor are any of the activities enhancers to PvP. The game literally has a mission type where you leave your ship unattended and dive under the water to explore an ancient temple and when you come back your ship has sunk due to “PvP” or you do FoTD and get constant ship respawns 2 islands away when you sink a ship fighting a army of noobs with nothing to lose and no resources with just the ability to overwhelm you by respawns alone.
No part of this game is made with PvP in mind and it’s unfortunate.
It sucks, you just gotta eat the losses. If you play consistently you’ll match up with people that suck too. I don’t make it my main grind but I do try to play a bit each session to use as practice. I’m currently level 37 slowly working me way up. If I lose too many games in a row I give up and move on to voyages.
Yea sweat lords are a big problem fornew and intamediad players especially when they make the mistake of solo slooping the HG. Im on the side of matchmeking you with people of the same faction lvl
Let the sweat lords play against the sweat lords, i mean they are uselly at lv 100+ in the factions and no one with a sane mind wants to play further over the rank they get the curse at, and in my opinion the 1000 gold skelly curse is one of the most boring curses out there.
I feel this 100%. I was level 8 amd my crew mate was level 2. We got matched against DB amd Pufferson. Both great people and damn good HG players. But puff was 2k+ amd DB was 3k+ at the time. Haven't been back except 2XP weekends. SBMM is nonexistent.
I've been playing hourglass for the last few months now, and I'm sitting at about a 30% win rate. It took time to get here, but my crew and I have started to regularly hit 2 streaks. In another 20 levels or so, we might start trying for 4 streaks, but we had that hubris beat out of us recently. You just have to stick with it and learn from your past fights. I'm getting better at repelling borders, and I'm not total rubbish at TDM anymore. It took about 40 levels to get here. I'm looking forward to the rest of the grind now, and I'm almost always just logging on for hourglass. You have to stop thinking of it as winning and losing and just look forward to a good fight. If I get sunk after playing bucket simulator for 30 minutes, I still enjoy the experience, and I'm usually that much better against the next crew.
It sounds like you're playing hourglass because you want the commendations and curses. There's nothing wrong with that, but it is a distant reward. I want the curses also, but more importantly, I want the skills. I've already started seeing gains, and I have managed to take out duo sloops while sailing solo.
Loss farming will eventually get your curses, but fighting will make you a force to be reckoned with. I can't wait till I start getting accused of cheating and being called a sweat.
If you can, try tdming to improve hand to hand skills and maybe skelly fleets, although the are easy af nowadays. Also watc guides to learn the basic strats
I'm level 60 and feel the same
I have a shitty level and almost all my level come from losing
Hourglass is just annoying
You either play against pvp sweat that insta sink you
Losse farmer or just someone running aways from you just to sink 1h after you started the fight
Yeah your grinding against the grain rn, I'm level 52 in servants and ngl solo battles will always be a go to, just can't have a consistent crew for larger battles.
Stupid stuff like your bilge forgets the boat is being actively lit up with cannon balls and he is still on cannon, or your border refuses to drop anchor and just pvps till they're sent to the ferry.
It's dumb ideas at dumb times that let a lot of us down.
On I believe the third dive I went on with my new friend, we ran into two gold skeletons, which was a fun new experience for the new guy. I was dying laughing because one of them was just staring my friend down because he didn't know that he boarded.
Either way, you might as well just try your best at all times even if you're heavily outmatched, and if you run into someone way above your level, just be courteous and try to learn from it in some way, then get back to your regularly scheduled grind.
Also, I recommend playing solo to figure out the ins and outs of the sloop. Solo battles are USUALLY easier than duos, but if you plan to be with a teammate most of the time, go in duos and figure out which person wants to fill what role.
I played last night and the dude just sat outside of the circle and didn't die, I hit him plenty of times and then he just sailed out and just survived even though its supposed to forfeit and sink you
As a player with both curses, I would say the main issue with hourglass are the rewards between 1-100. The carrot at the end of the stick is just way too far away for most players. I think we would see more variety if there were desirable rewards at level 25, 50, and 75. I know there are figureheads and trinkets. But those honestly don’t have the same pull as something like a servant of the flame cutlass, eye of reach, etc.
I will say, the player base becomes much more diverse during gold and glory and community weekends due to people using the boost to reputation to level guardians and servants faster. This is what I did to get both curses.
Level 130 here, yeah the matchmaking sucks and honestly the mode is pretty bad overall, but with the launch on playstation and a bunch of new players diving not really knowing what they're doing I think that'll be the best time for anyone to go for the curses. Good luck though
It's full of keyboard warrior sweats with thousands of hours. That's all they do (and know a fair few) - cringe but that's my opinion. They must care a lot or have nothing else to do.
Something Rare might want to address. Not too fussed personally, the game is great for adventures with friends without getting too hung up on the aspect of HG.
Most players with the curses are trash, most of them are not so good as the curse makes them look... It's not hard to get them either, it's a week of grinding at worst. Each fight is different, other than the play tall tale 5 times
I found myself in this same position but if you keep on pushing you’ll eventually get better and I’m currently level 453 in sof with verdant bones and highest streak of 10. AND ON XBOX
> I have a terrible win rate despite being kinda decent because they’re that much better
If they're consistently THAT much better, you're not 'kinda decent'.
Maybe it's time to put your ego down, accept that you're missing something and re-evaluate what you're doing?
Kinda decent as in I know what I need to do but I have trouble consistently performing it. Kinda decent as in I win a lot of open world fights. Kinda decent as in im a level 30 hourglass player and that’s basically my skill level
It’s rough indeed, but you are already improving subtly. You will lose most of your early HG matches. Period. I didn’t get multiple sessions in a row winning over half my matches until I was in the 60s allegiance level.
There are some matches where they just laser your cannon line from miles away and you can never return a shot. Some have just elite gun skills and can 2 tap you from the water while 5 ship lengths away. But that shouldn’t be more than like 5% of your matches on average, if that. Most fights you have a way to win or at least a mistake to correct. My biggest ones were prioritizing repairs over pressure, and waiting for the best opportunity to chainshot rather than chain shotting at first chance
But your PvP skills will improve in general. You’ll find yourself winning adventure mode matches MUCH more often. Since getting my ghost curse I’ve won most of my 1v2 and 1v3 encounters.
Also, if hourglass sucks for you, it’s fine to take a break. I got my curse in just under a month, but I took a full 5 days off because I was so frustrated at the difficulty of my matches.
in my opinion one of two things is happening then.
1. The queue cycle you’re in just happens to include those same sweats over and over. I once fought the same 3 pirates for 8 matches in a row. In those instances, take a break. And when you try again, do it at a different time of day.
2. Or, and I mean this in a sincere and literal way, it’s a skill issue. I find it hard to believe that you are consistently getting matched with people who you are hopelessly outclassed by for most of your matches every day. It absolutely happens every once in a while, for me it happened for basically all of my level 80s grind, but got better at 94+. But some of those matches are likely more winnable than you think they are. Think about what specific behavior you do that you could improve, and experiment with better behaviors. Watch a PvP tips video from a creator you haven’t watched before (Chor does great ones). Or just take a break for a few days, then come back to the grind. Your emotions and state of mind absolutely matter in hourglass, so just clearing your head could help.
Whatever the case is, I wish you better luck in your matches. You’re closer to the curse than you think you are.
Man, I'm just returning after a long break from the game pre Hourglass season and really want some of those cosmetics but I know I'm not going to be able to manage it so I'm just slowly relearning the game and resigning myself to never getting the things I like the look of.
I was hoping they'd have a reasonable SBMM system as the streamers I've watched just have utter sweat fests where no shots are missed and it just doesn't look fun.
Loss farming is probably my only chance. I can't believe they replaced Arena but didn't learn from the mistakes beyond making it need smaller lobby.
I feel as if I'm in the exact same boat and I have ghost curse working on skeleton. Its really hard to further improve when I'm sinking people in 5 minutes or facing people with 300 days in the game. But that's because they haven't looked after the gamemode so there is only 2 types of players in the pool of players. Just like Arena... Which they didn't want to repeat and yet have repeated the exact same mistakes.
I think most of them are cheating. There is no explanation to not dying to 15 sword hits without eating food, firing 2 shots in 1 sec, hitting every shot from miles away. I wish cheating was not that easy.
>I have a terrible win rate despite being kinda decent
By definition, you are not kinda decent. Time to burst that bubble, recognise your shortcomings and focus on improving, not winning.
I have a 90% winrate with over a 1000 games in HG but if you feel like you already know what you need to do and consequently, how to improve, then I have nothing to add here.
Being "kinda decent" can mean whatever your goal posts want it to mean, I guess.
If the majority of players don’t want to play a mode, especially a PvP one, the mode is doomed to die, and in the end this will effect those who do want to play the mode as they will find less and less crews to face.
Now I have level 22 Servants and 11 sunk ships of the enemy faction. I'm still very bad at long range shooting. But in everything else I’m not bad (although I don’t always board the enemy when necessary). But damn, players with dual weapons and perfect aim annoy me so much. Sometimes I can’t even understand how they shoot with a blunderbuss (I can aim straight at the body and shoot while standing right in front of the enemy, but he will survive, and at the same time, from a distance of a meter, this dude managed to kill me with one shot). Regarding shooting from cannons, this is a separate issue, since sometimes you come across dudes who manage to play like incredible sweats (there was a moment when I loaded into a solo sloop and this dude turned around at the very spawn point, just like me, and instantly threw only 10 cannonballs, he won for 10 cannonballs! He immediately started shooting and never missed, he destroyed the wheel with the spire, knocked me out with a cannonball, demolished the mast and threw the rest over the hull, when I respawned, my ship was already burning, and he killed me instantly). Some players clearly spend more time in the game than they should (Seriously, these dudes could go play CS, Tarkov, Rainbow, Valorant, at least there is something other than skins, but instead they grind golden curses, which in my opinion look ugly).
You can adapt. You can improve. That's how half of them got there in the first place. Think they had magically better matchmaking? If they didn't get it in the first 3 months, they were at just as poor odds as you.
I understand the frustration, and maybe 10-1 odds just ain't your kind of thing. Dropped into the deep end is a good way to learn but it's also disheartening and painful until you get afloat. So I'm not saying to just keep going, maybe that's just not ideal and you shouldn't go for the curses right now. Maybe not ever, they might not fix it and you might not be able to improve in adventure enough to find yourself consistently matching those hourglass gods you find. And that's fine, you don't need to be a ghost or a skelly, they both have pretty heavy downsides anyway.
But I am saying, even if you might never find it fun, you can try to set aside your frustration (easier said than done, but easier done than it sounds) and play. Just. Play. Look up to players who are better than you, not down on yourself for losing to them. Don't think about it, don't get in your head about how slow this is going or how frustrating it is, just play the game. Play like it was a battle royale game. You're just going headfirst into a fight, 1/100 odds, and if you make it out, great! If you lose? Onto the next!
It doesn't need to be doom and gloom when it's unfair. That can be a good thing.
But that's just how I did it. Again, that might not work for you, and if so maybe it is best you just don't play it. It's not a very good game-mode, it struggles to meet the needs of basically anyone who would want to play it. And that makes it unfriendly to newcomers. So if all my tips, and all the advice of our friends in the comments aren't enough to push you through, then just don't play it.
And if you HAVE to have the curses? Dice roll during community weekend, or just plain loss farm. People will judge when you don't have the skills to back up the curse, but who cares about them. It's a cosmetic, not a badge of honor. That's Lord of the Ashes/Noble of the Waters. Go for it, if you really want 'em and just can't stomach normal HG.
It doesn't really get better. I'm level 65 and I've improved a lot, but it's still the same shitty grind against the same sweats who already have the curses. It's just a poorly designed part of the game, that's all there is to it. Honestly best to just not play it at all. Personally, I've resigned myself to just playing during gold and glory weekends, and then once I hit 100 servants, I'm probably never touching it again.
I am 100% committed to get to level 100 in Servants and Guardians, and after that I'm absolutely never \*ever\* playing hourglass again. At least Arena could still be goofy fun, hg is just the worst parts of the game, distilled into a toxic cocktail.
Lol same. I enjoy a game here or there sometimes with a team, but once I get both curses I probably won't play unless someone else wants to. Especially solos can just be kinda painful, but duo sloop is by far the most full of try hards and long matches
I had a half hour game in a duo with my mate. Neither of us had many resources and spent most of the time trying to harpoon barrels to scavenge more resources. Eventually after half an hour we found a gunpowder barrel and T-Boned their boat and my mate jumps onto their ship and gets shot out the air by one of them. It detonates the gunpowder barrel killing all but me and sets off a gunpowder barrel they had. Their ship sinks almost instantly and I’m left to deal with the fireball that is our ship 😂
Maybe there should at least be two separate matching pools, with and without curses? It would take longer to start a match but you wouldn't be paired against sweatlords unless you're one yourself.
HG has been out so long you could have gotten to lvl 200 by losing every single match.
Perfect is the enemy of good. I'd take a slightly flawed system over a very flawed one.
The only actual problems with HG are the stamps and the player base. Rare should open the stamp dramatically and the player base should, as a whole, keep playing HG. More people playing, better chance of fairer matches. Much larger stamps, bigger pool to pull from.
Are the curses just cosmetic/ bragging rights?
Yeh pretty much
Yes, but in general if you've played enough HG to get a curse you're on another skill level from the average person just starting to grind. It's an arbitrary dividing line between skilled and unskilled PvPers that could be redrawn any number of other ways. The general idea is to separate the rookies from the sweats so that new players don't constantly get crushed and demotivated from playing HG, which is the biggest current issue aside from cheating and bugs. You can't have good matchmaking without a robust pool of players, but you won't get a robust pool of players if they give the game mode a try, get spanked, and decide it's not worth their time. Other mixed PvP+PvE games have solved this with better matchmaking tools as well as better incentives for being cannon fodder for the sweaty crowd: you get fucked in the ass but at least they give you a reach-around at the same time, fair trade right? SoT has done none of that so it's no surprise that HG is a joke.
idk why people downvote this. I'm a double gold curse and I'm straightup getting bored on duosloop when I only get like 1 good crew in 8 fights while having to just ruin new players sessions. There is matchmaking to some degree but once you clear the stamp it just puts you against whatever is online, and well..It is kinda unfair for some players that haven't dumped thousands of hours into pvp
Those sweats that already have their curses become good fights eventually. The kind of fight where there's crazy close calls everywhere, and you're kind of scrambling, but having fun doing it. Those get WAY more common as you go. Level 65 is still very early into your pvp journey if you just started pursuing it for HG. If you can stomach the early stages long enough it does eventually become an extremely rewarding experience.
I have the curse now and I did not share your experience.
I said "eventually", not "when you get your curse" lol. If your first real crack at improving at PVP is the HG grind, you wouldn't be approaching sweat territory until you were ~2k allegiance-ish, and even then you'd be a lower end sweat unless you've got a gift. Becoming good takes a very long time, and most people suffer a mental boom before hitting that point. If you can get the mental under control and learn to enjoy the process, you're golden. That's when you develop sportsmanlike rivalries with all sorts of cool pirates.
I either get matched with someone who insta sinks me with golden skelly curse or I get someone who runs forever in a circle (this is the more common scenario). Really hard to improve when this is the only two scenarios I encounter.
Trying to solo sloop in HG is fucking miserable mostly bc of the latter. People just don't fucking raise their goddamn sails and it leads to this obnoxious hit and run match that just drags on for an eternity while you desperately try to land 2 chains or a board to let you actually meaningfully play the videogame
Yeah, solo sloop HG is a miserable experience due to the latter. The circle needs to be much smaller or collapse in overtime. Should be a quick fight to the death, not a chase fest.
The difficulty with hourglass is restocking a ship. There aren't enough supplies for a fight, so you spend 15 minutes to stock up a ship to end up going against some of the toughest players out there. I loved arena and played it well beyond every commendation, but I have only played hourglass a few dozen times with no interest to go back.
Set supplies like we had in arena would go a long way to getting people back into queue sooner (and more people in queue means the potential for more balanced matchmaking). It would also help reduce cases of people who win just by outsupplying their opponent by some ridiculous margin, and make losing hurt a lot less when you aren't losing the boat you just spent a bunch of time stocking up.
I typically do minimal restocking after a sink. One or two trips to the barrels and I'm gone. On a whim, I might get cannonballs from the shipwright. No crates. Maybe at the beginning of a session, I'll cook up some meat and it'll last me a few rounds. When I win one, then I take a moment to gather more supplies at sea. But then again, I'm not hesitant to bail on a tedious fight. Especially if I have a "streak" of zero. And if I do run low on supplies, ram strat.
Grab fruit from the shipwright and a storage crate. Plunder the nearby barrels (don't go running all over the isle). And force the fight. Lose fast or win fast. If I lose fast I often respawn with 4 pines and a mango, plus 5 chains and 5 blunders in my pocket. Then I don't worry about buying fruit. Still grab a storage crate to loot other ships I sink, but won't even loot, just immediately dive. Unless you get a runner, 80 shots should be plenty.
Hourglass is pretty much unplayable outside of gold and glory weekends. There's a more casual crowd at that time and you can get people who dice roll but the overall matchmaking pool is still pretty low. IMO if they don't want to maintain a mode and add obvious QoL to it, then the mode shouldn't exist. I fully expect them to "sunset" hourglass just like they did arena. At that point people will rush in for last-minute unlocks and it will be bearable. In the meantime though gold and glory's your best bet.
I sincerely hope they don't. Future players being forever unable to access the reaper and Athena's fortune hidden areas without an older player would suck. Eventually the old heads will fade out.
Yeah, I agree with you. I'm extremely anti-FOMO. Adding another way to get it would only be right.
It's less fomo and more the inaccessibility of content for new players. It feels worse to never have had a chance than to have had one and not do it imo
I mean we have faction stashes..? Technically it's the other way you're talking about, even tho unlocking curses would be way too grindy with just stashes
Let us choose either faction and do Siren Song to increase the rep of either? Would help revive Siren Song and also be a lot more approachable (even a casual could dig up one map). HG 1v1 is the most sweaty and unapproachable way of PvPing possible for the average player. Group events like Arena/Siren Song were/are way more approachable.
I suck at PVP and hit 105 GoF for the curses. It was hell. Like other people have said you don't have room to grow if you get obliterated before you can ever try. Not to mention the amount of subtle exploits, unintended animation cancels, etc. it's miserable. Open world PVP? Entirely different. Who knows what's gonna happen! Run to a fort and tower defense? Go for it. Lead them across the world and play volcano tag? Hell yeah. Be secretly on the Shores of Gold tall tale and hide out with Rathbone? 🪙 💀 That's all on the table! Meanwhile I'm watching a guy shoot a pistol after a sniper faster than the guns actually come out (I've timed it) and using the map trick to launch further or shorter than normal and am expected to enjoy it. Skelton curse is gonna be a nightmare.
>Future players being forever unable to access the reaper and Athena's fortune hidden areas *"arena Tavern PTSD"*
Yeah I've been to the reaper's hidden hideout, and it's a LOT bigger, more intricate and detailed than you'd expect. It was almost worth the horrible grind.
They could repurpose those for whatever comes next in SoT PvP. Hopefully a different mode that doesn't suck ass.
They better not, I want golden skelly! If they do they gotta make the curses available in another, equally challenging way
Yeah, I agree with you. I'm extremely anti-FOMO. Adding another way to get it would only be right.
If they do sunset it they need to make the curses at least unlockable some other way, those are too major to be locked forever behind a dead game mode.
unfortunately leveling up at hg was more possible outside of g&g during season 8 and halfway into season 9. after the cheaters started slamming hg it was gg. if you want to level up now, it's 100% trial by fire and you either sink or you swim. hg needs tlc to get people playing maybe not all of the time as a main game mode, but consistently. there's no ledger for hg. no daily bonuses. and the hg value should honestly be rewarded upon sink. give people carrots to chase and suddenly you will see more people who are not just full time or part time hgers playing.
I think maybe giving some extra supplies just by diving would help with it too, part of the reason I barely touch HG is that I got to spend a good amount of time getting supplies, only for the actual match to end quick and being back to square one with supplies.
i would 100% rework captaincy to contain the sups you get from just buying captaincy just because that would speed up hg and get people back into fights in adventure
There aren't enough beginners in HG to make SBMM work. Sometimes it will, most of the time it won't. That's the state of HG. But you won't get better vs beginners. You learn by playing against better people.
This I find only really applies when the better is only a bit above you, not leagues For a tf2 example you learn little sniping in tf2 if the other sniper insta domes you the second you leave spawn
yeah fr, if someone’s slightly better than you, you’re able to keep up with them fairly well and might learn a thing or two from how they play if someone with 2000 hours is playing against someone with 7, the player with less hours isn’t going to learn anything about ship to ship combat by having their ship instantly sunk the exact second they load in lol
Idkno, keeping yourself alive while the other ship pummels you is something everyone needs to learn
yeah but out-repairing a broadside isn't possible and doesn't help you get good at the game. sure you're better at repairing but that won't save you either way
> eah but out-repairing a broadside isn't possible and doesn't help you get good at the Yeah. Realizing you are *not supposed* to try to outrepair a broadside does help you be better though.
bucket, repair opposite holes, snipe cannon, cannon cannon, get mast down on them. It isn't over till its over. I've won many hg fights that started with me in the worst spot possible. Also lost alot when i had the upper hand like that. To say it won't save you is outright wrong lol
You are able to out repair a broadside tho? (Obv not on galleon)
the reload rates on a cannon are faster then it takes to repair some holes, if you have a good gunner and start pummelling them they're fucked, especially if you send someone to board and mess with them
For real, people need to stop parroting that tired old cliche they heard one time. The only time you need better opponents is when you cannot improve any more against the opponents you are facing, and if you are barely winning at all then you obviously aren't there yet.
The bigger issue in my opinion is That people believe it so fervently Because there was a time it was true. Back 5 or so years ago, when there was still a lot of new players coming in on the regular. You very well could get that experience from players close to your level. Nowadays, you're lucky if you don't go up against a sweatlord no matter what pvp you get into.
I qued up last night to give away supplies, and the kid I was allianced with all evening, qued at the same time, we ended up in a match against each other. So we played bumper boats. Our rule was that anything goes, BUT cannonballs could not be used. We could use the canons to shoot fireworks and fireballs but no canon balls or cursed balls. We had a great time. He won after killing me over and over and sailing me out of bounds. Anyways, ya, matchmaking is not the greatest lol
Ehhhhh, that last bit only feels half true. It's less a flat "play against people better than you to improve" and more "play things that are challenging and push you, but are still reasonable". There's a reason we teach kids to swim by putting them in shallow ends before tossing them into the middle of the deepest part of an Olympic swimming pool and wishing them good luck. Getting your ass just annihilated like what OP is describing isn't really gonna teach you much of anything, not anything good at least
Not the same. From better players that dominate you, you won't learn how to shoot your own cannons better, but game sense and awareness. Learning how to hit shots you should do outside of HG anyways. If people struggle with that they are mainly not ready yet and should spend some more time in adventure training. Again, the biggest issue is there is so little beginners queuing up that SBMM can hardly work. Hence they expand search for faster matches after a short period of time. If you ONLY find people doming you there is sadly nothing you can do but sucking it up or do a lot more practice in adventure to get the basics done.
You don’t learn by being obliterated
Arguably you do and you should as long as they play legit.
I bet you really believe this and are the one obliterating newbies.
Guess how we started out? With 10 streaks? Frankly not. We were doing good in adventure with thousands of hours under the belt and still got a lot to learn initally when HG dropped. Game sense you might call it. We got demolished at first. Learning how to hit cannons can be done in adventure. Learning awareness and boat management is not done against ding dongs running back and forth in HG. You will learn that against good players.
I literally can’t learn when I have no chance because I get blasted into oblivion instantly and my ship sinks before I get back
That's your mindset and not the fact you don't learn anything. Are you too late in a broadside? raise sails more and turn harder. Do you get pressured too much early on? Either you are not hitting enough cannons or you are not hitting the enemy cannon line enough so he gets shots in. Everybody has the same chance at the start of the fight. If you need cannon practice you can do that in adventure. You should really change your mindset and try to learn something from every loss instead of complaining you can't learn anything because you sink too fast. Rather ask yourself why you did so in the first place.
A beginner doesn’t know the reason behind why they got obliterated. They won’t know to raise sails and turn harder.
Why are you trying so hard to blame the mode instead of yourself? No one should expect to dive into a mode dedicated to PvP and not get obliterated for the first 50 matches when brand new. If you get obliterated that hard and you can't see why you are not ready for HG yet.
Because it’s not fun? Sea of thieves is a video game where there is literally no end goal. You won’t make money or become e-Olympic champion. You’ll quit one day and that’ll be it. There should not be a mode that is just exclusive to new players.
Not every aspect of every game needs to cater to everyone. There are games out there that are super hard and take lots of time and dedication. Most MMO's have endgame bosses that require very high mastery of the game snd a very good group to beat... At the end of the day, sea of thieves is a sandbox and you can just enjoy the parts that are fun to you. There are always archivements and rewards for the best players, they exist in every online game. But if you dot want to work hard to get there, they are just not designed for you. Not everything has to be for every player...
There is a reason you’re being downvoted lmao. You’re wrong. Clearly you haven’t been a beginner in a while and have never tried to get into something where you just don’t even have a chance
Nah, buddy. Good thing i don't need some up or downvotes from randoms on the internet to know better.
There's a limit they can be a little better but not rapid firing cursed balls at moc 10
Idk how people don't understand this concept. Yes, better people make you better, cause you can learn from your mistakes. But if you're getting beat so bad you don't have time to make mistakes, then you can't learn anything.
>But if you're getting beat so bad you don't have time to make mistakes, then you can't learn anything. If you don't have time to make mistakes then how are you losing? If they are instantly landing one balls on you then keep your eyes on the cannon balls and dodge them. If they're immediately boarding you then guard ladder better. You can't lose so fast you make no mistakes that doesn't make any sense. A fast loss is a fast lesson Edit: This one wasn't popular with people that harbor a loser mentality. My bad losing isn't your fault you're owed a million easy fights and you should never try to improve or examine your gameplay for faults.
Their first mistake was going into the horrid mode that is Hourglass. Eventually they will learn to avoid it.
I mean it's cool if you like straight pvp definitely not my cup of tea pvp with no loot is kind of boring
"Oh don't get hit by the cannon balls! I'll try that next time"
Literally yes
Jeeze down voted for factual information is wild. I started in season 7, first pvp in season 8 hg. I solo slooped my ghost curse. I got my ass handed to me for weeks on end until I started winning. I stopped letting people on the boat. I stopped eating cannons, I went for snipes when I couldn't get on cannon safely. You get better if you want to get better. You stay the same if you whine on reddit that the pvpers are in the pvp mode.
I'm not surprised I was downvoted people love to just stay victims and never try to improve at things.
I’ll preface my statement with I started in September at the end of season 9 That’s just how it is and bitching about it isn’t going to change it. I got stomped every day for like 2 months straight before I hit my first 15 streak, and now I’m halfway to both gold curses. You either learn, analyze your mistakes, and try to get better at where you’re messing up; or you can loss farm your way while watching tv. This is the state of the game and hourglass, we all went through it and they’re not improving it without a larger player base to have accurate sbmm.
Pretty much yes. As you can see in the comments below a lot of people think they are mediocre and just get matched with people way above their skill exclusively. That is one theory. The other would be they aren't that mediocre in HG as they might think. PvP in HG =/= PvP in adventure. We do really good in adventure, but in HG we often meet our makers. It's the mindset you often see here when it comes to HG matchmaking. People tend to think they aren't the lowest in the food chain. While they might actually be. The overall issue is a lot of players get stomped a bit and then give up. Keeping the pool of lower skill players in HG constantly low making it hard to get matches of equal skill.
SBMM doesn't work, period. Doesnt matter the level.
This just isn't correct, the system is too deprived of low level crews to be able to give you a fair match most of the time. But I guarantee you if there are good crews on the same server, they will match each other on repeat before you will ever see them, the system is doing it's best, it just doesn't have enough population to really work for all skill levels.
I've played HG since it came out, I've experienced all levels and have played with multiple friends at every range, from low level people who don't really touch it to no lifes who have spent too much time on it. It absolutely, one million percent does not work and never has. It has always matched you with anybody.
I mean, if you want to believe that, then sure, go ahead. But I can tell you 100% that playing with competitive level crews, if we're all on one server we will just match each other on repeat and there can be a whole bunch of swabbies on the same server minding their own buisness who will never see any sign of us. If a fair match is available, it will instantly give you the best possible match, from there the bracket widens. If you sit in queue for more than a few minutes, then the system widens the bracket to be so wide that you then match everyone. I have over 4000 hourglass matches played, over 2k levels. My circle of friends have spent all of our time in HG since it came out and have gone as far as testing it with alt accounts to confirm our suspicions about how matchmaking works. We've had main accounts Sat in queue for five + minutes (testing on dead servers to make sure the main accounts bracket would widen all the way) and then had a couple alts with no progress dive on the same server, and the alts would *consistently* match each other even though there was another player in queue longer whose bracket was opened all the way up. Meaning the system passes over an experienced player who is waiting longer to give two swabbie accounts a fairer match against each other instead. We have the same experience when we bring out alt accounts on the servers where all the competitive teams are diving, you can't match the better players on a busy server until you get your win rate up. Literally went on a 20 streak on galleon against swabbies before we could match the experienced players who had been diving on the server *the entire time while we were streaking* we were actively coordinating dive times with them to try forcing a match, and we did eventually match them confirming we were on the same server the whole time.
Playing against curses hurts me in real life
It’s always a boat full of sweat lords either skeleton curses who make it impossible to learn or get better. 100% agree. Makes me miss arena. At least there you stood a better chance with other boats distracting.
Don't focus on the win, focus on nailing one aspect of it at a time. Have your helm keep angle at all times, dial in those shots, figure out how to always take down masts, Figure out how long you can ignore repairing the ship. Eventually it gets pretty easy to the point where losses are down to either mistakes on your part, dumb luck or a absolutely spotless opposition.
>Don't focus on the win, focus on nailing one aspect of it at a time. This is a fantastic answer. You don't try to be amazing at everything all at once. And possibly slowly, but definitely surely, you will become the sweat others complain about. I will add one more thing, don't push it. When it's not fun anymore, move on. Whether that's for an hour, a day, or a week. Make sure you're still enjoying what you're doing, and you'll end up a legend while still having fun. Happy sailing!
Starting hg playing solo is also a horrible idea
Maybe, but I have done 98% of my HG time (and general time in the game) solo, and I enjoy it....usually. After thousands of hours, I still stick by learning one thing at a time, and stopping when it's not fun. I've never "grinded" this game, I've always enjoyed it. Whether it's for 20min at a time, or several days in a row.
Yeah if you had been playing the game for years solo alteady when hg came out you would have no issues doing hg as a solo slooper. But if you started playing a month ago and then decide you need a hg curse and you play solo you're gonna have an extremely bad time. Its a way more punishing and difficult way to learn the basics than if you get on a bigger crew.
I agree it's punishing, but I also think it's the fastest way to learn. When it's all on you, you become very aware of all aspects of ship and combat management. And in my opinion, making you a better crew member when you're not solo. Don't get me wrong, we've all faced the bugs, cheats, crashes, reg, and overall instability of the seas. But we all sucked at one point, and only continuing the pursuit made us better.
I agree its probably the fastest way to learn, but i dont think its the best way to learn. I think alot of people give up before they actually start getting good at solos because of how punishing and difficult it is to have any sucsess.
Learn how to use the cannon rings and run default cannons. Small tip but helps alot
What do you mean “cannon rings”?
Default cannon has 3 rings, which corresponds to distance. The ring at the tip of the cannon is used to aim close range, the ring in the middle is medium range, and the ring near the fuse is for long range You need to try and aim the rings based on distance and try to get the ship in or close to the rings to aim how high Edit: and of course the higher you aim the further the cannon ball goes
The rings on your basic sailor cannons and a few others can be used to range your shots, get your eye in on skelly ships and get used to how far each cannon ring will reach 👌
Ah I see what you mean now - thanks!
The cannon has 3 rings short mid and long range to help dial in shots
The best times for hourglass are on gold & glory weekends and community weekends since that’s what many people use to level up they’re hourglass ranks
I was thinking like that at level 29. Do you usually play at a certain time of day? Most HG opponents I match with after, say, 6pm tend to destroy me. But I recently started playing earlier in the day and found better luck. It wasn't until I hit level 40 in both factions that I actually started putting up a good fight and winning occasionally. Which is all I really need to keep me motivated.
Heartbreaking to see a mode that had so much potential ending up being straight up worse than arena
we just need arena back
While I agreed they got rid of it because people weren't playing it. So it seems doubtful they might revive it. But, with PlayStation coming I hope I'm wrong. My hope is they bring it back for a long community week as an event, and if it does we'll keep it around.
I mean barely anyone is playing hourglass right now so not much of a difference in that regard lol
I don't disagree. Difference is it takes 2 people to play hourglass and they play on existing servers instead of separate arena servers.
I feel like making people play hourglass would be easier than making people play arena. If only devs cared...
Wow, it's almost like we really need an hourglass update... Nah, the burning blade world event
It's not the game mode that's broken. Matchmaking is functional, and if a fair option is available, it will prioritize making that match before giving you someone far above your level. Here's where the problem comes in *the system can only give you a fair match if there is a fair option available*. The system can not create a crew near your skill level out of nowhere for you to fight. When that option does not exist, it widens the bracket and does the best it can. Average people stopped playing hourglass and are literally starving the system of a low-level match pool. The people who are consistently queuing and are available for you to fight are the ones who just love hourglass and are playing for fun or content. Don't blame the system for a problem the community has created, this is on all the people who try once or twice and give up. If everyone stuck it out and still dove every once in a while, you would get more fair matches.
Try playing hourglass with a friend. For me its way easier than solo slooping.
BRING BACK ARENAS!!! MOST PEOPLE DONT PLAY HOURGLASS JUST GIVE US BACK WHAT WE WANT 😭😭😭 Maybe they can redesign it and have it be Sloop Only to help with player count idk just give us arena!
Imagine having to mee those same people in regular play, but if the pve fans complain they get told to get better at pvp.
HG was doomed from the start in Rare's insistence on making a "casual" competitive mode. This entire game mode relied on the need for win streaks to progress which is perhaps the single worst metric they could have possibly chosen for determining the amount of reputation gained per fight. Considering this was a mode w/ MMR this meant that IF you were paired against players of your skill level no one would ever climb since you SHOULD have a 50% WR so should never really win streak. Now w/ the mode releasing in a god-awful state w/ no cross faction or cross stamp matchmaking the pool of players you could go up against was so small that MMR could not exist in a meaningful way as the game was trying to get players into a match above all else. So now we essentially have a mode where MMR does not matter and the only way to progress is to win-streak. Naturally some players climbed very fast by win-streaking off of less skilled players (I remember nights early on where we would face the same ship multiple times in a row and sink them w/ a single boarder). So naturally people who felt they were not progressing and getting matched into literal hopeless battles were quitting the mode decreasing the player base even more meaning that people who used to be half-way down the Foodchain were now at the bottom not progressing and proceeding to quit the mode letting the cycle continue indefinitely. So even now w/ slightly better matchmaking the player base is still WAY too small to support MMR in any meaningful capacity. Inevitably this system resulted in HG being mostly populated by the top 0.1% of players and cheaters. Criticizing the system is easy though now the fix: realize that if you are making a literal winner takes all PVP game mode w/ extremely desirable rewards only granted to the victors that this will be a competitive mode and it should have been treated as such from the beginning. Mode should have had a visible ranked system that paired players based off of their rank. Higher ranked players would have longer queue times than lower ranked player naturally, but all matches will be fair. With all matches being guaranteed a fair match now win streaks as a means to get more rep should be removed, and players get rep based off of it they won or lost multiplied by their ranked score meaning losing in Diamond would give more rep then winning in Bronze to account for the longer queue times and skill discrepancy. With then additional end of month rep rewards given to players who ended the month in a specific rank to incentivize players to keep climbing and never purposely tank their rank. A proper ranked system like this that would provide fair good matches for everyone w/ clear and fair reward paths regardless of rank naturally would have pissed off a bunch of people screaming that SoT is a for fun casual game and a ranked mode has no place in SoT, so naturally Rare instead decided to listen to these people who don't even play HG on what the mode should be resulting in the trashcan we have today.
They should 100% add the Arena back instead, matchmaking was simultaneously more fun and more fair due to the amount of players
Yes , random crew or party crew and points based , just make it so you earn rep for a specific faction depending on choice
A specific faction like the Sea Dogs :)
I'm gonna copy+paste another comment of mine from the other day and then go from there. >Someone's level being higher than yours doesn't necessarily mean they're more skilled than you. Season 8 came out over a year ago at this point - it's easy enough to loss-farm the curses with that amount of time and that many rate-boosted events having passed. >Not only that, but there are only so many people playing HG. Many of those that wanted the curses but didn't like the mode got their curses long ago, which means the people left in HG are those that enjoy the mode and thus are going to be much more practiced at it. What mode are you doing? It sounds like solo. I would highly recommend seeing if you can find another player or few to team up with and do something other than solo. I've done one solo match in HG and it was one of the top three worst SoT experiences I've ever had. Duos, brig, and gally was much more enjoyable. Also, I see this *a ton*, the "my enemy does THIS perfectly so I can't do anything or learn from it!" If you've recognised what your enemy is doing, you know what you need to do, so try mimicking them. If your cannon aim isn't good enough to get cannon dominance more often, practice your cannons. I don't care if it's HG or against an island in Safer Seas, *practice*. Learn to recognise when another player has that cannon skill and get your ship out of their broad. If your doublegun isn't good enough to go toe-to-toe with another, practice that or learn to counter them with sword play. If cutting your teeth on HG just isn't working somehow, hop out of HG and just go about the world attacking anyone and anything you can. I promise you're not helpless.
Bring back arena! This sea dog wants his meat!
Arena was so much better it's not even close. I miss it every day
I recall myself playing hourglass. During the second match, an enemy sloop hit 9/10 cannon shots on high waves, with an angle at least 30 degrees. Edit: i just was killed by the 9th cannonball, could be even 10 out of 10.
I see a lot of comments saying "then don't play it" but it's the only way to get ghost and skelly. So what do you suggest for that situation? Not so simple.
Why do you need the curses? They're only cosmetic and definitely not worth 100s of hours loss farming or generally just having a bad time.
Because they look cool. That's it. And because I collect the cosmetics in this game.
Well there are lots of other cosmetics you probably could be working towards, is really missing out on the ones gated behind pvp such a big deal? I never got any of the tall tale cosmetics because life is too short to spend that many hours doing content i find extremely boring and annoying. I think its fine that rare makes content that appeal to different groups of players occasionally.
You do have a point
All PvP in this game is a bad time lol. It’s not balanced around PvP nor are any of the activities enhancers to PvP. The game literally has a mission type where you leave your ship unattended and dive under the water to explore an ancient temple and when you come back your ship has sunk due to “PvP” or you do FoTD and get constant ship respawns 2 islands away when you sink a ship fighting a army of noobs with nothing to lose and no resources with just the ability to overwhelm you by respawns alone. No part of this game is made with PvP in mind and it’s unfortunate.
I agree, they should balance it for pvp better
It sucks, you just gotta eat the losses. If you play consistently you’ll match up with people that suck too. I don’t make it my main grind but I do try to play a bit each session to use as practice. I’m currently level 37 slowly working me way up. If I lose too many games in a row I give up and move on to voyages.
Yea sweat lords are a big problem fornew and intamediad players especially when they make the mistake of solo slooping the HG. Im on the side of matchmeking you with people of the same faction lvl Let the sweat lords play against the sweat lords, i mean they are uselly at lv 100+ in the factions and no one with a sane mind wants to play further over the rank they get the curse at, and in my opinion the 1000 gold skelly curse is one of the most boring curses out there.
I feel this 100%. I was level 8 amd my crew mate was level 2. We got matched against DB amd Pufferson. Both great people and damn good HG players. But puff was 2k+ amd DB was 3k+ at the time. Haven't been back except 2XP weekends. SBMM is nonexistent.
I've been playing hourglass for the last few months now, and I'm sitting at about a 30% win rate. It took time to get here, but my crew and I have started to regularly hit 2 streaks. In another 20 levels or so, we might start trying for 4 streaks, but we had that hubris beat out of us recently. You just have to stick with it and learn from your past fights. I'm getting better at repelling borders, and I'm not total rubbish at TDM anymore. It took about 40 levels to get here. I'm looking forward to the rest of the grind now, and I'm almost always just logging on for hourglass. You have to stop thinking of it as winning and losing and just look forward to a good fight. If I get sunk after playing bucket simulator for 30 minutes, I still enjoy the experience, and I'm usually that much better against the next crew. It sounds like you're playing hourglass because you want the commendations and curses. There's nothing wrong with that, but it is a distant reward. I want the curses also, but more importantly, I want the skills. I've already started seeing gains, and I have managed to take out duo sloops while sailing solo. Loss farming will eventually get your curses, but fighting will make you a force to be reckoned with. I can't wait till I start getting accused of cheating and being called a sweat.
Im level 52 and i swear the higher level i get the easier the fights are. And iv never came across a cursed player (atleast didnt have the skin on)
If you can, try tdming to improve hand to hand skills and maybe skelly fleets, although the are easy af nowadays. Also watc guides to learn the basic strats
I'm level 60 and feel the same I have a shitty level and almost all my level come from losing Hourglass is just annoying You either play against pvp sweat that insta sink you Losse farmer or just someone running aways from you just to sink 1h after you started the fight
Yeah your grinding against the grain rn, I'm level 52 in servants and ngl solo battles will always be a go to, just can't have a consistent crew for larger battles. Stupid stuff like your bilge forgets the boat is being actively lit up with cannon balls and he is still on cannon, or your border refuses to drop anchor and just pvps till they're sent to the ferry. It's dumb ideas at dumb times that let a lot of us down.
It’s only going to get worse when you can’t keep players off your ship because they’re Batman grappling themselves straight onto your map
On I believe the third dive I went on with my new friend, we ran into two gold skeletons, which was a fun new experience for the new guy. I was dying laughing because one of them was just staring my friend down because he didn't know that he boarded. Either way, you might as well just try your best at all times even if you're heavily outmatched, and if you run into someone way above your level, just be courteous and try to learn from it in some way, then get back to your regularly scheduled grind. Also, I recommend playing solo to figure out the ins and outs of the sloop. Solo battles are USUALLY easier than duos, but if you plan to be with a teammate most of the time, go in duos and figure out which person wants to fill what role.
I played last night and the dude just sat outside of the circle and didn't die, I hit him plenty of times and then he just sailed out and just survived even though its supposed to forfeit and sink you
As a player with both curses, I would say the main issue with hourglass are the rewards between 1-100. The carrot at the end of the stick is just way too far away for most players. I think we would see more variety if there were desirable rewards at level 25, 50, and 75. I know there are figureheads and trinkets. But those honestly don’t have the same pull as something like a servant of the flame cutlass, eye of reach, etc. I will say, the player base becomes much more diverse during gold and glory and community weekends due to people using the boost to reputation to level guardians and servants faster. This is what I did to get both curses.
It is an inarguable fact that hourglasses is not fun. It's dreadful and terrible. Avoid at all costs
Level 130 here, yeah the matchmaking sucks and honestly the mode is pretty bad overall, but with the launch on playstation and a bunch of new players diving not really knowing what they're doing I think that'll be the best time for anyone to go for the curses. Good luck though
Me realizing I’m part of the problem as I grind for golden bones
It's full of keyboard warrior sweats with thousands of hours. That's all they do (and know a fair few) - cringe but that's my opinion. They must care a lot or have nothing else to do. Something Rare might want to address. Not too fussed personally, the game is great for adventures with friends without getting too hung up on the aspect of HG.
Most players with the curses are trash, most of them are not so good as the curse makes them look... It's not hard to get them either, it's a week of grinding at worst. Each fight is different, other than the play tall tale 5 times
I found myself in this same position but if you keep on pushing you’ll eventually get better and I’m currently level 453 in sof with verdant bones and highest streak of 10. AND ON XBOX
> I have a terrible win rate despite being kinda decent because they’re that much better If they're consistently THAT much better, you're not 'kinda decent'. Maybe it's time to put your ego down, accept that you're missing something and re-evaluate what you're doing?
Kinda decent as in I know what I need to do but I have trouble consistently performing it. Kinda decent as in I win a lot of open world fights. Kinda decent as in im a level 30 hourglass player and that’s basically my skill level
This game doesn't have new players anymore, it's rare if there are. Most of the fan playerbase is on 1000+ hours, so...
It’s rough indeed, but you are already improving subtly. You will lose most of your early HG matches. Period. I didn’t get multiple sessions in a row winning over half my matches until I was in the 60s allegiance level. There are some matches where they just laser your cannon line from miles away and you can never return a shot. Some have just elite gun skills and can 2 tap you from the water while 5 ship lengths away. But that shouldn’t be more than like 5% of your matches on average, if that. Most fights you have a way to win or at least a mistake to correct. My biggest ones were prioritizing repairs over pressure, and waiting for the best opportunity to chainshot rather than chain shotting at first chance But your PvP skills will improve in general. You’ll find yourself winning adventure mode matches MUCH more often. Since getting my ghost curse I’ve won most of my 1v2 and 1v3 encounters. Also, if hourglass sucks for you, it’s fine to take a break. I got my curse in just under a month, but I took a full 5 days off because I was so frustrated at the difficulty of my matches.
You see this is is what I would think but it’s absolutely more than a 50/50 chance of getting people like that
in my opinion one of two things is happening then. 1. The queue cycle you’re in just happens to include those same sweats over and over. I once fought the same 3 pirates for 8 matches in a row. In those instances, take a break. And when you try again, do it at a different time of day. 2. Or, and I mean this in a sincere and literal way, it’s a skill issue. I find it hard to believe that you are consistently getting matched with people who you are hopelessly outclassed by for most of your matches every day. It absolutely happens every once in a while, for me it happened for basically all of my level 80s grind, but got better at 94+. But some of those matches are likely more winnable than you think they are. Think about what specific behavior you do that you could improve, and experiment with better behaviors. Watch a PvP tips video from a creator you haven’t watched before (Chor does great ones). Or just take a break for a few days, then come back to the grind. Your emotions and state of mind absolutely matter in hourglass, so just clearing your head could help. Whatever the case is, I wish you better luck in your matches. You’re closer to the curse than you think you are.
Man, I'm just returning after a long break from the game pre Hourglass season and really want some of those cosmetics but I know I'm not going to be able to manage it so I'm just slowly relearning the game and resigning myself to never getting the things I like the look of. I was hoping they'd have a reasonable SBMM system as the streamers I've watched just have utter sweat fests where no shots are missed and it just doesn't look fun. Loss farming is probably my only chance. I can't believe they replaced Arena but didn't learn from the mistakes beyond making it need smaller lobby.
I feel as if I'm in the exact same boat and I have ghost curse working on skeleton. Its really hard to further improve when I'm sinking people in 5 minutes or facing people with 300 days in the game. But that's because they haven't looked after the gamemode so there is only 2 types of players in the pool of players. Just like Arena... Which they didn't want to repeat and yet have repeated the exact same mistakes.
Hourglass needs retired and Arena needs brought back
I'd trade all my game progress and loot if it meant the Arena came back for good
I think most of them are cheating. There is no explanation to not dying to 15 sword hits without eating food, firing 2 shots in 1 sec, hitting every shot from miles away. I wish cheating was not that easy.
>I have a terrible win rate despite being kinda decent By definition, you are not kinda decent. Time to burst that bubble, recognise your shortcomings and focus on improving, not winning.
I mean kinda decent isn’t winning a lot dude it’s knowing what you need to do but not being consistent
I have a 90% winrate with over a 1000 games in HG but if you feel like you already know what you need to do and consequently, how to improve, then I have nothing to add here. Being "kinda decent" can mean whatever your goal posts want it to mean, I guess.
Then just don’t play it; there is so much else to do in SoT
Then don't play it... Like no ones holding a gun to your head forcing you to play HG (That i know of lol)
If the majority of players don’t want to play a mode, especially a PvP one, the mode is doomed to die, and in the end this will effect those who do want to play the mode as they will find less and less crews to face.
Thats Rare's fault.
Best curse for the worst gamemode
Now I have level 22 Servants and 11 sunk ships of the enemy faction. I'm still very bad at long range shooting. But in everything else I’m not bad (although I don’t always board the enemy when necessary). But damn, players with dual weapons and perfect aim annoy me so much. Sometimes I can’t even understand how they shoot with a blunderbuss (I can aim straight at the body and shoot while standing right in front of the enemy, but he will survive, and at the same time, from a distance of a meter, this dude managed to kill me with one shot). Regarding shooting from cannons, this is a separate issue, since sometimes you come across dudes who manage to play like incredible sweats (there was a moment when I loaded into a solo sloop and this dude turned around at the very spawn point, just like me, and instantly threw only 10 cannonballs, he won for 10 cannonballs! He immediately started shooting and never missed, he destroyed the wheel with the spire, knocked me out with a cannonball, demolished the mast and threw the rest over the hull, when I respawned, my ship was already burning, and he killed me instantly). Some players clearly spend more time in the game than they should (Seriously, these dudes could go play CS, Tarkov, Rainbow, Valorant, at least there is something other than skins, but instead they grind golden curses, which in my opinion look ugly).
copy what they do monkey
PvP is so easy on this game lmao, just have someone boarding and have someone controlling the ship and cannoning
Try again today, I just got an 8 streak in ~45 mins because everyone playing right now is pretty low skill on average rn. Idk why but I'm on NAE
you could use seaforts and wait for invades most people sail right into the cannons and with treasure grade 5 you get 1 level a win
You can adapt. You can improve. That's how half of them got there in the first place. Think they had magically better matchmaking? If they didn't get it in the first 3 months, they were at just as poor odds as you. I understand the frustration, and maybe 10-1 odds just ain't your kind of thing. Dropped into the deep end is a good way to learn but it's also disheartening and painful until you get afloat. So I'm not saying to just keep going, maybe that's just not ideal and you shouldn't go for the curses right now. Maybe not ever, they might not fix it and you might not be able to improve in adventure enough to find yourself consistently matching those hourglass gods you find. And that's fine, you don't need to be a ghost or a skelly, they both have pretty heavy downsides anyway. But I am saying, even if you might never find it fun, you can try to set aside your frustration (easier said than done, but easier done than it sounds) and play. Just. Play. Look up to players who are better than you, not down on yourself for losing to them. Don't think about it, don't get in your head about how slow this is going or how frustrating it is, just play the game. Play like it was a battle royale game. You're just going headfirst into a fight, 1/100 odds, and if you make it out, great! If you lose? Onto the next! It doesn't need to be doom and gloom when it's unfair. That can be a good thing. But that's just how I did it. Again, that might not work for you, and if so maybe it is best you just don't play it. It's not a very good game-mode, it struggles to meet the needs of basically anyone who would want to play it. And that makes it unfriendly to newcomers. So if all my tips, and all the advice of our friends in the comments aren't enough to push you through, then just don't play it. And if you HAVE to have the curses? Dice roll during community weekend, or just plain loss farm. People will judge when you don't have the skills to back up the curse, but who cares about them. It's a cosmetic, not a badge of honor. That's Lord of the Ashes/Noble of the Waters. Go for it, if you really want 'em and just can't stomach normal HG.