the open crew system is in desperate need of a complete overhaul. players should be able to go into "crew finder" and select the boat size as well as activity they wish to join by checking boxes, then get paired with other players checking the same boxes. This way players wouldnt have to rely on the toxic and awkward discord to find crewmembers for certain activities such as hourglass, they could just "queue up" for a crew to grind hourglass similar to dungeon finder in world of warcraft. it could be used to find like-minded pirates for any activity, and players could still have the option to open up their crew to the crewfinder by selecting their activity in a menu and pressing "find me a crew"
Improved Crew Finder
@smokeburn-xc I still have hope this is part of what "guilds" will be.
Open crew, "Gold Hoarder Guild", find a crew doing GH voyages.
I would not balk at a more Deep Rock Galactic solution, which IMO is the gold standard for LFG.
@lordqulex I'm hoping for more generic player created guilds, open guild chat, "anyone want to do Gold Hoarders?".
To me faction based guilds is just more strangers with stranger behaviors, it would have the same weaknesses as Open, Xbox and Discord.
But we do need something, solo is what new players end up in because the other groupings fail and yet solo is supposedly hard mode. It doesn't add up.
@smokeburn-xc Would you envision this being at the main menu like Open Group or in game?
Neither would be perfect because once you specify an activity it might be a long wait. At the menu that would be boring and in game would mean abandoning whatever you were doing.
@foambreaker But player created guilds need to start somewhere that should not be a new channel on their Discord called "Guild Recruitment." We're not allowed to advertise for private Discords on the official one, but if players meet in game and want to join a pirate created Guild via Discord that absolutely happens. I've been on a few that have died off for various reasons.
I like the idea of if a pirate wants to start a guild they have to meet other pirates on the seas, be courteous (deliberately did not say peaceful), and say "hey, you're cool, wanna join my guild and play again some time?" But I just don't see that being very successful on a wide spread basis and that will just devolve into private Discord servers being the hub of the guild anyway, unless guilds cost gold to create in game and you get a guild social hub or something. For them to work they need to be available to pirates that perhaps don't own a PC, can't use Discord, and needs to be centered around the SoT client.
I understand there's no reason to reinvent the wheel; why put Discord inside of the client when we can just use Discord? But not everyone can, so I'm really hoping for an improved open crew in game. After you meet pirates, you can always follow them on XBox social, which is currently the only mechanism available across all supported platforms that can play the game.
Disclaimer: I don't own a Steam Deck. I know SoT is listed under "functional but not supported" with the Deck.
@lordqulex "when we can just use Discord"
I don't Discord, LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, etc.
I am not a product which is what people are to those companies. To be honest I am hoping SCOTUS kills section 230 which will change the whole dynamic for these companies.
@smokeburn-xc what activity do you mean? Like X crew is on an Athena voyage, join them? Sounds horrendous trying to navigate the UI on Xbox to pick a crew for that. Much better it’s random and the experience the crew bond together over happens organically. Plus, use Xbox group finder, SoT’s Discord page, even the group finder via the SoT site. Many options.
this a good idea and i had for a while now, imagine being able to pair with people who want to do the same as you, maybe make a interface with boxes and you choose what you want to do and you get paired with people with same interests (that being tall tales, hourglass, sky events or a specific company quest), but also is important they still leave the option to look for a random crew.
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