Rare started this journey in the Hungering Deep by trying something new: requiring a fifth person to progress in a quest line.
It was great, and fun... for the first day, and then the problems started surfacing.
Galleons and sloops alike would camp Merrick. Legitimate players who were fortunate enough to be on a server that didn't have campers would stock up their ships in eager anticipation for meg to.... wait. Sometimes for 30 minutes and sometimes for hours. Sometimes, the wait would never end.
Frustrated, many of these pirates took to the forums in hopes that the great creators would hear their plea. However, the community was clearly divided:
MY experience [on the first day] was wonderful, I enjoyed sailing with another crew SO much
I had to sit at shark bait for HOURS and never even saw another ship
You see, all you have to do is be super diplomatic, find someone else on the server and just buy their ship. Easy!
Griefers everywhere... and when I see other ships, they just shoot at me
Then, response was given. THD was a HUGE, MASSIVE success. Ship encounter combat rates fell sharply! People want to coordinate with other crews so we're going to keep doing that, even though we haven't provided any replayability or incentive to do it multiple times or a way for multiple crews to join the same server.
Fine. Let me be clear. There is nothing wrong with requiring crew coordination if you provide the tools to make it work, such as crews being able to join via LFG.
There is absolutely NOTHING fun, however, about artificially extending the time it takes to complete quests by requiring you to hope and pray that someone random in your server has the same goals as you and then proceed to hopefully find them.
I helped end the eternal wait for many in THD, and the reward is another quest line with the same bottleneck.
Until Rare either makes these types of requirements limited to a 4 man single crew or gives us the tools needed to effectively pair with like minded crews, I propose an unpopular solution:
Let's make that statistic go back up, and sharply. Let's band together across servers with the same goal: to make this quest so uncompletable after the first day that Rare has to do a better job of implementing the tools or incentive to make these quests engaging and fun instead of an artificial time sink.
Sink the ships, instead of our time. Form blockades at the challenging multi crew thrones. Make them hate you, the quest and the poor implementation.
We will be spat upon. Despised for our efforts. Misunderstood. Called Griefers, Hackers and s**m. But, we're the heroes that the Sea of Thieves deserves, just not the ones it needs right now. Join me my friends, so that this is the last time this design is forced upon us haphazardly.
See you on the seas.
