You can call me a griefer

  • Wodyo

    I don't much care. My experience last night just reaffirmed my opinion of randoms/random crews...

    I was powering through merchant quests yesterday, when I decided to open my fully stocked brigantine (also loaded with chickens, chicken coops, and snake baskets) up for random's to join. When they joined, they instantly turn the ship around and proceeded [to try] to turn the 3 golden chickens in to the wrong outpost. After fighting them with the anchor & sails, I said a few choice words, and they sent me to the slammer. I figured, "Well, this is cool. They'll take my fully-stocked boat and earn some coin. I'll just put the rubber band on the kiddo's xbox controller and..." /Poooof/ they let me out of the brig. They realized their error, turned the ship around, and began traveling back towards the necessary outpost, to turn in the chickens.

    We quickly unload, and with no need to gather materials, we all dart back to the ship, and the captain's voyage table. Ignoring all of my work gathering chicken coops and snake baskets, the rando's decide to go on a voyage for 4 or 5 OOS captains. Ugh!

    The noobs couldn't land at snake island, because I guess driving in a storm is hard? I took over the helm, and even though they refused to raise sail, I managed to park the ship beautifully between the little & big islands.

    They jump off, and go to start fighting skellies...

    I went and found a keg, sunk my boat, and logged off.

    I assume the two that had joined me were in an xbox party together. They spoke once, when they joined, and never again afterwards. They were working together, essentially hijacking my boat.

    The random crew experience is the worst. I keep hoping it will get better, but it never does.

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  • MAD G4M3R

    Once I had a random that turned ship multiple times to outpost because there is a wreckage near the shore as part of enviro (BTW using interactive objects as environmental noninteractive decoration is a huge design flaw in this game - barrels, cages, wreckages).

  • GPMrks
    Master

    That's why I only play single player. hahaha.

  • Wodyo

    @mad-g4m3r I have no problem with going to shipwrecks. That's not what happened. They literally parked at the wrong outpost, and proceeded to carry chickens to the wrong Merchant NPC, all while I was locked in the brig.

  • Zephraxe
    Captain
    Insider
    Founder

    Playing with randoms can be pretty bad at times. I didn’t have many people to play with at the beginning, but what I’ve done is keep my voice comms on and engaged with other players that played well and seemed like fun, and added then as friends. We ended up sailing together in the future. Now, that didn’t last forever, but another option is finding a community on Discord or something that you can get to know and easily find other people to play with that are positive and fun to play with. I am in several and can always find people to play with for an awesome time on the seas.

  • Wodyo

    @Zephraxe I've never been a fan of discord. I'm stuck in the olden-days of Teamspeak and Ventrillo, lol. I've joined a couple groups on facebook, but I'm not fond of the idea of searching outside of the game for others who would want to play.

    I've been an avid-gamer for roughly 20 years. I've been part of communities in quite a few games, over that time. I have no problem with having an external community. I don't have the time to be as involved in gaming communities, the way I used to. That's why I would prefer that the game had some feature to describe available crews to join (the number of crew, current voyage, treasure aboard, alliance status, etc.), or an assigned Captain who has more control of the ship.

    We (I do, and I've seen a lot of others as well) call them 'randoms,' and sure that's what they are. But the crew selection, in the start of the game at least, doesn't say anything about 'join random players.' I think that taking some of the randomness out of the start could be a huge help to building crews in-game.

    My complaint is likely barely a glitch on Rare's radar, seeing how they have always promoted the official Discord, Fleets, and all. Maybe the Ship Captaincy will give the type of control I'd like to see, but I doubt that too. Lol

  • JESTER776

    Why on earth would you turn it on after being fully loaded. That's like loading up your car with cupcakes and then inviting the neighborhood kids to help you unload them into your house. You know you're gonna have problems.

    lol

  • Wodyo

    @jester776 said in You can call me a griefer:

    Why on earth would you turn it on after being fully loaded. That's like loading up your car with cupcakes and then inviting the neighborhood kids to help you unload them into your house. You know you're gonna have problems.

    lol

    Lol... I was kinda near the end of my session for the night. I had already earned a good 15-20k, and I figured I'd gamble for some more help to quickly power through a little more.

    Honestly, if they hadn't put me in the brig, and if they hadn't turned my ship around to turn chickens in at the wrong place, I would have just left quietly. I don't like wasting all that effort, stocking the ship, and I've given supplied ships away in the past. Those supplies were wasted on these guys, though - KABOOM.

  • Omnipotence13
    Captain
    Insider

    Randoms are an investment. They may be few and far between, but every once in a while you find a new player that has a mic and you can work with. Those players become future crews, the others you never see again

  • AZChristopher
    Ship Mate
    Insider

    Anyone here use the Looking for Group feature on Xbox? Any luck?

    I scrolled through it last night but was gun shy on who to actually message.

  • Riareth
    Captain
    Insider
    Founder

    @azchristopher I use LFG most times I play, and my experience has been mostly positive.
    As a tip, only bother to try to join recently posted LFG (5 minutes or at most 10). Seems like people just leave them open forever.

  • Wodyo

    I use LFG once in awhile. I definitely have more success that way. I'm just not fond of xbox parties, personally. There's no Push-to-Talk option that I'm aware of for the voice chat, and that's another pet-peeve of mine.

    Like I said above... I assume the two randoms that joined me were already in a party together, as they were [mostly] working together. They had talked in-game when they joined, then never again.

    Maybe if xbox party chat was somehow merged into the crew chat, my latest foul experience could have been averted.

  • KattTruewalker
    Vanguard
    Insider
    Founder
    Deckhand

    @omnipotence13 said in You can call me a griefer:

    Randoms are an investment. They may be few and far between, but every once in a while you find a new player that has a mic and you can work with. Those players become future crews, the others you never see again

    I think this just about sums it up, we're going to encounter players who see the game, log in and just want to sail around or don't necessarily subscribe to wanting to quest, they've seen the trailer for Cursed sails etc and are logging in with some preconceptions around what you do in game. I do also still encounter pirates who are very reluctant to use voice chat in game. But there are gems and future friends out there too.

    I agree with the captaincy feature though, I do know it's been brought up many times on the forums as an option and we do know that some form of 'ownership' has been mentioned by Rare, particularly around Pirate Legends. If, as captain/owner/first logged in/crew leader you perhaps had some priority options over wheel/brig or anchor for instance, it might go a way to preventing some of this behaviour at least until they listened.

  • Omnipotence13
    Captain
    Insider

    Haha I am just picturing a giant lock that the captain can attach to the anchor so the deckhands can’t drop it

  • Sytoki
    Marauder
    Insider

    Randoms are the worst kind of players, whether are not we like that. Last night my crew tried doing the wilds with another brig and a sloop joins halfway through WITH THE WRONG SAILS. They just showed up and joined our alliance in the middle of the second last wave.

    Other brig sinks last wave but we complete it, no thanks to the sloop sitting there. We start collecting loot and then they come over to “help” us load.

    My crewmate was p****d these freeloaders prevented us from getting the alliance commendation. He says “I really wanna sink these guys...” not realizing I was already kegging them.

    Fast forward fight (they weren’t good) we unallied and sink them. They suddenly found the mics they didn’t have and started calling us all sorts of fun words but the one that made us bust out laughing was f*****t griefers.

    On the way to sell we noticed them ally with 2 other sloops that when we first encountered they didn’t want to help. Funny how fast they get better at combat when they can’t just leech off others.

    We sell and let them sink us, waving to them as we sell the last items in front of their greedy little faces.

    TLDR what’s the difference between a random and a griefer? Griefers at least have mics.

  • Wodyo

    @sytoki
    That bites about the commendation. I'm not so sure that those are the kind of random players I'm talking about though, lol. What you describe is an encounter with another crew on the Seas. My experience entails random crew mates. There's even less you can do about what you've described, other than exactly what you did - cheers to the battle won! :)

    @sytoki said in You can call me a griefer:

    TLDR what’s the difference between a random and a griefer? Griefers at least have mics.

    LOL

  • Wodyo

    @katttruewalker I agree, and to a great extent it is completely understandable - not everyone has the same goals in every session. Honestly, I was kind of expecting to be hijacked, with the Cursed Sails event actively going and being fully stocked. Really, as I'd already said, I was intending to leave the ship for the next crew. These dudes just really rubbed me wrong.

    I'm not a Pirate Legend yet (39/36/42/0), though I've been grinding since day 1. I remember reading/hearing something about PL's and Ship Captaincy. It's the one thing I most look forward to, upon reaching legendary status, and it's not even in the game yet! I reeeeeaaallly want to name my boat! Lol. Having some sort of authority over the ship would be the proverbial icing on the cake. The downside to giving ship control to only PL's would be the non-PL's (such as myself) would still have to contend with obstinate crew members. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad, though, I don't know.

  • EibeDionysos29

    I wouldn't deem voice chat to be absolutely necessary to form an effective crew, as everyone "just" needs to know his stuff - which is rarely the case - to operate a ship and complete voyages without a hassle.
    Heck, I have a microphone too, but refuse to talk to strangers.

    It would already be enough if other players would at least use the textchat or G-commands. Because let's be honest: If you are not interested in communicating at all, maybe you should stick to soloing instead. Or staying with SP-games.

  • OtherFanboy
    Legend
    Insider
    Founder

    I usually play with a friend but if so just jump into a random crew I bounce around until I find skilled players who are on a mission, and when my buddy and I run a ship we usually look the person with us in the brig if they start problems until they either quite out or we do

  • Genuine Heather
    Captain
    Insider

    @jester776 said in You can call me a griefer:

    Why on earth would you turn it on after being fully loaded. That's like loading up your car with cupcakes and then inviting the neighborhood kids to help you unload them into your house. You know you're gonna have problems.

    lol

    That was my immediate reaction, also. Yikes.

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