Open Crews are Terrible

It's not the differing level of 'skill' that bothers me, really. It's getting people on to a similar task, and keeping them focused.

Its pretty much how it went for me as mostly all the time I was getting no crew one person screw a rare full screw but already left and the list goes on, its quiet a shame.

@wodyo said

Maybe joining a random crew is good fun for Joe Neate, and the developers, and I'm sure the random players you join up with are excited too. But you're just goofing off with your game, proving to the player base that you "play the game too." It is not fun for a casual gamer to have to deal with those sorts of issues, especially from someone on your own crew/team.

I totally agree. Rare's developer team and other employees should play the game in a new profile and plain sails that doesn't depict them as anyone special.
They all need to join a crew as a random on open servers and actually test the game that they are so proudly standing behind.

What they do in streams isn't playing the same game we are playing. It's like only testing your new model Lamborghini on the autobahn and not putting it through the congested city streets or winding roads that your customers are expected to drive it through.

Although in their defense they can't be expected to be held responsible for who sails the seas and who you may be paired with.
But it would be nice if they could see first hand some of the difficulties in the real world application of the game without rose coloured glasses.

If your on a sloop and want players to join you, and find that one leaves and the wait for another to join takes ages, i have a tip.
Go into crew settings, switch to closed crew, then switch back to open crew, you should get another person join you within 2 minutes. And so on.. But you will find many people ship hop, hoping to land on a boat with treasure on board so they can insist you go to the outpost and cash it in, then leave afterwards. Lots of those players out there wanting a quick payday with no work.

Yeah whenever I use open crew, it becomes a game of joining and leaving crews until I can find a normal one.

Most of the time, you either get a crew of new players that want to mess around/don't know how to play, or an abandoned ship in the middle of nowhere, filled with water and no active voyages.

For the best experience, you need to join&leave, until you get a group of people who talk/type and are in the middle of a voyage.

A ranking system would be nice. Restrict players to their level range so it would be easier to group with others that want the same thing.
For example, a level 25 player can play with either 20-30 players, or anything below that (if he wants).

They want everyone to play with each other, regardless of level and experience, I get that. Thing is, most players that want to achieve anything (which can be as simple as completing a single voyage) need to use other programs in order to find players, which shouldn't happen.

I remember trying to complete the skeleton ship battles with open crews. Never again. Just players from Discord for me now.

@admiral-rrrsole I'm not particularly fond of the idea of a PvPless area/Friendly-zone either. My thoughts go 2 ways on this issue, and that's 1) give players a list of crews/ships to join, and not making 'open crews' a purely random function, and/or 2) allow players to swap crews (and perhaps change ship-type) mid-session.

The latter option could certainly be abused... but so much in this game has been/is currently abused, I don't think such a feature would really be a negative (it already happens via 3rd party apps anyways).

@wodyo said

.. allow players to swap crews (and perhaps change ship-type) mid-session.

G'day mate, we've got part of your wish list covered in this thread.
https://www.seaofthieves.com/forum/topic/74644/ship-type-changing-mid-session?page=1

Not only is it just another extremely popular request but the thread shows how easy it can be implemented pointing out that everything required, as far as coding, is already in the game. Despite Joe Neate saying it was too hard to program something like this.

Hmm it seems I am in a minority here, I have only been playing for about a week, and I have been consistently finding good, focused, hard working team players in game. So much so that I would go as far as to say this game has the best online community I have ever found in random players through joining groups.
Of course you occasionally get a lemon group/session, but its what you make of it. You really cannot expect everyone to want to achieve the same goals you do, this is what pre-making groups is for.
Why some people insist on putting down legendary voyages when in a group of noobs etc escapes me, everyone is confused and struggling. If you want to just play with randoms, expect to conform to the lowest common denominator.

Last night when I joined in, none of my normal crew were available to play, though I zoned in to a ship and found 2 great players, one a pirate legend, another a completely new player.
I explained my intentions and goals, aka complete 2 more mystic DR voyages to get access to Forsaken Ashes clothes, and get dubloons to complete the time limited items.
The new guy didn't know what I was talking about, but was willing to learn how to play, and pirate legend was happy to join in on the voyage.

This became a bit of a ramble sorry, but the point is that the matchmaking really hasn't been bad for me, I have never had troubles finding groups, I have met great people and added them to an xbox group chat along the way meaning I have to search through random people less and less (and even then I keep finding good people).

Maybe the problem is your attitude and social skills, if you are having an issue finding good players in this game.