On kicking and matchmaking.

  • aglaglaglou
    Castaway

    I'm a new player on Sea of Thieves, and open crew has been horrible. In 20 hours of playing, I only got on 1 open crew that wasn't useless (galleon on open crew is probably the worst...). I've seen people talk about this issue a lot on this forrum and I don't see Rare adding the option to kick players any time soon, so I come with a few suggestions.

    Firstly, I like the idea that captain should be able to kick anyone they want, it's their boat after all. But in this case, there should be an option to choose between captained ship and uncaptained one when joining open crew, this way people that fear an injustified kick can go play uncaptained.

    I'm a payday player, a game where it's very hard to get anything done if a player screws around. To remedy this, we have a mod called lobby settings, which allows players to set limits for players to be able to join the session (limits like playtime, level and infamy level, vac ban on account and private steam account.) Note that on payday, the host has all the rights to kick, which helps too.
    I think this would be a great solution to solve the problem of open crew. If you added the option for captains (once again, leave uncaptained as is for players who wouldn't like the change) to set limits for other players to join as crew, it would able people who want to play seriously to find and play with like minded people, while still leaving the option for players who liked the "old" system better. Limits could be reputations at factions, hours played and such.

    Let me know what y'all think about this, I'm interested to see.

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  • CallMeBackdrafT
    Vanguard
    Insider
    Founder

    @aglaglaglou my main suggestion for you, dont play open crew. Use LFG to find likeminded people OR join the official sot discord

  • aglaglaglou
    Castaway

    @callmebackdraft yeah I know, but this will never solve the issue.

  • heslashthem
    Legend
    Insider

    All members of the crew are equal. The captain shouldn’t have any more power over the other members. Yes it may be their ship, but that doesn’t mean they can command other players and even boot them out of their play session. If players are misbehaving, brig and report them as necessary.

  • Foambreaker
    Sailor

    @tesiccl Yes, and in fact many of the suggestions to give captains power are from captains who think they can boss people around. aka Captain Bligh. :)

  • aglaglaglou
    Castaway

    @tesiccl I don't really care for the kick thing, main point is matchmaking. Right now open crew is a dumpster fire, I'd like it not to be. Though I still can't see what's wrong with the captains having power, it's never an issue in payday. People should be able to play with who they want imo, if a griefer joins and won't leave, he's still both griefing and making free money because he's taking a crew slot.

    I feel like the whole multiplayer of the game is badly designed tbh.

  • heslashthem
    Legend
    Insider

    @aglaglaglou what works in one game with its own rule set doesn’t mean it will work or should work in another.

    Rule 4 of the sea: All Crew Members Are Equal

    That’s your opinion but I think the devs would highly disagree considering they literally made it a core rule that no one other player should have power over another. Payday is also an fps, this game isn’t, it’s also not competitive either so it doesn’t require hard rules the same way as other fps games do.

  • heslashthem
    Legend
    Insider

    @foambreaker some players take the pirate captain fantasy literally and suddenly think they have slaves to do their bidding…no.

  • aglaglaglou
    Castaway

    @tesiccl Payday and Sea of Thieves are more similar than you'd think, reducing it to "just a fps therefore not the same" isn't very fair... In both games you steal stuff in groups of 4 max, with way too much time spent moving loot around. In both games, one rogue player can mess up other player's experience. Which is why I chose to compare them in the first place.
    Lobby settings would work in SoT for sure though. Same for the kicking thing. And it doesn't matter to you if you don't want to play it, since in my suggestion it would keep the "old" system too, it's litteraly win win (even more so if you consider how much people could benefit from it instead of focusing on people that will get kicked unfairly, which is bound to happen with such system, but it's a risk you'd be willing to take if you enter such crew, so no loss). If that's something you'd like to play (I know I would) you can, if not it's alright, everyone's free to do whatever you get what I'm saying ?

    Also the captain thing was just for the example since it already exists, it was just simpler for me. If you wanted to be both on open crew and captained for the perks, then you could just make another type of open crew with kick rights instead of tying it to the captain thingy. The captain acting as session leader would make senss to me since I come from payday, and everyone would still be equal imo. Host isn't more important than anyone else in payday, even if he has rights over his session... he's just the host, and he'd be no more than a solo without the other players. If he acts bad, we leave, if we act bad, he kicks. Seems fair to me.

    I'm not sure what you were trying to say about competitiveness though, is SoT or Payday supposed to be ? They're both really casual games I'm pretty sure, but again I just started SoT...

    Also I'm not delusional, I'm aware that all of this is probably useless talk to be burried in the depths of the forrum.

  • CallMeBackdrafT
    Vanguard
    Insider
    Founder

    @aglaglaglou payday and Sea of thieves have way different requirements in the means of time investment
    where payday heists can be setup and done pretty quickly a sea of thieves session usually is only fruitfull with at least 2 hours of time invested.

    i personally dont get it why people even bother with open crew and want to add changes to it, when the game first came out open crew was the only option, so crew setup had to be complete before clicking set sail otherwise crew slots could and would be taken by Randoms, the community was elated when closed crew got added and for me, i never looked back, closed crew it was, and the other means of finding crewmates do just fine, for me it was Discord in which i found a lot of likeminded people some of which i still play with to this day.

    also, if you actually have a crewember that actively griefs (purposefully sinks or keeps damaging the ship or dropping loot for instance) report them and they will receive a nice yellow/red beard and will get some time to think about their actions.

  • aglaglaglou
    Castaway

    @callmebackdraft yeah that's mostly why I don't think it will change, it's been like this for so long... I doubt having a yellow or red beard would do anything to prevent them from griefing again though, since they're free to do what they want.
    Good point on the time invested, but you could have a commendation system for good people, that way you know more or less who you're getting in with at the start ?

  • CallMeBackdrafT
    Vanguard
    Insider
    Founder

    @aglaglaglou a red beard will prevent them from ever playing the game again (on that account) since its a perma ban

  • BurnBacon
    Vanguard
    Insider

    Think about the other boot. What if it were you who appeared to a crew as useless. The captain kicks you

    What if the captain and you alone did 2 hours of loot and the captain friend wants in on the loot. So they kick you out.

  • aglaglaglou
    Castaway

    @callmebackdraft ah I see, that would certainly prevent them from griefing yeah x)

  • aglaglaglou
    Castaway

    @burnbacon I wouldn't mind. I would have chose to join his crew knowing it could happen, and I play the game for fun, not for gold or reputation. With a commendation system you could downvote the guy to let the next person know that this person could kick to let their friends join too. An alternative would be to prevent any friends from joining your crew after a kick for something like 30 minutes, to deter people from making room for their friends just before a sell.

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