An open crew update is much needed and long overdue. It could just be a dropdown list of activities to select from to pair you with other players that want to progress the same things e.g. world events, a specific trading company's voyages, fishing, hourglass, etc. This simple kind of crew "matchmaking" system would greatly help open crews to unify on specific tasks instead of their usual chaotic nature. The current open crew system is like going on the official discord's LFC channel and just posting "LTJ galleon" rather than something like "LTJ galleon doing legend of the veils".
Open Crew Update Suggestion
The issue with open crew is that you're crewing with randoms in a sandbox. Anything can happen in a sandbox and you don't have to stay attached to one single goal. It is, in full design, meant to be chaotic. Crews that refuse to use out-of-game sources for crewing up, are given an option in case they do not want to solo sloop. The quality heavily varies, but that's the consequence of crewing with random players in a sandbox.
You do not join/start an open crew only so you can get YOUR commendations done. This is not Deep Rock Galactic. Time to open yourself a Discord account and start mingling in the Official Discord if you want to do that, otherwise, you can enjoy and embrace the chaos and have a good time instead.
People often criticize the quality of open crew but in my experience with it the narrative does not match what my experience was.
The issue with open crew is people viewed it as something that owed them something rather than a resource for those without connections or those that wanted random adventure with random people.
Open crew doesn't owe people content, it doesn't owe people personal accomplishment, it doesn't owe people their preferences, that's what resources outside of the game are for.
Imo the people that approach open crew with that in mind and with patience rarely had/have serious issues during their adventures.
Control over open crew is to leave people behind that should have at least have a chance for people stick around for a while.
This is what makes me remarkably curious about guilds. (Not an insider.)
I don't remember who said it, but the overview was "Rare does not need to improve open crew because they have the Discord server." From a software developer's perspective, absolutely! Why should I spend my team's time and resources on a matchmaking system when I can outsource it, for free, to Discord!? Makes no sense! Sure, there are some players that can't use Discord, sorry. Yes, there are some players that don't want to use Discord, but that's their decision.
So guilds are not going to be what I consider contemporary MMO "guilds"—a group of players that met in game that recruit you to join their guild to do large activities together, maybe build a base together (there are no customizable bases), and participate in guild v. guild PVP. That paradigm is now centered on Discord (every guild I've joined in every other game this millenia has been on Discord) and Rare's discord blocks invites to other Discord servers. So they would literally be blocking the easiest path for me to recruit pirates into my guild! Maybe that's intended, you'd need to meet pirates on the seas to invite them, but I just don't see it happening.
But I mean, I'm on the official Discord. It's nothing but HG and server hopping right now. I somehow spend a solid 30 minutes every night just finding a crew and that cuts into my sailing time. In that regard, I would love to see an Open Crew/Ship/[Emissary]/[Activity] selection in the client alike to Deep Rock Galactic. I think it would only go to improve the game because it's the chaos in adventure mode that makes the game dramatic, not the chaos trying to get into adventure mode.
There is a saying, "man plans, god laughs." There's nothing wrong with starting out according to plan. The adventure is watching that plan fall apart.
@lordqulex I'm actually hoping the US Supreme Court shoots down Section 230 which protects companies like Discord and Reddit from prosecution and responsibility for what users post. Reddit especially will not survive in it's current form, Discord to a lesser extent.
I would be disappointed if the guild feature were farmed out to Discord like that.
@foambreaker said in Open Crew Update Suggestion:
I would be disappointed if the guild feature were farmed out to Discord like that.
That is what almost every contemporary game is doing right now. I mean, they have in-game content for guilds: territory wars, instances that require 16+ players, customizable bases, et cetera. But those things I just don't see fitting in SoT. I mean, I would LOVE to own an instanced sea fort and decorate it as my own. I would LOVE to have a league of pirates to play with regularly. I would LOVE there to be guild events like the Legend of the Shrouded Ghost adventure that require 2+ ships. But that's a lot to add in one update. It would be very ambitious.
But all of that doesn't change the fact that outside of the game client, modern guilds use discord to organize and communicate. I don't know how many other games you play, but this is very common...
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