Started doing open crew roulette again

@realstyli I really enjoy open crew roulette.

You meet the strangest pirates. It can definitely be one of the most wholesome ways to play the game.

I only stay if they have mics though.

"Say ahoy. You have 10 seconds to comply, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, NEXT!"

It's surprising sometimes the number of PLs you meet who are also playing Open Crew roulette, and the unexpectedly great crews that you randomly join can really blow the dust off things when the game feels a bit stale.

There are of course some truely awful people you meet too. Trolls, toxic people, edgelords and complainers. You meet them in LFG and Discord too though. I'm generally an easy-going fella, but there are some personalities that just clash with mine. I've learned to accept this and I don't stay long in crews where I'm going to have a problem with people.

I guess I'm properly a vagrant these days with no regular crew to call my own. Although I do have people I regularly play with. I had considered joining a fleet, but if I'm honest, I used to be a senior member of a WoW raiding guild and I have a deep distrust of and aversion to player run organisations as a result. Games should not be taken seriously. It's unnatural.

Getting the right mix of skills and personalities can be tricky, and in my experience, for crew integrity, personality is more important than skill.

@sshteeve if you want to dip your toes in the water joining an open crew sloop is a good place to start. You'll only have one other player to deal with.

Brigs quite often turn out to be two friends in need of a 3rd. Which can be either great or awful. I've run into more "I'm the captain!" types on Brigs than anywhere else, which is great because sometimes I love to just kick back and be the bilge rat, but I have a very low tolerance for captains who try to lead a crew by shouting at them.

Galleons are really a massive mixed bag. I tend to want to be sure there's at least one other person who knows what they're doing, otherwise I'll be steering, managing sails and repairing all by myself and sure if I wanted to do that I'd solo a sloop.

I've only twice opened a boat that I was already sailing. It did not go well the first time. The second time was great. I'm still put off by that first time though.

I always had great luck with open crews and much fun.
It has been different lately though.
No matter which ship I choose, I often find myself on my own ship and alone waiting for someone else to join.
When someone does join, they leave almost immediately.

@glannigan said in Started doing open crew roulette again:

I too started goofing around with Open Crew. My last 3 play sessions were 2-3 players on a Galleon taking turns trolling each other and sinking our own ship.

Awesome play sessions that are good for about 15 minutes of entertainment.

Yeah, the way I look at it, I don't even attempt open crews if I want to get something specific done. I just join to chill and pass some hours on the seas. The randomness can be very entertaining.

A lot of the time it's newbies too and it can be gratifying to pass on some knowledge from experience - though I usually try not to be "the Captain", that can be too much work with a bad crew, so I go with the flow.

A few times, I've joined crews that are struggling, helped them repair their ship or whatever and leave when I realise they're not the crew for me. I joined one galleon last week that seemed to be 3 kids playing (I can only guess around 10ish in age). I laughed so much hearing them talk back and forth, but left soon afterwards when they anchored the fullspeed galleon to pick up a goblet from the water. I don't have patience for that sort of thing but I hope they had fun though.

@butterybarnacls said in Started doing open crew roulette again:

I always had great luck with open crews and much fun.
It has been different lately though.
No matter which ship I choose, I often find myself on my own ship and alone waiting for someone else to join.
When someone does join, they leave almost immediately.

Sorry, that's me. If I join at an outpost with only one other player in the crew, I leave. Nothing against those crews but it's much easier to judge a full crew, especially if they're already on a voyage.

However, my only exception is if the game puts me back in that same outpost crew a second time, then I stay and see if the crew fills.

@scoobywrx555

I do wish there was some sort of preferences you could select before searching. So the game will at least try to match you will people with players who have the same goals or play style.