Introduction -
Ahoy mates! Shiver me timbers, I have been seeing a lot of complaints in the last few days in regards to match making. Complaints of trolling, laziness, being land lubbers (inability), lack of microphones and hornswaggling (taking your ship full of treasure and leaving your marooned unable to complete your voyage/current quest).
I want to take a second here to talk about how you can manage this instead of relying/demanding that Rare makes a change to the current crew/matchmaking system.
Crew members are a resource -
Prior to sailing in to the DR, you ensure that you stock up with wooden planks.
Before engaging in a ship battle, you ensure you are stocked with cannon balls.
When you go ashore to battle skeletons, you ensure that you have bananas.
So why is it that prior to starting a mission, you don't ensure that you have the correct crew mates?
In any game where you are playing with random people, be it a round of CoD, a hard mission on Warframe, an online mission on Grand Theft Auto, you cannot expect everyone to be of the same standard as you, or to go about completing goals in the same fashion that you do.
So how can we manage this? Treat gathering good crew mates as its own mission type.
Planning to complete your goals without the proper resources (aka a reliable crew) is planning to fail.
Gathering your resources -
I have spent just over a week playing this game so far, most of my intentions when I am going in to random match making is finding permanent people to play with. When I started this game, I was alone. Now I have 8 new people on my friends list in an xbox message group, and have recruited 3 reliable people I know in real life to play with.
Chances are when I play, that at least 1-2 of these people are online and willing to join in. I am starting each game at least partially "stocked" with the valuable resource of crew members.
This has multiple benefits, but the benefit I see the most is that we have the numbers to find more people to join us, and if they do end up being rotten, we have the ability to lock them in the brig.
Public Matchmaking is a tool -
Much like barrels are there to find cannon balls etc, match making is there to find people. I don't consider it being there for finding people for a single session, but finding people for use later on as well.
Social Skills and Attitude -
The way you conduct yourself online is the catalyst in which you can ensure that you will find people to play with going forward. Being polite, reasonable, focused and articulate are the key in both this game, any other online game, and succeeding in a team environment in real life.
Trying to find positive attributes in people, and encouraging those traits will go a long way to keep people interested in achieving goals, and getting them wanting to come back playing with you.
Find someone not really interested in sailing, but is good at combat? No worries, let them slack off a bit when sailing, but still encourage them to help out.
Turning land lubbers in to old sea dogs -
You were new once too. Find someone nice over the mic who is new to the game? Ask them directly what their intentions in game are. Are they willing to learn? Do they like asking questions? Teach them, and then continue to recruit them for future missions!
It's not all about you! -
Final word is, it's not always about you, remember after you have found some people to play with regularly, that they have different goals that they want to achieve. If something isn't time sensitive eg. Forsaken Shores, take the time away from your own personal to help others with what they are going for.
In no time you will be stocked to the brim in cannon balls, bananas, wooden planks and reliable crew mates which you will be retelling stories of heroics with for years to come!
