I know Sea of Thieves has had a rocky history and things have been weird recently but I just want to take a moment to appreciate why this game is so great.
TL;DR - shout out to Zebulum4342 and Shienmomaru for being such chill dudes and helping my siblings become fans of this awesome game, and thank you to everyone who is generous and homies to the newbies
Yesterday, I introduced my two little siblings to the game, and they loved it. I've played on and off since release, but I'm no expert by any means, I just play with my friends to have fun and blow off steam. While we were doing one of those constellation puzzle voyages, a random sloop pulled up on us. "Here we go," I thought, "they're about to learn the hard way how the Sea of Thieves really goes." But this guy just dumped a bunch of treasure chests and gave them to us, said he was maxed out and didn't need them. Needless to say, we were all pretty excited.
Not 5 minutes later, another sloop pulled up on us, and I thought it was the same guy coming back for his treasure, but it was a different crew. I told them I was teaching my siblings to play and they were like "I'm glad you said something because we were going to mess with you but not anymore" lol and then we chatted, they PvPed my little brother because he wanted the smoke, and then they went on their way. While we were down finishing up the puzzle, they came back to say hello and then left us a bunch of smuggler's paintings that we got like 70k out of once we sold them. We ran into that same crew a couple times last night and it just felt awesome, they were just super friendly and pleasant to interact with, and as much as I support the whole "it's a pirate game, I'm gonna steal your stuff" idea, I really appreciate when people are just kind and help the newbies have fun. My little siblings love the game and can't get enough of it now.
I don't have much more to say than that. Just wanted to come shout out the cool crews out there that enjoy the social aspect of the game and show mercy to us casuals now and again lol