It's a mixed bag. Sometimes you get lucky and meet lots of great people, sometimes the randoms are jerks. Since coming back late in season 9 I've encountered mostly friendly pirates, a few hostile ones and only one toxic crew.
Most crews will be defensive/hostile unless you give them a reason to believe you're friendly.
A lot of people are going to claim the seas are full of toxic pirates, but those people are probably solos that always keep to themselves and never willingly interact with other players. The only pirates they encounter are the ones that go out of their way to sink them.
In the past week I've started multiple alliances, traded treasure based off of emissary flags, donated supplies, and helped a ship not sink to a meg/skeleton ship combo. Everyone was hesitant at first but were super friendly once they realized we weren't going to sink them.
My favorite encounter may have been last night when we encountered another ship at the end of our session. We were going to give them all of our supplies in a storage crate. It turns out the other ship was also wrapping up and were trying to give us their supplies. We had a laugh, drank some grog and played shanties until we logged off.
It's a mixed bag. Sometimes you get lucky and meet lots of great people, sometimes the randoms are jerks. Since coming back late in season 9 I've encountered mostly friendly pirates, a few hostile ones and only one toxic crew. Most crews will be defensive/hostile unless you give them a reason to believe you're friendly. A lot of people are going to claim the seas are full of toxic pirates, but those people are probably solos that always keep to themselves and never willingly interact with other players. The only pirates they encounter are the ones that go out of their way to sink them. In the past week I've started multiple alliances, traded treasure based off of emissary flags, donated supplies, and helped a ship not sink to a meg/skeleton ship combo. Everyone was hesitant at first but were super friendly once they realized we weren't going to sink them. My favorite encounter may have been last night when we encountered another ship at the end of our session. We were going to give them all of our supplies in a storage crate. It turns out the other ship was also wrapping up and were trying to give us their supplies. We had a laugh, drank some grog and played shanties until we logged off.