They do have some matchmaking, at least for hourglass and really early on in your voyages. But those get disregarded as soon as the player pool in your region dries off. Sea of Thieves has had some player retention issues, and the Steam data suggests that the game has been bleeding players for the past 2-3 years. Of course, there are still players on Gamepass and MS store, but I’m expecting those markets have had the same decline.

My crew and I have been put in fights against streamers, day one players, and other sweats when we were just playing casually. It’s fun though, and the feeling you get when you beat those kinds of crews is amazing. However, when you lose, it’s really annoying because you can’t just hop back into the action (as I mentioned above, 30 mins of resupplying). Rare could have made some really nice game modes like Arena, for example using the Sea Dogs Tavern as a TDM point (i.e., a sort of king of the hill, or capture the flag), 4-5 smaller ships against a bigger crew manning the Black Pearl, and perhaps more to pack in a rotating game mode. That would have solved some of the issues the PvP community is facing, and adventure mode would have been a bit fresher.

Regardless, I wouldn’t worry too much about this if you’re just starting out. You’ll learn lots of things from crews that have been sailing the seas for longer :D If you’re having trouble though and you’re from Europe, we have a discord of chill people that play during the weekends. We’ll gladly give you a hand :)