Max, out of all the teams we played with, only one person embodied all three of your motivational posters. We really ought to create a guide on
HOW TO IDENTIFY DREAM CRUSHERS
1) Dream crushers have a talent for gushing and buttering up the team's MVP player. During queue waits, when they're separated from most of the team, dream crushers will greet the MVP player with
hello!s and
howareya!s while pointedly ignoring the sidekicks that played dead ducks for 4+ hours.
2) While everyone else is trying to play the game, dream crushers will flood the screen with exclamations about how excited they are to help everyone out and hey, we should add each other to our friends list! All fluff, with few attempts to coach their team on a successful strategy. Maybe when it's close to their turn, they'll parrot something someone else suggested. If your team is lucky, these massive chat bubbles won't distract the other players from their difficult task or cause them to crash. In my experience, the true Blue Crewers who stick with you until the end - and I've met many - don't talk much because they're healing. And shooting dead ducks. And organizing multiple team queues to cut down on lobby waits. And fighting off days of sleep and food deprivation. They're
too tired to kiss anyone up.
3) They intentionally fail to follow instructions that 29 other people (including young children!) understood on the first go. No matter how many times you explain that planting your dead duck in the middle of the battlefield could a) endanger your crew with an accidental explosion and b) give your shooters less points* since they're wasting precious time either getting stuck on your prow or veering around you, dream crushers will state that you already said that then attempt to throw the game by blocking the paths of your healers and shooters. You are not surprised that this sharp shooter is stuck in the dead duck position (usually reserved for the crash-prone or those nursing illnesses, not decent pirates like the dream crusher who can maneuver the field without shooting the winner) because s/he clearly does not know the meaning of cooperation and teamwork.
* I've sat in enough losing games to know that shooters sometimes miss the 575 score by a matter of points, arg.
4) When they publicly thank their team in the official I Beat the Big Quest thread, they will have the gall not to mention the three players they abandoned once they won. (Note that I'm not including myself in this number since I was merely helping a friend out.)
5) Remember that part about the friends list? That will haunt the team later on when the dream crusher drags the MVP player away from a waiting lobby of teammates. All this to help the dream crusher chase ghosts with no discernable benefit to the MVP player, who did not work up to the Haunted Mansion section yet because he was busy healing in pirates - a task the dream crusher could accomplish, but refused to. During that wasted time, the MVP player could've helped two more loyal teammates pass pirates.
6) While you do not bother to check the Disboards all day because you are too busy skipping meals and nap times to assist your teammates, the dream crusher will post multiple requests on how to pass ghosts and jungle cruise. After wasting the time of actual helpers who are out there on the frontlines, dream crushers will rhapsodize about how they will repay your kindness by assisting their friends. Of course that's not remotely possible since they a) joined a team that consisted of strangers, b) never returned to lend a hand to the team that gave them enough time to finish the quest. Unsurprisingly, nobody thanks the dream crusher because there's no evidence to back up his / her claims of Good Samaritantude.
When I think of the incredible sweethearts who couldn't complete the quest because they gave up their turns and jungle cruise time to help dream crushers like this, I am appalled. If anything, VMK awarded the dream crushers who spent most of the quest time helping themselves.
