I think the missions are doing a good job putting together new CR. It's actually forcing characters to work together that might not necessarily do so under other circumstances. Two months ago, even though it was a player mission Mark still met new people, and last month Kaine would never have worked with Hawke or Bucky before, and it turned out really well. The fact it's OOC opt-in really helps too.
/this is Kaitie on a different dumb spider account