This is a criticism I made 2 (or 3?) years ago, I don't feel the situation changed that much but some specific updates and so I want to talk about this again.
While I do enjoy getting new content if it's good and I can't wait to play the new PL Voyages, Sea Forts and next Adventures; we shouldn't forget about the game current state and already existing content. New stuff is something that gets added to an already existing game that still has problems that aren't getting fixed or system that could be expanded, if the foundation of the game begins to creak, adding new stuff to the game without fixing its foundation just feels like a distraction from the real problems. Sometimes the new stuff added may have issues and instead of fixing those issues they move on to the next thing, I don't want to end up playing an abomination of an infinite amount of game systems that are scattered around the game and that you'll only use once.
I think this is a serious concern, I got 2 examples: Shrines are kinda the easiest example to make, parasitic content that got added to the game and that I visited only for the Breath of the see after Season 4, which kinda feel forced. Shrines are the perfect example for "one time content": a new area for the game, used for an activity you'll do once to try it out and some more times if you want to complete all the commendation, then it doesn't exist anymore. It made the game larger and not better.
The last phrase is something I really hope will eventually get to Devs, the game is already huge, it doesn't need to get larger so bad, it really needs to get better instead.
The second example is burying treasures: this is not an area of the game that we'll use once, it's supposed to be a new tool that will be part of our adventures, but it's not because this feature wasn't explored enough, this is one of those features that could be expanded to actually be part of our every-day experience.
We should also ask ourselves questions like: (I'll write my thoughts but feel free to let me know what you think or what you think Rare thinks. Or what can be expanded/needs fixes)
Is the Voyages System fine? No, most voyage types feel like tutorials for future harder voyages we never got, on this I'd have some ideas about introducing a difficulty to Voyages, making you able to buy easy - medium or hard voyages based on your playstyle and time available for the session, easy voyages being quick, low risk and low reward, hard voyages being longer, riskier but exponentially more rewarding. Also harder voyages would need to be unlocked by reaching a specific level with a company to both let the player get used to the easier version and add a way of progression. The way you acquire voyages still feels weird, what's that menu with 3 voyages? Also voyages feels stale after a while because of a lack of random little events possibly happening during a voyage to change things up, player interaction are not remotely consistent enough for a voyage's variety to be based off it.
Are Emissaries fine? As said in a recent post I made, while I do think emissaries made the game better, they took off freedom from farming the 3 main companies, once you could go around and farm the way you enjoyed the most, whether it was World Events, spamming voyages or whatever, now you are forced to spam voyages as, with how the emissary grade works and the fact you get a bonus for only a specific company, farming with World Events now is utterly inefficient to the point it's not worth doing it.
Is PvE fine? Personally one of the weakest points of the game, 90% of it is smashing an un-interactive standing dummy with the sword. When PvP includes naval combat it's fine, but on land it lacks interactivity, nothing to react to, never challenging nor ever requires even thinking. Some times (Skeleton Lords) even tedious.
Are random encounter fine? We either have very small random encounters like skeletons/phantom/ocean crawlers/ancient skeletons which are fine (but for the PvE issues staded above), or big encounters like Kraken, Megs and Skelly ships; I personally don't really like these, specially krakens and meg: not interesting to fight nor enough rewarding to bother fighting them on brig/galleons. I think the game needs much more little and less time/resource consuming encounters to keep having some stuff happening during dead moments of session, random encounters doesn't have to always be fights. Like finding a castaway pirate on a shore/floating barrel that we can get on the ship and that will get off when arriving at an outpost, rewarding us for the job; having gulls resting on our ship that we can either kill for meat before they fly away or give worms/fish with a chance of it coming back with a trophy/rare fish in return; etc... little stuff that gives a reward but doesn't ask for much resources, something to get the player attention without asking for too much effort (otherwise it wouldn't work).
Is sailing from point A to B fine? I think that, while the sailing system is good, most sailing times easily get boring with the lack of stimulation, having more little random events or something useful to do onboard would help.
(I'll let PvP out of the discussion as they said all in the last podcast).
And we could go deeper even with recent features by expanding burying treasures, dice etc...; or stuff that still haven't touched again like: wind and waves, weather, islands, World Events, etc...
Basically there's no need to add completely new stuff each Season, specially isolated features that won't add anything to the game but a one-time experience. The game has already much stuff that can either be fixed or expanded to enhancance experience, let's not add more.
