The strongest aspect of this game experience is working together as a well oiled crew to deftly pilot a ship against another. Foregrounding this even further is both easy to do and worth doing. Since, it will enrich the experience for both old and new players.
Because the existing META is to YOLO board other crews endlessly until you can successfully spawn camp an opposing crew, much of the feedback focus has been on in inadequacy of the hand-to-hand combat experience. Endless debates about OP 1-blunders, double gunning, stun locks, mindless sword swipes, bunny-hopping, and people getting spawn camped are all symptoms of the META: it foregrounds the player-to-player combat. If boarding other crews was properly difficult, then these problems would fade into the background.
So, as far as development resources go, rather than having Rare teams dedicate countless hours to re-jigging all of these systems, a single solution could address them while also enhancing the crew-cooperation based aspect of the game. Allow us to raise and lock ladders.
Allowing players to lock ladders in a raised position will do several things. First, it enables all players to protect themselves from endless, spammy, sword-lunging YOLO boards (which, I should say, is a favourite tactic of mine). This is particularly true for solo sloopers or any crew battling a larger crew. Since, the larger crew can always be sending out one pirate over and over until they get lucky enough to grab that ladder, board, drop anchor, and start the spawn camping (again, a preferred tactic of mine).
Second, it enables prolonged and more interesting ship-on-ship encounters. Since, battles would be harder to win via spawn camping. They would have to be won by excellent piloting, clutch cannon shots, and deft harpooning.
Third, it would enable two features - cannoning pirates and the harpoons - to become important once again. It took the community a very short amount of time to learn that a sword lunge is an easier way to board another crew than cannoning over or harpoon pulling. That isn't to say that people don't use these two features - they do, and I do, too. But they're less effective and/or have a more narrow use case than your standard sword-lunge-and-ladder-grab. However, these other two methods are by far the more interesting forms of boarding, and foregrounding them again would shake up boarding strategies in interesting ways.
Which means that boarding will still happen, as will spawn camps, but they'll be harder to execute and thus less frustrating. Since, everyone (myself included) is sick of the current META.
As far as balance goes, raising ladders and locking them is balanced. Crews that are immobile due to an anchorball or broken masts are also risking themselves not being able to get back on their boats should they fall off mid-battle without a crewmate lowering the ladder or swimming far enough away to talk to a Mer. As well, crews that lock their ladders in raised positions and then go to islands will be unable to get back on their boats without dying or taking a rowboat. Thus, if they raised the ladders to go exploring and are surprised at an island, they are putting their boat at risk because getting back on won't be straightforward. Thus, having this feature both foregrounds the kinds of cooperation-based interactions that make this game shine, while not adding wild imbalances. If anything, it adds greater balance because larger crews can't simply overwhelm smaller crews with YOLO sword lunges.
It isn't a novel or new idea, but I hope that I have framed it in a way that makes sense.
