So, I haven't purchased the game yet, doing the game pass trial. I played solo for a few hours and had a good time sailing around and getting loot. The only time I ran into other players was when I was on an island doing stuff. Both were 4 crew Galleons that got there after me. The first time one of them shot me from behind while I was turning stuff in, then they sunk my ship. I messed around on their ship and killed one of them before I just mermaided to a different island and new ship. The second encounter was while I was on an island getting chickens. One of them killed me when I got back to my ship then stayed on it and sailed it into a rock. After a few deaths there, I just logged off. In both cases, I had no loot on my ship, so there was no real reason or reward from attacking me, aside from preventing me from playing the game.
PvP is all fine and good, and it makes the game interesting, but getting ganged up on all the time while playing alone is not a good experience. Not really sure how this can be addressed. Maybe different matchmaking to group more of the same ship sizes together. 1-2 man crews might be more friendly toward each other, because they might not win an encounter they start, but when a Galleon sees a Sloop somewhere, that's generally a win for the bigger crew without much risk.
Some of the big ship battles looked pretty great, and I would love to experience it, but griefing in any game is never good and just leaves people avoiding the game all together. Hopefully these issues can be addressed somehow. I would love to get into this game more, but not sure I will at this point.
