I think it's fairly obvious that the Emissary update was largely successful, and well received by a majority of the community. However, as time progresses people develop strategies to manipulate certain game mechanics in their favor. This is most evident when viewing the interaction between the Reaper's Bones and other alliances.
Recently a meta has evolved where when players who aren't privy to player versus player combat encounter a Reaper, they will flee to the nearest outpost and lower their flag, regardless of flag level or loot they have onboard. Typically, this seems to be done in an attempt to purely spite the Reapers. I think this is fine, it's the same as if players were to flee and sell their most valuable loot before the oncoming pirates arrived. However, the primary issue is the accessibility of the option, and how it purely counters the sole purpose of a Reaper's Bones crew.
I have no doubt the lowering of flags was intended for players who wanted to swap their faction mid play session, but the requirements for doing such are extremely easy. These requirements being; Be somewhat nearby the island, and cannon two to three members of your crew over. This is in contrast to selling high value loot, which requires manually jumping off, swimming, and making it to the trader while defenseless with fear of a player killing you and taking the loot for themselves. Therefore, I just would like to pose a couple of potential small changes that I feel fit the game's motto of risk/reward in regards to denying valuable loot from an opposing crew.
Firstly, a ship should have to be docked within a range that would validate changing of ship cosmetics. I feel like this fits as it forces a longer period of time for the participants to get the ship in position, as well as forces the ship to remain in place during the cancellation.
And secondly, after a crew remove themselves from a faction, the flag should become a physical game object placed on the crow's nest. This could be turned into the trader for a small sum of coin based on rank for the team it belongs to. This means even after taking down their flag, which arguably still requires very little effort as you are fully able to defend yourself during the cancellation process, there is still a brief window for the Reaper's Bones to swoop in for the capture. This could also manifest itself in fun situations of players offering their flags up to their captors in exchange for keeping their loot, causing more memorable player interactions.
I feel like this would open up more high-action moments in a chase where the crew wanting to cancel their flag would need to have gained a large distance, as well as also defending the sale of the flag. It also removes the extremely frustrating element of gameplay where a ship can sail past any outpost and remove their flag hassle free, even mid-combat, while there is practically nothing the Reaper crew can do to prevent it, even if reaching the island at the same time.
I understand there is a large chunk of the player base that prefers to not engage in player versus player content, but the emissary flags are designed as a high risk high reward activity, with the inherit risk of running them being losing the flag to the Reaper's alliance. By allowing players to simply delete the incentive and primary objective of the Reaper's Bones, with very little effort required, it highly discourages players on the side of the community that enjoy playing as a Reaper's Emissary from even participating in the activity.
Obviously these are all suggestions, and are free to be implemented in any measure, but I do feel there needs to be a change to the way flags are lowered to remove this potentially toxic gameplay loop.
