There is an indie pirate game that looks like SOT and works very similarly but full of bugs and nowhere near complete and doesn't have the polish SOT has.
It's a pirate battle royale mode which would serve as a much more fun and better arena game mode.
How it works is unlike any other battle royale.
You have the entire map of SOT.
Your ship spawns at random places.
You have limited resources and no weapons.
You must go from island to island gathering supplies but also picking up weapons. Your swords and guns have limited durability. Grab them and store them in gun locker like a regular resource.
You can respawn upon death but lose whatever you have on you weapons too. But ship death eliminates your entire crew.
Collecting swords and guns is important lest you want to spawn with no means to attack people except your fists which are not very powerful.
The shroud starts to close in over time.
Inevitably ships will be brought together by the shrinking map.
Finally at the end, the shroud is small enough to accommodate a 1 vs 1 ship battle. Not too big and not too small.
Final ship surviving wins.
To mitigate the tedium of trips back and forth to your ship, there is a much bigger limit of how much items you can hold. Up to approx stacks of up to 50. But you will best store it in your barrels on the ship as you drop all you carry!
Forget collecting chests and whatnot, arena should be survival of the fittest. The game mode takes so long to get going I think it would be much better to be replaced with something everybody could enjoy.
Plus, who doesn't like last crew standing?
