So I've been trying out Safer Seas over the past few days just to get an idea of what the experience for a new player would be like and I have to say it's absolutely HORRIBLE.
Rare definitely went TOO FAR with the restrictions they put on Safer Seas.
Leveling up the main 3 factions (Merchant, Order Of Souls, & Gold Hoarder) without an emissary is already HORRIBLY long and awful, but to only earn 30% of the gold and rep you'd earn WITHOUT AN EMISSARY is absolutely HORRIBLE!
Rare needs to definitely change this by either allowing emissaries in Safer Seas (which obviously has pros and cons because it would definitely be helpful to teach new players how emissaries work in Sea Of Thieves and it would only allow them to make roughly 75% of the gold & rep that you can make in high seas without even running an emissary, but it would also allow players to earn all of the emissary rewards in Safer Seas which is the only real con imo) or to increase the amount of gold & rep earned in Safer Seas to 75% to allow players to actually be able to earn enough gold to actually buy cosmetics and not feel like the game is so restrictive that it's not even worth playing.
The other main problem with Safer Seas in my opinion is that you can only reach level 40 in each of the main factions. Rare how the actual heck did you manage to mess this up!
Only allowing players to reach level 40 means that they're not going to become pirate legend and they're not going to be able to unlock the ability to do any pirate legend activities. THAT'S A PROBLEM!
If you changed the max level for each faction in Safer Seas to level 50 then new players would play until they become a pirate legend and then they'd be like "YO what's this cool new pirate legend stuff? There's a whole new faction I didn't know existed called Athena? I wanna do these new Athena voyages and activities! Oh they're only available in high seas? Well I guess I'm gonna go to high seas then so I can try out all of these amazing cool new voyages that I've just unlocked access to!" Literally this is how it should be and I truly don't understand how you thought it would make sense to not allow players to become a pirate legend in Safer Seas to then motivate them to switch over to High Seas.
So those are the main 2 things I think should be changed to make Safer Seas an actual good experience for new players and allow them to actually learn all of the main game mechanics before jumping into High Seas.
So Rare just to quickly sum things up for you.
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Increase the maximum level that can be earned in each of the main 3 factions (Merchant, Order Of Souls, & Gold Hoarder) in Safer Seas to level 50 so that new players can reach and unlock pirate legend in Safer Seas, but then have to move over to High Seas to actually be able to do any of the new voyages and activities they've unlocked by reaching Pirate Legend.
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Either allow Emissaries to be used in Safer Seas (which would help new players out a lot by teaching them how emissaries work and what they do) but don't allow them to earn any emissary ledger rewards in Safer Seas, or just increase the amount of gold & rep earned while playing Safer Seas to 75% of what is earned in High Seas so that new players don't immediately become unmotivated to play the game by the ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS grind it would take to unlock even a single set of the cheapest cosmetics in the game in Safer Seas! It's absolutely absurd how much time it would take to earn even 100,000 gold in Safer Seas which isn't even remotely enough money to buy all of just the cheap regular bilge rat cosmetics (that includes all clothing, weapon, equipment, & ship cosmetics)!
So those are the main changes that I think would make Safer Seas a truly GOOD experience for new players and would actually help them learn how to play Sea Of Thieves and prepare them for the PvPvE experience that they will get in High Seas.
