Diving only takes you to the NPC that starts the tale for obvious reasons. It would be weird if it just teleported you into the Sea of the Damned without context. So the portals are still needed.
And if the portals were just replaced with diving, it would be hard to make it work with the cutscenes. Castaway clearly opens a portal but if we remove the archways, it will just be a confusing and anticlimactic move.
The Pirate Lord opening a portal would be very awkward too as he would point to nowhere with Kate looking surprised at said nowhere.
100% in support of getting rid of the portals. Obviously, you would need to change some of the tall tale opening scenes with the NPCs where they basically tell you to go to the portal, and change the tall tale books to reference some other outside force taking you to the sea of the damned, but yeah...get rid of them.
@sweetsandman npc cloud "hex" the ship using same emote to opoen a poratl and then after sailing to open sea we dive.
