First off, don't instantly drop anchor with your arena copy paste. (you know who you are) This isn't about arena, It's about siren song.
What if there was a version of siren song or just completely replaced siren song that was dove to, but would bring you to a server with 3 other people who also dove to the siren song? It would put 2 ships at each of the digs with a guaranteed 4 crews with the same voyage. The whole point of siren song was to bring an arena adjacent voyage to adventure, and just like hourglass and current siren song, it would take place in an adventure server. Maybe it could even be 3 ships per island, but I don't think the servers could handle a 6 ship battle.
This would require a 4 ship matchmaking system, but maybe it could just not matchmake at all aside for getting 4 ships? It's not a fight to the death, its a fight for victory! A sloop wouldn't need to sink a galleon to achieve victory, it's crew would just need to be capable of stealing a single item from a galleon. Yeah small ships and solos would probably be clobbered by big ships, but this is just how the balance of Sea of Thieves is. An unfair mess would be more fun and more SoT like than a fair fight ever would be. (Which is why i preferred arena over hourglass, it was much less calculated/fair, and more spontaneous/chaotic.)
This would also make sure the siren song raids are at least 2x more active than the hourglass equivalent.
(4x) - for not having the 4 ship types separate
(0.5x) - for needing 4 ships instead of 2
(+nx) - for not having skill based matchmaking
(-nx) - for being more niche than hourglass
(+nx) - for being more chill than hourglass
(-nx) - for being a bit harder to access
(math is probably wrong, but I'm saying solo, duo, brig, and galleon being combined would be a 4x increase in the pool, and then needing 4 ships instead of 2 would divide this by 2. Not having a skill based match making would also increase this number of players in the pool, and a couple other things may positively or negatively change this number.)
Runners would be an issue, but this could be fixed by making the key and chest also give a smaller, but still slight speed disadvantage.
People making the voyage impossible might be an issue, but that already can happen so this outcome probably doesn't need to be considered.
(Realistically, players would just cancel the voyage and do adventure stuff instead if this happens, so it wouldn't be a big problem I think.)
The value would have to increase to like 100 - 200k, but I also have another incentive:
Maybe the voyage could be raised in the raid section for most companies, and you can do it in the name of whatever faction you want. There wouldn't be an emissary buff, but you would get rep for the company you represent. This could probably be done in a similar way to how the sovereigns auto sort loot such as gems to whatever company you have an emissary for.
This would also make it an unlock for new players, who will want to try it. and hopefully be met with a more intuitive and less punishing form of PvP. Plus, if its only real reward is money, faction rep, and a few commendations, Cheaters and boosters will be less widespread than they are in hourglass. Especially if it's locked behind at least level 15 in a faction.
The only real issue I can think of is the lore aspect. Why all of the sudden has Briggsy decided that she needed more help from trading companies to collect EVEN MORE skulls?
Solution 1: who cares. This would be an improvement to current sirens song.
Solution 2: Briggsy wants to sell them fresh to the smugglers at an increased price.
Solution 3: Briggsy loves eating the skulls, and is so addicted that she wants the trading companies to deliver.
Solution 6: Lesedi wants to save Demarco, and REALLY wants these skulls to speed up the time it takes for Demarco to return from the Sea of the damned. After being revived, Demarco would take notice to how fun the competition of collecting these skulls was, and would take over as siren song's host alongside Briggsy and Lesedi to make siren song even more arena themed.
Solution 5: Briggsy misses having skin and watched a youtube skincare tutorial that involves using Mashed Siren skulls as moisturizer.
Solution 7: Maritime union finds a way to use these skulls to allow larger fleets into the sea of thieves and gets help from briggsy who doesn't know how bad they are or something.
Solution 8: At this point Rare has left the story to rot so much, I don't think this needs any extra lore reasons aside for whatever the current reason is.
If this were actually implemented, I think the voyage Could play out in numerous ways such as:
Perfect scenario (unlikely):
You dive, wait for a "match" then get placed on either side of one of the island maps to another ship. Elsewhere, 2 ships are doing the same. The rest plays out like normal sirens song but with 4 willing participants.
Rude scenario (very unlikely):
You dive, wait for a "match" then get placed on either side of one of the island maps to another ship. Elsewhere, 2 ships are doing the same. One of these ships, takes the chest key or skull and hides it in an impossible to reach area. Eventually after some scuffle, the other crews will realize what happened and seamlessly return to normal adventure.
(It's seamless because they were always in adventure, and the only thing that changed was their mindset.)
TDM scenario (very unlikely):
You dive, wait for a "match" then get placed on either side of one of the island maps to another ship. Elsewhere, 2 ships are doing the same. One of the crews convinces another to TDM, so they do it. Maybe the 3rd ship joins them too. This would undermine the siren song part of the voyage, but this is a sandbox game so this scenario isn't necessarily bad.
Another version of this would be a crew getting the skull, but not wanting to sell it in favor of prolonging the PvP. This would undermine the siren song part of the voyage, but still have the spirit of fighting for the skull. Plus this would encourage the less experienced crews to team up on the better crew, which would add even more fun chaos to the mix.
Realistic scenario (likely):
You dive, wait for a "match" then get placed on either side of one of the island maps to another ship. Elsewhere, 2 ships are doing the same. 1 ship from each island will get absolutely demolished. and the other would begin sailing to meet the other island's ships. Eventually, these two ships will collide to combine the chest with the key. At this point, the ships are sailing to the sell point. One has the skull and is sailing to the finish. In usual SoT fashion, a crew or two might've given up mid match. This is okay because it's not actually a match, so the players who give up will seamlessly return to normal adventure game-play. The rest will still play out normal siren song, but with one ship missing.
This would play more similar to arena, while still remaining mechanically the same as siren song but with the chest and key having the de-buff too. This would be arena but without rules. That means it shouldn't ever get broken by anything like arena did. Hopefully this will lead to a 90% guarantee for lots of chaotic multi-ship PvP instead of the current 90% guarantee for no pvp which siren song has.
Multi-ship PvP is my favorite form of PvP, and having it on demand would be great for me, and for players who prefer more casual PvP instead of the cold calculated tug of war that hourglass has become.
I like hourglass, but it lacks the chaos and sandbox aspects necessary to keep me guessing.
