Background: I have played since about 6 months after release. I am a sweaty, stinky, nasty HG player (no curses yet, that adult life) that does enjoy a little skull farming because I like Court of Souls colors.
I've stolen my fair share of loot. This feedback comes from a place of love for the game and a want to see it grow.
Here I purpose an issue that touches on all aspects of the game that effects new, and old player retention.
This problem can be viewed in the simplest terms as a "Carrot and Stick" issue.
Problem: In my opinion Safer Seas falls short of offering decreased risk, instead it offers decreased convenience, while increasing player annoyance, and difficulty for disabled or accessibility challenged players.
Why? This simply boils down to the lack of access to Captaincy, thus companies which the player can universally sell to. Players in this mode are forced to sell the hard way, treasure by treasure to the designated company, instead of to a Captaincy company like Sovs, Athenas, or Reapers. I can't imagine from a gameplay design perspective this is anything but intentional, and, to me, it seems like a big oversight as it gives new players the wrong impression about what having a captained ship will be like. Anecdotally, to put this in perspective, the most trouble I have had introducing people to the game is the tedium of selling off. The most engaged they were is when things were 'hard' for us.
So, what about Risk to the player? In Safer Seas likewise, is not all decreased over a High Seas, actually. A player who has spent enough time on a Safer Seas server will be subject to concurrent Random Events that are signifcantly more likely to effect the player the longer they play the session. Bear in mind, there will be no other players around to soften up those Ancient Megs before the player gets there, no one else to put a few holes in that Skelly Galleon before a first time Swabbies encounter, and on Safer Seas the server may see fit to spawn both at once! That means the risk of other players is gone, but the environmental risk is increased three to six fold (iirc that is how many boats the servers try to populate) and due to how spawning works, those Sea Baddies are going to spawn on the only ship out there. Likewise, not every High Seas server is populated, but every Safer Seas server will spawn Random Events on the player. Finally, as mentioned in the title, players who play entirely on Alliance Seas are at almost 0 risk of either PvE encounters or other Pirates ruining their sessions all while benefiting from the work of other ships in the Alliance, which is perhaps the biggest hole in the "risk" delta.
So, instead of the above I purpose a solution, that "the team has no intention of doing" just as they had no intention of increasing rewards in Safer Seas originally.
Solution: Give Safer Seas Captaincy, give it Emissary Flags. Give Safer Seas access to full content. End Gold Rush Hour, instead, Gold Rush Multiplier should be 24/7 on High Seas and increase Relative to Server Population.
To me, this above satisfies all of the above issues while amplifying and engaging with play-styles that already exist and encouraging players to venture into the most populated High Seas servers for the highest bonuses.
Alliance Only Servers? Now Incentivized.
Sweaty six sided pirate wars? Bet your booty you should try your luck.
For those not interested in PvP? They get to experience the whole game without inflating the economy while not effecting Emissary leaderboards because they wont have the bonus rates from playing on High Seas.
I certainly hope this feedback is helpful and does not get tossed in the trash.
