Diving was initially a great time saver and a good way of kickstarting a voyage / session. The issue with diving is that it removes the incentive to stay on a server when you can just dive to the location you want to be instantly, which just leaves servers having a couple spots filled by players that are just diving to server hop / leaving for a new server, sometimes making adventure feel dead. Diving also means the longer, organic interactions are less frequent, as although they still happen, diving just makes the seas feel more empty and gives less of a chance for those stories to take place.
Rare have acknowledged this, as they are testing the removal of raid voyages and incentivizing people to do world events which is a step in the right direction, however the gold hoarder dig spot dive quest server hop method is still the main reason servers still aren't as active as they could be, and I think the complete removal of diving would fix that issue. Alternatively, an incentive like an extra gold multiplier when selling, or a small amount of doubloons after an hour or two of play on the same server would naturally discourage people from diving so often which would result in more player to player interactions which is the core of the game.
