So reading the forum chats and watching the promotion material i understand that Rare are looking to make SOT centered on progression. Now with that in mind i had a few thoughts on pirate progression and what that would look like.
The first concept is the obvious status symbol of a pirate, the ship. After alpha there were two types. The sloop and the gallion. May i suggest a few more. I. E. The friget, brigadear and the man o war. To mention a few larger classes or the yacht, courser or corvette for smaller classes. Now one this adds variety which in turn gives character but also, to make a slight change in mechanics, this opens the door to ship progression. Players would start with the smallest ship and have to buy better ones (along side ship customisation ).
Now the big change here is how this relates to a multiplayer experience. I know that the sloop is designed for a 1/2 person crew but more makes thing easier same with the gallion however i'd suggest that to enhance the multiplayer option as well as hold a relative ship progression perhapse you could make it that players need to request to join a crew in person. Now hold on to the criticism just a second and I'll explain.
Firstly in the options you'd select one of two choices either captain of your own ship or deck hand to another.
The first option loads you in as standard. Captain of a small ship as current process goes.
The second option loads you into an open party working with any other pirate that has an open party option.
This option could be a simple toggle in the settings menu that says crew hiring open or closed. When open any multiplayer logging as a deck hand can autojoin your crew. When closed you would need to interact in person this could create friendly encounters on open water but in my view it could generate more opertunity for use of taverns as a sort of neutral meeting ground. This multiplayer option could then used by the captain to give ranks to the crew members such as the first mate, skipper, swab etc giving status to player and driving a progressive experience.
Please fire away with questions if you have them but otherwise all feedback is good feedback.
