Rowboats, the right way.

I wanted to edit this post to add something I thought of after the fact but didn't see an edit button so I'm replying instead.

Rowboats would also make it useful for the animal catching and transporting because you wouldn't have to jump in the water with them. I'm assuming if water on your boat is a hazard to them, going below the water level while swimming would be as well.

@cheatingpirate Thanks for the info! I wasn't trying to say that this is the only way rowboats can work in reality, but that I thought this was the best way to implement them in-game in a balanced way that also encourages teamwork. Would love to hear people's thoughts on what you have said to see if players would be interested in those mechanics as well.

@lucid-stew My initial thought is that you would still mermaid to your ship but I'm open to suggestions.

@lucid-stew I see the concern. Although, thinking back to when I posted this, if you left our rowboat somewhere it would stay wherever you left it. So in this case if you bail and mermaid back to your ship you effectively lose your rowboat. You would have to go find it wherever it may have drifted to in the open ocean and it could be sunk by crashing or going into a storm, in which case you wouldn't get it back until your entire ship respawned. Of course, the rowboat feature could be implemented in a variety of different ways and if the respawn system for the rowboat is done differently then none of my reply makes sense lol :)

@shadowstrider-7 Yeah the number of people that can board is definitely up for debate. I was trying to think of the most balanced way to do it and my initial thought was that galleons could have two rowboats each taking two people (although looking back I think I left out the part about two on the galleon). I don't really have any issue with letting all four people on the rowboat together. Maybe if it needed balancing you can substitute players for chests. So the capacity of the rowboat is 4 players or 8 chests (2 per player) and you can mix and match (2 players + 4 chest, 1 player + 6 chest, 3 players + 2 chests) kind of thing?

@marvelironfist I would love to have to use two joysticks on console. There is a game series called Ape Escape. The first was on the Playstation 1 and it was the first game I every played on PS1 that used joysticks. You controlled all your gadgets and vehicles with joysticks. One was a rowboat and each joystick controlled an oar. Spin one too fast or too slow and you are going in circles. Loved it. The only problem is you would lose the ability to turn your head in Sea of Thieves, and I'm not sure there is an equivalent on PC.