Gonna keep it short and simple, a cosmetic based game needs cosmetic rewards for achievements and commendations. The type of people who will play Sea of Thieves in the future are going to be achievement hunters.
Achievements and commendations unlock cosmetics for your ship, character weapons what have you AND at a reasonable cost associated with the difficulty of the achievement.
- Deliver 10 of every chicken to the merchant alliance = White chicken figure head 5k
- Deliver 100 of every chicken = Gold chicken figure head 20k
- Deliver 10,000 of every chicken = 3 gold chickens figure head 400k
- Once a pirate legend find some ghost chickens deliver them new figure head
I'm not a game developer and I thought of these while writing this post.
I haven't looked very hard into how commendations work because they didn't reward anything but if they were progressively harder as you went up ranks 5 - 10 - 15 etc and awarded cosmetics for completing them then the grind wouldn't simply be to hit 50 you could spend a tonne of time trying to unlock skins and your rank ups will be a side effect. Again low level commendations reward cheap skins. I want to sail the seas and see a ship and think "Wow that guy collects chickens" at the moment you see someone and think "Oh he got 70k, good for him"
OH before I forget - Survive the Kraken! = KRAKEN TENTACLE FIGURE HEAD!! COME ON!
