FOTD difficulty change when someone dies

No, in fact I tried waiting on the ferry for a while and my crew said it was the same. But when one of them went off in a rowboat to another island it changed. So they seem to have programmed it not to change too often just because people died.

We did it on a galleon. I can't recall what happens if one dies while doing the fort, I believe the difficulty remains the same. But it appears that if 1 or 2 are on the ship, the difficulty decreases. More FOTD's needed for accurate information tho

Now this is somewhat exploitable and a weird design if it is so. So technically, I can do a round trip, drop 3 people off at different locations to do their own tasks that are adjusted to players near it (so that means a solo guy) and then go back and pick them up with loot and quests completed. 3 for the price of 1. Wouldn't it be better that they would be adjusted per number of active players in a crew, no matter their location? Downside would be that other ships could circle the close perimeter and increase the difficulty artificially without actively participating.