Yup, I'm right there and my wife is too.. it's the most fun. In fact she only started her interest in the Sea of Thieves BECAUSE of the 'cute piggies' and spent her first month talking in silly voices when they'd get hungry and she'd feed them...
We still usually assure we carry an extra animal on board, a Golden Chicken to be precise, for luck naturally!
Though I'm all for streamlining and broadening the merchants voyages - small things like alterations to the pig's feeding habits (or outright elimination therof), ability to regain lost coops/cages/baskets without total loss of the voyage itself, and more... sure.. whatever you want man no idea is a bad idea if simply presented as an idea.
But your definitely not in the same boat as many players. Not by a far distance. in your personal experience perhaps, maybe all your friends hate 'em, maybe the players you meet in the majority hate 'em, but overall? Naw, I think it's appreciated.
In fact, in the higher levels it's the easiest one to deal with accepting. OoS skellies get obnoxious to deal with in the 40+ range and god forbid they spawn in the pit of sunken grove and be waves of gold... oh my! But a level 49 or post 50 Mechants? Bah.. easy peasy...
In fact soloists seem to enjoy merchants as well, choice of pick up locations, you get to explore islands for neat random looty things like messages in a bottle or random junk chests, etc. To cite my Wife again - that's literally why she plays.
Sure she enjoys doing Athena's with me because for the entire game play since launch she only wears a hat and gloves and boots. She HATES the clothing options. We tease her daily about "putting on some clothes woman" in our best misogynist impressions. She just smiles as her pirate toothlessly grins. But the Athenas outfit? She likes it. She's only able to play short hours late at night... but she gets her ranks up there. She's actually wearing pants now!
So what does she do when she's not sailing alongside me and my pals? She's solo on a sloop catching animals and cooing at them until turn in. She's looking for shinies, and having a heart attack leaping off still sailing vessels when she finds them often forgetting to raise sail or drop anchor in her excitement. Sometimes she does treasure hoarders since that's pretty chill as well and she knows she needs to balance her leveling or it'll get to a place where the things she enjoys doing provide no value. She even has been hitting OoS solo which is only in effort to get it over with and done ahead of the others so she never needs look at a skeleton again...... or at least not until cursed sails heh.
Frankly, she doesn't even need voyages.. she just likes sailing and exploring islands even after all this time since launch! Like I said, she likes finding shiney things! She even almost quit the game entirely when during "banana-gate" they removed shinies! She played the HECK out of State of Decay 2 during that period. Once they were added back in.... well she returned!
So I don't agree with your assessment buddy. Sorry. I don't think merchants or any voyage type are perfect and there is room for improvements in each. But... that's how the winds blow my man.
