Me and some friends were talking about what would be some cool new things to add and we came up with quite a few.
1rst, whales and artic area.
If an ice area is added, add whales for hunters call quests and treasure that progressively slows down the carrier as they hold it, and some cursed balls that freeze the water around ships, slowing them down.
2nd, functional cosmetics.
Make certain ship cosmetics have a bit of functionality. Like the new party capstan that has the bowl of grog, make it where you can refill tankards from it.
3rd, Pirate bounties.
Add a system for players to put bounties on other players that might've stolen from them or sunk them, and the player sets the bounty and the gold to pay the bounty comes from them.
4th, Merchant ship transport.
A merchant quest that focuses on keeping their trading vassal or vassals from sinking on route instead of hunting down their remains. Or vice versa for reapers, where they hunt down and sink a merchant ship.
5th, playable games.
Little minigames for while sailing long voyages where you can buy the board game from a shop in taverns and set it down somewhere then play it with a friend. and you could place bets on the games so you can gain or lose money.
6th, transferrable credits.
make an option to transfer any of the 3 currencies to a crewmate so if they're saving up for an expensive cosmetic or something, you can help out.
7th, reduced income on custom servers.
instead of making custom servers where any loot or rep you obtain while on them doesn't count, make it where it's significantly reduced so that larger friend groups can be in one server and actually earn gold or rep. Also have an option to join the server a friend is on if their crew is already full, maybe even give players in an alliance the option to set a ship as a flagship to respawn on.
8th, quality of life.
Maybe add more animals to the oceans, like mantas that'll swim close to the surface or dolphins that swim along ships and do their little jump dives.
And if you can get permission, Easter egg sea creatures from other games that rarely spawn and either don't do much or attack players. (my main thoughts would be something like the reaper leviathan spawning when players are doing a shrine, and it spawns at the edge of rendering and lets out some roars.)
That's about all I could recall from conversations with friends. I hope you guys will consider these suggestions, and possibly even accept some.
Thanks for your time.