Puzzle gameplay is much less advanced than combat gameplay. While combat gets progressively harder for world events and as players progress through certain trading companies, puzzle difficulties stay the same. This has caused a lot of complaints regarding puzzles in the sea of thieves, as no one puzzle can satisfy everyone anymore than one combat situation can. What I am proposing is making puzzles that get progressively harder, just like the combat does.
How this could be implemented:
While entirely new puzzles of the sort I am suggesting could be made from scratch, there is already a framework that can be used for these: the gold hoarder vaults. Right now, the gold hoarder vaults all have the same difficulty in terms of solving the puzzle and getting the loot, regardless of the titles you have earned from your gold hoarder reputation. I propose that an additional set of titles (like the ones in the trading companies) should be incorporated specifically for the vaults, with everyone starting off at the most basic title. These titles would be purchased from the gold hoarder representatives, but would be separate from the current titles that can already be purchased from them. Like the other trading companies, the greater the title you purchase, the harder the vault voyage will be. These titles would be earned through reputation gained specifically from completing the puzzle in the gold hoarder vault. The reputation earned from completing the gold hoarder vault puzzles would count towards a separate section of reputation apart from the general gold hoarder reputation. This new section of reputation could come with its own commendations and such, and would be how you earned the titles I mentioned adding above. I feel that this would both balance out the difficulty of the vaults and give players access to puzzles that will have a difficulty that is dependent on how they perform with completing the vault puzzles, and not a set difficulty that is dependent on the general intelligence level of the player base.
How the difficulty could vary:
I admit, apart from reducing the time limit for the vault, I do not have a lot of good ideas on how the difficulty would vary. I think the dev team (if they choose to implement this) are probably the best ones to decide how to do that.
This is just my general idea on how to make some better puzzles. I am not saying this is exactly how it should be implemented. Feel free to give constructive feedback on my suggestion.
