I know that Rare wants all players to "be on equal grounds" whether you are a beginner or a seasoned pro, but I think that the complete lack of any substantial, non-cosmetic upgrades could result in the game becoming stale very quickly.
TL;DR: Small, permanent buffs to pirate (e.g. carry more bananas) and large, temporary (for 1 play session or until your ship sinks) ship modifications (e.g. anchor raises much faster).
What happens once you've purchased all the cosmetic items you want? If the pricing is like the beta, you could do this within a few days rather easily. The result is that once you've completed much of the PVE content to get the cosmetics you want, it turns into a PVP-only game. If they can continue to pump out new PVE content, then you have new stuff to do, but I doubt they can produce additional content at the rate that players can complete it.
I think that there needs to be a middle-ground. Something that doesn't allow the pros to get so far ahead of beginners that they don't stand a chance, but something that takes some time and energy to achieve so you have something to work for.
My suggestion:
Allow players to earn a limited number of small, permanent buffs to their pirates AND allow players to earn more substantial, temporary buffs to their ships.
Permanent pirate buffs:
Allow players to permanently slightly upgrade their pirate to be better at a limited number of certain tasks.
This can include:
"Stronger pirate - aye sea yer pirate been lifting a lot of cannonballs lately. Now yer pirate is able to raise the anchor faster"
"Fatter pirate - yer pirate hasn't performed much physical activity lately. Now yer pirate can hold more bananas."
As you can see from my two suggestions, neither of these "upgrades" are game-changing. You could include other upgrades such as: faster reloading (maybe for only 1 gun at a time), slightly better sniper scope, more health from food, carries more planks/cannonballs/food, raise/lower/angle the sails faster, see farther with your spyglass, dig up buried treasure faster, repair ship faster. You wouldn’t start out with any upgrades and you’d have to earn them in diverse ways. Maybe each trading company offers different upgrades for purchase. Or maybe you must complete a specific task (like working out or drinking a lot of grog) to achieve an upgrade. You also must complete a different task if you want to switch upgrades, so you couldn’t just jump from PVE to PVP focused upgrades instantly. They would actually take some effort to switch.
Another key would be to limit a pirates upgrades to a limited amount.. Maybe 1 pvp upgrade, 1 storage upgrade, 1 ship upgrade and 1 pve upgrade.
So in total, one PVP-focused player could: reload pistol faster, carry 2 additional bananas, reload the cannon faster, and swim faster. Or a PVE-focused player could: do more damage to skeletons with your sniper, carry 2 additional planks, have the names of the islands appear when zoomed out on the map, and carry chests faster.
Neither option hardly sounds game-breaking, but it would give you something to further customize your pirate so it feels more like something you have created rather than having a fancier hat.
Temporary buffs:
This would be the second layer of upgrades and would be what really keeps players motivated to play for longer periods and seek more rewards. Each of these “temporary buffs” only lasts for your play session… or maybe each only lasts until your ship is sunk. These buffs would have to be earned/purchased every single time you logged on. And maybe each ship can only have a certain total number of buffs (maybe 4 again). So each player on a galleon would have to earn/unlock/purchase one buff.
These could include:
Faster ships, all cannons reload faster, sails turn faster, anchor raises much faster, get more gold from voyages, storms no longer effect the compass, other ship modifications, etc.
This could possibly also include purchasing of resources for your ship. Maybe one of the 4 temporary buffs you unlock for your ship is the ability to purchase one specific (or all) resource from outposts.
These buffs would need to be much stronger than the permanent buffs since they only last for your play session and they have higher risk (especially if they are lost when your ship sinks). But as strong as these buffs are, new players really still aren’t at a disadvantage because a new player and pro both start a session without these buffs and it would take the same amount of effort to unlock them. Both would have to earn the buff/ship modification again. Obviously, these shouldn’t be able to just be purchased with gold, because an experienced player would have a significant more amount of gold.
Thank you for reading and I look forward to more suggestions.
Happy Pirating!
