@guildar9194
People can already roleplay. It just does not have any mechanics to enforce it. Nor should it.
I think there's some wiggle room here. For instance, despite waking up at a Tavern in this game every time you log in, you cannot Sit and Drink. You also cannot Sit and Fish off the edges of your ship. While, realistically, yeah, there's probably no real reason for them to allow this, I DO find it a bit strange that you can't.
While I agree that this IS a Sandbox game and you can make your own fun, I'm also not against improving the Sandbox to have the tools for people to be able to engage with the "sand" in more ways than just gunpowder and steel. World interaction in this game can sometimes be overly reduced to Kill People, or Don't, with no real in-between, or reward for even attempting something different.
For instance, I've seen a lot of people want to actually Merchant for the Merchant's Guild. Scandalous, I know. While the game does support Cargo Running and the good old Buy Low/Sell High dynamic, what if there were "Supplies" that Merchant Guild members could buy, that become stationary boxes on their ship. These boxes would contain things like Cannon Balls, maybe Cooked Food, etc. The purpose of these would be to sell them on the Seas, to other players.
You'd sail up to them (Hopefully not get blown out of the water), and invite them onto your ship. They could check the crates contents just like you'd check a Cargo/Smuggler item Destination, and then if they want to buy it, then they simply hold the button, their gold gets traded to you, and the item becomes a usable item in the world they can unload into their barrels. If you get sunk before making a sell, but have cargo on your ship, that cargo "breaks" like the Rum Bottles, and can still be looted but with much less quality items in it, or maybe not at all? Then when you return from your run, you're paid out a bonus for the amount of stuff you managed to sell without being sunk.
With something like that implemented into the game, you'd still be encouraging Emissary Status and giving targets to Reapers, but you'd also have a new layer of interactions that players could achieve, and a playstyle unlocked for the less blood-thirsty of us. Merchants would have a completely new dynamic towards their Risk/Reward in a way that still encourages player interaction without feeling like a Sword of Damocles.
