I know that You guys said arena won't be updated in future but I wanted to drop some ideas from an experienced player who plays in NAL and loves arena that may bring more people to play it.
I want to start off with last arena update - removing voice chat. For me and for a lot of others it was a game changer. It removed the ability to communicate between teams mid games and mayby set up a TDM before the game. Better solution would be disabling the voice chat as default BUT with an option to change it back to enabled.
Like there is an emmisary ledger system in adventure, something like this in arena - rewards for most points earned in the season, just like adventure there would be four stages, one with no reward, second with just a title or gold, third - title and mayby some weapon / already existing sails and fourth - ship cosmetics. I wouldn't take silver to count the points, just the gold you receive after each game. (yes, gold hour would bring more people to play since it would be more rewarding)
After the game players receive a sheet of paper with overall score with detalis of what gives and how many points. Instead of this overall system i suggest - personalised statistics. It would count cannonballs shot, cannonballs hit, enemies killed, chests dig up and sold and mayby cannonball kills. With hits and shot cannonballs you could calculate an average. For players who are more advanced in arena it could help with their accuracy.
Since every company besides Hunters Call got maximum level buffed, why not update the arena to max lvl 75 and add some new commendations to achieve or add rewards for everyone who got legendary sea dog in 2020 like they got a new blunderbass in 2019.
Thanks to everyone who read it, i would love your feedback and I encourage you to play arena, it is a very fun game mode to boost your skill, as well as play some TDM's, they are also cool but the community may be a bit rough.