Now look, I'll caveat that I haven't played this game in at least a year. I've just got off of a night of 3 different servers, back to back, each day out of 3 days in a row, of people coming after me and my friends relentlessly, without any treasure on our ship. We are a little rusty, it's true, but we LITERALLY cannot engage in the PVE side of this game, whatsoever, without someone coming after us every 5 minutes. I'm trying to get someone new to play the game, no less.
"But it's a PIRATE GAME, BRO, WHY DON'T YOU GET GUD?" This is besides the point. I am a game designer/programmer by trade, myself, so I feel like I can spot a systemic design issue when I see one and, while I don't have the stats in front of me for how many people engaged in the Arena side of this game while it existed, it sure does seem like, since Arena shut down, there's way more pvp-focused players bearing down on pve players than I remember. My crew cannot complete a single voyage without being interrupted by pvp. It used to be that we'd have good days and bad days, but now it's just every single server, all the time. There's no such thing as a good day anymore. There's no reason to get into this game if you don't want to play the ghost of Arena. I feel that, in the absence of Arena, some kind of system needs to be put in to draw pvp players, or even maybe some kind of ranking system, in order to allow people to, y'know, play the game, at all. As it stands, we cannot leave our starting island with a rank 1 emissary of any type without being ganked instantly. The game is not fun anymore. It's not a pvevp game anymore. It's just deathmatch.
There's no longer any interesting question as to whether another ship will come to try to murder you; it's just a matter of fact at every second. People don't even engage their brain cells to think "Oh, maybe if we let them get to emissary level 4/5, they'll have the loot to make it worth it for us to engage." They just kill anything that moves, and use the tall tales to migrate servers until they find one that suits their fancy.
Whoever comes in replying with something like the aforementioned comment content, you will be ignored. This is patently absurd. Some kind of design element needs to be added/changed. My friend can't even get into this game , and I don't believe in the idea that a game requires viewing a couple of wiki articles or several dozen youtube videos to be able to play the game, period.