I would love to see the Quest Board get more love as well, it deserves a second look for sure. Some things that could improve it would be:
Figuring out the incentive loop for generating content for the board. As it stands now, the board tends to be mostly server generated content as opposed to player generated content as was envisioned when it was created. This is largely due to a lack of any incentive to interact with it, and when people do interact with it they are more likely to toss junk out as opposed to putting things of potential value out (as there is again a lack of incentive to do so). There are numerous ways that this could be approached, admittedly, be that adding cosmetic rewards for generating content based on the value of what you put out there or doing something with the Dubloons currency where burying becomes a choice of gaining Gold (selling directly) or gaining Dubloons (burying it an letting someone else get it and cash it in) that scales based on value of what you leave behind, or a number of other options. Regardless of what it is, it needs to be enticing to interact with.
After that, the range of activities that can be found on the Board needs to be increased so that it isn't only X Mark maps so that there are more ways that one could choose to engage with the system. Self imposed bounties could be interesting but would be a nightmare to make work in practice I think, but could be an interesting concept for bringing in a Wayfinder Compass again for more use having it guide you in the general direction of the Bounty (the big issue is this Voyage cancelling on players who pick it up when someone logs off - not an issue with the X Marks maps or the other idea I'll propose below). It might still be worth the effort to add something else to the Board though barring other ideas, and it is good that it follows the idea of player generated content.
I've also thought about having it so that if a Captain Ship sinks for any reason it could automatically generate a version of the "Lost Shipment" voyage featuring the name of the Captain Ship, a copy of the Log Book, and it could generate some loot based on the overall value of what was on board the vessel (this could be a way to encourage people to take the risk of a battle as if they lose it could result in someone doing a "Sunken Captain" Voyage from the Board which would result in the sunk crew getting a payout on completion in a similar way to giving up your Loot for making an X Mark Map can get you rewards - thus reducing the sting of losing some). It is also player generated, in a way, in that it is based off of what has happened in the journey of a player in their session.
Some kind of system for generating Riddles would also be cool, as it could let players get creative with things - though this is again an area that could be a nightmare to implement and be successful, but it could be wildly fun as well (assuming we have handled the incentive factor as well). So we'd have to decide if the effort to accomplish the system would be worth it. Personally I think it could be (same with self imposed bounties above) as it can add interesting player driven content to the sandbox which I think is an overall net positive for this kind of game.
I also think it could be fun to make these kinds of Voyages competitive like the Briggsy Note - meaning they stay available on the Board for other crews until such time as they are completed. This increases the potential for player interactions as well, since who knows if some other Crew also picked up this Voyage off the Board and is trying to complete it too.
If you get the variety and the incentive loop going, and get people engaging, you can also look into tweaks to the server generated content. A couple things I would do here, with all the above potential in mind: update the rewards for these, you can still have some that come out low value, or even ones that feature traps and such like buried kegs, but you also need the high value ones and they should be more commonly mid tier between the extremes. Also, if we have variety, use that variety as well in the server created content so the server doesn't just spit out 2 X Mark Maps per Region like it does now. It spawns 2 random Voyages per Region. Lastly, cull server created content in favor of player created content so people realize there is a solid chance that what they are doing is a player generated Voyage which has novelty to it, simply put if a player posts something that is in a particular map Region, reduce the server generated options by that amount until there is 0 server generated content in the Region because the minimum is handled by player generated content (and there can be more content in a Region than the minimum of course, but there will still always be at least two activities posted per Region when you check if not more).
This would be a massive overhaul to the system that I think would result in more engagement with it and accomplish people actually making content for the system. There are loads of other ideas and options and design approaches to all of this, with the same net result in the end of better incentive, more variety, a refreshed dynamic, and higher engagement.
Just my two cents and ramblings.
