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The Big Ship Thread
I know there have been other threads about Ships, but not one I started, and thus this one is superior. 
It's not right around the corner, but the time when we're going to be able to have a comprehensive look at the ship system is at least visible on the horizon. Frankly, the existing one feels a bit clunky in places and in dire need of improvement in others. Overall, it needs to be more accessible to a wider segment of Achaeans (it's a major system, and is not used enough given the amount of work that went into it and the potential it has), and probably needs a whole slew of quality of life improvements.
We haven't really taken a hard look at the system and started diving into details on what to change, but we're open to changing as much of it as is needed. If the conclusion we come to is "redo the whole damn thing" then that's what we'll do, but I suspect we don't need to get that radical.
So what are the things you dislike about ships and think should be changed or removed? What are things that you'd love to see added to the ship system? If you think it needs to be fundamentally, structurally overhauled, explain why and tell us what you'd do instead.
Comments
I'll point out the obvious upside which is also a considerable flaw to the system.
Upside: People buy ships to AFK (and avoid conflict) on them and store items and use them as a method to shipreturn to important areas not easily accessible.
Downside: This leads to the ships never leaving the harbour.
No solutions, but pointing out the most obvious reasons for buying and using them.
Semi-related: A credit/crown artefact steam boiler that can be used to speed up the boat would be kind of neat, dumping coal in to keep the burn going. Maybe 15 seconds of boost per 1 coal?. Nothing like the speed of a Seastrider under a huge wind, but something to make sailing against the wind a little less painful I think would be reasonable. @Kinilan would probably be the best person to chime in about the specific speed, if he even thinks it'd be a good idea.
Paging @Kinilan
and @Taraus
As for ship missions, maybe a system where on a random timer 1-2 times a day has a crew member send a tell to the active captain of their particular ship telling them of word going around of a cache buried on a beach somewhere, or the location of an NPC ship hauling valuable cargo that would sell for a good price at X harbor, or an NPC pirate vessel that could be ambushed to claim a bounty on + a good XP reward for the shipmates, or something. A dynamic encounter style that sends people racing to the same approximate location.
Totally agreed that things that force more ship competition would be great. Not enough multiple ships vs. multiple ships in sea battles.
One of the things I definitely want to look at is the display of information on the ocean map itself and finding ways to give more info-at-a-glance.
I hope this isn't meaning something like what @Taraus constantly asks for is being implemented. (A way to pull ships in harbour out) Or, at the very least, it isn't implemented to be possible when nobody is on board the ship. Only reason I say this is that it's going to suck for a lot of people if they log off one day and come back the next to their ship sunk because they didn't pay their 'protection fee' to certain cities/orgs.
Ship warfare is nice and all, but I just don't see it being that awesome without the ability to raid another city's harbor and destroy their harbor+sink all their ships. This solves the "people bitching out on ships" problem quite nicely.
1. Takes too long to get to ship-related activities such as islands.
2. Cost of getting into ships is too prohibitive (300 credits for seafaring, 1.5m+ whatever a ship is, plus massive upkeep/moral costs).
3. Next to no rewards for sailing (slight increase in xp/gold on islands currently).
4. Pirates/pirating make it really, really annoying for those who just want to sail/fish/dive in peace.
Edit:
5. Small harbors and not being able to stop at the first harbor because it's full.
6. Not being able to qq/leave the realms quickly while in the middle of nowhere.
Oh man, I was born for this thread. Strap in kids this is gonna be a long rinde!
I actually started talking to people I've been involved with in one way or another through seafaring. Getting their thoughts on things. What they liked, what they didn't like and so on. I'll try to lay it out as best I can here.
One thing I noticed from the very early days of setting up Mhaldor's navy and later Ashtan's was that within the group of people that is involved with seafaring the vast majority that I've come across don't want to be captain, or pilot the ship. Reasons given were lag, not having a good idea how to get places, not wanting the responsability and just not knowing how things are done. On the flip side there were people that enjoyed what they termed "support" roles. They took pride in knowing how to do their joband were more than willing to follow a capable captain and that is reflected in the fact that very rarely have people asked me to take them sailing but people are always willing to group up and go for a spin when asked provided they aren't busy with something else.
Now Ashtan has two seafaring clans, one for the general seafaring users and the navy with the navy being ship combat focused. That means a lot of the people from Ashtan that raid are also involved in the navy and one thing they all dislike about seaffaring is how hard it can be to find a target let alone a fight. If they want to raid for example all they need to do is group up and go to an enemy city. With seafaring it's a lot of standing around and waiting for the slim chance to find another ship and about 40% of the time we manage to spot another ship it's not a ship we can attack for one reason or another. One of the ways we work around this is by having people just use ship return. I'll go out and do my thing and if a ship is spotted the party all jump right to the ship and get to work instead of just standing around looking at the wilderness map scroll by.
People that wanted to be captains expressed an interest in exploring and lore. People that were in it for the fighting said they enjoyed the "cage match" style of fighting when boarding a ship. Ship return and island access was a big factor in people buying a ship and learning seafaring. Those that bought a ship for ship return always went with a Windcutter because of the massive price difefrence between the ship types and the fact that Windcutters cost less to maintain.
Everyone I've ever sailed with agrees that wavecall is bullshit.I'll say that again. Everyone I've ever sailed with agrees that wavecall is bullshit. Some people that started into seafaring before I got my claws into them expressed a disinterest in learning anything about ship combat because running away was always the easier option by far.
Almost every single person that I've been involved with in seafaring was a well established character with seafaring being one of the last skills they bothered to learn. Because of how seafaring specialisation works the few people i've worked with that weren't able to instantly trans seafaring or at least get 15 SPP to reach rank V in a specialisation found the whole thing quite dull because the only jobs they could really do were stand there and load weapons until the boarding party landed a boarding deck and was ready to start fighting for real.It'd be more about pulling the players on the ship off, not the ships out of the harbor.
My only real desire is to see upcoming reworks balanced in a way that neither faction feels specially favored over the other. If you make it so that people are afraid to even step in on a boat, then you won't accomplish your goal of making the system more widely used, and you won't see more ships on the water.
Just something to think about.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
Using ships as safe places in a harbor isn't using ships at all as far as I'm concerned. It's basically taking advantage of a loophole that has nothing to do with ships other than that the loophole happens to be in that system.
As I said, its just something to think about in general. The example given is just what was on the top of my head at the moment. But too much danger and too little ways to avoid that danger will see the system in no better state than it is now.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
I uhh, will leave the intricacies to the rest of you at the moment. However! I have one big suggestion - ship vs ship ramming. Please. Pleeeeeeease make it a thing. Situational or not I think it'd be wholly awesome to last-ditch effort take down someone, or just plain add to the humiliation of things to get ram killed by an unarmed cutter that snuck in during a fight.
@Shirszae Yeah, definitely agree with that in general.
1) Barrier of entry is way too high. Why spend so much development time on a huge feature and then bar a lot of the playerbase from entry? Create more ship types, like tiny rowboats or whatever so John Midbie and his buddy can run around on the ocean. You can leave the massive warboats as expensive options, maintaining the prestige & goldsink factor without making the sea a boring place.
2) Feels weird as hell to be able to walk to somewhere 10x faster than you can sail there. Not sure how tractable that problem is, though, because it's mostly a result of how blindingly fast normal Achaean movement is.
3) Wavecall is stupid. You can teleport a ridiculously long range, making it impossible to chase without the aggressor having a similar amount of wavecalls available. Furthermore, the aggressor has to guess at which direction the victim wavecalled each time as they can go beyond vision range. Why is there such insane teleportation available when the entire premise of ship combat is careful positioning? Should be like three squares max.
4) If you add incentives to be in certain locations at certain times, it will help fix a large part of the problem especially if you tackle 1) as well. The ocean is vast, vision range is small, and we have no tools to divine where other ships are. Ship trades were a good step in the right direction, but obviously not enough.
I think the core of the ship system itself is solid (basic functionality and operation), it's only peripherals that need to be looked at/reworked.
Somewhat related to Trey's suggestion of a method of increasing speed, I've always thought it would be cool to incorporate an actual rowing command somewhere in the seafaring skillset to do just that - allow for a player crew that will nominally increase speed based on how many are rowing - which also gives another tangible benefit and reason to have more of a crew onboard.
And handling ship AFKing is tricky. Its a hugely inconvenient issue (also abused), given that it does provide an impenetrable fortress of sorts - however, the method of ensuring it isn't being abused, I'd think, would need to be addressed so that any vulnerability a in harbour became susceptible to would be done WHILE someone was actually on board.
Off the top of my head: put a skill somewhere in seafaring that'll allow you to infiltrate/weasel your way onto a ship in harbour; climb over the side, sneak up the gangplank, whatever - and create a new shipboard denizen (a guard of sorts) who sends a shipwide announcement that someone (without boarding permissions) has boarded; those aboard will be alerted to the intruder, and have the ability and opportunity to handle it accordingly.
(The only time I've ever asked for a ship to be forcibly removed from harbour was during the recent hide-on-a-ship-with-the-facet fiasco, and that was tongue in cheek!)
More sea creatures, more Kashari threats, more random events actually -out at sea-, more reason to get people out there on the ocean and actually sailing.
Wavecall is bullshit.
I'm curious what more information (regarding the ocean map and at a glance) you're talking about expanding?
Some of the changes that are definitely on my list:
I guess another important bit of data that we'd like to know is what aspects of ships/seafaring do you use most? What abilities don't you use? What abilities are generally a pain to use (and why)?
I have felt completely locked out of this system (including island exploration/questing/bashing) because of the learning curve, the burdens of travel time, not being able to qq instantly, and especially the gold/credit investment required. Across all my characters ever I have seen most islands that you need to sail to no more than a dozen times. I have not even seriously tried to figure out the major island quests (save Clockwork, which is pretty quick and I know by memory) because it isn't something that you can do for a little bit and go do something else if you get bored.
I don't particularly care about ships themselves so much as the islands with great content that are made inaccessible to me by the ship system.
Ok round two! My own thoughts now.
The costs for ships are just stupid. 2.5 million gold for an entry level ship that can't really fight outside of a boarding action that just isn't an option for non-coms. That's around 500 credits worth of gold, AFTER investing in a full cost skillset. Double that for a strider plus another million to arm it and then crew costs and other assorted goods you're looking at 7 million all told plus the cost to make your weapons nodecay unless you want to burn gold on comms restoring their months through the Weaponmaintenance ability which isn't worth it because after about a year you're just throwing gold away compared to buying credits off the market.
And then you've got War Galleys at 10 million plus another 3-4 million to equip and again credit costs to make weapons nodecay. Weapons you can't really use without at least 1 person per weapon because of the firing mechanics. A 7 person crew is freaking HUGE. You'd almost never have that many people ready to go with the right specialisations at any given time and the ship type itself under the BEST conditions takes 30 seonds to turn 90 degrees making it very very easy to escape a war galley just by turning and sailing off while they either make a crazy wide turn and end up losing sight of you or they stop and you sail off and again they lose sight of you. I wouldn't use a war galley even if it was free. They are shit.
Finding another ship on the water is pretty hit or miss. Unless you camp a high trafic area or sit in harbour waiting to jump out and surprise a ship as they try to dock. You can sail for hours and not see anything which tends to be a huge turn off for a lot of people.
The Command, Helm and Deckhand specialists take too much work to get to. Weapons and Watch can be accessed without a ship but the others being on islands act as just another hurdle to jump through before you can get started in seafaring.
Command and Watch specialisations have everything you need to turtle up and stay safe if you know what you're doing which gives one person the ability to almost completly shut down the efforts of a whole crew of people. Other abilities like sounding, sighting, barrier and keelhaul are useless. Abilities like Anticipate can only be used from the crows nest making it impractical or the helm abilities that can only be set and maintined by someone standing at the helm. Whirlpool a rank V helm ability requires you be melded at the figurehead. Either you can use Whirlpool and none of your other helm abilities at the cost of 15 ssp or you can use your helm abilities but not whirlpool which itself can be a highly effective defensive ability.
Most of the chops mazes add nothing to the experience of seafaring beyond frustration. Some of them the more like ones, like the route from Ageiro to Tuar or Tears to Meropis, ones you can maneuver in are enjoyable and would be fun to engage in ship combat within. Shit like the maze between Tasur'ke and the northern islands are rage inducing pieces of shit that need to be redone.
Fishing on ships is high abuseable through automation. I've caught more than a few people I suspected of autofishing over the years.
Diving is just odd. On the one hand it can if you're lucky provide some nice gold through chest hunting but the mobs themselves range from almost ratlike sea cucumbers to Sea Dragons that can kill an unprepared dragon making it a terrible bashing option for any but the highly leveled or heavily artifacted and then because of the lack of gold drops the few things worth killing for dragons just give you experience and essence. No gold.
Escaping combat is too easy. The east coast for example is littered with harbours that you can duck into. some you can block if you're fast, ones like the ship arena are just a ship combat eject button. Defence stacking, low damage from weapons, low fire rate, low accuracy result in a high time to kill on ships which makes boarding the only real option which can be so very unenjoyable for non-coms and at times dull for combatants.
Fights between evenly matched crews with captains that know what they are doing are dull and drawn out. the year 650 ship arena battle was a perfect example of this. If the fight between the final two ships had been in open water one of them would have said fuck it and turned to the nearest harbour long before the fight ended.
Trade delas are terrible 70% of the time. Most aren't even worth doing. The rare ones that are worth doing are really the only thing that get people out on the water moving and those are few and far between.
There is no reason to be on the water moving. You either beach a ship on an island to use for semi-pirvate island bashing or you hide somewhere to fish/dive and only ever spend extended peroids of time moving around when there is a deal worth doing. This makes for a very limited window for conflict to happen.
There is no reward for ship combat beyond some xp when you smash a non-com into the deck and bragging rights when you sink someone. On the plus side the actual losses from a sink ship are quite minimal which is a plus
Wavecall is Hitler in ability form. Fuck wavecall.
Have I mentioned I hate wavecall and chops?
All the bugs. Flares south of the Tears appearing far to the north of Sapience. Ships not sinking when they should be sinking, ships regaining hull health after they have hit 0%, deathsight on sinking ships not giving credit. setting sails before rowing not giving the ship the benefit of rowing speed and all the other outstanding bugs that have been reported years ago and never addressed.
You can't really help someone in need. Either you're in the area with a ship to help someone under attack or you're just too far away to do anything about it.
Ship trade itself, the mechanics of trading a large number of goods down to a small number is needlessly complicated.
...I'm sure I'll think of more later.
Oh, fuck chops.
and wavecall.
All basic seafaring abilities except deepseafishing. Cooking, Fireweapon, Status, Mast, Shipscan, Shipmeld, Shipcloak, Shipwarning, Wavecall (to counter all those other sons of bitches with wavecall), Command, Fleetsense, Sailsgrid, Hullgrid, Rainstorm, Windboost, Shiled, Scythe. I have but never use keelhaul, commscreen and spyglass.
Through crewmembers I make use of Hullmaintenance, Sailmaintenance, Salvageops, Forceboarding, Grappling, Weaponmaintenance, Ammoenhance. Weaponaiming, Helm, Setadygoing, stationhold, Evasives, Jink, Emergencies. Weaponenhancement I've used but it's been setup there is no need for it any more everything else I've never needed or almost never used.
It's probably super weird but I like shipping actual people, like my friends or @Xer and @Hasar, and... oh... not that kind of shipping...
I haven't sailed much because it seems like a ton of effort for virtually no reward, which is very silly because I really like games about sailing and pirates and stuff. Piratable NPC trade ships might be cool for pirate types, and a more refined trading system (might play into commodities?) for the trade-y types, perhaps.
Also, I get that walking, swimming, or flying over the ocean is not a good idea, but it'd be cool if there was some sort of soft penalty instead of instant death. Like maybe it costs a ton of endurance (and maybe health as waves batter you, if it's a non-flight approach), and if you run out you die. It's really weird that I play a character who of their own abilities (no water walking shoes, just shindo mastery) can walk across lakes, rivers, etc. but it is completely useless at the ocean.
I know there was an item that allowed that last part, and that's totally a gameplay solution, but not really a fluff solution. A fluff solution would totally even include having a separate death message (like "you try to fly, but alas, even though you can sustain flight over long spans of arctic wasteland, you fail to fly more than a few feet away before Neraeos is like 'nope!' and pulls you underwater. You don't drown because you were holding breath and have two thousand prickly pears ready, but fish eat you anyway.")
As much as I hate being becalmed or having to sail into the wind or tacking with bad winds something you have to BUY I dislike. Any speed boost option would very much be something you'd NEED for ship combat otherwise your target will just sail away and right now ship combat is something that isn't pay to win, Unlike our regular PvP. It's certainly pay gated to a huge degree but once you get set up someone with a level 3 ballista isn't going to pick you off from the other side of the ocean.
That said there is certainly room for a speed increse from rowing or sails or both. How the winds are set up could also be looked at. Their direction is static within given lattitudes and that combined with island/harbour position and the route set by terrible terrible chops mazes forces you to in some instances sail right into the wind. Like when you sail towards Meropis. And the need to use a resource like coal, or something else unique to the speed boosty thing would be interesting. Something like 5 extra knots could be manageable without being overpowered. Anything faster would make escaping even easier because speed lowers weapon accuracy.
Top abilities that I use most - Windboost first and foremost on my list of what's used regularly. The best really. Since I agree with wavecall being a bit poor I'd put up the option of upping boosting and just doing away with wavecall, or maybe make wavecall a quick way to change headings? Something more for short distance tactical options than a quick escape? Cloaking would be next up. Very useful with interesting dynamics given flares. Haven't been in combat enough to go into specifics. Cooking, shipscan, shipwarning, etch, keelhaul would be next down the line though getting into more obvious abilities.
For my ship use: mostly fishing, exploring, trading, and very soon forging (so please make whatever afk detector not kick me for that please?) if that's what you were asking.
What I don't use, or don't plan to:
=Bearings - while I like the idea of requiring maps, they're a bit of a pain to acquire/create and it's easier and more fun to just explore and memorize. So for anyone who isn't just lazy it's a tad useless.
=Spyglass - Unless I'm missing something, it just doesn't seem that useful.
=Barriers - AP weapons can't really out-damage adventurers from my experience, and boarded, I think it better not to interfere with the combatant's work (or waste the figurehead power on it). Not when things such as ship momentum and dousing fires (I.E. rainstorm) are a higher priority.
=Deepseadiving - Not really worth the cost of the diving bell IMO. Why? Because 1. it's hard to skill for the use of a leadline if you're specializing for more solo captaining, and 2. the experience and gold tends to be less worth it than just hunting or fishing.
Hope that helps
It's interesting that no one on Kinilan's side wants to be captain. On the white side, people are willing to be captain (when we leave the harbour doncha know), but the bigger problem is that their SPPs are usually stacked in favor of sailing as a lone captain. I have someone even less experienced than I am (no offense) "captaining" my boat most of the time because I know that most people have their SPPs configured that way, so I reconfigured mine in the interest of having someone who could actually fire a weapon accurately, or jink (I also wanted to see what it was like to have something other than a high command and watch SPP ranking, which is what almost everyone seems to have).
What "captain" really means on an Achaean ship could use a look (especially if you want to convince people that filling other crew positions is desirable). Besides so many people specializing in command (and usually watch) at the expense of other things in the interest of sailing alone, there's also an assumption that the "captain" is running everything while the rest of the crew are just minions. Since the word probably isn't going to go away, you might even consider greatly weakening the affinity of the captain position with the command skills (and call the command skills something else). Make it appealing for the "captain" to simply be whoever is actually the most competent sailor (or if you're all good, it may not matter too much). Maybe make the captain position have the most affinity with things that are SA related (like shipwarning and anticipate).
Also helm not being able to see the ship prompt and detailed bearings makes me rage. It's worse if I don't have Captain's privs (so I can at least see ship info).
EDIT: Spyglass doesn't seem to have all of its advertised functionality, but I do find it useful to ensure I'm not trying to duck into a full harbour.
For those of who store things on ships, does that mean those things would no longer be safe? Would they be able to forceboard even in a harbour, or have some way just to get us off whether the plank is or isn't up? And what does this mean for those who've built their houses on their ships?
I guess part of why this change would suck is that those of us who like to use them for storing, safe afking or just wanting to be left alone (I don't agree when they're used to hide things that are a part of events), and things along those lines is that we've paid the expense in having the skill and buying the ship and all of the constant upkeep costs, plus the time it takes to learn to use the skill and get the marque attested in the first place. Plus the costs of upgrades both in credits and gold. If there'll be an option to at least pay for it to stay the same with some kind of a credit upgrade I'd probably pay it, but I may drop my seafaring skill and sell my ship since I use it to afk when busy at home or storing things that are too valuable to keep elsewhere. I don't explore with my ship often enough anymore to keep up with the costs otherwise due to pirate activity being a huge deterrant.
There was a recent thread that summed up even the most enthusiastic non-com's feelings about pirates/ocean conflict in general. In short, most of us are very conflicted as to how much it's exciting, and how much it's a royal pain in the ass. We contemplate this matter from the harbour, mostly.
As for the harbour thing, many people, including me, like the security a docked ship can offer (and it wasn't cheap). It's quite superior to just about anything on land if you're say, playing with your triggers. Also, when I'm checking my ships, I spend a fair bit of time just looking things over. That's where even someone like me would end up saying "fuck it" if some of the best combatants in the game could try to shimmy on board while I'm dinking about with the strongbox, or my map desk.
Of course admin will ultimately do what they're going to do, but it's probably too late to roll that one back without some serious non-com credit whore backlash. I have mixed feelings. I don't store anything on my ship so no loss to me there, etc...
I don't sail out cause I can't get the ship to safety fast enough if I get an emergency and I don't have weapons because I don't like to go looking for people as a crew to be able to utilize them (reminds me too much of WoW, yuck) and having them means I'll risk running into sea monsters and when I can't use weapons that's just stupid, plus if I had weapons and the crew there's the risk of that crew having an emergency and having to log off, which puts you back to square one.
I'd prefer if you could utilize your denizen crew to use all the seafaring abilities (though at lower efficiency than players). It'd mean it's possible to be a single captain, but reward you much more if you use a player crew.
I also bought a galley to use as an out of sub house because I hate cities having that much power over my own private house (kinda why I find Lusternia's housing system way superior to ours)
Now that the bitching is out of the way, what would I change? Make ships have to/want to move around more
First up would be islands. Remove the ability to leave ships on an island for ship return island access. Remove shipreturn to docked ships (seaparyer could be used if you die while bashing an island but the ability should be moved down below Trans) or only make tokens useable when a ship os actually sinking. One way or another you'll need to move your ship from that island you're on.
Rework the trade system into something less confusing, more rewarding and something that can be done constantly. Not just complete a good trade and wipe your hands. You should want to be out there moving around doing things and it doesn't have to be for gold or credits or crowns. Make trading an attractive alternative to simply bashing for gold, add more things like the mounts or pets, things people want. remove the crap people don't want and fix things like the crew experience and morale or ammo deal deals that give crap rewards. Personally i really love the crown deal not just for it's value but because it opens up the SoW items as something (almost) unique to seafaring. If you want those items you have to sail or deal with someone that does and the demand is so great that everyone and their mother tries to complete the crown deal. And let's be honest what's been better? Crown sales or Talisman sales?
Windcutters need some love combat wise. It could be as simple as letting them use a ballista over a thrower. Onager would be too powerful because of the range of ammo options it has but the ballista might be enough to get people to want to fight back instead of running. Or just change wardiscs to be not useless. There is no reason to envenom them because they hit players so rarely and even if you could hit shot after shot the single venom comes far to slow to really bother anyone. and chainshot is useless in the face of spidershot. Why try to hit 10-20 spidershot to slowly wear down the effectiveness of a ships sails at the expense of damaging the hull with starshot when you can hit sails once with spidershot and get the same result as doing 100% sail damage?
In the grand scheme of things forceboard is exremely overpowered. solo sailing non-coms can't do shit against a prepared boarding party. Like that the hell is Sailor Sally Cyrenian supposed to do but give up or die when 90% of the A-Team appears on their deck? The flip side being that Ship weapons themselves are unreliable and do crap all damage in the face of shield/cloak/evasives/hullgrid/saillgrid/ hullmaint/sailmaint/shipmate repairs and god damn wavecall. Any sort of system that generates ship conflict is going to need to address the fact that boarding and thus the whole fight can be won through raw numbers and that simple ship vs ship is drawn out and easy to escape from.
More dynamic encounters are already on the table so that's a plus but they will need to account for the huge difference in ability and capability of a tricked out Strider with strong player crew Vs an unarmed windcutter with one person aboard.
A sysem for the casual captain.sailor to set up crew might be useful. A sort of "looking for crew" board where people that want to do something can find someone else to do it with them for compant, efficiency and even protection from nasty asshole pirates.
Redo the chops. Less tight frustrating mazes more broad channels with multiple, viable routes to destinations that funnel traffic with wide open ares that can be used for fishing and divng and sea creature hunting or whatever.
Just do away with harbour limits. They only frustrate people. I'm of the opinion that using a spyglass to check the count is a perfectly viable option but if it's a serious sorce of contention for people that want to sail but are affraid of being left locked out at sea for too long it may as well go. That said jumping into a harbour shouldn't be possible or, as easy when you're under attack.
Add rewards for sinking ships. Gold, experience, special items, talismans, whatever. Something to get people involved for reasons beyond cage match style combat and a character aspect.
Diving needs to be readjusted. I like the chest mechanics, hell who doesn't like the chance to find hundreds of thousands of gold? But the range of creatures to fight is so wide and so high that it's not viable for anyone under dragon and then the rewards from the bashing are below that of normal bashing with no gold outside of the chests. Create separate diving areas with a more limited range level range of creatures that offer slightly more experience and essence with the tradeoff of no gold drops. Chest mechanics and payout chances should remain the same across the areas due to how you have to go about finding and opening them. There is no real connection between the chests and the bashing outside of the odd time a dragon or tuna is holding the key and the chest mechanism breaks.
Make wavecall less stupid. Add a counter, reduce the range, add a cooldown. make it cost experience to use. Anything to make it something less than the first and best option for running away.