Just a couple quick and not super fleshed out ideas, just kinda throwing out what pops into my head.
1) Buff or introduce a "hard mode" Black Pearl boss battle.
The Black Pearl boss battle was put into the game (speaking of POTCO here) when the level cap was 40 and the max level for weapons was level 25 (I think? If it wasn't that then it was when it was lower, those were the caps when I played waaay back). It has always been one of my favorite things to do in this game but it is just way too easy as a level 50 pirate. The enemies are all grey in there, I don't think I even see green tags when I do that fight. I don't think the entire thing needs to be revamped, just perhaps buff it a bit so things are higher level. The boss battle should also give actual loot, perhaps even just leaving the current one as is and adding loot to a hard mode version if that is the preferred route (I do understand keeping the original easy as you are meant to finish the quest line around early level 30s).
2) Add loot incentives to treasure fleets.
Currently there is no reason to do treasure fleets except for fun, money is so insignificant in this game that nobody truly needs to go out and try to farm money, so royal chests aren't even a reward. I personally would like to see them be given loot containers (doesn't necessarily mean guaranteed skull chests, but fairly high rate for the main ship at least) and I think that with it being an event it could be the perfect thing to add a level 4 loot container. It doesn't make much sense that loot containers stop at 3 stars/skulls, and maybe even make it a non guaranteed treasure fleet exclusive loot container that would have a higher chance at famed/legendary and then adding a new treasure fleet exclusive legendary item, maybe going off the theme of treasure one that when equipped increases chance that higher level loot containers will be dropped (like some form of actually useful treasure sense). Now I don't mean to make legendaries common from them, I'm talking like a 5-10% chance at a famed item and a 1% chance at a legendary. I feel like that would be fair as the container shouldn't be guaranteed, with exceedingly low chance from the guard ships and a moderate chance drop from the main ship, and on top of that the rarity of treasure fleets (I genuinely don't remember the last one I've seen...).
Oh, and also please make treasure fleets more common. ;-;
3) Rework higher level flagships and add QAR back.
The QAR point I'll just say it quick since many have already brought it up: please, add it back, lower Sword of Triton chance, buff it and make it legendary, ty. As for flagships, first off I just wanna vent that I used to love taking over that Colossus flagship on POTCO but the levels of the enemies are significantly lower in TLOPO for some reason, maybe it's a bug, idk, but yeah that's disappointing. Regardless, high level flagships should be changed to act as a sort of sea boss fight, similiar to QAR except perhaps not really needing a wave system. This could be an excellent opportunity to add sea exclusive legendaries that you can hunt for without just mindlessly sinking ships and hoping you get said sea exclusive legendary out of a skull chest
cough admiral's weapons/iron priming
cough. Also adding more flagships would complement this idea nicely (flagship juggernaut?
). Even if you don't do that, please buff my Colossus flagship again
Oh and also fixing flagships might be a good idea as well so your entire crew doesn't disappear when you defeat one.
4) Captain's Quarters
So with all these new weapons and clothing items being added (which is amazing, please keep doing this ty), space is becoming an issue. The past bandaid fix to this was to add a 2nd page of inventory space, which, as I just said, is a bandaid fix. I think something awesome would be to add an interior to your ships that only the captain can enter and it basically acts as a storage room or vault so to speak. This way you are still limited to what you can carry on you which just looks cleaner, but collectors and hoarders can throw all their weapons in a chest or on say a weapons rack (of course it would be a magical weapons rack connected to the void so we can store mass items in there) and all their collected clothing pieces into an infinite wardrobe that connects to Narnia for extra storage space. The holds can look different for each ship, but the weapons rack and wardrobe would be connected to the pirate of course so it doesn't matter which ship you are on and so you don't accidentally sell your ships with all your collectibles. Of course you'd probably need to add restrictions to being able to enter the captain's quarters, such as not being able to do it if you are in combat (have any ship agro'd onto you) or with crew members on board, and if you are in your captain's quarters then ships can't agro onto you (mostly needed because those pesky skeleton ships which need no provocation).
5) Add more raid style events with exclusive end game items.
I think this game would really benefit from raid style events, and this new lobby system that was implemented would be PERFECT for it. Events where you have to get a group of pirates to push through a large amount of high level enemies to get to a high level boss that at the end of it all could drop a guaranteed high level loot container (maybe skull or maybe new loot containers
) that has a chance of containing powerful gear exclusive to that dungeon. This is essentially just another boss to farm like any other you've added except it has actual engagement. No longer would the grind be standing perfectly still, left clicking repeatedly as the boss spawns in front of you and gets rolled by a group of 20 people. It could be a chance to have actual cooperation necessary, forcing people to have healers, making it so using 5 points of your sword skills for parry isn't a complete waste of damage with essentially no gain. It could add an actual engaging and fun endgame, which the game desperately needs, standing still and left clicking enemies isn't fun or engaging, and almost none of the content in the game is challenging or even dangerous right now, which isn't even really your fault since how are you supposed to make something difficult when the only factor is can you out heal the enemy hitting you or kill him before he kills you? I might actually try to come up with a legitimate dungeon idea and make its own post, I might not, who knows. I just think that raids would be awesome in this game and please add them ty.
Accidentally went over the character limit so this is post one of two.