First off let me say I'm a big fan of the concept of the game.
As an old player (first hit steam) I fell in love with the gameplay mechanics and the sailing aspects of the game. It's the best. I've played Voyage of the Century / Bounty Bay Online - Pirates of the Burning Sea - Sid Meiers Pirates - and the like. This is a game we've all been waiting for! That is, until they wen't and broke the game.
Pros:
New UI! - It's great, it finally feels like a polished game!
Ships! - A ship for every occasion!
Cannons! - Broadsiding never felt so good!
Fleets and Multiplayer - Bring your friends to the fight, work together, coordinate!
Cons:
No trade ship spawns - new players have no choice but to grind missions
Tier 7 missions - grab a basic cutter and head out to make money only to face a Lynx or some other Tier 7 ship that takes you to task. There's no hope in the noob cutter. Don't even bother.
Base Raping - USA on PVP server constantly has enemies outside Charleston making any new player rage quit. I lost my only non-noob ship (Traders Brig) after doing a mission only to be sucked into a battle with 3 pirate players. Either the invul timer needs to be extended or National Capitals should be off limits to other nations.
Grind - One Tier 7 mission awards less than 50xp and less than 1000 reals, I would need to grind 20 of these to afford a ship w/ guns, only to fall victim to base raping as stated above.
Imbalance of ships. Tier 7 missions should ONLY spawn cutters for your basic cutter, I've failed 5 missions in a row because I would just get dominated and out gunned. This isn't what the new player experience should be. I was forced to do this because of base raping as stated above (no other ships to use)
Trading - Buy Low / Sell High - I should be rewarded for hauling goods far away, but when you look at the buy/sell prices, a lot of goods don't have a trade route at all.
Taxes - Adding tax for everything only makes sense when there's a way to reduce it. Port tax is understandable but taxes to place a contract, to collect from labor buildings all needs to go. There's no point unless there's a skill/method for reducing it. It only adds ambiguity to commerce and makes it really easy to lose money on something that looks like a sure bet for profit.
This is my experience coming back to the game after the UI changes. I have my XP from way back when but I have no ships, no money, no guns/goods, and I'm constantly up against a brick wall with base raping, noob missions that just destroy the crap out of you. I've done the tutorials, don't tell me "get good". I hit with almost every cannon and still get sunk in the basic noob missions.
I don't know why I continue playing considering all the cons, maybe it's wishful thinking but as it stands, the game is broken. The XP/Money curve for this game is worst than Eve Online, which is legendary of punishing new players. If you want more players, you need to fix Tier 7/6 missions to be easier to complete, you need to protect nation capitals from base raping pirates/players. There should be a buffer zone around the capital that other nations can't attack within. If you want new players to stick around that is. If it wasn't for the generosity of my nation, I would have rage quit already. What the hell happened to this game? It used to be hard, but do-able. Now it's damn near impossible as a solo captain.
Fix your game!!! I spent good money on this game and it's been sitting in my Steam library for 2+ years waiting for you guys to finish up the development, only for you guys to completely eliminate any solo captain opportunities. Stop listening to the vocal minority and start looking at stats. If you don't have stats on what works and what doesn't then you're doing it wrong.
And before people post their hate responses know this. I played a LOT of the game at early access launch, I also had a dozen or so friends that bought the game based on my recommendations at the time. But because of the above bullets, none of them play anymore. One of my friends said "I'd rather have a coronary than lose over and over again. I quit".
Do not cater to end-game players, you need to soften the curve for new players if you want the game to grow.