So, as a person who does a lot of merchant emissary stuff the (at this point rather old) trade route changes felt rather bad, and over time I've come to a conclusion on why. So, we all know that Sea of Thieves is in large part a game of logistics. I came to the realization that the merchants are just the epitome of that part of the gameplay. It's about solving logistical issues, and optimizing the process so that you can approach that golden moment of perfect execution of a plan. A big part of that is speed, of both sailing and pickup and drop-off of goods (the dopamine generated by doing something optimally is a Thing, in neuroscience and game design. This is why there's a musical sting when you catch the wind in all sails) and generally doing things fast.
So when Rare cut the price and increase the quantity of the trade goods it turned what could have been a 1 minute pit stop per island, into a 5 to 10 minute slog of which at least a minute is just interacting with a menu to buy crates, that functionally requires multiple people to make it not hideously painful. On top of that they cut the value of each crate so instead of being an experience where you are able to efficiently do something that's high value, it's something that feels like it takes forever, and nets an okay profit. When they first showed up, I truly did want to do the full trade route cycle, I'd hit all the islands as fast as possible. The change kind of eliminated that, now trade routes are exclusively something I do while doing something else, not really a goal in and of themselves. By eliminating the possibility of doing the trade routes quickly, the change also took the urgency from it; it's no longer something you can plausibly get away with if you're on a server with a reaper. This is a shame for broader gameplay reasons as well: fewer people running trade routes means less interaction for the rest of the server, and because a full circuit requires hitting every Outpost, having more people running trade routes means a LOT more points of interaction.
I'm not suggesting a return to crates of unsorted gems selling for 10k with full emissary, but I feel like there has to be a midpoint, especially considering that it's one of the few activities that it's possible to lose money on if you get caught at a bad time. As it currently stands, it's something people do either to game reaper emissary, or squeeze a bit more profit out of a trip which just seems a bit sad.
