Perhaps people are annoyed with the commendations because these are new weapons with skins they could have earned previously in a natural way if they existed before.
Allow me to explain myself. Imagine that shipewrecks always existed, but they only had normal chests in them, and this season introduced the barnacled chests, that means it would 300 shipwrecks starting from this season while it could have been something they could have been working on since previous seasons. This is basically the same, the game had tons of sharks, and 250 was already done by many, but the weapons and commendations were introduced this season, those are 6 years late into the game, 6 years players could have already started working on those.
It is the same feeling that people had with captaincy back then when it was introduced in season 7, a lot of people already caught every fish variant, defeated some shrouded ghosts, and made some achievements, but none of those counted retroactively because they weren't done in a captained ship, and captained ships didn't exist back then.
I also find really odd that the commendations are required for unlocking skins of basic sets, like the admiral set and sea dog set. The admiral, sea dog, bilge rat and sovereign set, with some of their variants existed since 2018, and we're considered the four basic sets. Those skins were available from the get go without significant barriers. I wonder why they chose the basic sets as rewards for these commendations instead of putting them in the outposts without barriers, and put new special skins behind these commendations.
The admiral set was ready for purchase as soon as you got the game, and gained some gold, even the fishing rod being behind the plentifins was fine because it only required one of each plentifin, and the admiral captain items required the emmissary milestones that is earned passively in the pirate milestones by earning gold as an emmissary, which is a common activity.
The sea dog set was also available at the beginning, with the fishing rod being available after getting one of each wildplash. The captaincy items required sleeping in the bed, or sitting or playing music on the ship which is also something that can be earned naturally.
But the admiral weapons require you to finish a skeleton or ashen lords and being you the one finishing the final blow, and while it is true that you may encounter many lords in the future you actively need to go with the new weapons and try to be the one delivering the final hit with the new weapons. The sea dog weapons require a thousand of skellies with the new weapons specifically which means players will have to actively avoid using the other four weapons until they get it, and it must be skeletons, not phantoms nor ocean crawlers, nor sharks nor sirens.l, only skeletons, which granted they are the most common enemy, but it is still something more specific and more time consuming than anything else the locked seas dog items required.
Finally the royal sovereign set, those items could be unlocked by leveling up the gold hoarders to level 50 which was naturally done on the road to pirate legend. But the royal sovereign pistol and knife require all the war chest commendations, that means not only doing the previous tasks, but also do specific ones like getting an enemy player off a harpoon line with the horn of fair winds, hit a megalodon with the scattershots many times, and have bonecaller skeletons eliminate the ashen variant of the enemy skeletons., carrying loot one by one with the harpoon (which regular harpooning is still more efficient), sell horn of fair winds hundreds of times, and use scattershots against players, all of that for the royal sovereign double pistol and knife, which the rest of the set unlocked by leveling up gold hoarders. I find it really odd, perhaps it would have been better if it was the cartographer double pistol, or perhaps a new set never seen before, or perhaps a standalone knife.
Killing a lot of skeletons with the double barrel pistol is fine, as many players will encounter them a lot, and any skeleton variant counts, doing that with sharks is where some people start to feel it stings as sharks are more tanky (I think they take like 5 shots, while skeletons take only 1), and they only appear when players spend too much time on the water or going specifically to the shrine of hungering, which is like going out of your way instead of doing something naturally. The thing is some players don't feel it natural or passively, but instead they feel like they are going out of their way to do these oddly specific and tasks, while stuff like the golden leaf set is earned much more naturally since small golden relics for the gold hoarders appear everywhere.
I don't know why, but the developers sometimes make players repeat the same stuff over and over, and that can be annoying to some people, that feels like artificial replayability instead of organic replayability, it's like they are not repeating something because they enjoy it, but because there is an incomplete number in the commendations that asks them to repeat it. The best example that comes to my mind are the shores of gold tall tales vs the newest tall tales. Some players may repeat the shores of gold tall tales because the commendations asks them to repeat it five times each. Meanwhile the Pirate's life and Monkey Island Tall tales can be done once, but people may want to repeat them to check hidden secrets or find paths that they didn't take before or do the optional tasks that were not required to complete the tall tale itself, but can offer some things they missed the first time. That is artificial replayability ba organic replayability. Someone enjoying something a lot and that why they repeat it, and someone doing something again and again because that task is incomplete.
For me, I love sea forts, they are fun for me. I already completed all the commendations for sea forts in season 6, and I still do them because I like how they are a reliable source of resources, explosives, and loot. I can monitor my ship constantly, I get cooked food, I can find trinkets, I can get a mix of loot for the three main companies, I can play with minimal risk if the server is too heated. The sea forts is content I repeat because I enjoy it, not because I have to complete like 500 sea forts.
If I have to go out of my way to do something, then I really can't say I will earn that naturally, but instead I would say I'm grinding. Perhaps that what everyone feels when they say there is nothing to do in the game. Perhaps it is the feeling of having everything explored, even if it is not maxed out, but have everything experienced at least once.
Anyway, I think some of the commendations may be a bit overboard because some require specific tasks that can't be earned naturally, but also tasks that are dependant on RNG.
In the end, I think I will simply get the admiral and sea dog skins, and then focus on other things, I don't feel like completing any other commendation as those are very time consuming.
