The Skull of Siren Song Voyage (SOSS from here on out) is a piece of content that I think has a lot of unrealized potential at the moment. When everything works as intended SOSS can be one of the most fun pieces of content the game has to offer. Those first few SOSSs I did when it came out were some of the most fun I've had in this game in a while. The problem is SOSS is only any fun when other crews are doing it with you, and as most of you knew that's rarely the case anymore. I think there's several things that have caused this. So I wanna break down what i think these are and what could be done to fix it.
Rewards
I think the first thing that people think of as the reason they don't do SOSS anymore is that the rewards aren't worth it. After you've completed your comms there's nothing for you to get besides 50k and a little guild rep. My idea for a fix would be to bring the skull in line with other siren treasure and have it give reputation to whatever faction you have an emissary up for (and also give the emissary bonus). The skull of siren song is one of the only loot items that doesn't progress any of your companies. An item that's potentially worth 150k of rep for whatever faction you want would be well worth grinding the quest out. And it would vastly increase the likelihood you would be contested (which is the point of the content).
Visibility
Rare needs to lift the veil a bit on this voyage so to speak. Currently, if you haven't accepted the voyage at your mast you cannot see any of the items on the map or beacons in the sky. I think this is kind of a bad design choice. If rare wants only the crews actively participating to be able to see it, then they need to either require at least one other crew to accept it before it starts and/or show the number of crews participating on the mast or something. I would love to able to see if someone has started digging pieces up without having to vote up the voyage every time.
In a similar vain here you can't turn in the skull if you aren't participating in the voyage. I think this is also bad. If you sink boat and realize they had the skull of siren song aboard you might be completely unable to turn it in. If you previously declined the voyage or the skull outdates the current voyage on your mast then you cant turn it in at all! The skull should automatically add your crew to voyage it's on your boat.
Confusion
New players have no clue how this thing works. So many times I've seen a locked chest of siren song dug up and brought to the gold hoarders. I've seen even more players take the skull to the order of souls. Most of these players give up and leave these items at the outpost. Now I'm not exactly sure the best way to fix this without being to hand-holdy but maybe we could give a players a ghostly note in their map wheel with instructions for the voyage that can be read at anytime.
