Well servers are dead so thought i would take the time to voice some suggestions on the forums i think would help the game and keep the population up.
PVP
-Battle join times: Okay i'll start here, in PVP the time between you're tagged and before the battle closes is far too low the time should be at least 15 minutes or based on battle rating. Ganking is one of the lead causes of losing people on a PVP based game, now i'm not against ganking in the slightest. But it doesn't make sense to have 20 vs 1 in battle and another 19 waiting outside but they can't join because of the 3 minute timer. Either way i think this is something that needs addressed sharpish.
-PVP Marks: From what i understand each ship is worth X amount of PVP marks and how many you receive is based on how much damage you do to that ship, which is fair enough however we discussed this in clan the other night about how to come up with a way to reward everyone who takes part in the battle.
for example 3 surprise vs 2 surprise and a l'ocean, the 3 surps are going to sail from the l'ocean but the ocean is still playing its part, if he leaves the 2 surprises could very much be done for. So if he gives chase for an hour he should at least be rewarded something for the battle. Even if it's 1 pvp mark and you increase the total required for admiralty items or we were thinking a PVE to PVP conversion at high numbers e.g. 100-200 PVE for 1 PVP. But that would mean you wouldn't even have to participate in PVP so i would rather award those for actually being in the battle.
There is a lot of issues with PVP at the moment in my opinion but i think these two are priority. I think if they add a system when you get a PVP mark for joining PVP battles a lot of people will be joining them, but i also believe they should add a system where if you join and leave without doing sufficient damage then you lose PVP marks.
If servers begin to accumulate too many marks you can either increase the price of items or make PVP marks non-tradeable.
Alliances
Alliances are something that should of been fixed and implemented before the wipe if you ask me as it effects major aspects of the game from PVP to the economy and even for those of us who like to explore.
Even the old system was better than nothing.
I haven't put to much thought into how this could be implemented but some sort of diplomacy system would suffice.
Economy
The economy is so broken with everyone just spamming iron fittings/hull repairs, Most ports buying items for 1 gold and selling them at full price.
That's not how supply and demand works, if you have too much supply you lower the price to shift goods so you can buy more to sell.
Quantities also need to be improved, you use traders tool to find the only port with available products you need then make the risky 3 hour sail to purchase said product only to find out the port has none, Or you grab a delivery mission and realize you would have to sail around the entire map twice to complete your delivery order, and you would be down 200,000 gold profit as you had to pay over the odds to fill the demand.
User Interface
Now i don't know about everyone else but i honestly thought the user interface would of been updated. I've owned this game a long time now and i realize it's still in alpha and UI isn't a major priority but i honestly think that could attract new players to stick around and even make old players return.
Anyway i may add more as i think of things, if anyone else has suggestions or better ways they want things implemented feel free to comment.