Celtic

This would help, as one of the big issues of with the ghost ships is that they appear to move independant of the wind, normal "pirate" and "trader" ship mobs would be nice

There is a point to be made about it being "too easy" to progress before this patch, and I understand that it was entirely too easy for 1 guy to build his sloop and do things without any sort of support network. However the "fix" that has been implemented (adjusting the skill point cost up so high) effectively makes small groups of friends untenable - The group I'm playing with are all working adults with wildly varying schedules that leave us with maybe 5 or 6 people on at any given time on a good day. Now if our "dedicated" smith is out for a day or two we're screwed for metal gear. Shipbuilder is out of town? well no boats for your clan. Which doesn't sound that bad until you realise that these people have already rendered themselves largely combat ineffective by being crafters and what if they're the only folks on when that enemy galleon hoves into view? Is it possible for us to advance right now? yes. Is it fun? Not really. 

53 minutes ago, RyuujinZERO said:

In addition to the number, handling sails allow the ship to be closer hauled to the wind than speed sails before you begin losing power. (Sailors out there would immediatly recognize the implication of square Vs triangular sail designs)

I don't know about weight sails, havn't experimented with or even seen what sail configuration those use.

Except the sails in this game hardly resemble real sails....The small handling sail is a marconi sail that's rigged backwards, the Small weighted resembles a traditional gaff Fore and aft sail and the speed sail is a square.  But sails don't work exactly the way game seems to imply. 

3 minutes ago, Althena said:

This is not a Singleplayer Game. How you will ever get a Big Ship? How you will Sail them? Do you know how many Mats you need?

How will you fight against other Players with Ships when you are alone?

 

You have to specialize.

There is specializing, and there is being made unable to play the game - we're too far towards the latter whereas before we were to close to the former

I know for a fact that the new skill system straight up doesn't work, we don't have enough people at any given time to get anything done now. Oh you're the guy who builds ships? well guess what that's all you can do, NOTHING else, oh and you can barely do that. Level 23 and I can barely make sloops wth

maybe 1 per grid, they're far stronger than the sloops that most people will be able to play with or use for resource runs, so being able to avoid them is a neccessity. 

Skill tree rework is definitely needed, the cost is too too high for smaller groups that have only a handful of people at the peak times, let alone one or two during the down period.  And Ghost ships should maybe only aggro on things bigger than sloops? A sloop doesn't hold a fighting chance to one, not to mention multiple ghost ships - and given the way resources work you can't even settle in half the map with out being able to travel to other servers for resources like sap -- which you're now unable to do to without getting murdered by ghost ships that swarm anything larger than  a raft.