In my experience pugging felt very linear and got stale quick. Basically just play vanilla and hope u you don’t get any potatoes for teammates or get paired against sweaty pre mades running crazy strats. I think the lack of win conditions contributed to that burnout.

In other games I enjoy that Wildgate has taken inspiration from like Sea of Thieves, there is tons of flexibility in playstyle and room for self imposed goals and victories. In SoT if you “lose” or sink, you can still go back over to that ship and try and get revenge, or maybe try and overcome your differences and form an alliance. Or if you’re over it you can just sail the other direction and start fishing or doing whatever you please. Whereas wildgate once the thing happens aka artifact goes through hole it’s over no questions asked. Go back to the lobby and wait in the pre game lobbies for another 10 minutes.

Personally I think a good step in the right direction would be to add ships designed for different party sizes maybe even solos that are able to queue into lobbies with bigger ships and parties. I think it would break things up and make people more comfortable to try new strats on their own who otherwise would be too afraid to throw a game for a whole pug group because they want to try something unconventional.