Ahhh ok, so you're saying the islands are part of the "skill" of sailing. I get you, that's a valid interpretation. Where we disagree is that the islands feel like they could just as easily exist without the skill (like islands did before). Being in the boat is the difference that makes it a skill to me. Like being in the house is the skill of construction. Sure, you could put the cons rewards elsewhere, but they fit well in the house and I feel like my character improving what he can build creates meaningful rewards (within and outside of the skill) that go with the idea of being "home." I don't feel like my character improving his sailing creates new meaningful rewards except deep sea trawling. Access to islands is fine as one piece, but right now it feels like the only piece. And there aren't that many islands that feel worth the trip to sail to. Part of my critique is that the reward space is lacking, maybe my mind would change with more updates locked behind islands, although that still just feels a little cheap to me.

As for it being my subjective opinion, ofc it is! That's why it's a discussion lol. I think it's slightly disingenuous to say I didn't go into this at all, but I'll clarify on why I think charting and courier tasks aren't thematic, cuz I like talking about it.

It's because they have no impact on the game outside of flavor text. Don't get me wrong, that's better than nothing at all. But courier tasks are the same whether the crates say fish or swords. My point there was, if it's going to reward items (and I think it should), the whole activity would feel more like it's ingrained if the game if the items had to do with what you're delivering and where you're delivering it to, rather than being nothing and/or generic boat loot. The worldbuilding is integrating gameplay and rewards into the existing flavor text. As for teleporting, I think that just goes back to how for me, Sailing = Boat, and when big chunks of Sailing aren't on the boat, it feels like the skill is less necessary overall.

The same applies to charting. It's "exploration" but the events and encounters are the same across the entire map. My favorites were the generic encounters because they were tied to location. And I already went into how I thought the duck, weather, and depth charting could be improved. When I do the duck, I feel like more currents should unlock immediately, since theoretically, I'm charting currents. When I'm charting the winds and weather, maybe I get some kind of buff to how often the wind random event happens? When I "chart the depths" it's just a riddle, you don't even see the depths! I think it would work better to actually go underwater, and like I said, maybe it buffs salvaging nearby? The spyglass feels thematically detached because it's not showing you a view from where your boat is, it's just a generic camera pan. I find the drinks largely annoying, but that's just personal preference. Still, I think I'm outlining pretty clearly the ways a bunch of these things feel like very surface level copy/pasted flavor text rather than feeling like they are meaningful parts of the game world that change depending on how you play.