A comparison just struck me about this game. I am not sure how many of you played EVE online, but Sea of Thieves gives me a lot of the feelings of that game. It has very little to do with any connection to mechanics, or anything like that, but everything to do with my feelings while playing it. The general day to day game play is actually quite boring for me (as with EVE but 10x worse), but the moments of pvp battles are incredibly thrilling. As Bro G was talking about, when you and your crew successfully fight off other players trying to steal your treasure (or just kill you because you might have treasure) the game is insanely fun. Taking revenge on someone for their actions against you is immensely satisfying.
For instance the most fun I had was during a battle between my galleon with 3 total crew and another. A smaller sloop decided to try and get involved. I ended up sneaking onto the ship and killing the 1 person crewing the ship. I then proceeded to ram the galleon that we had been fighting off for I think about 30 minutes. It was truly glorious watching the ship I had commandeered sink and the pursuing galleon panic as their ship began sinking at a rapid pace as well. We escaped with our treasure laughing and cheering. It was truly the most fun I have had in a video game in some time... sadly it is those short lived moments that make me keep coming back to this game for the boring missions.