pretty sure he meant to say that at some point vetex will be “forced” to submit to the demands of the masses that want the deckhand reworked since later leveling deckhands will be tedious as hell (which i don’t see being a problem since that will take atleast 6 years to come to reality)
If that is what he meant then the first part of my response should work well enough. But ye it will take years for lvling to become an issue if it ever becomes one, but i dont think it will even become an issue at all tbh. Higher tier ships = more lvls gained. So lets say you fight a heavily armored frigate, that could be like 20 lvls alone for a lvl 1 deckhand. Higher tier ships could give even more xp and thus make lvling deckhands consistent regardless of how high their max lvl is/will be
Professions, stats, everything. This whole system is flawed for the game that vetex wants AO to be, and many other mechanics fall in the same group of problems that will get worse as content is added.
How are professions flawed? Besides the fact that chef is just plain horrible i dont see how that subsystem is flawed. Stats i do agree with since you can only really run 2 stats (speed and turning), 1 of which (speed) is still way better than the other and astronomically better than the rest. Artifacts are also pretty unbalanced since frayed lead lines are just better than the rest unless youre pveing ships in the regular seas, in which case lucky coins are better. As for the other stuff, its mostly qol stuff to loyalty that needs fixing. The lvling and upgrading system are completely fine.
So overall i think the system is a bit rough around the edges but definitely not flawed as a whole
It works in cohort with all other systems (levelling up, stats, profession mastery, deckhand affinity) to make changing deckhands a major pain, all while having knowledeably useless professions with non-descript details (like chefs using fished up fish for meals, nothing tells you about that despite being important).
Overall, this works to repel anyone who wants to experiment with the game and play it more by locking all of it behind yet another time sink that forces you to commit to the tedious and boring aspects of the game, something that nobody wants to bother with unless they’re extremely dedicated.
As to why this will get worse with time, that would be because they will likely become completely obsolete past a certain (global) level with ships having absurd stats by default, and ship parts furthering this powercreeping.
It becomes a useless, clogging, and time-consuming feature that will require an overhaul (or straight up removal) in the future.
Of course, this is without considering that their level will increase the amount of stats they give, but what about rarity and profession mastery? From the looks of it, it looks like it’ll grow gradually useless as time goes on, but still, take this with a grain of salt as it’s just the humble opinion of a doomposter based on what vetex has revealed so far.
fire that boy
I completely forgot about this but youre completely right about it
Dont most of them have a decent description tho? I remember navigator, shipbuilder and cannoneer being pretty straightforward in terms of information. Merchant i forgot and enchanter & chef arent very descriptive, so i agree with those.
Your next point i fully agree with tho, again i somehow completely forgot about switching deckhands costing effort for imo no good reason. Luckily that effort isnt too much, except for their profession and loyalty.
Bigger ships = more deckhands but ye i could see new ship(parts) making deckhand stats way less useful. Tho vetex does have things planned for deckhands, such as having them command parts of your fleet. Those are all things for the future tho so its hard to say if thisll actually become an issue or not
Rarity increases the scaling of their stats. So a legendary deckhand has better scaling than an adept one. As for their profession mastery, those work with % and therefore will never be obsolete. A 5% instant durability regen and 33% more durability gain from repairing your ship will always be useful, same for all the other abilities since they either work with %s or are something completely different (merchant’s shop and chef’s meal cooking).
But either way, all the issues you mentioned (except the issue mentioned next) would become only small qol issues if vetex allowed us to change our deckhands’ stats and professions more easily. Theres no real reason not to allow this change, hell you could even make it cost galleons for yet another galleon sink 
I agree, I fumbled the latter part of my message (the “prediction”) by forgetting a bunch of important factors, remembering some, and keeping it as is so that I don’t have to rewrite it.
Their biggest flaw so far is that changing their stat/profession/any preset cosmetic chosen at random (face, hair, title, etc.) is a true loss of time as you have no way to have them back after doing so.
As a solution to this, I propose that they should be able to be stored. This would provide replayability to ship optimisation, one of the thing that I enjoy the most in Arcane Odyssey, but is ruined by the lack of flexibility that deckhands cause.
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