I know you want to see a living world, but this is a problem that has been with us for a long time, already claimed on countless occasions, and we have never been listened to.
The ships clusters in Velia and Iliya are at best surreal, or abstract art, forcing us to jump from one place to another in a shapeless form of overlapping ships.
That is when the character is not stuck in someone's cellar, and you have to teleport back to your ship or change servers.

There are multiple ways to fix this...
- Auto dock when you are in a safe zone (Towns) if your ship stays inmobile for a time like 5 minutes.
- Let's us move all the items in the cargo hold (in a ship already parked in) from the Wharf Manager.
- Expand Velia Safe Zone to avoid collision with other ships.
- Hide all ships except yours in town safe zones.

I would like everyone affected to put screenshots of the ports and how it affects them to make Pearl Abyss aware and finally decide what to do about it.

Iliya Port (27/02/2021 - 14:00 GMT+1)

The way it should have been originally handled is a ship's boat, or actual harbors. The current wharfs are way too small for the size of BDO ships.

I suggest a QoL solution. Let us do all the loading/unloading from the ship helm, via a menu like the bartering popup. And make the range large enough so that we don't have to park right at the docks.

Everyone's happy.

Both have good ideas and I will add repairing ship and resupplying and manage sailors to be done from the wheel. I would also like to suggest that rather than needing to feed sailors from the wharf manager you should be able to feed sailors from anywhere with personal supplies. It is ludicrous that you can feed food to your boat to restore rations but cannot  give food to your sailors in the same manner. Imagine a deep sea fishing boat not being able to feed the workers until reaching a wharf, absolute madness.

Just add an option to not load in ships of other players unless you're in their party or guild in the vicinity of harbours like Epheria, Velia and Illya, much like tents work right now.

As in, not just hide, but not load their collision either.

And for the love of god, please let me repair the ships damage without having to check the boat in, repair, then take the ship back out.

Velia Port (11/03/2021 - 13:50 GMT+1)

Same with Horses in cities. It doesn't add, but subtracts from immersiveness.
These things can be fixed. There are many different ways to fix it. Either hiding like pets, expanding reach or even giving incentives for ships to be put into the wharf. 
I remember suggesting long ago that putting horses into the stables would buff them up or so, so people are incentivized to put them there. Or simply hiding away ships, once everybody left the board for x minutes. Any fix you'd come up seems to be better than this clustering. 

Honestly, just expanding the auto check in zone for wharfs to encompass the entire safezone after ~15 minutes with no one on boat would solve most problems. If there is anything to be implemented, it would be this.

Velia Port (13/03/2021 - 15:43 GMT+1)

Most of these ships are abandoned because the port is near the exit of the safe zone and the collision between ships does not let them access the port easily.

Yeah the amount of people not bothering to check in their boat is ... nuts. Should just auto-check in after 10 minutes of zero usage