This topic has been brought up as many times as @Feinzin nin discord, but here's another suggestion:
@Ueda you said you want the game to be a hard-core experience, and that's fine. But the Mist Village is lacking a severe amount of players despite having the most fun organization buff, a fun passive (IMO), the best village weapon, and a really cool village asthetic that you spent over a year working on. Why is it dead despite being a really cool village? The boat ride.
Here's my 2 suggestions to change this problem.
1. When a mist ninja VILLAGER (Excluding rogues) goes to the ferry man, he would have a new dialogue saying; "Ah, a fellow Blood Mist ninja. I will help you destroy our enemies by granting you a free ride to the mainland and a faster route." - Free ride and faster route. Maybe by 2.5 minutes to the mainland making it 2.5 minutes there and 2.5 minutes back for a total of 5 minutes sitting on a boat doing nothing instead of 10
2. Reduce the amount of bears spawned in the 2 maps after port. It's awful as a low level mist ninja to have to evade 2-3 maps of very strong and high level mobs.
Please reconsider this, @Ueda. Mist village is really cool and you spent too much time and effort to let it die like this.