Took me a few hours to write this, but I had fun, hope you guys enjoy my ideas and I would love anything else you guys come up with, just if you do have a critique make it constructive!
Factions have two major issues that I see and would like to fix.
- Reliance on renown/PVP, even when it wouldn’t make sense for the faction
- Immersion, or the lack thereof. There’s nothing unique about a faction which is very large wasted potential.
Therefore here’s some features I’d add or rework to make them feel rewarding to actually be apart of.
First of all, removing the renown requirement for higher ranks.
Revised Ranking System
I’m going to base this around the Grand Navy since they have the most ranks currently and even a competitive leaderboard for ranks.
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First of all, renown will be replaced with a point system, which for sake of consistency ill be making 1 point equal to 1000 renown.
So for the navy, going from Marine to Vice Captain would be 75 points, after that it would be 125 points (total of 200) for Captain, then Lieutenant would be 200 more points (total 400), then 400 points (total 800) for Major. After Major, your points get uncapped and are now based on the leaderboard again.
Speaking of the leaderboard, there are a few changes I’d like to do.
Admiral - Top 4 (remains the same)
Vice Admiral - Top 16 (total 12)
Rear Admiral - Top 32 (total 16)
Commodore - Top 64 (total 32)
Commander - Top 128 (total 64)
This gives more people opportunities to get onto the leaderboard and adds a nice base-2 system.
(Also to keep the leaderboard players happy, points would be automatically translated from their current renown, so if they have 2 million fame in the navy then they’ll be given 2000 points upon the change, and they still keep their renown.
Now that I’ve revised the rank requirements, how would we actually get points, and how would they work?
Point System
Points could be gained and lost, though not always through the same ways as renown. The method to gain points would vary based on faction, but we’ll go with the Grand Navy again.
There would be 2 ways to gain points for the Grand Navy (varies per faction). The first way would be renown gain. The renown you get from anything, divided by 1000, is converted into points. So if you got 15k renown from hunting a player, you’d get 15 points. For PVP-off players, they would be capped at 800 points (Major), and their point gain will persist even if they’re at 250k fame and can’t gain any more renown. The reason for this is because The Navy is meant to be competitive, so you shouldn’t be able to get on leaderboard without any risk from other players. This is just the old system except if renown cap was 800k for pvp-off players basically.
You would also lose points in the same way (through losing renown), just to keep it consistent, but not every faction is going to be a competitive leaderboard like this.
The second way to gain and lose points would be from tasks, which I’ll be talking about now.
Task System
Tasks would have a time limit depending on a few factors: Difficulty, Length, and Convenience. Harder, longer, and more inconvenient tasks will have a much longer time limit. When you hit Leaderboard, you will no longer get tasks, and when you hit capped points with PVP off then you also will no longer get tasks. Not all factions would have points be based off renown, but all factions will have points gained or lost from tasks. These would be given in 3 ways:
Mandatory Tasks: You’ll either get a task randomly from a higher ranked NPC, telling you to do something for a certain amount of points. Failing to do so will remove points from you, and going into negative points will kick you from the faction where you wouldn’t be able to rejoin for an hour. These randomly given tasks would decrease in frequency the higher your rank is in the faction, since there would logically be less NPCs to give you a task (and to give higher ranked players more freedom). The higher your rank, the more difficult the task will be. Marines may only be told to go to a certain island for a certain amount of time (being stationed there basically), whereas something like a Major would be told to defeat a certain NPC with a high level (such as a rival, or a boss like dusk). Preferably certain NPC quests would be added after they fix some NPC’s not spawning or getting stuck, but getting a task to hunt one down will give you constant pings of their location.
Special Tasks: The second way to get tasks would be from higher-ranked players in your server. These types of tasks would be customizable by the player (such as picking an island for them to go to, defeating a certain npc, etc), and both players would get point gain from the task being completed, though the higher ranked player would get much less. The Lower ranked player wouldn’t lose any points from failing special tasks, though the higher ranked player may receive a small penalty as their superior. These would have a cooldown that scales with how long the task’s time limit was (not customizable by the player, instead it will be based on the criteria mentioned above).
Promotion Tasks: These are a special type of task that do not grant points, and are only given when a player who has reached the maximum points for their ranks, requests one. These would be custom tasks set by the developer, though there would probably be a variety that it just randomly picks from. Failing these tasks will make you lose a decent chunk of points, and completing them will move you into the next rank. Here are some example tasks I thought up (1 per rank, but like I said there would preferably be multiple and it just randomly selects one).
Marine promoting to Vice-Captain: Defeat an NPC with over 75k Renown
Vice Captain promoting to Captain: Defeat a Tower Boss (if one is spawned in)
Captain promoting to Lieutenant: Defeat an NPC with 250k or more Renown
Lieutenant promoting to Major: Defeat an Assassin Syndicate Architect (NPC or Player)
Leaderboard Ranks would not require promotion tasks. Tasks that are not able to be completed (Like if you’re tasked to kill a certain NPC and someone else defeats it before you) will be cancelled with no penalty.
Issue brought up by @daniel29ioy, now there would be a button in the faction menu that you can toggle on-off every 4 hours that turns off incoming tasks. Tasks are meant to be a way to progress fast through the early ranks, but if you wanted to do something like a dark sea run, they could end up being detrimental to you, so this button would basically request time off.
There’s all of the point and task systems and how they affect Promotions. Now to get into the rewards of joining a faction.
Effects of Rank
Currently, having a higher rank just changes your uniform (if your faction has one), lets you make a sub-clan, and increases your bank capacity. These features will remain as well as new ones. (Again just doing Grand Navy as a baseline)
Uniforms: Grand navy uniforms stay the same (Though some uniforms could use updates), except at Major or higher the player is allowed to swap into casual clothing or uniform if they so please.
Bank Capacity:
Marine: 1000 Drachma (remains the same)
Vice Captain: 2000 Drachma > 2500 Drachma
Captain: 4000 Drachma > 5000 Drachma
Lieutenant: 8000 Drachma > 10000 Drachma
Major: 12000 Drachma > 20000 Drachma
Commander: 16000 Drachma > 32000 Drachma
Commodore: 20000 Drachma > 50000 Drachma
Rear Admiral: 24000 Drachma > 75000 Drachma
Vice Admiral: 28000 Drachma > 90000 Drachma
Admiral: 32000 Drachma > 125000 Drachma
Additionally, since the bank system is now added these faction banks could grant a boost to points, kind of like you’re getting special treatment for supporting the faction monetarily. Maybe also interest on deposited drachma like you’re an investor?
Now for the new stuff-
Faction Tools
Captain: Dispatch Seal (passive, not really a tool in the sense of the other ones) - Let’s you place a special marker on the map for 10 minutes that all other Navy Members can see. Limit of 1 per player and 3 for the server.
Lieutenant: Task Log - Lets you issue tasks to lower ranked Navy Members
Major: Blue Raven - Works just like the blue raven from seafaring (seafaring talent tier 5 now maxes your ships stability, resilience, and grants +5 speed. This is mostly so blue raven can be given to Navy members and also because it doesn’t make sense to be able to use the blue raven as a negative renown since the navy would never protect them and they can just sink the ship which sometimes gives brigs so that fixes that issue)
Commander: Arcanium Cuffs - When defeating an enemy or player, they stay at 1 hp and get put into a downed/stunned state for 30 seconds. In this state they can be finished off if the person who landed the final blow on them hits them again. Otherwise, they can be arrested for more fame than normal. This effect can be toggled by clicking the tool while its equip-able if you just want to kill them, this, however, will not put them in jail.
Rear-Admiral: Grand Navy Flag - Temporary placeable flag that works like claiming flags except useable anywhere, and rather than claiming it’ll place the flag down and slightly buff all navy members in a wide radius. Would be visible on the map.
Admiral: Buster Call - Surrounds the island with a Navy Blockade, ships will remain stationary unless a negative renown player approaches the blockade from either side, in which case the ships will Aggro onto the player’s ship and chase them.
Faction Rewards
Marine: Forces you into the Marine uniform (no boosts)
Vice-Captain: Forces you into the Vice-Captain Uniform (20% beast defense)
Captain: Forces you into the Captain uniform (gives 33% beast defense), and gives you a special crew of marines (an actual crew rather than just retexturing your current crew, stats would be balanced around BoB and KP crews).
Lieutenant: Forces you into the Lieutenant uniform (gives 40% beast defense), and a skin for Edward Kenton that puts him in a Navy Captain uniform.
Major: Unlocks the Major uniform (gives 50% max beast defense), and ability to swap between uniform and casual clothing.
Commander: Unlocks the Commander uniform (gives 60% max beast defense)
Commodore: Unlocks the Commodore uniform (gives 65% max beast defense)
Rear-Admiral: Unlocks the Rear Admiral uniform (gives 75% max beast defense)
Vice-Admiral: Unlocks the Vice Admiral uniform (gives 85% max beast defense)
Admiral: Unlocks the Admiral uniform (gives the max beast defense you can normally get from armor)
That’s all I could think of, this isn’t just for the navy only did it around them since they’re the generic faction and this is just a general idea on how factions could work.
Small bits about other factions
Oathkeepers - Only get tasks for points, no leaderboard since there is no competition for this faction, but you’d be able to become a templar. This faction would work more-so like a solo faction versus grand navy being based around other players. Promotion task from squire to templar could be defeating Mizeria maybe.
Assassin Syndicate - Basically the same as navy but evil!! You can think up how it’d be with the navy baseline. Would have different tools based around assassinations, maybe a tool that lets you go invisible like tacet in deepwoken?
Brotherhood of Balance & Knight’s Proxy - Grouping these two because they’re like the syndicate and navy respectively. Their shops could have alternatively requirement with points, so if you’re pvp off and you want some of the higher quality stuff from them you can join them to get points to bypass the renown requirement. Both would be able to kill their rival for free by themselves.
The Forsaken - Who even joins this 
, would just work mostly like the assassin syndicate, maybe a tool or even a unique weapon that has the special poison that can give tempoary mageskin disease to someone, which would just give them a decent power boost with a decent defense nerf or something
Paramount Bank - Ranks should go from being part of the Golden Ones before becoming an actual banker, much higher interest returns from depositing drachma into the faction bank, some boosts to drachma gain maybe and something to do with auction possibly like no taxes to list items and increased items listed at a time.
Seekers of Sight - Not sure what to do for this since we still don’t know a lot about them. Maybe resistances to the infected water typically involved in their location (abyss of charon), or gaining more favor with chaos outside the talent through the faction? Since Cazal is Vetex’s favorite NPC he could probably make the seekers unique compared to other factions maybe instead of a points system, its replaced with your chaos favor which can be increased for doing evil stuff and decreased for doing good stuff, dunno.
Now thats everything, thanks for taking time for reading the suggestion, had fun writing this.
TL;DR - Factions become much more immersive and rewarding to interact with, they feel unique from each other and grant exclusive rewards for progressing in them.
Ranking System taken from the wiki ↩︎