My idea starts with the flagbox. In the place of the offer alliance pennant, you can instead raise a sea dog pennant. This will lock you out of alliances and you can't raise one while in an alliance. This pennant, sitting between your emissary pennant and cosmetic flag will work very similar to an emissary pennant but can be used along with the other emissaries. Ideally you would use reaper and sea dog for various reasons, but you could choose any other, or no emissary if you want.
This will make your ship appear on the map for everyone, including showing what ship size you are and what grade sea dog emissary you have. In the pennant slot beneath the cosmetic flag that would normally show your alliance, you will have a pennant representing one of the teams from arena randomly assigned.
Being a sea dog emissary, you will be able to earn silver similarly to arena. Hitting a ship with cannons will award the normal 40 silver. Killing a player will award 40 only once, and 40 more for sending them to the ferry, but again only once. Sinking a ship will award you 1000 silver and raise your sea dog emissary grade a full level.
Imagine coming across a solo slooper you catch off guard. You kill him and he goes to the ferry. Meanwhile you mast him, and hit him with a full pocket of cannonballs. 11 hits and he sinks. That would add up to 1,520 silver. You could try to farm silver by continuously firing on his ship but cannonballs go fast. If you want to leave yourself with none, that's on you.
Now imagine a fight with a sweaty galleon. Assuming all 4 crew died and went to the ferry at some point, that's 320 silver. Let's say you used around 100 cannonballs and maybe hit 80. That's 3200+320. And of course, they sank. +1000
That puts your crew at grade three and 6,040 silver.
If you sink as a sea dog, a sea dog chest appears. It is marked at all times just like the chest in arena. It's value in gold is equal to the amount of silver the crew had upon sinking. It can be sold to the reaper's, or to the sea dogs at the tavern.
The emissary multiplier should be higher than the others. I like having 100% added for each grade, so at grade 5, it's a 5x multiplier. This will cause crews that are reaper and sea dog to actually take any sea dog chests they have to the tavern instead of just selling it to the reapers while they sell everything else they have.
With those multipliers, this crew could go to sea dogs and vote down their emissary to cash in their silver, turning 6,040 into 18,120 gold. They could also sink two more ships, double their silver and cash in with 5x getting 60,400 gold. This would earn you rep and possibly even have new commendations and cosmetics, not bringing any cosmetics over from arena of course.
I do like arena and despite not getting support anymore, I don't think it's going anywhere. Seeing sea dogs come to adventure is unlikely in my opinion but I did feel this could be a good fit for it while also giving us a more pvp focused faction. I respect reapers for what it has become. Above all else it gives us freedom, which includes everything from digging up chests to tucking forts, but at its core, it still promotes pvp even when undesired, which makes it the risk vs reward faction.
Do you think this is a good idea? Are the multipliers too high or are they necessary to make it relevant? Are the silver earnings too unbalanced or exploitable? Does it create too much of a pvp environment for the game or does it give the pirates that revel in battle something to enjoy?
