Nothing has changed. Day 1 player here. Many players, especially newer players, don't necessarily take a long term view towards some content.
Some additions to the game are meant to be a specific type of grind. Take fort of the damned. There are commendations for doing it 50 times. Rare clearly rewards people for grinding it. They ugh even this kind of content, I suggest, is meant to be one of many activities that are in a mix of things for players to do. Just flopping down and doing 50 fotd runs in a row in three days isn't healthy gameplay for anyone.
Emmisaries were also a "something you do" feature. You can raise an emmisary to maximize rep and profit for any faction. And specific. And trackable. And specifically steered your session. It wouldn't make sense to rase a merchant emmisary then do a ton of souls voyages.
Then there are "foundation" additions (a word used by Mr. Chapman in various podcasts.) These aren't meant to be things you "do" like fotd, but are things that are simply "there" and are meant to survive in the game for years, not weeks.
The Reaper faction is this. No new voyages. No new activity. It's just something there, in the background. You can sell there without being an emmisary. Sure you can raise an emmisary. But I covered that above.
Captaincy is definitely this. You don't "do" a captaincy run. You just buy and sail a ship. And do the things you'd do without a captained ship. People who try to "do" captaincy look at trinkets and complain that it "forces" them to do the same things they've been doing. No. Their frustration is from a place of trying to "do" foundational content that isn't intended to be done. It is intended to be an additional layer that simply exists while you go about your day.
Guilds are this too. Yes, you can raise a guild emmisary. But there will be times when raising a GH emmisary in a guild ship is still more efficient for that goal. Maybe you get someone new to your guild who isn't a pirate legend. Maximizing their specific faction rep is more preferable.
I'm not saying that foundation features don't have rewards. Clearly they do. Captaincy has trinkets. Guilds have stuff and things. But they aren't meant to be something you do overnight and move on to the next shiny. They are more fundamental systems that track progress while you do other more seasonal things. Raid a chest of fortune? Earn guild rep. Succeed at the soon-released siren chest activity? Earn guild (and captaincy milestone) rep. Do whatever season 11, 12, or 83 brings? Earn guild and captaincy milestone rep.
Don't grind guilds!!! It isn't intended to be a grind activity. It isn't something you are meant to reach level 1,000 by the end of the season. It is meant to last YEARS for most people. And it's also meant to be social. You should be able to play just once a week. And when you log in, you see what others in your guild were up to in the week you were gone. And you see your guild rep went up two levels.
If you want to be a solo guild... That's a you choice. Guilds arent for meant for solo membership, full stop.
Historically I've read solo sloop tales on here that they suffer from anxiety, or don't have friends that can play when they can, or have plenty of reasons why they solo sloop. And that's all legit. A guild could have 24 members who only solo sloop and they'd still level up pretty darn fast. And still enjoy that experience of logging in and browsing what their 23 Solo sloop brethren got up to. I AM NOT SAYING that this feature excludes solo players. I am saying that solo GUILDS are missing the entire point of the feature.
Now for a couple of small criticisms. Because I am not one to just praise rare no matter what.
Hourglass is something you "do." And yes, it feels like an excessive grind for how it currently works. That feels like a miss. I don't think it's because of a culture change st Rare though. They clearly wanted matchmaking to be better. I really think they thought that their Elo and cross stamp stuff would maintain players. The grind is because people aren't winning 50% of their matches. And long matches that end in a loss makes the grind FEEL worse. I don't have a good fix. Matchmaking needs to be better. Upping the rep for losing will just mean more loss farmers. Streaks seem to fundamentally contradict how skill bard matchmaking would work. If it's working, you'd roughly win, then lose, then win, then lose never building a streak. And clearly they didn't anticipate the level of cheating that hourglass brought to the fore. So it is a feature that "missed" for reasons far beyiund "culture" but I hope to can be salvaged.
Guild discovery is currently a gap. I won't call it a miss... Yet. But it is a gap. I've defended rare on open crew matchmaking. Don't reinvent the wheel. With a sandbox game, making a complex system if selecting and matching activities doesn't make sense. Xbox LFG does this fine. Discord does this fine. It's there for people to find each other while they are wanting to play. It's ephemeral.
Finding a guild is different. LFG isn't the right tool. Guilds are persistent and you want a tool that people can browse and find a guild that meets their "style"... Whatever that is. With only 24 slots to a guild, generic tools like discord are too chaotic. There does need to be a purpose built tool for this.
Dobi think they needed to hold up the entire feature to write such a tool? Nah. Do I hope that such a tool is in the works? Hells yes. Sox it's a shortcoming, but not (yet) a total whiff. If they ignore the need, it can become one.
That's it. That's my TED talk. I wrote it on my phone so forgive all typosx autocorrects, and mangledwordsthatdontmakesense.
