Something that's always bugged me a little is how you're free in this game, but the only way to get money is helping the trading companies. No matter what you do, it still will help them. So I had an idea for how you can be more pirate: being able to attack the factions.
Each faction would have its own way of doing this, and doing these raids would either have you lose some rep or some other bad thing, but would get you a lot of money or unique items. If you fail, you still get a negative effect, but maybe not as bad.
Here's how I think each one would work:
Gold hoarders: For this, you would start off by using your sword on the back of the tent. This would start to cut a hole in it, but if you make too much noise(cutting too much at a time) it would alert the gold hoarder and you'd fail. If you succeeded at that part, you'd have to sneak around the back of the tent to find a key. Gold would be random in the back(not always, only when you cut the back open), and would make noise. Too much noise still makes you fail. If you get a key, you'd have to get back out, same thing as getting in. Using the key, you could open any chest similarly to chests from tall tales. These would contain trinkets that you can either be sold, worn, or displayed in a new disay box in your ship(would appear as an item in those customization boxes, with an option to take it out to sell). The key would break after a certain amount of uses. Because of the stealth nature of this, with this rare would have to add crouching(as a way to move stealthily).
Order of the souls would be more combat based. First, you would have to break down the door to the "potion shop". This could change if Rare actually makes a potion shop there, but for now the raid would be there. When you break in, some kind of guardian would be in there. You would have to fight it, and it would attack you with spells and a weapon. The guardian would most likely be something made with the magic of the order. If you die, you fail. When you defeat it, you'll find some of those things the order uses to interpret the skulls. Similarly to the gold hoarders, you could use it to get information from skulls for yourself. This information would be a schematic, and if you get a certain amount of them, you'd either be able to sell them or use them to either be able to buy a new cosmetic(exsculsive to schdmatics and randomly decided) or get a new shanty. This would also add a shanty section to the vanity chest, allowing you to choose which shantys you can play(up to 5). The pirate legend shanty will be one of those options when you reach it of course. The schematics would also have a section in your inventory.
I can't think of anything for the merchants(maybe smuggling or something) , and I don't think hunters call or sea dogs would work for this. For both of the ideas I gave, using the item on better chests/skulls would give more trinkets/schematics.
Other negative effects besides losing rep for these could be getting the reapers mark and a symbol for which faction you attacked for a certain amount of time, rewarding people with rep in that faction if they sink you.
Tl;dr: you should be able to fight the companies for rewards.
Also, what do you guys think? I want rare to notice this, so please give feedback on this idea.
