First order of business, I like hourglass despite its warts. And I will/would continue playing it even if it didn't have the PVP curses tied to it.
That said, I would like to suggest an alternative way for Rare to do the PVP curses in adventure mode.
Currently, as far as I know (and I could be wrong) there are a number of commendations in the Reaper's Bones faction for things like turning in various emissary flags, stolen treasure, etc. But none of the commendations have any reward tied to them other than their intrinsic gold values.
And the Athena trading company doesn't have any commendations related to hunting reapers, etc.
So my suggestion, for reapers, would be to tie various PVP cosmetics to the different commendations that don't have rewards. Specifically things like "turn in gold hoarder emissary flags" etc. And Rare could create new commendations like "kill 100 enemy pirates with the blunderbuss/eye of reach/double barreled pistol, etc.
Similar for Athena. Create some new commendations about turning in reaper emissary flags, and killing reapers with various weapons.
Then this could be earned in adventure mode. Would add some new motivations to the economy system. And would reward players for getting proficient with all the different weapon types, etc.
Plus it would probably improve the hour glass experience, too, since the number of loss farmers would likely decrease (not complaining about loss farming per se. Just mentioning that having alternative ways to get the curses would likely shift the focus of the loss farmers to the other new metrics).
