They are doing this stuff to get people to log in but imo today was the most clear example of counterproductive direction in SoT.
If someone were to sail today they throw their luck voyage down and literally within a few minutes they are likely digging up one of the best pieces of loot in the game. Quick sell. Uninteresting, far from adventure. People like it because it's easy and lucrative, there is no urgency or risk to it. It's a few minutes on a server.
Then they throw down their merchant gilded voyage, a voyage that barely makes any sense for the faction, but it's easy and lucrative so people will take it.
Not many will push back on or challenge easy gold in large amounts, as well as massive rep, but it burns people out from how uninteresting the experience is. People have to pretend there was some high risk or challenge to it, nah, it's a few quick islands and a few quick sells for game changing amounts of gold/rep.
Yeah, merchant gildeds should be more relevant and interesting for the faction, but that applies to just about everything in SoT now.
There is nothing we can see on the outside that makes it look like any of these freebies are actually working for getting people active and engaged in the experience. It's just the thing to do before people go play games they are into outside of SoT.
I hope this abundant reward science test they have been running in recent months shows that lack of reward isn't why many people aren't that into these events anymore. It's the lack of adventure for the reward. The constant in and out of servers. Makes for a very linear experience.
People liked when events were about the experience as well as the reward.
