I was eating breakfast and something reminded me of a thing from Mechwarrior 4. There was this one mission where your contact tells you "salvage for this op is split with Linden's Battalion".

So here's the idea. And remember, I'm thinking in the context of CoX, so if some of this doesn't translate to CoT, that could be a thing, But anyway, here goes:

So remember the Vanguard missions where you got them from contacts like Serpent Drummer and Guassian etc and then eventually some small amount of Vanguard merits would drop? What if, instead of that, you got like MORE Vanguard Merits (which can be used to get costume unlocks, maybe a neat Vanguard themed temp power or two, etc) but the faction sending you on the mission makes you agree to a "contract" whereby they lay claim to any and all very rare drops you might get during the mission.

So like, people will most likely notice that most of the time they're not getting very rares (purples in CoX dropped VERY infrequently), so most of these missions cost you nothing, at least nothing you can actually bank on having gotten in the first place, BUT, you get some added Vanguard Merits to play with.

Then, when when you actually DO get a very rare that get's dropped, it drops directly to the NPC that gave you the mission, not to you.

I would envision this as a thing where the NPC can then try to sell the item, maybe giving you first right of refusal with a timer so that if you don't buy it by like 48 hours later, it goes on the market. Either way, the NPC now has a big ticket item they can try to sell, and when they do, that IGC probably just gets destroyed and sunk out of the economy.

Another idea I had as part of this might be that each NPC that gives these sorts of missions will hold onto the items they get from it for some period of time and will sell those items only to people who have grinded through enough faction-specific content to be "in good with the faction", so that you would have to go talk to those NPCs on a regular basis to see what they have for sale. OR, after MUCH grinding of such content, you get their cell number and can call them, and after even MORE grinding, they'll alert YOU when they acquire a new very rare that's not currently spoken for.

One thing this sort of requires is for the very rare items in question to be things that can drop even if you're not level capped, unlike purples in CoX which only dropped when you were within shouting distance of level 50. The idea being that grinding for faction-specific rewards from missions is a "leveling up" type of game play behavior, to me, and I wouldn't want to have to do a lot of faction grinding for no useful XP. I would want to be doing this as a way of leveling a toon in addition to getting faction-based rewards and possibly my very rare item sequestered and sold back to me (or to someone else).

So people can grind through farms or whatever for IGC and faction-specific merit rewards, XP, and all of the usual item drops, but all the while know that any "purples" they get are going straight to the NPC That send them on the mission. I know some people are going to say "WHAT?!?! They're stealing my purples!?!? That's HORRIBLE!" But remember, this is only as horrible as the number of actual purples you would have gotten, and even on my Mastermind with the difficulty number cranked up I only got like one purple in every ~100 missions I did (that was like 1 purple per month as it turned out, but still).

I would assume that a lot of the temp powers and stuff you'd get with faction-specific rewards would be stuff you'd have to craft up using IGC too, in all likelihood. Afterall, you do get to keep the IGC form the missions anyway. Also, after much grinding, you might unlock a TF or Trial or raid or something that can, like the Rikti Mothership raid, get you a lot of faction merits, which might after many many runs, get you tot he point where you're getting called on the phone whenever a new very rare shows up in faction coffers and is up for grabs.

I also think there ought to be enough different factions with enough different cool costume pieces, SG base decor items, temp powers, and unlockable raids and whatnot that people aren't just going to all do the same faction all the time.

I also think that any exclusive right you might get to buy very rares from faction contacts would have to be at prices slightly higher than what is on the market, because you might be buying a thing that is currently not available on the market at all, and there ought to be an added cost for that to allow for the possibility of the NPC to just sell it on the market later after you balk at the high price. That way you can "Buy it Now" for the higher price or wait for it to hit the open market and try to snap it up for a cheaper price there, which is a risk.