Guild Workshop Idea

I have an idea that addresses a couple small things I've noticed so far in Pirate Storm;

a) There can be a steep curve for new players trying to build up some of the basic items and
b) Older players wish there was a way they can directly help new players beyond leaving behind a few boxes and some advice.

The Idea:
I suggest having an item donation 'sink' that old players can dispose of excess items into. When the donations of specific items reach certain thresholds, offer a "Time Discount" on the required time to build that item in the guild workshop. This bonus could be reset along with plunder points monthly to provide an new on going team objective for guilds, as well as being a very strong 'item sink'.

Hashing it out:
I feel this idea fits in well with the Free-2-Play business model BigPoint operates on. One of the core concepts of F2P games is having certain 'item sinks' or reasons that strongly encourage people to use up items so as that they feel more inclined to make purchases to replenish stock.

To this extent many older players have extremely large stacks of the basic farm-able items that they no longer use faster than the obtain. Providing an option for older players to burn these excess stacks of items makes strong fiscal sense in the F2P model.

At the same time it will let the older players feel like there is something they can do directly to help newer players in their guilds.

This idea scales naturally with the availability of items. By this I mean the easier found and faster built items are the ones there is the most excess of, and would be the easiest to donate in sufficient quantities to achieve some threshold. One the otherside, trying to achieve even a small time discount on the higher scale items such as 'Handymen 3000' would end up being costly, but perhaps possible true to a F2P model.

The balance of this idea works out to providing a faster capability for lower players to get the lower items that they often have initial difficulty acquiring, with relatively little direct benefit to the players donating items other than allowing them to feel they are directly helping and influencing the growth of their new players. The concept is flexible and could be tuned in any number of ways, but I think it would go a long way to adding a whole new level of achievement and interaction between guilds.

I think this idea would also manifest itself as players reconsidering (and breathing new life) into many of the less farmed zones. While people may occasionally drift to a zone with a high drop rate of a specific item they need, there is a clear tendency for people to farm in the highest gold/dim return zones they can farm in. By bringing this new use for many of the less strived for items, it would likely encourage players to consider zones for more than their dim/gold out put and increase traffic in some of the less used zones as older players try to farm items to build up their guild workshop bonus.

So, what do you guys think?