

It's easy and anybody can understand that in a matter of minutes. That is A to B then return to X, Y, Z or any. Once you sail there you solve the riddle or find the X marks the spot and dig up the treasure chest(s) then you can return to 'ANY' Outpost on the map for your reward in gold. (Gotta grab excess crates/cage/coops/etc.) Sure it isn't quite as straight-forward and simplistic as the Gold Hoarder's voyages are where you just go to an Outpost, talk to NPC, buy a voyage, vote for the contract on the ship to start it and start sailing using the map or named island (riddle) that it AUTO gives to you to locate a often-not-so-remote island destination.

It's fine how it is, it's just more intricate and takes more to set up in advance. I honestly don't agree with the negativity in regards to this Trading Company being overly tedious or incredibly boring compared to the others. People are saying it would seem that the Merchant Alliance is poorly designed or giving suggestions for making the Merchant Alliance more engaging and I'm all for streamlining and enhancing the experience of this Trading Company but if we're being realistic about expectations they're not going to change or overhaul anything drastically at this stage in development and probably won't change something that isn't broken post launch either when they have a road map for additional content they want to add in addition to the launch content already. Same sentiment from players on Reddit too. There's plenty of forum posts discussing Merchant Alliance in a negative light. ( TLDR version skip past the wall of text to the pictures.)
