So I had this idea for a very long time in my mind. Basically you dissolve the village system and add in hideouts for each clan. There would be an alliance system where 3+ clans would be able to form an alliance and occupy major settlements/hideouts thus creating original villages. Pretty much like in the manga/anime before villages were created. I never suggested this idea because we all know how many alts ppl have and like to village hope every then and now. So if this clan alliances idea was added you would be restricted to join your clans village or be a missing nin.
But now that I saw Kayne members coming back it came to my mind to use guilds to build villages instead of using clans. So any major guild with lets say maybe 10+ active members would have their own hideout and through alliances with lets say 2 more guilds be able to create villages. There would however be restrictions so that a village cant contain too many guilds.
Each village would work just like now with missions and shit. But how the ranks are handeld/named and shit should be up to the respective village guilds/leaders. As for new players they would be able to choose one village (not guild) to join and could then join one of the guilds inside the village afterwards if they fullfill their req.
This would pretty much mean that the story from the villages and what not would all be playermade. Ofcourse to ensure that there are villages for new ppl to join youd have to start your guilds now if this idea was ever to be implemented.