I'm waiting for a new world, I find the begining of a world more dynamic, you have to explore a lot, wheras the middle-end game is more about increase quality crops, feeding animals at home.
If you could find a solution to keep the middle-end game dynamic, it would be a game changing feature.
And its not the fear of murder that keep people inside, just something like moving nodes on the map every month and making clay, water and stuff made of clay-metal decrease in quality over time could do the trick.