The Classic Resetting Problem and How Do We Solve It

[Rebs]

PoE dev said it best in an interview they used to see the player numbers go down and think it was some kind of big problem and constantly worry about player retention

Eventually they realized that mindset is the real problem. Its perfectly normal for people to play for a bit of time then take a long break until the next time you give them an incentive to play again with a reset or whatever

It's not really something you need to 'fix'. If anything, without that periodic incentive to return, you would have even worse retention. Eternal world is over rated. You cant have kids play in a sandbox and never change the sand.

Very valid points, I would say that I would be less against resets if there wasn't a massive flatline drop off of players. I imagine PoE reset on the down curve, and I hope that these new worlds will be shorter ones but there is no given for that. 16.1 might last a year etc, heard nothing about their intentions about this since steam release, everyone is assuming that this is their intention. and I am sure there will be arguments had about how short we would like those worlds (2/3/6 months).

It could be interesting to see why people drop off, burnout is likely the highest contender for sure, but as mentioned in OP that there is a large percentage that give up once they die/get out compete, I think the reason most people quit after death is because they are now behind the rat race early world that is, this is mostly based off seeing my neighbours 1 by 1 give up because a village member died and stopped playing causing a cascade of workload to overs that causes burnout.

I doubt people come back for a world reset just to replay content either, they can do that any time right. but world resets comes with the high pop, high risk, levelled playing field. sure there might be some new content but its never anything crazy like an expansion etc. I agree that Eternal worlds are over rated but I still 100% believe its lazy design to just reset them, its a quick solution to draw back retention when half those people come back and see nothing has changed then they leave after the first weekend or week. what I care about is those who stick around for 1-3 months and then go through the content and stop playing out of boredom, I would bet a lot of these people come back throughout the year to play in a more chilled out manner - this of course is all anecdotal might not be the reality.

I also actually think world resets cause burnout a lot more, the first week everyone is throwing unhealthy amount of hours into including the rest of the first month too honestly. where as some of my longest "runs" have been via joining late game.

[ZamAlex]

World resets help big villages to shuffle their members between each other too, refreshing the blood with new people.
Game conetent can be closed fully in two month or less (we have time-gates now), after that there is nothing to do gameplay vice, only players ineractions keep interested for a game, but not for very long too, population costantly decaying after.
May be if the game will have something to offer for late game, population decay will be slower and stable online (100 ppl now) will be higher. If devs care, I know that a lot of people will suggest some great ideas for late game content, where individuals find application for their insane statsrather then flex screenshot at chats.

[whateverisfine]

theres nothing to be solved. this is a season game that you play one season and have fun then wait the next one and move with your life... if you are not into pvp then much better for you, just keep playing

[Crest]

I believe the main reason everyone wants a reset is to level everyone back to zero so things feel fair again.

That's not why I want a reset at all. I doubt that's even the reason most people want a reset.
I reset the worlds and start fresh again in plenty of other games I play, most of which are single player.
I enjoy the early game the most. I find the early game here to be the most polished and content rich part of the game. I like the world before it's besmirched with bases everywhere. I like carefully choosing the location of my base and I enjoy my time with it for that world but then I want a change, and I want that change to take place on a new world, not the same old world.
Early and midgame are all about discovering new things, reaching new plateaus, new tiers of crafting. You get to enjoy all that in these stages of the game. Late game sucks, late game is all about maintaining what you already have from the previous tiers and boosting their quality. It's nowhere near as exciting.

Regardless of if this game was multiplayer or not, I'd still regularly reset the world to start anew.

That being said I do enjoy the multiplayer early game rush of everything being so chaotic and less structured. It's exciting in that aspect.

The game becomes stale fast. It's the unfortunate truth. I can keep playing the early and mid-game part for years more but the prospect of grinding quality or maintaining the chores of the game once you've got your base fully operational is not all that appealing, to me at least.
And as unfortunate as it is I don't really have a way to solve it. Eventually you will hit end game, and you'll stop discovering new things and the only things left to do is to quality grind. It is what it is. There is no fix to this other than to reset the world which is why myself and others advocated for worlds which don't drag on as much as the currents and past ones did.

[Rebs]

I believe the main reason everyone wants a reset is to level everyone back to zero so things feel fair again.

That's not why I want a reset at all. I doubt that's even the reason most people want a reset.
I reset the worlds and start fresh again in plenty of other games I play, most of which are single player.
I enjoy the early game the most. I find the early game here to be the most polished and content rich part of the game. I like the world before it's besmirched with bases everywhere. I like carefully choosing the location of my base and I enjoy my time with it for that world but then I want a change, and I want that change to take place on a new world, not the same old world.
Early and midgame are all about discovering new things, reaching new plateaus, new tiers of crafting. You get to enjoy all that in these stages of the game. Late game sucks, late game is all about maintaining what you already have from the previous tiers and boosting their quality. It's nowhere near as exciting.

Regardless of if this game was multiplayer or not, I'd still regularly reset the world to start anew.

That being said I do enjoy the multiplayer early game rush of everything being so chaotic and less structured. It's exciting in that aspect.

The game becomes stale fast. It's the unfortunate truth. I can keep playing the early and mid-game part for years more but the prospect of grinding quality or maintaining the chores of the game once you've got your base fully operational is not all that appealing, to me at least.
And as unfortunate as it is I don't really have a way to solve it. Eventually you will hit end game, and you'll stop discovering new things and the only things left to do is to quality grind. It is what it is. There is no fix to this other than to reset the world which is why myself and others advocated for worlds which don't drag on as much as the currents and past ones did.

I feel like you contradicted yourself here. You can do all the things you listed by joining on a new character whenever you want, if you enjoy "Early world" is not the same as "early game" it does not require a reset to hop back into the game and replay its content from the start. What you are clearly referring to here is indeed the fact that everyone going back to zero is make the game more fun. There is nothing stopping you from reaching end game, taking a break for a week/month coming back and making a new character from fresh and running through the content again, it does not require a reset at all.

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There Is a few posts about haven simply being a seasonal game that requires resets which I totally understand and agree with But I am simply asking the question, If they decided W16 was the last world and they would add 1 mechanism to help prolong retention or keep people coming back to the same world, What can you come up with? Of course the easy answer is "You can't is impossible, games dead without resets", if you want to be a parrot then post that. but that's not a fun discussion. I want to hear some wacky arse ideas to fuel my boredom before the new world.

[Fostik]

That would be nice if it was possible to buff your start in 16.1…16.n using stuff from world 16, and in some years start world 17 with entirely fresh start.
Hope I’m not hijacking original idea, as I’m not completely understand what expeditions meant in this example game I haven’t played