A lot of the content in the game currently supports a world span of 3-4 months rather than the 1+ years the worlds normally last. Much of this is due to game mechanics that have existed forever or at least since Hafen, however, many of the recent changes (within the last two worlds) have further pushed the game in this direction. I'm going to split this thread into a few different categories detailing why the mechanics in their current state support shorter worlds and hopefully suggest or at least open up a discussion on how to rework these mechanics so that the game feels playable for a longer portion of the worlds. The main categories I'm going to be focusing on are Industry Grind (Metal/Mining, Trees, Farming, Hunting, and Clay) and Stat Grind. A lot of what I'm going to discuss will be more prevalent among faction players than casual players, however, even the casual players will suffer from these problems, just a bit later into the world. I should preface this by saying I haven't searched C&I for similar threads or discussions regarding this so everything I write here will be my own views and sorry if a similar discussion has already taken place. I should also mention that this thread isn't meant to support earlier world resets. This is something I am actually against, I support the long 1+ year worlds, however, I believe there needs to be some kind of content that keeps people playing for this long which the game currently lacks.
How the major industries overlap
This sections only purpose is to establish how all the major industries intertwine with each other. Most higher-to-medium-level players will already understand all this and can skip reading it as it'll be obvious to them. It should be noted that everything stated below isn't actually a problem and is a pretty cool feature of the game. I'm just reviewing it all as context to what I'm going to go over in the next section. I'll put a hide on the lower bit as it's not necessary for most to read.
To conclude this section we can see that all of these separate industries rely on each other for continuous quality growth in each respective industry. Farming can kind of be excluded from this list as it doesn't necessarily rely on any external industries to grow, however, it is extremely important for trees which are important to every other industry. Farming also becomes the only real way to see quality gains later into the world which we will discuss deeper into this thread.
How these industries cap out early into the world
As established in the prior section and as most people already know the major industries all tie into each other. This is good, however, the problem with almost all of these industries is that they all cap out relatively early into the world. The fact that it caps out isn't necessarily the major problem, however, the problem is that these caps are reached very early into the world (3-4 months maximum). After that period of time the industry grind is basically dead which wipes out a major incentive to play this game. All the tools/weapons/armor wont increase or if they do the diminishing returns are so extreme that it'll take over a month to see a <5 quality increase across your industries. In the remainder of this section I'm going to describe the theoretical maximum qualities of each industry and how they tie together creating caps in other industries. I'd also like to preface this section by saying I use the term cap a ton. I obviously don't mean hard-cap, however, it's basically a cap because of the extreme amount of time required for almost no gains. I'll add a hide for this section too as the faction level players at least definitely understand all of this.
Basically this entire section is meant to show how each industry caps and that the only way to raise industry later into the world is by increasing your flax and turnip quality by farming which will take an unreasonable amount of time to see non-effective gains. This gameplay is obviously a bit rough as there's no point to mine, hunt, forage, or plant trees later into the world. The only thing left is farming and quality farming can be done in very tiny fields which takes barely any time per day. In the next section I'm going to go over some old game mechanics we had which solved this problem and were recently removed or nerfed.
Why the old mechanics would be better with some limitations
The main two mechanics that allowed for uncapped quality progression were metal spiraling and potters' clay spiraling. In world 10 both of these were in full effect and we were seeing really insane qualities that were growing exponentially. I'll start with discussing metal spiraling specifically.
The main reason the metal industry grew so rapidly was because the anvil and hammer quality boosted the cast iron quality significantly so you could continuously spiral lower quality iron and turn it into higher quality iron. Currently that isn't really possible because the anvil and hammer quality doesn't boost it. This change while making it so you don't need to spend as much time mining the same low quality metal, has essentially completely capped out the industry grind and also killed trade. One of the reasons trade was so successful in World 10 and 11 was because factions were continuously in need of something lower level players could easily provide. This allowed them to trade cast to buy things they need rather than sub tokens like we have now. Currently there isn't really anything like this other than morels which are seasonal and not bought to the same extent as cast iron was. The main reason the growth of metal was so exponential in these worlds is because spiraling raises metal by percentage rather than a flat value. In this case if you hit q3000 blooms for example spiraling it would bring it to around 3600 with some variation depending on your anvil and hammer quality at the time. Such jumps are obviously a bit too extreme and are pretty unreasonable, however, if spiraling was reworked to be a flat value increase rather than a percentage based increase we could still have industry growth that doesn't cap out, nor become too ridiculous too quick. With spiraling brought back trade would become more popular again and noobs could provide more than just sub tokens for high quality items. It would also provide an incentive for people to mine all world rather than stopping because there isn't any point anymore.
In world 10 potters' clay could be spiraled up by using normal materials that anyone can get (ball clay, acre clay, gray clay, and bricks) and crafting it on a potter's wheel. You could then use this clay to make bricks and make more potter's clay and continuously raise your clay industry. You can technically do the same thing now, however, now that it has been switched to bone clay it has made spiraling it so hard that it's basically useless. The amount of top quality bones needed to exceed the bone clay quality makes it not worth it and there's no longer any point of potter's clay aside from level 8 and 9 mineholes. The potter wheel quality is also significantly lower because currently the entire tree industry and clay industry just caps out or becomes impossible. If the bone clay portion was reverted back to ball clay it would make it so that ball clay, acre clay, and gray clay aren't completely useless for basically the entire portion of the world. There would be a constant demand for good quality nodes and people would be trading for gray clay again. This change would also lower the entry barrier into the clay industry as noobs wouldn't need to scour the world for one of the few top bone nodes. As we know the clay industry is a very significant part of every other industry so this would allow for easier progression for the average player.
I'll dive in a bit deeper to how these changes would affect other industries and why they allow for every industry to grow at a nice steady pace. So to start with the best part of the metal industry continuously growing is that it will outgrow stone and bone tools. Currently the bone saw and the stone axe are the highest tools in the game which is a bit absurd since they're far more primitive than every other tool. With this change metal quality will eventually pass both bone and stone allowing pickaxes and metal saws to be used over stone axes and bone saws. This increase in tool quality will allow branches to quickly catch up in fuel quality rather than using limited quality coal. It will also make it so you can make better boards to make coal in tar kilns. You also get high quality dross from the finery which can be used to upgrade your tar kilns and your potter's wheel. The tar kiln upgrade is really big for metal fuel as tar kiln coal will continue growing whereas natural coal caps out. The stone increase being used in the potter's wheel allows for extra growth in clay as well which in return allows for extra growth in trees, etc. It should also be noted that as of this world stone and metal quality has an impact on smelter quality which may boost industry a bit faster than what would be ideal, however, I believe with a good flat value on spiraling this could be pretty easily mitigated.
If these two changes were in effect again we would see constant growth that doesn't immediately cap out and it also wouldn't be growth that is ridiculously fast. All of the industries would connect perfectly and help each other grow as they normally do without becoming capped. The qualities would raise at a pretty steady pace throughout the world and trade would be far more successful throughout the world. These changes would give a lot of people reason to continuously play the game throughout the world rather than getting bored and quitting once all the caps are hit.
Typical reasons why people would not want this change
The main reason why people in the past were so against spiraling is that it supported botting. While this may be true, there are a good bit of counter measures to botting mining now and I don't think mining scripts are all that relevant anymore. There are also many processes in this game that are negatively impacted by botting, however, it's a bit silly to completely remove content because people may be botting it. I can say with confidence having played on both sides of the major factions that in the worlds where spiraling was really big people were not botting mining much at all. Most people were boosting their industry from trade or manual mining.
Another reason some people may dislike it (jorb and loftar may side with this) is because the concept of turning extremely low metal into extremely high metal just sounds a bit ridiculous. This is kind of true, although there are many things in this game that are a bit unrealistic and this being the trade off for good balance in end-game industry grind and trade seems like a pretty easy pill to swallow.
The last reason I can think of is that people don't find in enjoyment in endlessly raising their industry and that it becomes too much of a job. I can understand where people are coming from in regard to this, however, the only reason endless industry grind would actually be necessary is if you're working towards another goal. In this case this argument would typically come from people in major PVP factions. A very large reason industry is so relevant and that the major PVP factions remain at the top in terms of industry quality is that the armor and weapon quality play a big role in combat. This creates competition in industry and trade in order to remain relevant in PVP. I would argue this is actually a good thing, however, I do understand how for PVP oriented players it will seem like a bit of a high barrier to entry just for participation. In this case given that the increase from spiraling would be a flat value rather than a percentage it should prevent people from getting overly far apart from each other in a short period of time. From my experience the same people who usually are making this argument are the same people who are quitting very early into the world because there isn't as much fights as they'd like anyways though. This is a pretty small portion of the actual people playing the game and I feel like a larger portion of the people playing are quitting because once things cap out there isn't a whole lot left to do.
These are just the main arguments I've heard regarding this. I'm also not necessarily saying that bringing back spiraling on potter's clay and metal is the only solution to this problem. This is just a solution I can think of that seems like it would be much better for the game and rather easy to implement again. I'd love to hear other suggestions on how to make late-game industry grind something that is possible and enjoyable. I'd also love to hear reasons as to why people think this is a bad idea (if they do). I personally think it's a pretty good idea, but I understand my gameplay may differ from the gameplay of others.
TLDR of industry grind problems
In recent worlds the changes to industry have made it so that all of the industry basically caps out. The diminishing returns on industry are so severe that the few points of quality you may get over weeks-months make it not worth the effort. This leads to a lot of people quitting the game a few months into the world as there isn't much left for them to do anymore. The idea I'm proposing to fix this is to bring back metal spiraling and potter's clay spiraling, but with a change to metal spiraling. The change is that anvil and hammer quality will still affect it in the same way as it used to, but instead of the spirals raising the quality by a percentage (currently 20%) it raises it by a flat value instead. This combined with potter's clay spiraling being returned to normal (ball clay instead of bone clay) would promote end-game industry grind and trade without the quality raising at an extreme exponential rate.
Stat Grind
I was originally going to make this section very large too, however, after seeing how large the above area is I feel like it might be best to keep it short as I doubt anyone will read this at this point lol.
Stat grind suffers largely from the same problem as industry grind. There's no reason to raise almost all stats past a certain level due to the caps placed on industry. Obviously there are a lot of stats with pretty low importance, especially past the first few weeks. A few of these stats are stealth, exploration, charisma, etc. This is fine, not all stats are going to be extremely useful, however, the main problem is that the stats that are useful (the ones used for caps and such) only need to be raised to 200-400 base maximum. From there you can get enough with just mediocre gilding sets to basically reach the current industry caps in every single stat. Once you've hit these values LP becomes completely useful meaning there's not really any point to the whole curio system and no point to quest for LP either. Raising specific attributes also becomes completely useless. This problem mostly affects crafters. People who play the game as a crafter don't really have any reason to raise their stats continuously because they will reach all of their caps and then never have to worry about it again due to the industry never increasing. The only stats that make sense to continuously raise are Strength, Agility, Constitution, Unarmed Combat, and Melee Combat (UA/MC far less now). These are obviously raised for PVP exclusively. You don't really need much stats to PVE every single animal which obviously suggests that hunting may need a bit of work, however, that's a topic for another thread. Even these PVP stats aren't overly important to raise super high because this game is currently lacking any incentive to actually PVP (also a topic for another thread).
One way to make stat raising more relevant throughout the entire world would be to fix the industry grind so that it doesn't cap out. Fixing this one problem would make so many other aspects of the game come back to life later into the world that die out early. All of the crafter stats would need to be continuously raised so that you can keep up with recipe caps. This doesn't necessarily fix the problem with the mining, hunting, and PVP stats becoming a bit useless, however, this thread isn't really meant to delve into that, although, I may make another topic regarding that too.
TLDR of stat grind problems
Currently there is no reason to raise almost all stats past 200-400 base. With gilding sets you can hit all of your necessary caps because the industry basically freezes in current gameplay. This makes LP completely worthless past the first month of the world basically. UA/MC are also pretty useless to raise because as long as you're half who you're fighting you will have the same weight. There's not really a point in trying to double someone's UA/MC because the cost to double someone is exponentially more than to be half of someone. A lot of these stats would be relevant again throughout the entire world with industry that continuously grows through the world. This would make LP in the late game at least a lot more viable than it is now. Some PVP stats and stats like Survival and Masonry are going to be useless regardless of any of the suggested changes above as nothing suggested will increase animal or ore/stone quality. PVP stats are very useful in general, however, there isn't any incentive to PVP currently so PVP isn't happening as much as it should be.
