The Classic Resetting Problem and How We Do We Solve It

[Rebs]

Disclaimer
I know this post will probably never get read by the devs. This is just a discussion about how we might come up with some ideas for resetting worlds (or maybe finding another way around it).
Please don't post small implementation details like "If you do this then this will be exploited bla bla bla" or any "You can’t compare this game to Haven." I also know there has likely been other posts about this but whatever.

Problem
I believe the main reason everyone wants a reset is to level everyone back to zero so things feel fair again. It’s a common strategy to keep items, bases, and titans (or whatever the game’s top-end content is) to a minimum. After about three months into a new world, new players join who can’t dream of ever "catching up" to faction-level PvP or Quality. There might be many reasons why people want resetting worlds, but to me, this is a lazy solution to the problem (let’s gamify it).

I look at games like Rust, Tarkov, Dark and Darker, and even PoE, and they all face similar issues. After six months, players accumulate so many rare or powerful items and so much wealth that new players are dominated in every way (even through market monopolies). For those games, the solution is seasonal resets. Jumping into a dungeon or raid as a new player with no gear against people with BIS setups is the same concept as Haven. The big difference, though, is that in those games you can grind and loot your way to being competitive (in Haven, that’s basically impossible for a new player). Maybe veteran players could start 3–6 months in and still become relevant again, but the amount of work is kind of insane.

Solutions?
I recently saw that Arc Raiders has an expedition feature where you can dump all your loot, gear, and levels in exchange for some persistent buff. That’s their solution to not having to reset everyone’s progress every few months. That got me thinking: there could be a creative way for Haven to have these kinds of "resets" for characters, groups, or bases.

Here are some examples (by no means perfect, but examples nonetheless):
Something simple could be sacrificing your character’s stats and LP back to zero in exchange for a base Quality buff or FEP buff for your new character, hell even if its just a number that we can make bigger might work.

Or maybe something more ambitious: add some hearth magic that lets you delete everything on your claim/village and reset your stats. In exchange, you and your villagers get a base Quality or FEP buff based on the total value of items and stats you just dumped. Of course, these buffs would need to be small enough that you’d have to do this repeatedly for a significant effect (but it’s a kind of "spiralling" system, could even had capped stats, and up the limit of the cap per reset instead of something).

This could solve some of our problems (maybe not all), but it opens some interesting doors:

Top player churn. If someone never resets themselves or their base, they’ll eventually be overtaken by players who regularly reset and gain buffs.

Risk and renewal and reward. If top players do reset, they make themselves vulnerable again until they rebuild and regain their stats during this time of course those pesky noobs you murdered might come and hunt you down preventing your rise to glory once more.

Of course, there are issues with these ideas, but all issues can be solved over time. The implementation might be rough at first, but maybe (just maybe) W20 could end up being the final world where we have a self-contained, player-driven resetting system that doesn’t rely on dev-triggered world resets.

I want to hear ideas like the ones above (how we could create an ever-lasting world without forced resets, where the player base self-resets instead). It could be more item sinks, old age mechanics, whatever your crazy idea is (post it).

Once upon a time, it was the devs’ dream that Haven would become a game without world resets. So let’s dump some wild ideas to achieve that goal. If you disagree with the problem, please tell me/us what you think the problem is, why you want world resets and why you don't join late world and wait for resets.

Resetting every 3 months is of course easy, but as mentioned its kinda lazy design imo

[Robben_DuMarsch]

Imagine thinking Jorb is going to read this.
There are plenty of games that let you prestige reset, including many of the ones you listed as examples of games that include seasonal resets in their regular cycle. A prestige reset is not comparable to a fresh server, even if it gives you a gameplay advantage. Plus, if your proposed gameplay advantage is large enough from the prestige reset to matter you're going to compound the issue by making the grind difference even more insane.

It's still their dream to have an endless world. W16 isn't going anywhere. That's still their plan, the simultaneous worlds with "quicker" resets is just their short term experiment.
The problem is that they've slowed development to a sluggish pace and they can't even properly test short term world resets properly, so we are going to end up in years of purgatory with no proper perma/long world, and no proper consistent short term resets.

We'll either get a second wind some day once Jorb's kids grow up or Loftar wins the lottery, or the game will die. That's where this is headed.

[TemuSoldier]

-1 yap

[sMartins]

There's only one way: death.

[Rebs]

Imagine thinking Jorb is going to read this.
There are plenty of games that let you prestige reset, including many of the ones you listed as examples of games that include seasonal resets in their regular cycle. A prestige reset is not comparable to a fresh server, even if it gives you a gameplay advantage. Plus, if your proposed gameplay advantage is large enough from the prestige reset to matter you're going to compound the issue by making the grind difference even more insane.

It's still their dream to have an endless world. W16 isn't going anywhere. That's still their plan, the simultaneous worlds with "quicker" resets is just their short term experiment.
The problem is that they've slowed development to a sluggish pace and they can't even properly test short term world resets properly, so we are going to end up in years of purgatory with no proper perma/long world, and no proper consistent short term resets.

We'll either get a second wind some day once Jorb's kids grow up or Loftar wins the lottery, or the game will die. That's where this is headed.

Yeah I agree prestige resets are different to fresh servers but that doesn't mean we should just default to resetting worlds because of that difference.

There is a balance to prestige bonuses for sure. and that would be a balancing act. Personally PvP should be the active resetting mechanic but that is "less fun" then optionally doing it yourself, and once raided/killed its near impossible fight back/respond in any meaningful way, for 95% of the player base, at least with sieging/raiding the way it currently is.

I don't want this to be all doom and gloom here, sure yes devs bad/lazy however you wish to put it. I don't really see the point in pointing out the obvious here, I want to hear some interesting suggestions on this problem that isn't just "Lets delete the world and everyone start again" when that doesn't solve the underlying issues and that means we will always have them. Again not that this will ever reach the devs but its a fun topic to discuss, at least for me it is.

[magnet]

Resets are fine but should be like PoE leagues: more predictable in schedule but with drastic changes. Theres alot of variables they could change to make each world feel different. I thought this was what they were getting at when they first introduced the idea of "experimental" worlds... but we all saw how that turned out, lets hope 16.1 is interesting, but given the time crunch they are on to have the world ready by Dec 5 I just dont see them making any crazy overhauls to the game... would love to be wrong about that though.

[Rebs]

-1 yap

yes yapping is the point.

There's only one way: death.

+1

Resets are fine but should be like PoE leagues: more predictable in schedule but with drastic changes. Theres alot of variables they could change to make each world feel different. I thought this was what they were getting at when they first introduced the idea of "experimental" worlds... but we all saw how that turned out, lets hope 16.1 is interesting, but given the time crunch they are on to have the world ready by Dec 5 I just dont see them making any crazy overhauls to the game... would love to be wrong about that though.

They do seem to make drastic changes that require world resets each world reset which does align with their development reasoning to only reset worlds when required but dev needs and player needs are kinda different. I am totally happy with shorter worlds but I think there has to be a solution that we can get that world resetting dopamine at any time during a world length. I imagine 16.1 wont be that different, we didn't even get a trailer for it.. so I image this was done purely to satisfy the player base not any dev requirements. we got a new biome-> required new world.. I guess i should clarify that resetting worlds should only be due to Dev requirements and players should not be gagging for it for something that might never come type thing.

[Sevenless]

You can't truly "start from scratch" in a world when the rest of the world fully interacts/trades with you. If you're not starting from scratch, it's just a different way to grind quality. We've had infinite quality grind in the past, and 90% of players still quit in the first 3 months.

Deep worlders are a different breed of player compared to the 3 month early game rushers. The infinite quality grind was enjoyed by the deep worlders that world (10 I think?), but ultimately it didn't change the playstyle of early worlders.