player retention is a circular problem. the average mid-tier player i'd argue gets about two good months in, and then a couple extra less-enthused months at best, and then drops off. newbies and tryhards can go more or less indefinitely until newbies get smacked by tryhards, etc. arguably the problem shouldn't be "how do we keep people from gettng smacked and quitting" but more "how do we make people who are already playing, not experience the severe drop-off point?" and the answer to that is either a community situation (cf?) or meaningful lategame.
world 10 retained players for an incredibly long time because there was an abundance of community driven stuff fueled by a renewable "loop" (spiraling) and the absence of the renewable loop means it is no longer profitable to run a market. (HARD TO SWALLOW PILL:)
the current only reason to run or participate in a market is to farm out tokens. your existence will more or less be farming out trash to appeal to scrubs to try to recirculate your coin for tokens. currently, when someone buys a q300 anvil, they are reasonably set for the rest of the world. this gives mid-tier players even less to look forward to, new players have less "shiny new things" to acquire, and top-tier players have no reason to farm a community other than to slaughter them at discretion for recreation.
alternatively, new content also serves as a carrot on a stick, with frequent updates often bolstering morale of stagnant villages, but thats a shitty unsustainable prospect because sooner or later there is no more content to jam in the game that isnt just blatant Feature Creep and
then maybe jorb/lorb have to work more than a couple hours a day on average.fixing the player retention/world longevity problem is basically impossible given the current circumstances of everything, and there is no actual solution that has been proposed that i can personally see retaining people.
i think some suggestions put forth should AT LEAST be given a shot, but this is already too long of a write-up on an inconsequential topic.