Suggestion #12893

Improving Seasonal Resets for Long-Term Players

Hey everyone,

I’ve been playing on the server on and off for 9 years now, and I love the community we’ve built here. However, I wanted to share some honest feedback regarding the seasonal resets. While I understand why they happen, losing months of building progress every 10 months is becoming a major motivation killer - at least for me.

I’ve put together a detailed proposal for a "Persistent Realm" system. It’s designed to keep the economy fresh and competitive for new players while finally giving long-term players a way to keep their creative projects and "legacy" on the server. It also addresses issues like griefing and server performance.

I’d really appreciate it if you could take a look at the logic behind it. I think this could be a game-changer for player retention.

Proposal: Transitioning to Persistent Build Realms & Asset Resets
Resets are a massive motivation killer. Reaching a 9-year milestone on a server should be a badge of honor, but having everything wiped every 10 months makes long-term players feel like they are back at square one. It discourages ambitious projects and leads to burnout. There is a better way to keep the game fresh without deleting months of creative effort: partial resets with persistent build realms.

The Core Concept: Personal Build Realms
Instead of claiming chunks in a shared overworld that eventually gets deleted, every player should have their own Claim Realm. This is a personal world where you expand your world border using shards, just like the current claim system and would act similarly to Skyblock's islands and would be where players do their building that would normally be done inside a claim.

Zero Griefing: This completely eliminates griefing and "border-claiming" issues. Since players no longer build side-by-side in a shared space, the toxic behavior surrounding claims disappears.

World Optimization: The main overworld can be significantly smaller since it no longer needs to host massive player bases, saving the server on storage and reducing lag.

Inactive Cleanup: To prevent data bloat, any realm belonging to a player inactive for over a year would be automatically deleted. This clears abandoned builds while protecting active veterans. Deleting worlds could also be a punishment for sever offenders putting extra pressure to follow the rules.

The Maintenance Fee (Shard Sink): To keep the economy moving, maintaining a massive private world border could require a seasonal "activation fee" in shards. While your builds are never deleted, keeping the full area of a massive realm active gives veterans a reason to participate in each new season’s economy.

Monetization: The server could sell additional world slots and/or other world customization features - perhaps like the ability to fly for players who want separate projects, providing revenue without creating a pay-to-win environment.

Economy Reset Option A: The "Hard Wipe" (Simplest Method)
The most straightforward way to reset the economy while saving creativity is to completely wipe all balances (money, tokens, shards, etc). Delete all stored items from chests and inventories as well as delete all spawner blocks, farmable crops, harvesters, extractors etc. from both the world and inventories. In this scenario, the only things that survive a reset are the structures players have physically built.
Since you can only place and re-mine so many blocks manually, mass-hoarding becomes a massive waste of time. It would be much faster to just play the new season normally than to spend weeks hand-placing thousands of blocks just to "save" them for next season. This ensures a clean slate for the economy while protecting the hundreds of hours spent on architecture.

Economy Reset Option B: The "Item Rotation" (Advanced Method)
As a more detailed alternative, the server could allow items to stay but render old "wealth" items useless:

Asset Wiping & Item Rotation: Clear all balances (money, tokens, shards). Delete all spawner blocks, harvesters, extractors etc. from both the world and inventories.

Seasonal Meta Shifting: To ensure a fresh start, the server can rebalance the shop so that meta items from the last season are no longer competitive in the new one. By devaluing the previous season's top-performing crops or items, any mass-farmed stockpiles effectively become worthless. This forces everyone - veterans and new players alike - to discover and build for the new meta rather than relying on old wealth.

The "Hoarding" Solution: Some might worry that keeping builds allows players to hoard materials, but even if someone has 20 double chests of items, it gives them a negligible advantage. To fully prevent a "lucky" start, the server can use Dynamic Shop Prices for the first week of a season. If a player tries to mass-sell a stockpile of last season's crops, the price would drop to an insignificant amount. By the time the prices stabilize, the players who are actively building the new meta-farms will be ready to out-produce anyone who just sat on a chest of old items. This gives new players plenty of time to catch up and eventually outperform the stockpiles.

Empty Shells: In both of the above examples, players would be left with "empty shells" of their farms, which doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. The real fun and economic value of a new season comes from the grind to obtain premium custom items and spawners. The challenge should be in regaining that power, not in the tedious busywork of placing water buckets for crop farms or building walls for spawner rooms. Perhaps a hybrid of both Option A and Option B could be the best solution - protecting the creative architecture while ensuring the economic "engines" are completely reset each season.

Seasonal Prestige: Building a Legacy
Since the build realms stay, they become a permanent record of your achievements. At the end of each season, top-ranking players could earn unique Seasonal Trophies, Statues, or Banners. Because the realm is persistent, these rewards stay in your base forever as physical proof of your success from every previous season.

Better Stability and Flexibility
Separating the economy from the builds makes the server much easier to manage. If a major exploit ruins the economy mid-season, staff can perform a currency or item reset without the "nuclear option" of deleting everyone's progress. This allows for quick fixes and balances without killing player motivation. Furthermore, since building blocks aren't the focus of this modded server - farming and specialized plugins are - allowing builds to stay doesn't break the game's progression and design.

Final Goal
This system keeps the competitive "fresh start" feeling of a new season - even if some players have a minimal head start - while finally respecting the time invested by long-term players. New players get a level playing field, but veterans don't lose the projects they've spent hundreds of hours perfecting. It is time the server moved toward a system where our time actually counts for something.