Once Human's Seasonal Resets

 One aspect of Once Human that intrigues me is their plan for seasonal resets.  Every six weeks the world will rest and a new chapter of the story will be revealed.  Along with it characters will start fresh for that new season.  I think this is an interesting model so wanted to share some more thoughts on it.

 First, a summary of what a season is in Once Human 

 In Once Human, seasons will introduce fresh gameplay experiences within a fixed timeframe, featuring new stories, events, and mechanics. Each season is divided into stages with unique challenges and objectives. Players start anew at the beginning of every season, but can carry over certain progress and items to the next season.

 The best comparison I can make is to Crowfall where campaigns came and went and players extracted materials from the campaign to use with their "crow" (character) in the next campaign.  Crowfall also had Eternal Kingdoms that were persistent hubs for players to build up as a more permanent hold.  Once Human is planning a similar feature with Eternaland.

Eternaland serves as a personal "bubble world" for each player that persists between seasons, allowing them to build and keep structures across resets

 This model looks to keep things fresh for players and help avoid power creep in the long run as players are brought back to level playing field regularly.  However it is at the cost of persistence so Eternaland makes sense.  To note; as far as I could tell Eternaland was not available in the demo and its not clear we have any players that can share hands on experience with it.

 Personally what I enjoyed most about the Once Human demo was the core loop of clearing enemy camps, gathering stuff, and coming back to build up the base.  The story helps as it drove me to explore more of the world and thus find more camps to clear/loot. 

 That sort of gameplay loop would eventually run out of steam if the base and my character and base persisted forever.  The season resetting and having me start fresh will keep me in that loop longer.  Now it is yet to be seen if that will be enjoyable to start over as the fine details of what carries over or does not carry over is to be seen, but I like the idea.

 I can also liken the experience to my experiences in New World; specifically server merge days.  While it wasn't cool to think less players over all were playing the game (hence server merges) it was actually a neat experience those first few days after server merge.  The somewhat stale cycle of your server was turned over and new faces/enemies/friends/etc came available.  Everything felt good for a couple weeks before thing settled in again.  

 I don't think it's wrong to think Once Human's resets will create that same sort of "server merge day" feeling.  Six weeks also feels long enough to be useful for progression but not long enough to feel like you've lost everything because of a reset.  It will likely feel weird for players that start playing right around a season ending but there is always a feeling of "I need to catch up" when you join a game past its launch.

 I will hold my final verdict until I get to move through a reset, but I think its a neat way to keep the game fresh.  I am also interested in Eternaland and what it will offer for players to have a sense of persistent progression outside of the seasons.