The real win would be new players in towns with cathedrals could do their leveling construction in the same town, not have to go travel to sister towns with smaller churches
1) effectively cap the number of players who are restricted to joining defense.
2) strongly incentivize people to give up their one-man towns and join town-level communities
About the shop idea, it's true it could be good to have changes in towns : when everything is built it can be a bit boring for some players; and it's rather bothersome to feel stuck when we don't have in our shops what we are looking for. It could be good to have things to build regularly too. But as it is right now it incites a lot to do business with players if we don't have an item in our town, while with this new system, it could only incite to try our luck to get what we are looking for in our own town : instead of inciting exchanges between players in different towns, it could make towns more secluded. It can even be bothersome if other town members build a lot the buildings while other town members may want to keep their shops as they are.
I think it'd be better if there was building deterioration with time and the reset would happen only when the building level reaches 0 : from there, new items would be unlocked level after level while the building is built again, as if it was for the first time after creating a new town. This possibility would take place only if all town members don't build until the shop level goes down to 0. Otherwise, at every level down, previously unlocked items would be locked again and if players re-built before level 0 to increase back the level, no new items would appear : only previously locked items would re-appear. Like that it would make it more difficult than just building : construction gear are very good to the point a whole town can be fully built in a short time, so for some players "construction only" wouldn't represent a real difficulty at all. And on the contrary for others who don't have those good gear, it could become undoable if construction requirements were too high. Here, the difficulty would be to let the time to buildings to reach level 0 beforehand, and everything that it implies. I think it's very important a reset couldn't be so easy. And in any case, thanks to deteriorations players would always have things to build whether about other buildings, shops we don't want to reach level 0, or after a building has reached level 0.
I think if it was like that, the good points of the idea would be maintained, and the bad points I mentionned would be lowered. In any case, building deterioration with time was in an old roadmap, so the dev team is supposed to already be ok with that. I don't know why it hasn't been implemented though ... The only new thing here is the shop reset from level 0.
But if the team still wants to implement building deteriorations one day (big big "if"), they are NECESSARLY supposed to plan something for when the building level would go down and then up again : new items can't appear at every level up, otherwise it'd be a big mess and too easy to get whatever items we want. I just suggested this to propose something coherent regarding that point; but there are other coherent systems which lead to the exact same result (=reset possible after letting down the level to 0). That's what you (or anyone else) were supposed to comment, actually. The details are up to the dev according to how they want to/can handle things. Once again "if" they still want to implement that, though.Getting back the same items would be a dev level change I just don’t see happening.
the purpose of achievements is to say "yes ! I did it !"; it's supposed to require a bit of time and efforts, not just spend nuggets.
Could be good this way, but as you said no real chance to happen, and in any case "collective achievements" can't be won the same way than originally ...
I was more thinking about things like, for example : repeatable questlines available during events period with the possibility to win as a reward a missed achievement (supposedly not winnable anymore) ? in event period so limited amount of time to fulfill the questlines; and I think all missed achievements are related to events so it could stay thematic ...
New repeatable quests during event period and under x and y conditions is something regularly implemented by the team in events; here the only subtility would be the reward : we are used to win a predefined achievement when we fulfill a questline, not to win one achievement among a specified list of achievements. Don't know if something like that could be doable nor if other players would think it's a good idea. Maybe there are other (and easier) ways to allow players to still win missed achievements too, I didn't really think about it.
Lol yes, it should be clearly announced to prevent misunderstandings. This eventuality is very interesting though.
Personally what would worry me a bit, it's the time it could require to participate to this kind of things and the fact we (surely ?) won't be able to keep all the snowballs collected (or equivalent). Farming isn't fun at all, but these small rewards make it much more enjoyable; so if it's to farm as much than in real events but to only keep the achievement at the end, and not the multiples rewards (no event rewards and not even the money, exp, products/items from farming), that may be rather tough.
But if it's clearly announced, if the drop rate was a bit higher than normal and/or if the collected things like snowballs could be transferred to our main account at the end as well as achievement, I think that could be a very good thing.