I totally agree on this, i just stared out 14 days ago or something so ofc im not aware of all the problems. But just looking at the map when we first came to "abella" was kinda shocking, it looked there was buildings and settlements all over the lmap, with no open spots whatsoever that we could use and be a little to our selfs as we leared the game from scratch ... but after a while we realised that areas, no matter how small, that had been terraformed ordeserted looked 10x bigger on the map then was the reality was when we saw them firsthand. So the map is showing terraformed area's that ppl who either quit playing used or that people used temporarily for a short stay or for skill training....
So it would make the world and map more "natural" if it returned more to the way it was before ppl touched it. Ofc it shouldnt always sink down to the original level again, just all plateaus ppl have built should slowly turn in to hills with stuff growing on it instead. And the terraforming status (green tiles) should also start disapearing at the same rate as grass starts to cover the tiles. It should be kinda easy to implement, just set a number of days or even weeks that the tiles have to have been untouched or unclaimed for the transformation to start, one tile after another.
As it is right now when running around to find a spot to build you village/house, especially when you get to the point where you wanna build a more permanent place, but even a temporary place. As soon as you see a terraformed area closeby it's an instant "turnoff", atleast for me personally. And my guess is that many players who buy a game like this are the same way. We want to build something for ourselfs gives you the feeling "this is my home, i helped build this!". Dosen't matter if it's alone or with friends. So building in an area that was to some extent already prepared or even used by someone els before would ruin that feeling for alot of people. (me inc!:>)
So i feel that its detrimental to the game if terraformed areas stay the way they do right now, a map that feels overcrowded the moment you come to the "real" world for the first time, when there's no more then around 10-15 players per "world tile" online at the same time. Is just a plain waste of the both usefull and beautiful locations that exist on the map!
-----------------------------------------------
From my own experience grass already grows back to plowed tiles right?Just not fast enough sometimes perhaps. But i agree that soil quality should be able to return to some extent through a system with "year cycles" or something. But it would be hard to implement in a balanced way if they dont wanna make "fertilize" totally useless. It would have to be some sort of system like in real life where farmers need to have their fields "rest" in cycles, just endless fertilizing wont work, depending on what you grow atleast.
My suggestion would be to implement the use of water for this type of thing. Aswell as more use of plowing. In real life farmers usually plow the fields they plan to have rest after grass has grown on them. This too get the grass(or crops) growing on it deeper into the ground, so it wont just fertilise the top layer of soil and to make sure as much of the nutrition as possible stays in the ground. So it could be worth considering a system to raise soil quality by plowing and then watering the soil in cycles.
But bad soil is in the end bad soil. And it wont just become fertile by it self, no matter how long it stays untouched or how much it rains.
-------------------
Sorry for the novell, and if i strayed away from topic.