This 'episodic' approach will come at the expense of those who favour personal, inter-character stories over grandiose and 'flavour of the week' world presence stories.
I feel as though this is mostly a means to stimulate short-term activity than actually making the game more pleasant for the playerbase.
I don't understand this notion of characters overstaying their welcome. Characters in this game are more than just narrative tools to drive whatever flashy story is going on at the time. They're a shit ton of time dedicated by people who seek to live an experience that offers an escape from their (probably) crappy IRL grind (there are other reasons, just citing a pretty common one). Let people enjoy their characters rather than stamping them as permanent NPC's/Background characters to these 'arcs'. I can guarantee you that, to them, their personal stories are far more interesting than whatever world-scale story the administration and ambitious players have in store. I really don't think they should be deprived of that because a few people are bored and think this game should consistently be having explosions and plot-twists everywhere.
As for antagonists not being able to contend with the rest of the world, here are some basic suggestions:
1. Bullrushing and being completely combat-oriented should be a great Darwinian method to weed out the bad antagonist wannabes. If you want to cause trouble with little resources at your disposal, you either need to be a little more than a verb-centric turd, or serve as a henchman to a character with a higher charisma stat.
2. Don't introduce very obviously evil factions out of the blue. There is literally no reason for them to not be instantly eradicated (you can only use the 'muh story' card so much until it becomes silly). I think the progressive introduction of demons under the stewardship of high RPL witches was a good approach to ushering a new threat without plot-buffing them. They were dependent on the witches for their collective survival, unlike pre-TS where they could probably overtake Moonfall if they really wanted to.
I suppose I'm a bit sour over this because I lost a pretty damn good character pre-TS before they could reach their prime. It was annoying and very much impacted my motivation after the TS. Needless to say, I do not think this episode idea is a good one.
Tl;dr
Let me enjoy my character. I find my adventures more interesting than pre-planned world plots I'm forced to react to. To hell with losing my character (or 10-20 years of their life, fuck off I'm not eating those age nerfs early) because people are bored and probably just need Adderall.
I feel as though this is mostly a means to stimulate short-term activity than actually making the game more pleasant for the playerbase.
I don't understand this notion of characters overstaying their welcome. Characters in this game are more than just narrative tools to drive whatever flashy story is going on at the time. They're a shit ton of time dedicated by people who seek to live an experience that offers an escape from their (probably) crappy IRL grind (there are other reasons, just citing a pretty common one). Let people enjoy their characters rather than stamping them as permanent NPC's/Background characters to these 'arcs'. I can guarantee you that, to them, their personal stories are far more interesting than whatever world-scale story the administration and ambitious players have in store. I really don't think they should be deprived of that because a few people are bored and think this game should consistently be having explosions and plot-twists everywhere.
As for antagonists not being able to contend with the rest of the world, here are some basic suggestions:
1. Bullrushing and being completely combat-oriented should be a great Darwinian method to weed out the bad antagonist wannabes. If you want to cause trouble with little resources at your disposal, you either need to be a little more than a verb-centric turd, or serve as a henchman to a character with a higher charisma stat.
2. Don't introduce very obviously evil factions out of the blue. There is literally no reason for them to not be instantly eradicated (you can only use the 'muh story' card so much until it becomes silly). I think the progressive introduction of demons under the stewardship of high RPL witches was a good approach to ushering a new threat without plot-buffing them. They were dependent on the witches for their collective survival, unlike pre-TS where they could probably overtake Moonfall if they really wanted to.
I suppose I'm a bit sour over this because I lost a pretty damn good character pre-TS before they could reach their prime. It was annoying and very much impacted my motivation after the TS. Needless to say, I do not think this episode idea is a good one.
Tl;dr
Let me enjoy my character. I find my adventures more interesting than pre-planned world plots I'm forced to react to. To hell with losing my character (or 10-20 years of their life, fuck off I'm not eating those age nerfs early) because people are bored and probably just need Adderall.