So currently we have climate zones which effect the time is takes for trees/crops/animals to grow/breed. Which is great.
We also have the chance to create a regional resource required for blueprints.
However, I believe that more should be done to encourage players to settle and trade across the ENTIRE MMO map.
Currently, most settlements are clustered in certain areas, mainly where there is wood nearby. See picture


As you can see here, vast areas of the MMO are currently unoccupied, and these clusters will intensify once OBT starts.

To encourage players to spread-out and trade regularly, my suggestion would be to cap certain resources in different climate zones.
For example, the maximum quality softwood tree in the Arctic climate zone would be 100, however, in the desert, the maximum quality softwood tree that could be grown would be 25 quality. A guild can get by on low quality materials for awhile, but they will want high quality ingredients for buildings/crafting stations/weapons/armor eventually.

I have maybe up a "very rough" map/list of the potential resource caps. See below



The intended benefits of such a change would;
1. Spread out player base - resulting in better performance/ping across all 49 servers.
2. Increased trade - creating more sandbox opportunities whether its a starting trading company, banditry, resource control through warfare. Very achievable with Horse n Cart
3. More active more - currently people don't need to leave there claim very often.

Thoughts everyone? Again, the charts are rough and i'm sure you would want to carefully consider each resource for each zone if you ever implemented this system.
I'm not sure how hard is would be to code this in, the Ores/Rock/Granite/Clay/Marble/Slate/Water/Soils could be done during the resource shuffle but it could work very similiar to how copper, iron, steel & vos steel works currently.