Where is everyone?

It is not a secret Eco is focused around play on medium to large public servers which tend to provide the best play experience and are most akin to how we intended Eco to be played - the settlement system should provide a good insight into that. The development currently - as we had already shown in the Roadmap to 1.0 - has a major focus around resolving issues that lead to player dropoffs on such servers that are often related to economical issues caused by the fact that there is no constant need for player's professions beyond the early game - the singular most common feedback currently.

Addressing that is complicated and requires a holistic approach consisting of many different changes. The new repair system is a step in that, as is the maintenance feature and there is multiple more changes to come that have been widely requested by both players and server admins. Both features have adjusted settings on lower collaboration levels (which since Update 11 also automatically adjusts a ton of other settings to make configuration easier) and can be freely configured to one's personal liking beyond the presets as well - including notably decreasing durability loss and allowing repairs to be done by anyone (which is the default on anything below high collaboration), addressing what was criticized here for servers with lower collaboration settings. It is vital that smaller servers make use of these configurations.

Official servers due to their average player counts run on high collaboration, but they don't always get the same amount and type of players in regard to available playtime and commitment - with the population vastly differing in all directions, even more so when groups are playing. It is unfortunately not possible to predict what the audience on any given cycle will be and many players have an interest to especially play when everything is fresh and hence like to restart on a new server regularly - or do so, because they could not participate in the community and / or market to the degree they wished for. The reason we are doing these changes.

Most people don't play on the vanilla official servers, but on the typical populated community servers that have adjusted the settings to fit their specific audience, while the official servers need to provide a baseline experience that is much more dependant on the players playing that cycle. We have always openly recommended to play on community servers for multiple reasons - the official servers cannot provide an adjusted play experience specifically suitable for specific audiences and are not having any creative concepts. We are nontheless monitoring those cycles after each Update for a while and then decide on if we deploy different settings for them. The latest update just released, though.

As I already said a few times, feedback is neither only nor majorly taken from White Tiger which for playtests mostly serves for stress testing. Nontheless it is fully correct that we focus around creating a game that supports large servers with intricate, collaborative systems. Assuming that White Tiger is magically not facing the same issues as other servers do just due to a higher population wouldn't be correct either - in some regard they are even bigger due to some of the ways it tries to address issues. It is nontheless a great place to test concepts with its focus on trying to have more casual and more commited players be on the same server and both having a great time, which should be the default for any vanilla server. That is also the goal of many community servers out there, which employ their own concepts to tackle the issues with the means the game currently offers, often successful.

It will also be used for testing a general concept of research eras that in the future may make it into the base game as a dedicated game feature. A common problem still is that Eco is played at a pace that is much, much faster than we ever had intended - leaving players with less commitment behind. The exhaustion system is a support system that allows to migitate the issue a bit, but isn't a solution in gameplay mechanics.

It actually also was feedback from there that led to the repair bounty system being reworked to allow repairs of the parts and a profession being introduced in the next Update that will allow making all and any repairs without requiring the specific skill if the setting is turned on. The needs for smaller servers and bigger servers can sometimes be vastly different, but that is why we make every new feature configurable and have in Update 11 also adjusted the Difficulty presets to not only take rates into account, but also feature settings.

Originally posted by Cattastrafy: Nice to know there's a profession that will let you be a repair man but....the game doesn't need more professions. I feel like that's moving in the wrong direction. Making painting and paper necessary was already a blow.

I understand that sentiment, but personally don't agree - and it's actually part of a roadmap item: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/382310/view/4174344193742545599

Profession variety and the availability of professions that have different playstyles and especially time consumption to play is a pretty important factor in providing servers with mixed audiences a good experience. Professions that are more focused on activity like repairman, transporter, politican, etc. are a regularly appearing suggestion as well. There is also multiple changes related to the goal of these changes still in development - talent rework, specialization paths, more use for stars later game, etc. That will also include a holistic look at different professions and their content levels.

Our focus for now is to implement the outstanding big ticket items - for 11.2 (scheduled for before christmas) that will be a module rework and the introduction of freely placable objects with no grid alignment (and on rugs). Depending on how quick progress goes, we might also have the animal revamp ready by then. For 11.3 we plan on scheduling the talent rework.

Originally posted by Cattastrafy: Guess servers just gotta adjust the repair thing, I don't see anyone really enjoying it or thinking its a good way to solve the late game boredom.

It's not intended to solve any late game boredom, it's one feature to strengthen activity and economy and with repair bounties on high collaboration servers also collaboration aspects.

Originally posted by Cattastrafy: Having to log in and run around the world repairing things is in no way shape or form "fun" or making you feel like there's still relevance to your skill late game.

That is a understandable subjective opinion, given player interests are vastly different - but not generally applicable, Eco tries to offer fitting activities for all interests. Professions that are less focused on crafting and being stationary have been wished for long and are already implemented on multiple community servers through law incentives. We are also monitoring that feature and will adjust balancing especially in regard to how often repairs are necessary depending on our observations. Though of course servers can already do that right now where they feel it's too much for them.

I unfortunately don't have any current information on that, but I'll inquire about it. The pet rewards for some tiers are planned to be implemented to the game together with Animal Husbandry.

We did not intend for explosives to be PvP content, by the way.

Originally posted by TheFounder: Last 3 professions added just seem very hollow and unfulfilling. Blacksmithing is literally tools and nails. Paper is just paper, 1 workorder to place, just....paper. Artist is mostly just ink.

I actually acknowledged that issue and it's a consequence of an iterative development process where we will take a holistic pass at professions and their content levels once all the remaining professions intended to come with big ticket items are finally implemented, which isn't too many more. I'm pretty sure Jens will do a stream on that once we are at that point.

Generally smaller professions aren't bad per se, though - they are very suitable to be done by players with less time commitment and while simply merging professions is an option we consider as a potential resolution to your criticism, it can also have benefits to split currently existing big professions into multiple smaller (and potentially merge with existing very small) ones where the intent is for players to have multiple depending on their time availability, synergizing with the plans we have for talents and star spending, creating specialization.

This also has another potential advantage we could leverage to address a problem of servers below medium size - dynamic professions, where specific professions are automatically merged together depending on the collaboration setting of a server, decreasing the number of professions for servers where there is less players.

Smaller niche professions are also very suitable to take when the actual play interest of a player focuses around different things than crafting, as I mentioned before. The addition of more professions that "mechanize" or rather support activities like artistry, building, repairing, politics, transporting, etc. pairs well with having a small additional crafting profession. That is something that is already done today on servers that emulate professions like a transporter or where players focus in politics as their main interest and take a smaller side profession while mostly dealing with their main activity that isn't a profession.

Originally posted by TheFounder: The paintings were a feature being used early after v10. but with implementing voting for peoples plots in v11 you kinda nullified the effect of needing arts so last cycles i did i saw that paintings wasn't really done anymore. Painting your house was just to much hassle for most people, so barely got done as well.

We observed that effect as well and are reconsidering the impact of ratings compared to paintings and other cultural mechanics yet to come - that system is fully configurable as well, so server admins can already make adjustments as they deem necessary for their community. What we did not observe is the painting (as in colouring) functionality to not get used, actually we're quite happy with its usage well beyond players typically known to be interested in building and decorating.

There may also be a small misconception here. We did not introduce this and other similar mechanic(s) to make them "needed" (for progression), they are social features with incentives and appeal more to some players than to others. Eco has always been a game designed with emphasis on activity that goes beyond the mechanized core progression, more on that in the next topic as it fits there.

Originally posted by TheFounder: Eco is bleeding players, every update attracts less and less, but the features you implement are all based on filled servers, while in reality there's not many of them left out there.

I get where that concern comes from and why you attribute it to Updates, but the player fluctuation actually roughly follows the expected variation. We had notable higher player numbers during a timeframe in which there were global restrictions on activities leading to all games gaining notably increased traction and kept that up for a while beyond that, but the numbers otherwise don't differ significantly from the expectation. We get player upticks on updates and around christmas and streamer events - that is similar to what other games experience.

I don't think that your criticism is too far off of what we are observing ourselves at all, just that the approaches to resolve them and our philosophy behind Eco may differ a bit. The main problems we are wanting to tackle is the time consumption per timeframe it takes to play Eco on a global scale on the one hand - it is not suitable for many people nowadays to need to commit to a game excessively for several weeks and the most prevalent reason in statistical player drops - people get burned out.

And on the other hand the issues that appear with a multiplayer game and high economical focus, leading to players with less time or success to not be able to follow through with their goals and hence dropping out. These issues are linked and appear no matter what collaboration setting is used or how many players play on a public server - servers that can keep their audience the best (even though more limited in numbers) are such that focus on longterm experiences. Of course there is many other smaller reasons, but tackling the biggest problems first does also yield the best improvements.

I mentioned a few times that Eco currently is played in a way that is much more focused on progression and speed than it is supposed to. Modules unfortunately actively incentivize that and lead to major advantages once reached that fortify the situation - it is why they are going to be changed to a simpler system, where modules are supposed to also increase the tier requirements of tables they are attached to, but their availability will be more streamlined and is intended to lead to a less packed chase for them. Jens should have a stream about that pretty soon, as it's going to be one of the next things to be introduced.

Someone before had mentioned correctly that both me and Jens joined the team as Eco players. Actually a notable amount of our staff had been recruited that way, including people with no affiliation to any community but also such with affiliation to other communities - diversity is great. We also consider it a strength to have colleagues that know and love the game. Only the conclusion - which is oddly personal - I'd not sign. We're not favouring any specific servers and the reason of Eco's design isn't that some of us originated from the community, but one reason I'm personally working here is much rather that my ideas aligned with the design goals of Eco - which are a big part of why I started playing it to begin with.

White Tiger simply is our official server that shows off an example of what can be done with Eco when trying to use all its features, that is one of its explicit purposes, as that is what we are aiming for on all servers, including vanilla - of course with the respective takes on it that develop there. And in that it is absolutely not unique, many organized community servers take their own approaches. But it suffers the same problems any server does and also operates similar to community servers. That also allows us to have a direct insight into problems faced all around, as we do so ourselves. Of course, with more population and a specific concept it naturally has problems other servers don't and doesn't have problems others do. And as with any other server, it is not suitable for everyone - but that is not a surprise given it uses a very intensive organization structure. On the other hand, it is and has always been very popular, which is not without reason.

We use that server as a testing ground to try different potential mechanics for the game. Circling back to before, Eco is intended to be a social game and offers tons of stuff to do that isn't tied to any specific profession. Managing a settlement, transporting and trading goods on the fly, multiple activities that have no profession but are supported through the general economic systems like contracts or that can be made one by complicated laws. This, creativity, community events, socializing, putting dispute resolution into player hands and other things are what we designed Eco for to go in tandem with the core mechanical progression. That's also why we for example added face tracking for players that like roleplay. I can understand if that might not be what you are personally looking for, but neither the focus around collaborative multiplayer experiences with lots of people nor the social contents are new plans, they were part of the game design and intended gameplay loop all along.

No matter if one considers White Tiger's specific concept one would personally play on or not - it is not consisting of hardcore players that for some magical reason have separate interests from everyone else and the complexity isn't it's goal, but the path it uses to get to those. It also suffers the same early and end game retention problems as other servers have. It also experienced issues with groups as many other servers do. It also has problems stemming from game balance. It had and has to find solutions for all of these problems.

The general idea of the server trying to incorporate players with vastly different interests and of different time availability from half an hour a day to 12, offering different activities and working towards progression allowing both more casual and more hardcore players to reach and work on their goals without getting the sentiment of being useless for or limited by the community or made irrelevant by someone with more time is simply a mirrored goal of what we want to achieve in the game in a way that allows to experience that on as many servers as possible as easily as possible - without needing to creatively use the law system or complex meta concepts for it. We believe and always believed that is what is the best possible experience to be had and what Eco is about.

Professions that focus around activities that are not crafting or gathering resources is an outpour of that. Social mechanics, support for creative activities and some economic systems are as well. All this is supposed to be integral part of the gameplay loop on a community scale. And there is no doubt still much to do - a potential concept of research eras (though module changes will help a bit in that regard) I have talked about in some other thread, intended to stop rushing and giving people with less time fun activities to do and time to catch up with those that can put out more progress, so the server isn't finished when they come back after three days of hiatius. Exhaustion doesn't resolve that problem, it can only provide a bit of migitation by pairing players with similar playtimes, but we're fully aware that limiting playtime is never popular (and that's obvious in the amount of servers using it) and that solutions need to tackle the causes mechanically.

Of course some things are indeed easier for servers of that size, but the general problems found everywhere are found there just as well and finding solutions that are scalable are an expressed goal of development. Unfortunately we'll never be able to make it right for everyone and in a game with the complexitiy of Eco it will always be required to use configuration options - that we always try to provide for in-depth options - to adjust things to the specific requirements, as there is no one fits it all solution. We need to focus on some "base". In the end all Updates are steps to solutions, not the singular solution. I get that this can cause the impression of us ignoring major problems, but we aren't. We're looking at them from a macro scope rather than a micro scope.

Originally posted by TheFounder: There's a promised rework of talent and profession system for a long time now, but the effects seen so far are not encouraging, and its presented as the holy grail. Its just taking to long and its an absolute unicorn as in no one really knows what to expect in a reworked talent and profession system. Its a carrot being held in front of players, without knowing if its an actual carrot or just another disappointment.

I absolutely understand that and I'd love to change that, but we are bound by the resources available to us. Nontheless we have tried this year to focus around more frequent and on the point Updates and want to continue and improve on doing this, especially for introducing the remaining 1.0 big ticket items. As for the talent rework I get it's a meme by now by our own fault and there is nothing I could say for it to not be, but we'll be sure to let you know once there is news. As per usual, Jens will likely show some stuff off in streams before an announcement as well and gather feedback on it.

Originally posted by Delaunay: It was me who brought up the new leadership is from the White Tiger server. It helps explain reaction to OP: it "has been a common complaint, although continuously denied by devs" that White Tiger server is used for testing ground for things that might not work on other servers. The passionate defense is actually reinforcing the belief, when I think your goal was to dispel.

That is simply incorrect though, as the leadership hasn't changed since founding of the company - our CEO and Art Director are still the same people and making the key decisions about the base design of Eco. Repair Bounties were designed by our CEO, for example. I specifically noted how I joined the team due to the game design being in line with my own impression of the game when I got it, not the other way round. I also noted that the point is to extend what works on larger servers to as many servers as possible, as those are the experiences we want to create with Eco.

Originally posted by Delaunay: There’s also talk like "this was always the plan" and "we always believed Eco should be this way." It sounds like you try to say “always” means as long as the game has existed. When you claim this, it opens the door for the truth to be revealed by the original players who remember the old ways. It may feel personal when outed as not being involved in the original development process, but now it is out there and should be no problem.

There is no truth to be revealed, I meant exactly what I said. The fact that I'm "only" working here for a bit more than 6 years (which could be common knowledge for anyone following us closely on discord and doesn't affect me personally at all) doesn't mean I wouldn't know what the old voting page or the Eco Tree it was replaced with contained, especially given I was part of the community before working here. The latest roadmap post is a overview over our next activities until final release specifically, it doesn't replace or act as any sort of roadmap for the whole game that is not intended to end with the final release.

That priorization changes based on different needs during development and plans are reevaluated and restructured is a normal process, which also applies to introducing new features benefitting the design that weren't originally considered or dropping such that turn out not to when recognizing that during the start of their implementation phase - and a point of Early Access is being able to do exactly that. What I was talking about was the general design vision of Eco (and the three pillars of Ecology, Economy and Government it revolves around) that all our development follows, not a roadmap of specific features.

Ultimately, animal husbandry was not even contained in the Eco Tree (and I'm not absolutely sure if it was on the voting page before that), but still the most voted feature that is now planned to be the last major feature before final release. Neither the voting page nor the Eco Tree ever contained an order of features, the voting page was actually replaced with the Tree due to the miscommunication that the votes would determine the order, while they were intended for us to gauge interest as we now do via our feedback tracker separately. Parts of either were always worked off based on internal evaluation.

What I'm trying to do here is making you aware that every single feedback that is being voiced is being read and considered within the feedback process. But that unfortunately doesn't guarantee that it will be the thing we end up doing. It unfortunately is not as simple as taking every single feedback and just implementing it as is (that would also lead to directly opposite things being implemented), nor is the situation as black and white as it is made to look like and while personal experiences are valuable information representing a specific circle, they are not the best metric to act on when making decisions. (Which, as I noted multiple times, also is the approach we take when it comes to for example White Tiger) There is tons of people happily playing Eco as it is and looking forward for the things to come.

I am constantly bringing up feedback as part of my job and we often make adjustments based on that, but it is also part of my job to communicate back our stance and view on matters brought up or discussed given our open communication policy - which is not as common for other games, so the fact alone that we are communicating that way at all can already have an influence on how it is perceived. Not sure how many other developers you would even had gotten the chance to address that personal.

I've been giving insight into what we are doing and why. It is impossible that everyone will like all our decisions, we make decisions based on taking all data into account and that simply doesn't show a majorly negative sentiment as was noted here, we receive plenty of positive feedback about changes and the state of the game as well. That does however not mean nor did I state anywhere that there is no issues - I did openly communicate which ones we are currently focusing, acknowledge the ones brought up here, provided a different view to some takes and told you what we currently intend to do. I cannot, however, simply change the plans I'm communicating when they aren't what a group of players would like to see. That goes through a process that takes more into account.

You seem to be assuming that a lead position makes calls on their own, while that is not true. Decisions are primarily made based on the design goals, influenced by player feedback, in a team consensus. In the rare cases that is not possible, the call is made by the founders based on their vision representing the game idea.

Eco is being worked on since about ten years, staff changes are absolutely natural in such a long timeframe. The sentiment of some of our staff being "replacement people brought in" is simply disrespectful to me and all of my colleagues - especially given positions becoming vacant naturally get filled by people that have worked in the company before, most often for many years.

I, for example, started here as QA about 7 years ago as a part-time side-job next to my main job because I was asked to and liked the game as a player. Over time I became Community Manager and transitioned here as my main job, switched to Associate Producer years ago and finally ended up as Producer. A pretty common experience for anyone starting into game development without having been in there from the beginning. That also means that I worked with my colleagues, specifically such in lead positions and my respective predecessors in all positions for long times, even as their assistants, naturally sharing ideas and vision.

Of course new people have new ideas, but they go the same process as any else. Everyone working in a leadership position here has done so for many years and most of all my colleagues do so.

You're welcome to voice constructive criticism, but what you're doing here is getting on a personal level, spreading misinformation based on your subjective assumptions on our internal matters to justify your personal opinion about the game direction. That is inacceptable - I'm hence locking this thread.