Thoughts on Microtransactions

As per your FAQ the only new option for us to increase our resources would hence be making the game pay-to-play, despite it is today industry standard to offer additional cosmetic purchases to enable long-term players to optionally support the development of a game that they have often spent multiple hundred hours in and had enough fun with it that they often are willing to support? I doubt that would have been popular, nor that there is a way to legally do that in all jurisdictions to begin with when not implemented from the beginning. It likely would be the instant death for the game. I doubt that would have worked as something to start out with either, as what we are making isn't an MMO. In any case for us it is out of question and was never up for consideration to do that.

So the remaining realistic options are to go with the industry standard and give it a unique Eco touch in the form of using it to also give back to the very community that supports us or just direct development efforts towards new player acquisition and hence away from current player support. The latter being undesirable (and in cases where we already did, also noted as such by existing players), we went for the first. Your statement does offer absolutely valid criticism, but unfortunately no better solution - without the availability of a timemachine to reverse potentially wrong decisions ten years in the past, what would you do in our place to increase funding to be able to sustain and expand resources now?

As far as the control for server admins go, I don't see that as "unfortunate", but one of the fully intended main strengths of the game. The game is a framework and as such intended to be made into unique experiences by players and server admins alike since the very beginning (and insofar it did keep the educational origins) and that reflects in them being able to get a share of the marketplace income - invested server admins are what makes some of the greatest play experiences in Eco.

It is reasonable to leave it to those people that make those great concepts to determine how they want to see cosmetic items being used on their server - the ability to trade them in conjunction with price limits for example can be a fair way to allow players that do not have the money or will to spend on cosmetics to get them in a different way. Unadministrated and vanilla servers won't have it enabled, as it's not default. Official servers will not have it enabled either. But for some servers - that do not even necessarily need to have a gameplay revolving around economy or competition, just think of roleplay servers - that can be a desired option.

Players and admins that have no interest in that will not use it, but there is such that are fine with that - including such that let us know they expect anything in Eco being subject to the rules of it and as such the laws and market mechanisms. I'm confident the majority of servers will not use it, and current feedback doesn't suggest any different. We also expect no splittering - in opposite with servers required to register now it is more likely that a ton of the dead / empty / vanishing servers will no longer exist, focusing players much more on desirable servers of their choice. The server list will even rate servers up based on their reliability now. In the end we always have given admins as many options as we could and we think that is a big strength in Eco, not a weakness or a refusal to take responsibility. The game experience between one and the other server can on the extreme ends feel like you are playing a different game - in the good sense of that.

The term "industry standard" is well known to apply to anything that has received widespread adoption - I'd assign that term much more for nowadays common marketplaces compared to lootboxes, at least for the western market.

And the term "support" does very well fit the idea of the marketplace. It has been openly communicated that the income it generates is to be used for sustaining and expanding the development resources available to Eco. A purchase hence supports the development of the game - and other people that do vital things for the community, like server admins and modders.

Which is not any different to how Eco came to exist as what it is now to begin with - if people hadn't purchased different tiers (Wolf Whisperer for example including cosmetic items not available otherwise) in Kickstarter the game wouldn't exist today but development would have stopped after it's prototype for educational use was finished and the project done. I think those people are supporters, they made it possible for us to start creating what we imagined.

It is probably clear to everyone that most people aren't willing to just donate money - at least to a company, with people much more willing to spend money when they get something tangible in exchange. That is common everywhere, even most charities will provide some "thank you" packages due to that.

We are going to sell cosmetics for the game to gain an additional income source for its development. There is no point in splitting hairs about words when the meaning is clear.

I'm not wanting you to do anything. We're offering you to purchase cosmetics that you like which helps us with continued development that we have no intention to ever stop as long as people play the game and we are financially able to. If you don't want that, because you generally don't do that, that is absolutely okay - I'm not going to force or convince you to do otherwise. But I did ask you in what way you would personally handle the situation better - and you didn't give an answer. Maybe give us the trust or even just the benefit of the doubt to try ours then?

The very point of a framework is that it provides tools that others use according to their needs and liking - not every tool we make needs to be used and not every tool is used in one of the ways we thought of when creating it. The creation of a federation for example currently isn't necessary in a vanilla server, but can serve good purposes on concept servers. The creation of countries we do regularly observe - though obviously not in the amount of towns.

It is not true however, that we wouldn't monitor vanilla servers and how the game plays on those. I think the much better criticism here is that we aren't fast enough in addressing problems and expanding systems. Changes to settlements are planned, but the current focus is on animal husbandry and talent rework. It is precisely one one of the things we hope to be able to improve with additional resources through a marketplace.

Settlements for example currently have not enough direct gameplay benefits beyond claim papers and they do neither provide a lot of gameplay incentives to use them for diplomatic, positive activity. Vanilla servers also often lack some guidance for players on what options they have and where the journey could go to as well.

You are right that such and other problems are often improved by server administrators and that the guidance that such provide is hard to naturally create on a vanilla server if there isn't some people specifically stepping up for it. Eco ultimately revolves majorly around the very decisions of players and every single server population is different (player count, player activity, player interests, player opinions, player goals, etc.). There is no specific way how Eco is supposed to be played, figuring out on the journey what works best for the respective society is the goal - and that is hard without guidance that humans caring, like administrators (in some cases you could literally call them "Game Masters" as per Pen & Paper games), provide. The game experience in Eco is majorly created through players themselves - it has concepts that only few games known to me have and can't easily be compared with a game where the majority of the experience is based on predetermined mechanics.

That doesn't mean we wouldn't be thinking or working on solutions for that or that we would have no deeper plans behind what we are introducing and / or not care about the vanilla experience.

We're currently evaluating a global research progress system to address a multitude of the problems. It would bring general community tasks and suggested personal activities, potentially reacting to the environment, to guide people towards how to use features in Eco and how to progress the game exemplarily as a community without predeterming the outcome. Progress would be separated into eras that are unlocked not only through production output (current "Research Papers"), but also provided by ecological state, economic power and cultural achievements - so that every playstyle can equally participate in it. Skill Scrolls would no longer exist - research is unlocked for everyone at the same time (or alternatively, if preferred with some competetion, on a per settlement base with spread mechanics) and not dependant on someone selling it. Effectiveness of very experienced solo players and groups to just trump away with progress is severely limited, as era switch is based on progression level of the whole server. There would be more time to use for community activities in the game and rewarding player's assisting each other. Settlements could specialize in specific productions, gaining bonuses and penalties for activities within, making them a core gameplay part. Even victory conditions like "Congratulations, you managed to unite all settlements on the server in a single federation without using annexation. Take it to the stars!" could be part of it. It automatically prolongues game time as well, taking the rush out of it.

Got some light civilization vibes? Not wrong there, that could be one potential future of the game. We are putting parts together. The whole picture and potential unfortunately isn't always directly visible. We'd love to have more resources to work on more stuff :)

By the way: The first part of maintenance will be introduced in Update 11 to address the demand saturation you are talking of. We are taking care of these issues.

You are effectively insinuating that the introduction of options would serve the purpose of being able to point with fingers onto others, despite it is always made for the purpose of players being able to adjust their personal experience to their liking and allowing a variety of ways to play - not rarely based on very feedback in the community to introduce such options - including from server admins that would like to customize the experience.

I have already noted that Eco is developed with it being a framework in mind and not as a sole linear game supposed to be played any specific way. Imagine you play a campaign of Dungeons and Dragons and your Dungeon Master makes use of some of the variant options, creates their own campaign with a custom world and own storytelling, prohibits players from using the newly introduced class in the latest book they got as it doesn't fit their world but allows them use a custom created class that they feel is a great addition to their world, assuming their concept will be the most fun to their table. You unfortunately happen to not like it, do you now proceed to blame the creators of Dungeons and Dragons for introducing variant options and the specific spirit of the game to be used as a framework for a custom experience, constantly noting that the Dungeon Master is free to and should adjust the game as it best fits their table, as intended to be able to point to someone else? Or didn't they rather just build the game in mind with the creativity of its players to enable them to have vastly different experiences suitable to them? And do you think that if it turns out there is balance concerns in one of the core books (that a Dungeon Master can resolve by custom rules) they will then not feel responsible and adjust these, which both they and us actually do and work on? I can't believe that.

The usage of the word "force" when it is about an optional setting someone can turn on is tendentious, as they aren't forced to do so at all. They may find it to make sense in the specific concept they wish to create and that players decide on if they want to play it - and in opposite to what you again assumed to be the case I'm not against such action. I have specifically noted that the outpour of Eco as a framework is that servers can be so different that on some of them economic competition compared to for example roleplay may not play any notable role, especially with systems that ensure fair pricing for such goods. Or have you ever played on a server that prohibited to own (additional) property and where stores sold everything for 0, just limiting how much people can take via laws and or deeper organization? I did.

As such server administrators could create servers where trading such objects doesn't actually come with any benefits in their respective concept or have an audience that is acceptive of the use of the objects on the specific server. I noted elsewhere that this could be for example a nice way to allow players that are not able to or unwilling to spend money to also get to play with the creations. The decision on if a player wants to do that remains at only them. A server without audience doesn't survive.

As far as a server economy being much more sustainable with blueprint made goods, I see no basis for that at all. In the opposite it has been argued by many server administrators that already have announced to not enable the system on their servers that for their servers it would be detrimental to a functioning economy as they envision. As far as a commercial interest in seeing goods made from blueprints I can only say that there is no intention behind the option pertaining to that. I do understand that you can both argue a loss in sales from players that now can access such goods without paying and an increase in such that buy a bigger amount, to be able to sell some. I'm not personally qualified to make an assessment on the result.

The Marketplace is not even released yet and we are still collecting feedback on it - so it is still possible that the option for that could ultimately not even appear in the release version or be removed later. The usability of cosmetic objects is always dependant on server settings and laws and that is noted.

There is obviously no getting away from taking responsibility nor any intention to (otherwise we wouldn't currently talk in one of many feedback threads about it) and we have never argued that introducing a marketplace was done because others do so. The Marketplace was the outcome of a considered decision - it did play a role that as an industry standard there is data available for it compared to potential custom solutions (and I was comparing with pay-to-play, which is not an industry standard for games like Eco), but that wasn't what sparked the idea to have one at all, but financial necessity. You also have a clear personal opinion revolving around them that I personally don't share - Marketplaces similar to ours being abuse.

I in opposite do actively use them in such games where I have a high amount of play hours and would have been willing to pay more for the game to begin with if that had been possible (and I do so on kickstarter projects for successor games). Marketplaces allow me to give some additional money to developers in exchange for something nice I can make use of, knowing it will help the developers (or that they even have a business model that from the beginning revolved around crossfinancing and if people wouldn't, the game wouldn't survive). I am fully aware at that point that the actual purchase I am making is probably not best valuation, given I could get a full game at similar expense. I still do it. There is nothing wrong with that and there is a ton of factors you could debate about that - from pricing expectations for games and the desire of developers to want to be able to offer their game to people with less spending capability over the different investment costs into different games that isn't obvious to every player without backend views to the difference in play hours you can get out of a game despite the vastly varying variable mentioned before. This is a very complex topic.

Later you say that it is "rightly so" that people aren't willing to donate money to companies, e.g. getting nothing in return. That is understandable and logical - but there is a bit of difference in companies, like where they came from, what they do and why they do. We are a small indie developer that works on their passion project, sustaining our lives through it - we don't make money to put maximum profit to shareholders. We make it to be able to pay our wages and continue the development.

It seems you aren't taking into account that there is many businesses that are reliant on either government funding or the willingness of consumers to support it through buying additional products - not rarely at a notably discrepancy in received value - for crossfinancing the main product or consumers willing to pay more for the same product than others do. A very common sector - that I happened to work in before - is the cultural one. In my opinion an extremely important sector for a society, but one that is often falling off the cliff in any crisis as people will save first where they can easily do without for a while. If cultural institutions wouldn't do crossfinancing through other products and offer pricing that for the same product is different depending on who buys it (age, income, voluntary support) the lights would go out.

It is fine you are of a different opinion, but I do think that is a fair way of handling things - business models based on people crossfinancing the main product through additional purchases are neither uncommon nor "wrong", in opposite they do tend to work fine for those that use them. As such what you are doing is letting us know your personal opinion, which I appreciate - but there is no generally valid basis behind that would allow to classify something as factually wrong. I do get the feeling that this is what you are trying to convince me of, though?

We are not asking for donations, we are offering additional cosmetic products as an indeed commercial exchange - targeted towards an audience that is willing to do so, because they want to support us through the crossfinancing it does. That way everyone get's something out of it and noone needs to do it. But those that are willing can do.

Neither are we not taking responsibility for the decision - I provide insights into the thought processes behind where I can and I'm right here for you to tell me your opinion and ask me questions that I will try to answer. Your opinion, as every other noted here, has also been noted to be brought up internally. We're not hiding.

What's unfortunate about a game that is based around the creativity and problem-solution ability of the players and administrators then, which was my original question? You made it sound we made the game like this so we can't blamed for something, while we made it because that is what it's supposed to be. That is what was intriguing me and why I initiated conversation.

Also I've never said that we wouldn't be responsible for gameplay and quality, we very well are for the base game mechanics and their ability to be used constructively as well as to guide and support player's in using them - which I already admitted is currently not sufficient and being worked on. Just not every problem in Eco is one that is based on mechanics, there is problems that solely arise due to specific communities finding together and fully intended to be resolved by them.

I don't think it is up to me to make an argument on why something is not abuse, given you are the one postulating a thesis here - an alienating one to me, as it would make nearly every multiplayer game I played since Battlefield 2 twenty years ago having abused me, despite me never having felt that. In that game with Special Forces you got new weapons to unlock that could be used on the base game maps against people that didn't have the addon - as it was still called back then long before any marketplaces -, and as such also not the weapons.

I personally agree that additional purchasable items should not have inherent mechanical bonuses over base game items in competetive multiplayer games and that indirect bonuses should best be avoided to provide the game with the necessary fairness for the competition it is about. Eco neither offers items that have inherent mechanical bonuses, nor does it make indirect benefits unavoidable, nor is it competetive when it comes to the game goals to begin with. You can certainly play it that way out of personal goals - and other ways, hence options for server admins that do not. And even players can, if they wanted, make the economic gameplay one that isn't around competition but about providing every player what they need so all have the most fun - that just requires the adjustment of personal goals and standing in for it, which is kinda part of the social experiment Eco provides. Little decisions like "Today I'm not going to buy at this person, but at this - it's going to be happy about the sale" can make a lot of difference.

The idea of games (be it Eco or any other) being an equal opportunity space is very commendable, but a dream that doesn't exist. I have no chance in newer Battlefields to compete for necessary unlocks as I am not able to invest the time into that others have. And being able to change matters of life to get to equal opportunities (which includes at least realistically having the same options, e.g. the ability to play more if not even the exact same prerequisites) is most often simply impossible or something a game shouldn't expect. The only way to stay competetive would be to purchase the unlocks, which is possible there to some degree (in opposite to earlier installments of the game), but understandably underlies the very same criticism. And something I personally wouldn't do, as they do not fulfill my valuation requirements. I do know people that buy these to be able to stay competetive with such people that do not buy anything, though - they actually like that they are finally able to pay for catching up with such players that simply can invest more into progress. Understandable to me, honestly. They buy the game to get the most fun out of it in the little time they have and are willing to spend more money (which they often, but not always also tend to have) to do so.

In the end the only equal opportunity game would be one that has neither any additional purchases nor any kind of permanent, session-progress unrelated unlocks for any kind of activity - everything that is in the game is immediately accessible, aside of cosmetics - though the ability to color your weapon a bit darker can give the miliseconds delay in your opponent seeing you, giving you the win. I'm sure such games exist, but I can't remember having played one off the top of my head. Might have to do with the fact that gamification since around the times of Battlefield 2 became a core driver for people playing games - getting that next reward.

As you can see, I don't think the base premise you are assuming exists in life nor in the vast majority of games (if any) and I do neither think it is reachable for most types of games. What you can do is strive towards it, which we actually do - for example by exhaustion in Update 11 being default enabled and influencing server score, but the amount of criticism for "I bought this game to play it when I want, not be limited in playing it" that games with limiting factors get is immense - again, understandably so. Personal goals always play the biggest factor and can vary extremely between players of the same game - including to even be against the intention of the game. And in the end, you can only strive for something, if you are able to steadily continue and / or expand your efforts - which requires funding to enable it.

In the end this is and will always be a debate of strong personal emotions and views, I can understand every stance. But they are only valid for oneself and anyone thinking the same and everyone needs to make their own opinion and decision.

You are again assuming we wouldn't be working on changes to game systems addressing problems you have identified, despite I have outlined that isn't true just a few posts before. At the same time you compare us to a company that was sold for 425 million dollars and has capabilities we can only dream of.

We are a small, independant, private development studio founded by former industry employees. I am not involved in business decisions, and neither would we publish internal details of such, but have you ever considered that what seemingly was obvious to you all along might have not been for us, for example because no data suggested that until it did? It is always easy to talk about things of the past when you know the present - but it is never of any constructive use aside of learning for the future.

You are also directly ignoring the majority of things I have said, tendentiously constructing a not actually existing threat of the game otherwise dying we would use to make players take part in "abusive" microtransactions, when what we are doing is a strategy change based on what we think is best for Eco and the focuses we want to lay, which is existing player support that isn't possible economically when the only income is from new sales and as such mostly new audiences that have different needs than existing players. You might want to consider to take a step back from your strong personal opinions to actually allow yourself to see other views, as it seems they force you into a single tunnel.

And at the very last you seem to suggest that we didn't call Eco a day with Update 9 and change it into a paid MMO because that would be too hard and we would want to avoid financial interest in fixing things we are actually working on and have been of financial interest all the time, as it's problems applying to everyone - no matter if existing or new player. That is just incredibly rude and not far from slander. Honestly, I would have expected a outcry of community that goes beyond anything a Marketplace can do if we did that. I don't even remind a game that ever did something similar.

We do not want to create an MMO or a pay to play game, as such we chose a different option and never considered that. And I'm confident the majority of Eco players wouldn't have wanted a pay to play game either.

I'm happy to discuss with you and give you insight to the degree I can, but I won't be able to continue that if you continue to just ignore the majority of what I said, compare apples to pears and insiniuate things that are far from true while suggesting us to take a development route that neither we nor - to my belief - our players have interest in.

And I've not only being working on the game for six years, but also an active player and server administrator for seven of them, well aware of the shortcomings of the game from both perspectives. I did literally agree with you about many of them.

I'm sorry if you got the impression I would avoid any questions, but I haven't noticed that, feel free to let me know when you notice that again.

It isn't correct that there is no financial incentive to change the systemic issues you talk about, as those are problems that affect any player - no matter if existing or new. But you are correct that for development of changes and features especially desired in the existing community there is no such incentive. And that means both of us have literally been saying the same thing, as that is what we have communicated since the first stream. Let me quote our CEO:

Reason we wanted to do microtranscations is to allow people playing 1000s of hours a way to continue supporting the game, in a way that doesn't affect gameplay for others. Without that, dev funding stops unless we're constantly getting new people in. It shifts our financial incentives to include supporting our biggest players and end-game content, which is where it should be IMO, not just on new purchasers only. DLCs are also an option but they can be disruptive and split the community deeper than cosmetics IMO.

You didn't mention an MMO, that is correct. But the suggestion of "pay-to-play", which typically only works for such, and your mention of high player count systems did nontheless suggest exactly that.

We weren't developing systems that don't work - we are not yet done developing all systems required to make them work together optimally, as we are due to the resources we have, required to implement puzzle piece by puzzle piece.

The reasons to not use pay-to-play are massive: First, I don't think it's legally possible in all jurisdictions to limit play capability after release to only paying players. Second, the outcry for such a change would be massively higher than any marketplace could ever be, as it takes players ability away to play the game they bought (or continue to play it in whatever mode we are going forward) - in my opinion the instant, deserved, death of the game. Third, I don't know of any game that went this route (instead of the one to free-to-play), means no experiences, high risk. Fourth, we simply from a ideological standpoint don't want Eco to be a game that is only accessible to people that can afford paying monthly for the game. This would be an extremely high risk we'd not be willing to take.

I do not however have concerns of anywhere that scope for a marketplace that is offering existing players the ability to optionally crossfinance main game development through the purchase of things that don't grant them any mechanical benefits in the default game over others. In opposite to you, I do not consider that abuse. I would however consider it abuse to change Eco to a pay-to-play system or ending development to create a new service adding onto it to circumvent legal restrictions. We have never even thought of that being an option - it is simply alienating to us to do something like that.

If I had exactly those two options I'd always choose the marketplace without a glimpse of an eye, it is the much superior (and in my opinion also fairer) option. From the other discussion thread I noticed that you don't seem to hold any good opinions of systems where the game benefits from people willing to support through crossfinancing - I do. And I prefer that a lot over pay-to-play, if I had to personally create a game that could work with either pay-to-play or a cosmetic marketplace, I'd chose the latter to not exclude people from playing it. It's then people that are willing to spend money enabling others to play it without additional costs - that is fair game, literally solidarity. Note that this was my personal, private opinion and that it is fine to have different one. But game development isn't only business relations, we are doing a passion project here as we love what we do and envision. To us it is more important to keep to our values than the optimal business ways. I'm not mainly working at SLG because it pays my bills, I'm working here because I love Eco's concept, its players and due to the job being fun - even when I am the person everyone loads off their anger. I could get more money and less stress elsewhere.

No advantages are being sold, all contents in the store are cosmetic and identical to their base objects in how they function.

There is no equal opportunities if you don't have the same prerequisites from which point you can use them and are also realistically unable to create them. That is a scientifically proven fact coming up regularly in real life politics. Your refusal of that is interesting, as that very point is one of the biggest problems in Eco and what creates the actual problems in a server that lead to player drop offs.

All data sources we have show that the single biggest reason for players leaving a server is the unfairness in prerequisites that makes them unable to enjoy the game, as others have vastly more progression or the edge in any and all competition. Resolving that via equalizing the opportunities is not realistically possible, as such holistic solutions will focus around making it impossible for people with better prerequisites to take over the control over a server and incentivize them to help those that don't have the same prerequisites, while improving the enjoyment of people with less time in doing the things they can, giving them a bigger impact on the game and sense of accomplishment - e.g. making them enjoy more what they can do so it doesn't feel bad if others can do more as they are still having tons of fun and feel valuable in the game.

Of course it matters if something you purchase is something for your personal enjoyment or if its something giving you an edge over others. That is not the case with the things in the Marketplace for Eco on default games.

Trading marketplace items is not possible by default, you would need to join a specific server that intentionally does that, which is shown to you. No official server will use that setting, but it is a setting that is useful for servers that do not have any competetive economy as they focus on roleplaying or different concepts on how to play Eco. Nontheless that option is still being debated and might not even make it to release.

I appreciate that information, but the past cannot be changed and as such has little relevancy to a constructive discussion about the present, which is the only thing I can provide you with - I've not even been working here for the whole duration of the studio's existance.

You are presenting the opinion of a single different user, while we have data available to help us evaluating things on a broad scope over all our users and additional measures that we use to evaluate decisions with players that haven't played Eco ever before. If one of hundred players would be willing to pay-to-play for Eco that is not a reasonable option, not even from a business standpoint. Just a far reached question: Would it be possible, given "MMO" is part of your name, that you have a bias towards the acceptance of monthy payments given that is very common in MMOs?

And I'm not sure why you read in a threat or intimidation into the words of our CEO - he was stating the simple fact that funding is necessary for the game and that without a marketplace that solely comes from new sales - which means that our development needs to be focused on that. I have already explained this multiple times though and the quote of our CEO just confirms that we rather want to have strong priorities on existing playerbase.

I'm also not sure how I can - without repeating myself - make clear to you that we under no circumstances are willing to just call Eco finished to "fulfill our obligations", end development on it and start a new game with the same base and pay-to-play to continue. We'd be called out for scam and in my opinion rightfully so. I also have already explained that we are not willing to limit our playerbase to people that are capable of monthly payments. We do not need to reason that, it is a conviction as result of our values.

I'm also not sure we understand Early Access the same - it is an option for games to release in a early development state and players to support the developers with feedback on the game creation. It is not a tool intended for funding, but nontheless that plays a factor for nearly every developer using it. As with every game on Steam you buy the right to use the developed game, but not in a specific state. Games change regularly after release without that having any legal bearing. The Early Access documentation for Developers specifically recommends to make no promises - the outcome of a game failing to release is a possible outcome of Early Access. The obligation is to provide access to the game in the state it was seen at the time of the purchase at that moment. Players that bought Eco got a fully playable game already that isn't released yet but is also not planned to ever finish in the sense of updates stopping at any point as long as people play it and we have the funds to continue its development. I don't see a conflict in adding a way for us to generate additional funding for the game's development with the concept of Early Access. There is Early Access games that launch with a Marketplace as well.

The plan for Eco has always been to be our forever game and the fact that you consider Eco a game that could have been released years ago just underlines that Eco has been a fully playable game in Early Access for a good while - of course with flaws as you described and I agreed. The choice on when to leave Early Access is a matter of when we consider all the main features we wanted to have in and when it makes sense for marketing reasons to leave, which is our current plan. The way we develop it does not change afterwards, though - there is tons of new potential features waiting.

I also wouldn't consider Eco 8.0, 9.0 and 10.0 different games. I already said that due to our resource constraints we are implementing features piece by piece, revisiting older ones and develop the game towards what we envisioned. We wouldn't be able to release Updates quickly enough otherwise - and speeding up the release cycle was a goal for this year. The features that were added in these Updates were all concepted from very early - the fact that Towns & Nations would make it to the game was already clear when Eco launched on Steam. Boats have been in the roadmap since Alpha. These are all parts of the same game, not new ones.

We *could* have done what you said, but it would neither have been popular nor did we want to - and that is kinda the point where I just need to ask for acceptance of our decision that the way you suggest for business reasons is not compatible with our ideas and values.

As for the MMO part - we target a stability for 100 players online at the same time, not surpassing that. So yes, Eco is best played on bigger servers and that shows. But it's not MMO level and it's absolutely reachable on community servers. Federations are not necessary for gameplay, they allow an additional level on the biggest servers that typically also have bigger worlds.

The bigger problem in terms of server size is the fact that there is about 550 public servers, which are just way too many. That number will go down with registration need and our changes to the server browser will also help to direct players to a set of good organized servers instead of finding themselves on unadministrated potentially vanishing servers.

That is a misconception on how things work in detail. The official Animal Husbandry Kickoff meeting was on June 18 2024 - that is when development on it started for actual implementation into an update, as it is now coming.

That some art or design parts of that were already worked on before (as for many other features that will come much later, be moved around in planning or even dropped completely) isn't a contradiction, especially as you quote me with "it's coming". When Jens says he's working on something that does _not_ mean it will be making it into the game anytime soon. Boats were "worked on" as early as 2019. I also stated in other post that art has things done that you may not see in the next two years.

One example of that would be the "Education" feature that is basically nearly done for a year but as you know isn't there, even the option to enable it was removed. Might it still come? Yes. Is there any plans currently? No.

Also note that the feedback survey led to prioritization - afterwards we for example focused on the top ten mentioned issues in it. We had multiple of the big ticket features "worked on", but which one will actually make it was decided by the survey - the actual decision met later than that based on its data.

The survey took place from January 28, the announcement for Update 1.0 on March 3. Or in different words: If you had voted majorly for trains, Animal Husbandry might not be coming, but trains. If I now had said that Animal Husbandry is coming, you would be horribly disappointed and call me out for that.

Was that unfortunate and misunderstandable? Yes - and I'm sorry for that. Was it malicious? No. But I mainly work in Production and Jens on Design - and Jens doesn't actually do any kind of pre-approved plans for what the Stream will contain, it's spontaneous and personal.

If you had asked me for trains, I'd have answered the same, despite work on that exists. I'm not supposed to tell you what is coming when it's not locked in, because then you will nail us down on it despite it might not make it for years, I can only do so once an announcement is made (or I do it) - but I will work on improving on how I do that. Thanks for the feedback!

That is a business related question I cannot answer, as I am not involved in that. But it is not far-fetched to assume that selling additional copies did work out as planned just fine for a long while until it did no longer. It is not uncommon for games to introduce additional ways for funding later in the development cycle when things change. Audiences for games are now different from ten years ago, they prefer different games and have different focuses on what they want to see in games. As such it is logical that when a specific timeframe passed to keep up with sales, the game needs to adjust to those new audiences if that is the only funding option or introduce new ones.

We have no intentions to introduce any predatory practices to the Marketplace now or later.

Your quote there is a personal statement I made in a discussion with you and that you take it out of the context it was posted in, that was clearly referring to how higher playtime is always an advantage in most games, feels malicious. It is a simple matter of fact that the capability to higher playtime for any games with competetive unlocks or multiplayer including interlinking mechanics is an advantage. It is also a fact that players expect to be able to play their game as much as they like. But it also stays a fact that this discrepancy makes equal opportunities not exist - as you can directly see in Eco when you look at the main complaint on why players give up on servers, which is their inability to enjoy the game as the playtime advantage of others makes them unable to compete or leads to a rush on servers that removes the sense from the playtime they have. It is the main problem we will have to tackle.

You are reading something in that isn't there - you made a point of equal opportunities existing, while they only do extremely rarely. If someone can spend 2 hours and the other person 12 hours then yes, per hour there is equal opportunities. But that is not the right measure to take, as the amount of hours that can be invested cannot be realistically freely determined. There is no equal opportunities if the prerequisites aren't the same - just as in real life.

I also noted how we are striving to create as equal opportunities as possible - which is also why exhaustion is now a default mechanic, trying to match players with such that have similar playtime.

Also - please feel free to hit me up if anything ever feels weird to you via DM or whatever way you prefer. I certainly do not want to confuse people and the situation of me working effectively two jobs at the same time is definitely not great - but if you hint a mistake or improvement option at me, I will most certainly try to improve.

I have that tag because I work for SLG, but that does not mean that everything I say somewhere (especially when I specifically note "I" instead of "We" - I cannot on demand turn that tag off, unfortunately) is a direct SLG statement just because I work for it. Many members of our staff are around on some channels and engage with players on a regular basis, much of that interaction happening in our free time. Providing some insight and personal opinions by people working on a game can be very interesting to players, even if it is for some reason not for you - Reddit is ultimately a discussion platform, one of its very purposes is to exchange opinions. You posted an interesting thesis, I was intrigued and asked to find out what is behind. You asked me questions - I answered. I asked you questions - you answered. You brought up feedback - I made sure the team hears it.

I am not sure what your exact expectation was, given the company stance has been provided long before our discussion already and covers everything you said:

We decided for the marketplace for business reasons after thorough consideration of multiple options based on a large amount of data available to us. The marketplace turned out to be the best way to reach the intended goal with the least impact on players and we decided to also make it work in a way we can give back to those players that are doing things that are especially supporting the game. We are aware there is a number of players that will not like that decision given their personal opinions on that and that there is no way for us to change their opinion - that and the resulting negative reviews was part of the thorough consideration.

It seems like you still think we were blatantly ignorant about the decision not going to be one that everyone commends us for or that we'd be unable to read negative reviews to of course find out they're for the marketplace announcement. We knew that is going to happen, but we are confident that the majority of our playerbase will have understanding for the decision and not have an issue with a marketplace that they can optionally buy cosmetic items that don't come with any inherent benefits. As we are confident there are players that would love to be able to support us that way.

We are as typical providing options - where potential indirect benefits like trading are limited to both administrators and players finding together voluntarily on specifically marked servers that will likely be such where economic gameplay doesn't play a big role or where people playing on don't mind the ability of players that don't own cosmetics being able to use them - just as you can turn off the marketplace functionality the other way. The key point is: Who doesn't want to deal with it, can still play the game, who wants to deal with it in other ways than the default, can also do that. No matter what opinion you have on it, you will be able to play the game that way.

I am sorry that you are out of principle no longer going to play our game, host a server for it and write about it - despite you could host one with marketplace turned off, if you wanted. But you have made very clear very early that you have a strong opinion of a marketplace being inacceptable to you in any form and nothing I or anyone else could have said could have changed your opinion on that in any way. I can understand and I respect that, but I wished you could also understand our decision.

But what I was hence providing is insight into the decision process and the reasons that could maybe have allowed you to understand the decision, even if you don't agree with it - a company can by principle not have a personal opinion though, it is a legal construct. So when discussions about "is a marketplace always abuse by design" or "are games offering equal opportunities when people don't have the same prerequisites and effectively there is no equality" came up, it can obviously only be my opinion - and that can still be valuable to someone that likes to see multiple different views to make their own opinion if they haven't done so yet.