devtrackers.gg
If we know that of course.
External link →If we know that of course.
External link →The next big version will be 1.0, not 11.0.
While possible, that is not yet planned.
Honestly I think they should just change it up.
Upgrading your tools increases the amount of X resource you can carry, otherwise there's really not much of a reason for upgrading things like the hoe/sickle. Abstract it by saying since it's sharper/more efficient you can get less of the stuff you have to get rid of by hand so you're just able to carry that much more of X resource, be it 'carried' or in the pack.
Please for the love of god let me actually use a shovel to pick up ten clods instead of 3-5 until late game, without needing a mod.
The change to give them more carry capacity lately already was a compromise we made requiring at least progression, given many in the team (me included) don't think that should be possible at all - we ultimately agreed on that players at least shouldn't be able to pick up that amount of stuff from the start without machinery. Terraforming, often used as a absolutely valid argument for it, is just specifically not supposed to happen that early as of the design intention of the vanilla game. It is one prime example of what should feel really hard to do until you get into later game.
Chances for us to do that are hence currently near-zero. (And then we'd need a mod to revert it, as multiple of the bigger and more economical collaboration focused servers consider this easy-mode and detrimental for the economy that also works off manual labour contracts, including official server White Tiger.)
I think with the progression based compromise and the ability to use a mod for anyone that prefers an even easier approach there is everything around any potential player could want.
And don't get me wrong with "easy mode", I am also aware some people just consider this QoL personally - but that takes a major factor of requiring labour contracts out of the game for tasks that were fully intended to use them, especially if you want to start early with specific major projects. We generally want Eco to also display more menial tasks especially in the earlier game and people getting paid for them. The logistics overhaul will also go into a direction that requires more manual interaction. And generally we want to offer much more options for economical participation that isn't based on skills and queuing crafting recipes. Of course on small servers and singleplayer you don't want that / can't do that - but it can be changed for those cases. We do not feel the current default system to be unbearable for those cases either, though.
I have literally never seen somebody create a labor contract for digging. Is this a White Tiger thing?
I just don't see how you can reconcile the disparity between being able to pick up 5 whole blocks worth of rock with your bare hands while dirt is not only 1 at a time but also totally totally removes your ability to do anything else while you carry it.
Well, all personal experiences, including mine, will be solely anecdotical. I see that regularly on the servers I play or visit, which is mostly bigger and economy focused servers. Digging contracts even were a nice early game way to earn money quickly for newer players and I tend to have my basement be digged out that way as well. White Tiger itself actually doesn't do that anymore, as we have UBI and just spawn the government basements.
With the second part of your post the problem is the assumption that this would need to be reconciled, which it doesn't as the difference is fully intended. Digging and Mining are different activities, with the latter being in much higher demand throughout the whole cycle and being a much more lasting task compared to Digging (when not terraforming, which is not intended at early stages), so it also can work differently. It also doesn't use a tool to pickup or hold materials. Shovels have always allowed to transfer the maximum amount quickly from storages as well - you just couldn't ram your already full shovel into the ground once more to pick up another dirt block.
Then why abstract the ability to transfer resources from stockpiles at all? If you want to build something you should have to carry each and every resource there by hand until you've built a crane.
Is it because it would make the game tedious? Unfun?
How is having to pick up a grand total of 3 clods for the majority of my play time not tedious and unfun? I'm still having to *dig* them up, I'm still having to shove them in a wheelbarrow or cart, I'm still having to haul them around. It's literally just removing the excess busywork.
I respectfully disagree.
Edit: In a world where we either all work together or we all die horribly, I don't really see the point of money or labor contracts. If it's for the potential survival of the planet, Why should I seek pay? Why should anyone seek money when you can work together to ensure everyone gets what they need in order to save the planet? This isn't like RL where there's idiots who *Swear* the planet will be totally fine, promise, please just ignore the man behind the curtains laughing about oil and coal. Everyone going into this knows the planet is doomed unless we act.
Instead of tying pay into things like that I'd personally do XP bonuses. But what do I know?
As well, if player choice is so important, please put in something to let us disable settlements in singleplayer. I don't want to have to deal with running a dedicated server just because I want to mess around in your game and it actively sabotages you for daring to not have a town/settlement/claim papers.
I was surprised that the water filter demanded a notarized deed showing proof of ownership before it'd deign to filter any water. <3
Well, because we are in Early Access and not all features we want are yet implemented.
We are actually going to change logistics to require manual intervention in a way similar to what you talked about. Inventory transfers will be limited to very short range transfers and require calories that only allow sorting compact facilities, mass transfers and big sized goods are supposed to require vehicles to transport. We had a post on that a good while back with shelves, containers, forklifts and container ships - and if we did trains, they would be used for exactly that as well. Stockpile elevators as you are probably known to currently are actually an exploit resulting from the fact that we couldn't make this possible yet. We never intended for players to creatively chain link a mechanic that is intended for short range inventory access and sorting to be used as an efficient transport mechanic. But we also see no reason to do something against that until we have our logistics overhaul ready.
You are absolutely free to disagree with me, but are seemingly assuming (or wanting?) that menial tasks in gameplay is something we would want to avoid at all cost. But that isn't true. Eco is a game that intends to have such tasks actively required until reaching later game tech stages and offers mechanics to share the burden early against payment with the help of others. Not to mention that "tedious" itself is already a personal thing - I never had an issue with how the shovel worked before and didn't find it tedious at all. Rather chilling, honestly. Of course that is not representative of others and I'm specifically not saying so, but there is a specific design we have in mind and that does include menial tasks. On bigger servers there is always diggy diggy hole people around that are very happy to do those in my experience as well. It's not like it's tasks that wouldn't get done and hence should be obsolete. I've seen people that do nothing else but driving trucks to trade between stores and transport things between other people for money, they never take a skill. That's great. We made a profession out of it on White Tiger, no taxation when not picking a skill. There is many such great uses where players came up with "new professions" that aren't based directly on a game mechanic. We absolutely love this.
The actual QoL focus we have is around our sometimes pretty horrible UI - and that is also what people have voiced. But we do not intend to remove menial tasks from the game, in the opposite we want to make tasks like logistics, free trading and menial work to be a thing people can do as a profession, especially early on. We also for example want to incentivize people building houses for others, following the exact same idea. Being a banker loaning money as a main job is also something that should be fully possible. This can go on forever, given we want to make a living world out of Eco. Want to be a taxi driver, why not?
In regard to your questioning on payment in general - Eco is a society simulation based on economy, ecology and governance. The game is about founding a functioning society through all those means that is able to beat a meteor, the actual game of Eco is it's meta-game that comes out of the interaction with many, many players and different opinions. If you are capable to do this in a utopian way that requires no money or payment I must congratulate you that you basically "won" the game. I have unfortunately in 7 years never seen someone win the game, as a society simulation tends to come with many different players and ideas and people don't follow this utopian idea with a critical mass on any public server I have ever seen, including White Tiger. The only places I have seen this is small co-op servers with only friends, but Eco is developed to be played on public servers with hundreds of players. Or, maybe the realization to take away from this is - yes, this is like IRL "where there is idiots who *Swear* the planet will be totally fine, promise, please just ignore the man behind the curtains laughing about oil and coal". But on here you have much more influence and can be active yourself to change something, as players that only do politics and nothing else show on several servers every day. We want to support being a fulltime politican - on WT we pay them a nice wage for exactly that.
As for settlements: Disabling settlements is a unsupported legacy option that could go away at any point in the future and going further new features may no longer work with that. It would hence be very bad to have the singleplayer experience being based on outdated code, especially given it doesn't make a difference to the singleplayer, as the singleplayer experience with settlements is not notably different to before - with No Collaboration as recommended or if configured manually you still have the same unrestricted claims as before. We also want singleplayers to be able to open up their server to friends at any point during their play so they can take advantage of the settlement system. Given the choice for yes or no on the settlement system is a permanent one, for singleplayer it is always on. You are simply playing in a unsupported way - but obviously it is possible, as you are doing it without issue. It should be understandable that we cannot support that, though.
Please note that you can always play how you want, as all that counts in a game is having fun personally (which is ofc subjective again). But obviously every option we add (and we are known for adding tons of them, because we love that server produce so many unique experiences) is a technical debt and requires maintenance. Things we cannot realistically support forever we cannot display as a default option to singleplayer, where things just need to work forever. And of course while Eco is as flexible as it is, there is a idea we have how it is played best and servers we would recommend people to start out on and play (which will be reflected by the upcoming Recommended servers feature), which is mostly servers that make use of all our features as a society simulation and as such often servers with a good economy focus. Recommended servers would include a variety of different concepts though, given their purpose is to highlight community servers that have a responsible administration and interesting concept moreso than working as we imagine.
The water filter internally creates unowned work orders, which for technical reasons require claimed property to choose an output stockpile. It is honestly kind of a workaround, but it works. It will be changed once there is free resources for it.
Well, because we are in Early Access and not all features we want are yet implemented.
We are actually going to change logistics to require manual intervention in a way similar to what you talked about. Inventory transfers will be limited to very short range transfers and require calories that only allow sorting compact facilities, mass transfers and big sized goods are supposed to require vehicles to transport. We had a post on that a good while back with shelves, containers, forklifts and container ships - and if we did trains, they would be used for exactly that as well. Stockpile elevators as you are probably known to currently are actually an exploit resulting from the fact that we couldn't make this possible yet. We never intended for players to creatively chain link a mechanic that is intended for short range inventory access and sorting to be used as an efficient transport mechanic. But we also see no reason to do something against that until we have our logistics overhaul ready.
You are absolutely free to disagree with me, but are seemingly assuming (or wanting?) that menial tasks in gameplay is something we would want to avoid at all cost. But that isn't true. Eco is a game that intends to have such tasks actively required until reaching later game tech stages and offers mechanics to share the burden early against payment with the help of others. Not to mention that "tedious" itself is already a personal thing - I never had an issue with how the shovel worked before and didn't find it tedious at all. Rather chilling, honestly. Of course that is not representative of others and I'm specifically not saying so, but there is a specific design we have in mind and that does include menial tasks. On bigger servers there is always diggy diggy hole people around that are very happy to do those in my experience as well. It's not like it's tasks that wouldn't get done and hence should be obsolete. I've seen people that do nothing else but driving trucks to trade between stores and transport things between other people for money, they never take a skill. That's great. We made a profession out of it on White Tiger, no taxation when not picking a skill. There is many such great uses where players came up with "new professions" that aren't based directly on a game mechanic. We absolutely love this.
The actual QoL focus we have is around our sometimes pretty horrible UI - and that is also what people have voiced. But we do not intend to remove menial tasks from the game, in the opposite we want to make tasks like logistics, free trading and menial work to be a thing people can do as a profession, especially early on. We also for example want to incentivize people building houses for others, following the exact same idea. Being a banker loaning money as a main job is also something that should be fully possible. This can go on forever, given we want to make a living world out of Eco. Want to be a taxi driver, why not?
In regard to your questioning on payment in general - Eco is a society simulation based on economy, ecology and governance. The game is about founding a functioning society through all those means that is able to beat a meteor, the actual game of Eco is it's meta-game that comes out of the interaction with many, many players and different opinions. If you are capable to do this in a utopian way that requires no money or payment I must congratulate you that you basically "won" the game. I have unfortunately in 7 years never seen someone win the game, as a society simulation tends to come with many different players and ideas and people don't follow this utopian idea with a critical mass on any public server I have ever seen, including White Tiger. The only places I have seen this is small co-op servers with only friends, but Eco is developed to be played on public servers with hundreds of players. Or, maybe the realization to take away from this is - yes, this is like IRL "where there is idiots who *Swear* the planet will be totally fine, promise, please just ignore the man behind the curtains laughing about oil and coal". But on here you have much more influence and can be active yourself to change something, as players that only do politics and nothing else show on several servers every day. We want to support being a fulltime politican - on WT we pay them a nice wage for exactly that.
As for settlements: Disabling settlements is a unsupported legacy option that could go away at any point in the future and going further new features may no longer work with that. It would hence be very bad to have the singleplayer experience being based on outdated code, especially given it doesn't make a difference to the singleplayer, as the singleplayer experience with settlements is not notably different to before - with No Collaboration as recommended or if configured manually you still have the same unrestricted claims as before. We also want singleplayers to be able to open up their server to friends at any point during their play so they can take advantage of the settlement system. Given the choice for yes or no on the settlement system is a permanent one, for singleplayer it is always on. You are simply playing in a unsupported way - but obviously it is possible, as you are doing it without issue. It should be understandable that we cannot support that, though.
Please note that you can always play how you want, as all that counts in a game is having fun personally (which is ofc subjective again). But obviously every option we add (and we are known for adding tons of them, because we love that server produce so many unique experiences) is a technical debt and requires maintenance. Things we cannot realistically support forever we cannot display as a default option to singleplayer, where things just need to work forever. And of course while Eco is as flexible as it is, there is a idea we have how it is played best and servers we would recommend people to start out on and play (which will be reflected by the upcoming Recommended servers feature), which is mostly servers that make use of all our features as a society simulation and as such often servers with a good economy focus. Recommended servers would include a variety of different concepts though, given their purpose is to highlight community servers that have a responsible administration and interesting concept moreso than working as we imagine.
The water filter internally creates unowned work orders, which for technical reasons require claimed property to choose an output stockpile. It is honestly kind of a workaround, but it works. It will be changed once there is free resources for it.
Given my text space went out, there is one more thing I wanted to note:
Eco, contrary to potentially popular belief, was never made to depict a specific way of how things should be done. While many of our team would probably classify as people that would appreciate getting to a Star Trek society, Eco was developed with the idea that players figure out themselves what works and what does not and we don't judge at all when a dictatorship works best for some people or if they use the most weird economic systems. The point is offering many different options on how to found a society. And depending on who plays on any specific server opinions can vary massively and so do majorities. Settlements were also introduced to allow like-minded players to get together more locally, making governance easier, as multiple systems can co-exist and only need to compromise on more global matters. We're not here to judge how players approach the goal, on if that is a utopian approach, a fully capitalistic one or enforced "communism" where noone owns anything and everyone has forced access to everything. Exploring those options is kinda the point of Eco. So a "How it should be" or "This isn't IRL" doesn't exist in Eco - factually, most servers try approaches from actual real life with systems we are used to, but changes to it to try something out. So, realistically, most players in Eco deal and want to deal with economy. It's more or less a "gold standard" and the most common usage - unsurprisingly, as economy is such a major factor of the game. The game is hence always also developed around this idea, but that does not mean you couldn't reach your goals without it.
What we do simply love is when servers try to use as many systems of Eco as possible to achieve that - as we have so many things you can do, when you creatively use them. Labour contracts are just one small thing of these options.
Maybe as a last thing: We generally want things to become more immersive as well (which labour tasks that require interaction with the world naturally are). Not to a degree that TerraFirmaCraft (if you know that Minecraft mod) has, but in a direction where activity goes beyond "queue work order" and click in UI's. This was suggested quite often in the survey we had lately as well.
First of all I want to thank you for the detailed response regarding the intentions of the creative team, I can respect the wish to make the game you want to see made, and I wish you all luck for it. I truly hope that I end up being wrong about my concerns, and regardless I hope you all find success and enjoyment in this, and truly if I didn't care about the game's success, I would not offer any critique or compliments on things in said game.
However I do have some issues with some statements you've made.
The claim that no this is just like IRL wrt the doomed state of the planet is. . .False. Like, from the entire *point* of the game, everyone knows that the world is doomed. Literally everyone when they log onto a server can look up and see a timer saying when the meteor is going to impact. There is no 'meteor denial', there is only the cold hard fact of 'Meteor coming in X amount of days'.
You *all* know the world is doomed if nothing is done about it. This is part and parcel of the entire point of the game. Can you stop the destruction of the planet without destroying the ecosystem in the process? Knowing this and then demanding something as petty and useless when the world is doomed as 'money' makes no logical sense to me or I imagine a lot of people. Unless of course we're roleplaying, in which case that opens up many different options and also problems.
Is someone roleplaying an asshole to ruin other people's fun a valid way to play? 'cause it sounds to me like the best solution for something like that is an administrator coming in and banning the individual in question.
Alternatively everyone else coming together and having a good ol' fashioned french revolution style uprising where the one who is damning them all to death gets a speedy ticket to the afterlife while the rest of us try and solve the issue. But I'm pretty sure that's going *against* the intentions of the game in general, so what even is the point?
`` We are actually going to change logistics to require manual intervention in a way similar to what you talked about.``
Again, I respect your intention to make the game you want to, but I don't think this is going to go over well at all.
I understand wanting realism. But realism has to be tempered by gameplay and understanding that it isn't an actual *real world* situation. Demanding people put in the same amount of time and effort as a real world situation would be is going to lead to people throwing up their hands and going to do something that respects their time.
The closest I can point to in this regard is Minecraft. Yes, minecraft requires you to actually mine and gather resources to build things outside of creative mode, but because minecraft is *not* Real life, because demanding you give a real life amount of effort and time into a game is going to end with you having no players, minecraft makes concessions to gameplay and respecting the fact that people have lives outside of the game. Hence why you can carry a wide variety of blocks, a good number of blocks, and you aren't limited to one kind of block per movement of block.
Refusing to respect your players time may get a lot of very hardcore fans who love it to death.
But will there be enough hardcore fans to fill more than one, maybe one and a half servers? Especially since a lot of people seem to lean on mods to make the game enjoyable?
`` especially given it doesn't make a difference to the singleplayer, as the singleplayer experience with settlements is not notably different to before ``
This is false. On singleplayer in order to get the bonuses to certain things you skill into, such as the ability to craft faster using single tables or double tables, or increasing the amount of room quality necessary but lowering the amount of resources necessary, said tables must be *OWNED*
Guess what you don't get in single player on no collaboration? The ability to expand your 'owned' property.
So you start off in a place where you can set up a decent farm in order to keep yourself fed, and notice you can build a water mill off a river that's not too far, but is far enough that it's no longer on your property. You've managed to level up and made a sawmill, and even gotten the skill point that lets you decrease the amount of resources you need, even if it bumps the quality demand of the room up.
*unfortunately* due to the lack of ability to increase the size of your property, this skill is completely useless to you because it only works on tables that are on your property.
The only other option is to every time you want to go and make a production at your watermill, you pick up your homestead claim and move it there. But then you're just ensuring you can't make use of similar skills on things in your previous house, so what is even the point?
I suppose I could just *cheat in* the items necessary to actually play the game singleplayer, but I don't think that's a good precedent to set for gameplay.
``I never had an issue with how the shovel worked before and didn't find it tedious at all.``
I'm glad to hear that. The problem is a lot of people do, otherwise there would not be so many people saying that the 'big shovel' mod is a must install, or the mod wouldn't even exist at all.
Again, if this is a situation where you all are making the game *you* want to make and to hell with the players of said game, I can respect that.
I am however afraid that you're not going to have very many players that enjoy the vanilla settings though, that is if they're willing to deal with having to maneuver and figure out what settings to change to make the game tolerable before throwing their hands up and refunding the game. Or if it's too late for that, just never touching it again.
``The water filter internally creates unowned work orders, which for technical reasons require claimed property to choose an output stockpile. It is honestly kind of a workaround, but it works. It will be changed once there is free resources for it``
I honestly wasn't all that upset, I thought it was a goofy thing to have happen, but I understand entirely that it's some coding BS. Genuinely wasn't trying to be mean about it, hence the <3 after it. The idea of a water filter system suddenly whipping out oversized glasses and shaking its mechanical head, saying this paperwork isn't properly notarized made me laugh.
That said I am glad to hear it's on the list and will be dealt with.
Ultimately, I'm not a dev, I'm just a player. All I want is for a game that I see a great amount of potential with to see said potential through. Maybe I'm wrong! I hope I'm wrong, and that things that I see as being weaknesses and things that will turn players off will instead prove to be strengths. If I didn't care, I wouldn't say anything.
Thank you again for this discussion, I'm not trying to be a jackass, and I apologize if I've come across as one. It wasn't my intention.
P.S. Anarcho-communism. All the way!
The claim isn't false - you are assuming that most other players would think like you. But that isn't the case. It ultimately is a game - which means players can join and leave whenever they please. There is no way we could give people a real sense of urgency that would make their thoughts adjust to it as if the same happened in real life (and then we'd honestly only have looting and crime, at least in my opinion), if they aren't already willing to do so. And it's simply a matter of fact that the absolute vast majority of players do not adjust to roleplay that setting and behave in a way that you would expect people to do when faced with this knowledge. They build up a very normal society, without the meteor controlling their thoughts in the meanwhile and focus on it once they are ready. Panic at most comes up when the timer is nearing the end and they're having difficulty to get together the last needed materials.
Funny side note: There absolutely is meteor denial, it's actually a not uncommon trope some players do, acting a bit against the goals, playing a meteor worshipper, embracing the end of the times. And we don't suggest to ban such players either, as that is a valid depiction of what absolutely would occur in real life as well and is hence part of a society simulation's intent, which is to depict all parts of a society, including those you'd rather not have but are simply there in every society on earth.
So, while this doesn't make any sense to you - it is unbendable reality.
A french revolution style dealing with such a player would surely be an option (though one I'd not agree with), given the law system can stop players from playing - but it is a matter of fact that most servers that have no organized administration face issues in communication and self-organization, as surprisingly or not - that actually isn't as easy as you think. Often, when players get presented with the need to debate or act - in a game - they will prefer the easier way of finding a different server where they don't have to. Players don't typically like to step up to bring change or matters to the table, only few personalities do. There is always players that just want to play along others to trade, but have their kind of singleplayer experience and so on. That means, while the option you would take is there - getting people to rally for it is a task that is extremely hard, as can be seen by the debates on annexation where the only thing people would need to do is unite in a settlement against it. It's hard for many people to make organization as a small 4 player premade group has it.
Grant me the doubt that with having a five digit play hours, after hosting some of the most popular servers and being a developer for more than 5 years and player for more than 7 I do have the necessary experience and access to interesting metrics that allow me to make my statements.
In the next topic you go into I am getting horribly confused as to me it seems you are trying to make a point about people realistically should behave differently than they factually do but then talk about how realism in a game shouldn't play as much role. That is a unresolvable paradoxon for me, so I'm just going to answer to the singular points made.
Anyway, "respecting your time" is another subjective thing. We are generally making the game more casual friendly, but Eco is a time consuming game (just like any MMO) and intendedly so - a society simulation needs participation in real timeframes. We are going to help solve problems with people that have less time with polishing our exhaustion system so people with less play time can enjoy the game on a server that has limited playtime for everyone on it - which makes the general game time to happen over a much longer timeframe, but not with much less time investment in total - ultimately that is configurable to a degree based on your collaboration settings though.
I get that you do not want to do menial tasks, but that is simply not the case for everyone. I never felt the game disrespecting my time, even when doing menial tasks and I am a type of player that likes doing such - even after work. There is _tons_ of players of the same type. Every game has target audiences and our game allows the unique way of having people with extremely different interests on the same server and make use of other players where they themselves aren't feeling like they want to deal with it. Some people don't like building, others love it. Some people do not want to deal with politics at all, others want to do nothing else. Our playerbase is extremely diverse and the challenges we pose allow for mostly everyone to find their niche.
So, no, I can't agree with you on that matter. I don't think we are demanding real life amounts of time to begin with on right settings and if you personally feel that it is too much for you, it is too much for you - but not representative for everyone else. While certainly for our monetary wellbeing it would be absolutely great if this became a triple A game, it was never our intention - we wanted to make a specific game that we presented on Kickstarter and lined out what it is going to be and got funding for exactly that - and there is a ton of potential out there to do so within the design we imagined. That Eco cannot be the game for everyone is clear to us and always was.
And you're unfortunately wrong about singleplayer - if you start singleplayer with "No Collaboration" presets you continue to get claims on every consumed skill scroll, just like in Update 9. So you absolutely can increase the size of your plot. It doesn't really help a discussion to make wrong statements.
Eco is very configurable and people adjusting it to their liking is fully intended, but it likewise also doesn't help discussion to throw anecdotical evidence around. Big shovel is certainly a popular mod, but not nearly to the degree you seem to think. There is many servers that for balance reasons make things "harder" than they are as well and those are very popular, too. People are simply different. I am super fine if people say that something for them and their friends is too bland and they change the settings to adjust for it - but that doesn't mean everyone or even a majority thinks like that.
The claim isn't false - you are assuming that most other players would think like you. But that isn't the case. It ultimately is a game - which means players can join and leave whenever they please. There is no way we could give people a real sense of urgency that would make their thoughts adjust to it as if the same happened in real life (and then we'd honestly only have looting and crime, at least in my opinion), if they aren't already willing to do so. And it's simply a matter of fact that the absolute vast majority of players do not adjust to roleplay that setting and behave in a way that you would expect people to do when faced with this knowledge. They build up a very normal society, without the meteor controlling their thoughts in the meanwhile and focus on it once they are ready. Panic at most comes up when the timer is nearing the end and they're having difficulty to get together the last needed materials.
Funny side note: There absolutely is meteor denial, it's actually a not uncommon trope some players do, acting actively against the goals, playing kind of a criminal or a meteor worshipper, embracing the end of the times. And we don't suggest to ban such players either, as that is a valid depiction of what absolutely would occur in real life as well and is hence part of a society simulation's intent, which is to depict all parts of a society, including those you'd rather not have but are simply there in every society on earth.
So, while this doesn't make any sense to you - it is the reality in Eco that noone can bend.
And yes, a french revolution style dealing with such a player would surely be an option (though one I'd not agree with), given the law system allows to stop players from playing where it is enabled - but it is a matter of fact that most servers that have no organized administration already suffer from the ability of players to communicate and self-organize, as surprisingly or not - that actually isn't as easy as you think. Often, when players get presented with the need to debate or act - in a game - they will prefer the easier way of finding a different server where they don't have to. That means, while the option you would take is there - getting people to rally for it is a task that is extremely hard.
Grant me the doubt that with having a five digit play hours, after hosting some of the most popular servers and being a developer for more than 5 years and player for more than 7 I do have the necessary experience and access to interesting metrics that allow me to make my statements.
In the next topic you go into I am getting horribly confused, so I'm not sure my answers are still as tied to what you said as I would like as to me it seems you are trying to make a point about people realistically should behave differently than they factually do (which is the fun thing to figure out in a society simulation, even if it only ever can be flawed given you can log out in a game) but then talk about how realism in a game shouldn't play as much role. That is a unresolvable paradoxon for me, so I'm just going to answer to the singular points made.
Anyway, "respecting your time" is another absolute subjective thing. We are generally making the game more casual friendly, but Eco is a time consuming game (just like any MMO) and intendedly so - a society simulation cannot work differently. We are going to help solve problems with people that have less time with polishing our exhaustion system so people with less play time can enjoy the game on a server that has limited playtime for everyone on it - which makes the general game time to happen over a much longer timeframe, but not with much less time investment in total - ultimately that is configurable to a degree based on your collaboration settings though.
The thing is, I get that you do not want to do menial tasks (and that is fully fine, you can pay others to do where they need to be done), but that is simply not the case for everyone at all. I never felt the game disrespecting my time, even when doing menial tasks and I am a type of player that likes doing such - even after work. There is _tons_ of players of the same type. Every game has target audiences and our game allows the unique way of having people with extremely different interests on the same server and make use of other players where they themselves aren't feeling like they want to deal with it. Some people don't like building, others love it. Some people do not want to deal with politics at all, others want to do nothing else. Our playerbase is extremely diverse and the challenges we pose allow for mostly everyone to find their niche.
So, no, I can't agree with you on that matter at all. We're not demanding real life amounts of time to begin with and if you personally feel that it is too much for you, it is too much for you - but not representative of anyone else. This game is designed in a specific way and it's not like we'd hide that. While certainly for our monetary wellbeing it would be absolutely great if this became a triple A game, it was never our intention - we wanted to make a specific game that we presented on Kickstarter and lined out what it is going to be and got funding for exactly that - and there is a ton of potential out there to do so within the design we imagined. That Eco cannot be the game for everyone is clear to us and always was.
And you're unfortunately again wrong about singleplayer - if you start singleplayer with "No Collaboration" presets you continue to get claims on every consumed skill scroll, just like in Update 9. So you absolutely can increase the size of your plot. It doesn't really help a discussion to make wrong statements.
Again, Eco is very configurable and people adjusting it to their liking is fully intended, but it doesn't help a discussion to just throw anecdotical evidence around. Big shovel is certainly a popular mod, but not nearly to the degree you seem to think. There is many servers that for balance reasons make things "harder" than they are as well. I am super fine if people say that something for them and their friends is too bland and they change the settings to adjust for it - but it's again not representative of the majority of the game and making it sound so is dishonest.
And again over the limit:
The point I really want to make is that there is no such thing as generalized players. I have real life friends that only touch Eco out of support for me as they only play games with triple A graphical spectacle - what they do being rather irrelevant, fully fine if playtime is only 8 hours for $99 and a slog during that, then they are finished. Yet, we have players already not happy about the animations we do have so far, as they value efficiency over atmosphere.
I don't care about graphics, I mostly play sandbox and roleplay games. I would never buy most AAA titles and have the rule of a game must provide 1 hour of playtime per buck or I don't buy it. I don't have any more time as my friends (and neither have family responsibilities yet and all work full time). And it's been a problem to find games to play together for a while, because despite us mostly playing at the same time, we tend to play different games, just sitting in TeamSpeak together. This seemingly major difference continues into much smaller differences even when the general game type is interesting for everyone participating. In Minecraft we always had a guy that did nothing but build, some that did nothing but fight and explore, two guys that did nothing but grind resources - they loved it -, and me alone figuring out the complex machinery of mods. We all loved the game, but for totally different reasons and neither of us would have wanted to do the things of the others. Yet, we all played the same game. And - we all liked to just shoot each other in Battlefield before the games went meh. I guess some things of that experience many could relate to somehow.
Players are very diverse with different interests, different tolerance for grind, different available time and different usage of time. Our game offers so many different things you can do in a interlinking way, we cannot even satisfy specific groups fully anymore. But that also isn't our goal. Our goal is to create a game where everyone can find their place and together - with the other people that have other interests - reach the goal. We want to embrace the differences between players and players making use of exactly that to reach the goals - we literally enforce specialization in the game. The game is about people with different interests, backgrounds, cultures and opinions coming together, debate their differences out (or failing to do so, which is a valid outcome) and find a system how with the players and their interests on a server they can have the most fun building a society that works and destroy the threat. That is possible in countless ways and there is no single correct way or behaviour players should show when presented with the premise of the game. Legislation allows players to enforce a majority consensus over the always existing parts that don't conform. Some people affected by that stay - others go play elsewhere, due to it ultimately being a game. But the general idea works.
We never can make it right for "players", we can only introduce interesting mechanics that some target audiences like to play and interconnect them with other people to give a interesting experience. Players not liking to do everything themselves is actually kind of vital for creating a need for other players.
It can get tiring sometimes, when people think they are representative of THE players or get rude telling us how to do our job (not you). They are only part of one of many groups with lableable interests playing this game, such interests often conflicting with those of others. We cannot make a game respecting or following THE players, as those don't exist. Players don't tend to have the data to realize that their assumed majority in this game is one of many minorities, as there is hardly any categorizable group at all that would make a coherent majority in Eco. It is much more complex than people assume. And yes, there absolutely is people for who the grind is too much or that cannot afford the necessary time. That's why finding a fitting a server and good settings is key in a game like ours. And why we are going to polish up exhaustion. But once the factor of available time and amount of resources that can realistically can be gathered is out of the way as players play on a server with similar playtimes, differences between them aren't eradicated, but just starting once we get to what these actually prefer to do in the game and what their opinions are on how the goal should be reached. But that is what this game is about.
The thing is, of course there is things that are extremely popular and I'm writing from a view of our design intentions. We could for example add violent PvP with guns, which in the player groups playing this game is mostly very unpopular, but could give us extremely big new player groups in exchange. But is Eco still Eco when any disputes are simply solved by shooting your neighbor? That's not the game we want to make. We could also tap into other big groups (that also have diverse sub-groups, though) - but that ultimately would always require changes to the base game premise in a way it would no longer be the game we wanted to make and got original funding for. We don't want that and most games aren't developed to just get the biggest possible target audience for maximum compatibiltiy and money, at least outside of the big players. Indie game studios make games they love and stand behind, in our case a game we think has educational value and gives players the ability to reflect - we think our game is a unique experience you don't get in any other game. That is what we want to make. Of course we do want to welcome as many different player groups as we can and we are happy about everyone that buys the game - but we cannot fundamentally eradicate parts of the game that are vital for it to function the way we imagine it. We want to make a coherent game experience based on what Eco is supposed to be. And that does include a depiction of menial tasks, but also players that are happy to do them and ways for those that don't to avoid them or have others help them. (And progress ultimately making it much easier - the menial task depiction is for the early game and in regard to terraforming a deterrent, but it doesn't stop you from finding creative solutions!)
Ultimately the meteor is also only a goal, but we already communicated that we are working on making Eco into a forever game. The meteor exists so players that need a goal have one and that the game has a base premise, but where we want to ultimately get over the course of development is that you can play a full year on a Eco server and be part of a society that is facing new challenges all the time.
The claim isn't false - you are assuming that most other players would think like you. But that isn't the case. It ultimately is a game - which means players can join and leave whenever they please. There is no way we could give people a real sense of urgency that would make their thoughts adjust to it as if the same happened in real life (and then we'd honestly only have looting and crime, at least in my opinion), if they aren't already willing to do so. And it's simply a matter of fact that the absolute vast majority of players do not adjust to roleplay that setting and behave in a way that you would expect people to do when faced with this knowledge. They build up a very normal society, without the meteor controlling their thoughts in the meanwhile and focus on it once they are ready. Panic at most comes up when the timer is nearing the end and they're having difficulty to get together the last needed materials.
Funny side note: There absolutely is meteor denial, it's actually a not uncommon trope some players do, acting a bit against the goals, playing a meteor worshipper, embracing the end of the times. And we don't suggest to ban such players either, as that is a valid depiction of what absolutely would occur in real life as well and is hence part of a society simulation's intent, which is to depict all parts of a society, including those you'd rather not have but are simply there in every society on earth.
So, while this doesn't make any sense to you - it is unbendable reality.
A french revolution style dealing with such a player would surely be an option (though one I'd not agree with), given the law system can stop players from playing - but it is a matter of fact that most servers that have no organized administration face issues in communication and self-organization, as surprisingly or not - that actually isn't as easy as you think. Often, when players get presented with the need to debate or act - in a game - they will prefer the easier way of finding a different server where they don't have to. Players don't typically like to step up to bring change or matters to the table, only few personalities do. There is always players that just want to play along others to trade, but have their kind of singleplayer experience and so on. That means, while the option you would take is there - getting people to rally for it is a task that is extremely hard, as can be seen by the debates on annexation where the only thing people would need to do is unite in a settlement against it. It's hard for many people to make organization as a small 4 player premade group has it.
Grant me the doubt that with having a five digit play hours, after hosting some of the most popular servers and being a developer for more than 5 years and player for more than 7 I do have the necessary experience and access to interesting metrics that allow me to make my statements.
In the next topic you go into I am getting horribly confused as to me it seems you are trying to make a point about people realistically should behave differently than they factually do but then talk about how realism in a game shouldn't play as much role. That is a unresolvable paradoxon for me, so I'm just going to answer to the singular points made.
Anyway, "respecting your time" is another subjective thing. We are generally making the game more casual friendly, but Eco is a time consuming game (just like any MMO) and intendedly so - a society simulation needs participation in real timeframes. We are going to help solve problems with people that have less time with polishing our exhaustion system so people with less play time can enjoy the game on a server that has limited playtime for everyone on it - which makes the general game time to happen over a much longer timeframe, but not with much less time investment in total - ultimately that is configurable to a degree based on your collaboration settings though.
I get that you do not want to do menial tasks, but that is simply not the case for everyone. I never felt the game disrespecting my time, even when doing menial tasks and I am a type of player that likes doing such - even after work. There is _tons_ of players of the same type. Every game has target audiences and our game allows the unique way of having people with extremely different interests on the same server and make use of other players where they themselves aren't feeling like they want to deal with it. Some people don't like building, others love it. Some people do not want to deal with politics at all, others want to do nothing else. Our playerbase is extremely diverse and the challenges we pose allow for mostly everyone to find their niche.
So, no, I can't agree with you on that matter. I don't think we are demanding real life amounts of time to begin with on right settings and if you personally feel that it is too much for you, it is too much for you - but not representative for everyone else. While certainly for our monetary wellbeing it would be absolutely great if this became a triple A game, it was never our intention - we wanted to make a specific game that we presented on Kickstarter and lined out what it is going to be and got funding for exactly that - and there is a ton of potential out there to do so within the design we imagined. That Eco cannot be the game for everyone is clear to us and always was.
And you're unfortunately wrong about singleplayer - if you start singleplayer with "No Collaboration" presets you continue to get claims on every consumed skill scroll, just like in Update 9. So you absolutely can increase the size of your plot. It doesn't really help a discussion to make wrong statements.
Eco is very configurable and people adjusting it to their liking is fully intended, but it likewise also doesn't help discussion to throw anecdotical evidence around. Big shovel is certainly a popular mod, but not nearly to the degree you seem to think. There is many servers that for balance reasons make things "harder" than they are as well and those are very popular, too. People are simply different. I am super fine if people say that something for them and their friends is too bland and they change the settings to adjust for it - but that doesn't mean everyone or even a majority thinks like that.
By the way: You may want to start a new world to reapply configs to the world you are currently playing or setting up configuration correctly, happy to help you with that. You will already see in the config screen there is settings for claim papers on settlement on worlds - but given you are capable to dig into the server to disable settlements, I would have assumed you found those settings automatically set for No Collaboration as well.
You find them in Difficulty.eco:
"ClaimStakesGrantedUponSkillscrollConsumedAndSettlementsDisabled": 1.0,
"ClaimPapersGrantedUponSkillscrollConsumedAndSettlementsDisabled": 5.0,
"ClaimStakesGrantedUponSkillscrollConsumedAndSettlementsEnabled": 0.0,
"ClaimPapersGrantedUponSkillscrollConsumedAndSettlementsEnabled": 0.0,
They should be self-explaining, otherwise just hit me up via DM and we'll get it sorted.
Removing stockpile linking will kill the almost dead game
Stockpile linking is not going away. This is about moving items via UI around at no cost whatsoever, up to chaining up stockpiles to not need to use vehicles and infrastructure.
"Funny side note: There absolutely is meteor denial"
Oh ok, so we're talking about roleplaying, which I mentioned and said has its own boons and issues as well. For instance I imagine more than one server will ban someone for pretending the meteor isn't coming and trying to jam up everyone's ability to accomplish anything because it's ruining the point of the server. (I know that's what I'd do. I have to deal with enough people trying to spoil attempts to save the real life world, thank you)
But I mean you can continue to pretend I didn't mention that at all. If that's what you want.
"In the next topic you go into I am getting horribly confused as to me it seems you are trying to make a point about people realistically should behave differently than they factually do but then talk about how realism in a game shouldn't play as much role."
In the attempt to explain this better:
What I'm saying is that respecting players time is paramount in a game such as this. Community can only go so far to keep players around in a game that has you do the same things over and over again, with an intent to drag it out as much as humanly possible, as what you're proposing. No, I don't *want* to make doing shit as tedious as humanly possible, because for all that effort and time spent on it, I could go and play a game that actually feels rewarding. I play games to have fun or escape from my shitty boring life, I don't play games to go from one shitty boring life to another shitty boring life.
As for 'Realistically should behave' vs 'Realism in a game'
We're talking about *GAME MECHANICS* Vs *PLAYER ACTIONS AND PLANNING*
These are two VASTLY different things, and trying to say they're the same thing is. . .I don't even understand how you got to that misunderstanding.
`And you're unfortunately wrong about singleplayer - if you start singleplayer with "No Collaboration" presets you continue to get claims on every consumed skill scroll, just like in Update 9. So you absolutely can increase the size of your plot. It doesn't really help a discussion to make wrong statements.`
Ah, good. I'm glad to have been wrong about this, I've just been told from multiple player sources that no, there's no way to get claims if you're on single player and not part of a settlement. You're right, it doesn't, which makes it really weird when you keep pretending I didn't mention 'roleplaying' when you claimed that no, people *totally* don't know that the meteor is coming, because they willfully pretend they don't know.
Ultimately, I'm going to probably stop the conversation here because to be honest with how much you are rambling, I don't think you're talking to me, you're talking to some hypothetical person that I'm not.
As I said before, I hope I'm wrong, and I hope that you all find success and happiness with this project. Have a good day.
You omitted the whole relevant part that wasn't a funny sidenote and was about how in reality barely anyone playing Eco does so with meteor danger in mind or adjusting to it in the way you suggested. People play the game mostly as an economical simulation, then at some point destroy the meteor. The whole suggested thought process of "We need to destroy the meteor and that means we all must do everything we can as one people and for this we need no money" does not exist outside of small co-op games and is a true utopian goal to reach on a server with dozens to hundreds of players. Interests of players are different and there is not few players that even just simply want to be the richest at the end of the cycle (as they, for example, play Eco due to the economical possibilities but not due to ecology or the meteor), not giving any deeper thought to the meteor at all (or even minding if it hits, as long as personal goals were reached). They do know it is coming, but they draw no specific conclusions from that, specifically not the ones you suggested they should. That was the point I tried to make. Even knowing there is a meteor, they still play a normal economy focused game on average - that is, maybe bitter, reality. And given we know that and the goal of Eco Infinite being servers without resets that continue after meteor destruction, we develop around that. The meteor plays less role than the simulation, as I also noted.
I did not pretend you didn't talk about roleplaying either. It was a funny side note that players acting criminally exist and banning them is surely something you can do, but is your decision as admin. Not all of them are roleplaying and it is especially not only happening on roleplay servers. There is a player group that literally wants to see the world burn. From a game design perspective the ban feature isn't made to deal with that and such players should be dealt with the law system - which was a solution you offered, but I noted getting people to rally for it can be extremely hard. A ban is always a quick solution to everything, but removes any societal struggle and is unavailable on unadministrated servers. While you can do that, we don't develop with that in mind but with players dealing with such people via game means, like White Tiger for example actually does (imprisonment aka ban the last very rare resort, typically fines and community work or other measures - for a time the justice was administered by elected player judges, currently again by GM's due to the law system on WT being very complex and being a judge very time consuming, but planned to move back again once we implement more judicial features to the game for less manual work). The other official servers indeed employ minimal rulesets, as they have no judicial system, though players could always create one.
On the matter of valuation of play time I already commented lengthily. If you feel that menial tasks are disrespecting of your time and / or boring to you, that is absolutely fine. it is just not the case for everyone and as such not representing of our community or "players" as a whole. Ultimately we offer a game and people decide on if and how they want to play it and what parts of it. The whole thing you called "ramble" was detailing exactly that in-depth with an anecdotical example that could have been relatable to some: Menial tasks are a part of this game by design intent, there is intended ways on how to improve technology for their necessity to become less and ways to split the burden and interact with other players to get them done. That some people do not wish to do them doesn't mean they would have nothing else to do or that we would need to remove them. It doesn't mean everyone thinks like you or noone would like doing them. (I play ARPG's - that genre is literally about doing the same thing over and over) Because you were - at least to my understanding - generalizing your personal opinion to be the "players". I'm sorry if that was not what you wanted to come across.
I do however disagree that we'd be making anything "as tedious as humanly possible" to begin with. Ultimately this started from the sole matter of shovelling, I cannot see into what else you at this point could have thought about additionally - but having some intended menial tasks to do, overcome technologically or get the help of others with is not akin to making things as tedious as humanly possible, repetetive or prolonguing for the sake of it. There is tons of stuff one can do in Eco and players play it for countless different reasons, doing what they prefer. A good simulation comes out of it when many different people do different things they like on a server - the guy building funky stuff, the poltician trying to get government up, the free traders getting the economy going, the people grinding mass amounts of resources, and everyone else doing what they like in the game while they totally dislike something else they never do. Them together form the community despite highly different interests. Their specialization into what they like allows other people to not deal with what they don't like and vice versa - still reaching the goals. The current shovelling mechanics in any case, after the recent changes, certainly aren't unbearably tedious to me. I do understand however, they still are for you. We think the compromise between the positions made works well for the goals the game has and that for any change desired beyond that the ability to easily change it via a mod is sufficient.
Have a good day as well :)