[2024] Is anyone else not a fan of the ultra modded, over abundance "easy" game play?

Generally, the game is played in a too fast manner for what is intended, yes. I also personally agree with most of your points, but there is differences to be made in what mods are used. There is mods that just outright make the game easier / quicker to finish, such that alleviate grind for people that aren't a fan of that (which is understandable, especially if your time is limited), some that introduce QoL features (both for things where we want to do that as well and for things where we purposefully want things to not be easy until later game like terraforming) and such that are decisions that are helpful to follow a specific concept and set an atmosphere, like global currencies. But there is also tons of mods that in the opposite make the game harder and less quick to finish.

Though, town competition can quickly lead to a more hostile atmosphere and is something that can be very detrimental to gameplay depending on what kind of experience you want to have. It's a constant source of issues on official servers that players can overcome much less often than I would wish, as many people for some reason don't have much interest for positive diplomacy. That form of competition we are seeing wasn't intended for settlements, they are supposed to work together for the common goal, just with their own ideas on how to manage society in their local region. We don't want a conflictless game, but it's not supposed to be CK3 bordergore - different ideas in the local regions, uniting for the common goal was the idea. Currency stability can be a very integral part to a good experience as well and it can be extremely difficult to sort that out for players, especially when at the same time the game is played at a much faster pace than would be required to actually have time to sort that out in a working manner. There is the potential to quickly get burned out if people can't get anything moved to a compromise.

As White Tiger and similar servers show, you can have highly increased difficulty, but still use a global currency and eliminate town competition and instead use them for organizing things in a positive manner from the very start for the greater goal. The latter is a question of beliefs and what fits the intended depiction, in the case of White Tiger a single country on the whole planet where we remove the unfortunately regular discrimination and competetive play ("My town, My house, My Garden, My Car"), but instead have increased politics difficulty for the whole country where it's rather about making decisions for everyone after a general vote. (E.g. starting at player relations where other servers should get to during their gameplay, but rarely do without organized help by people stepping up to do that - which can be either server admins or players that just have the goal to do that, as I've seen quite a few times on officials as well) You will still have people with the same competetive attitude, but now you have systems to deal with that effectively. It has a reason why most countries in the world have rules. That can just as well work for a philosophical design as it is intended in "vanilla", in that the Federation would be akin to the UN, with key decisions for the global goal being made between the towns / countries but local politics being up to the towns / countries. Or a design like the EU, where some parts of politics are given to the federation, but not everything. Or the it's all one country approach. All of that is possible, depending on what players prefer for their game. But having any of them is very helpful for the game and resolution of inevitable disputes. Something that often ends up on in the GM ticket system, but the game offers ideas for how to resolve it on your own. The systems just need to be established. And are supposed to.

In my experience that always works better, as there is means established that most everyone agrees to have for decisions for the world and dispute resolution via courts and resembles the social structure we have in real life better and as such is more accessible to people. This just doesn't exist on a "vanilla" start if players don't make it - but against our expectations, they too often do not create means that would help them to settle disputes and resort to last resort solutions like annexation that had a different purpose instead. Which ultimately isn't surprising, given they at the same time try too often to complete the game as fast as any possible.

So generally I would agree with all of that, but I personally wouldn't play on a server without global currency. I want my difficulty in gameplay and politics, but not deal with group competition or the very vulnerable part of "Will players manage to get along?". Bartering has never been super popular though and has always been a split through the community, even way before settlements made stuff harder.

But yes, generally we are looking at getting settlements into a state that actively rewards collaboration with other towns towards the greater goal as part of the vanilla experience and make it easier for players to make decisions that are key to a good atmosphere and organization. That all already can be done, but people just don't do it - be it due to not knowing how, not having the time for or just no being interested or capable to overcome challenges in a compromising way.

But it also needs to be said that we purposefully implemented ways to start with global federations and currencies, it's not "not vanilla" to play that way and doesn't require any modifications. Servers that use them often experienced what I explained and skip the vulnerable part of setting up a society system to start with that, getting their difficulty elsewhere - with a strong society system to make the decisions to be successful, which simply plays different. That is also true for White Tiger - it's running for more than 7 years, that community already figured out what is needed for efficient organization and has just brought the improvements from every cycle to the next one. It's just meta development over many cycles instead of doing everything in one - something that can be seen with all major community servers that run for multiple cycles and is not a unintended way to play. Often such community start to form from the desire to have a society system be established, but that being too rare within a single cycle. Ultimately, it can also take a lot of time to develop one that works for a specific population, a time that cannot be achieved within the quick play times most Eco servers currently have.

I'm not sure if you actually read my post, as what I have been saying is that there is already sufficient difficulty (as in too much) - there is no need for an increase in it in the social matters.

The other part of your post seems to be a very generalized premise I cannot agree with, neither does noone in real life care nor do people in Eco not care. In the opposite the successful shooting of the meteor is the main and unfortunately often only goal the majority of players pursues and failure in preserving the world regularly leads to mass exodus of people from a server that feel they have lost when sea level rises and poses inconvenience to them.

Eco is also intentionally a game abstracting from real life and supposed to allow reflection back on that. That will always be limited in effectiveness, as in opposite to a game you just cannot leave in the real world.

If players already have issues organizing despite that having major benefits in the important social aspects that can easily decide about if you have fun or not, adding people that - next to the negligience that players tend to exhibit about ecology (just like IRL) and everyone has a hard time to battle - also add active "criminals" makes absolutely no sense.

I would certainly not sign what people seemingly told you as that is just rude and I understand the fantasy behind that, but I am absolutely of the opinion that such actors need to be stopped and / or removed if they cannot be "resocialized". Just as bad faith actors should in real life, actually - ecologic crimes exist and at least in my country face harsh penalties, including jail time. If that is via laws or server admins is irrelevant, you can - if you have the respective organization - ban players ingame with a title that removes all relevant rights, as White Tiger does it instead of admin interaction. It is possible. You can effectively put such actors in jails which can work for "removal" if nothing else can convince them to be cooperative instead, e.g. "resocialized".

Given the organizing of people is already hard and such actors often lead to heavily detrimental gameplay for everyone else so those often rather quit (given in opposite to real life this is an option in a game, as I mentioned) than deal with it, server admins seem the currently easier route for that in the current state, as there is little chance for players to be able to manage to deal with it. Here it's a thing of simple reality and what to do to effectively get the best experience for the majority of the players. Of course the reality can be ignored, but I'm sure from experience adding more difficulty and pressure won't make people deal with it, it just makes them even more likely to pursue a server where such people are removed by admins so they can have fun. It's not a goal problem, but a difficulty to deal with problem. And also a "Do I really want to deal with it when elsewhere someone else does?" problem.

I'm personally also of the opinion that server admins shouldn't be needed for anything that isn't bleeding into RL (e.g. chat violations, uploaded picture violations, etc.) - instead it should be easier, more straightforward and interesting for people to create systems and take responsibility within all these cases that could be handled with ingame systems and meta-gameplay like courts (as does White Tiger have). Explanation and guidance and often also the first idea for such things being possible are missing (akin to what new people to pen & paper games with a human GM often tend to do, thinking in limited videogame constraints when they can do anything the GM as a human can react to - which they then tend to realize and take it a bit too far, seeing things have consequences and then ultimately get the hang of it), as this is things that never can be automated with code, systems can only support it, but players need to get to the idea - "Okay, we got constant disputes, how about we take three of the most reputable people on the server and have them hear disputes and decide on compromises that we then enforce with laws through the game mechanics?". Courts exist as someone said we put these judges on there and have them hear cases and give them the widespread accepted power to then act based on the laws to make decisions, which we help to enforce. It cannot be automated, it's things that need to be socially formed and handled.

But what I noted was that precisely this is difficult already, especially as for effectiveness you need to get to a sufficient coverage on the planet first with those rules. So there is many difficult parts, from getting together to decide to do something, decide about what to do, decide about how to organize the meta parts (like people that convene for court decisions) and get it to apply sufficiently wide. That is indeed how it is supposed to work, the game supporting your creativity to create your own ways to handle issues and make systems you potentially like better than real life ones or find to be more effective - if there is someone that is near-universally accepted, you can also make them the "Great Arbiter" and have them decide all disputes and enforce resolutions, most can be done with the law system, some need admin commands but admins could just be supporting measures to enforce decisions that the ingame mechanics cannot do yet but not decide anything on their own or make the rules. You can even pay the Great Arbiter a wage so they don't fall behind in actual gameplay possibilities, as the time used gets rewarded (and then ultimately should be, that is why we have that feature). But obviously that is supposed to happen within a longer timeframe than how Eco is currently played, which is why we work on that.