Designing for "balance" over fun

Hey!
I can give a bit of a summary about what is going on and address maybe some of the general issues here.

1. Food preservation
It was never directly related to the implementation of food decay(meaning decay would happen regardless of the state of preservation as the goal was to make farming/food production have an active component requiring attention) as a whole you have storage alternatives that help prolong the life of food items and it is true that we want to add ways to deal with some of these things over long term like the cannery mentioned in the end of your post.
However it has a lot of complicated issues that needs to be resolved in way that fits well within the game in terms of usability versus item bloat (which is a phrase used to describe meaningless accumulation of copy pasted identical type entries that just does the same thing really) we have some ideas on how to approach this but prioritization happen very fluidly and unfortunately some things just happens to end up on a back burner due to more pressing matters that needs to be fixed/added.

2. The mining changes
The mining node changes were done for a whole series of reasons, yes one of those are related to new mining methodology for alleviating the grind of mid game transition over into late game as we want players alternative approaches from just pickaxe day 1 to pickaxe day 20 but that was only 1 reason.
The more prominent reasons for this change was large issues with non exploration or exploitative environmental aspects and "you only needed to find 1 node and you are set for life" situations which was very contrary to what we are going for in terms of land ownership, resource conflicts and so on.
Another reason is that we need to test out changes especially big ones such as these prior to adding external aspects that dilute the feedback surrounding these changes as we have more plans to add new ground materials to reduce the dependencies of just plain iron/steel combo for all modern and mid game equipment but we still want iron ore to be common enough that it has proper viability which is why we reduced deposit sizes but at the same time we also significantly reduced the ore required to get the same quantity of iron out.

3. Attachment durability
The vehicle attachment durability drain was absolutely necessary as it was a stage of completely removing all tool decay from all farming activities as you progressed meaning it was no longer needing any repair or input at all which was not super optimal and could almost be considered a bug fix rather than a new implementation.

4. Demand for crops, crop changes
In terms of "Demand for crops" i presume you are referring to the addition of plant related ingredients in crafting progress blocks and materials giving farmers a well needed boost and overall increase in their use and integration in the economy.
But on the general crop changes and world food reduction the whole 9.x had way too much crops all over the place and our main received input across the board when it came to food was unilaterally "Chefs have no use, Farmers are useless" and so on across all our feedback channels due to everyone could just pick gathering themselves and never have to plant anything really as things just regrew and overpopulated with plants.


That all said these are still balance values that are being revised, tweaked and looked at continuously and most definitely not to be viewed as "final values, is complete" kind of thing but at the same time the default balance for a lot of these things can also be very disproportional biased depending on the size of the server, the population of the server and how active it is from the off set and potential player drop off during the cycle and a lot of other external factors we have no control over such as administration, mods usages and so on.
But we still try to form a baseline where servers can work from in changing configuration setup to fit their group/playstyle and if you have any suggestions for something you feel is missing or want to see added please add it on our canny suggestion/feedback tracker https://eco.canny.io/

p.s. We are also ramping up the rate updates are deployed as we work towards our 1.0 goal on the roadmap and as for general feedback and playtests i would suggest diving into our discord as it is a great place for discussing some of these topics and have more frequent information updates as i generally post teasers or discussions in there.

Originally posted by Bravo: 1) Day 1-2 food shortages are common - this is mostly in smaller maps; but I have even played on servers where large maps were essentially stripped bare of "wild" food supplies. This is less of an issue where server admins have accelerated growth, however does tend to still exist for a 4-8 hour period if a server has high activity throughout Day 1.

The early game struggle for food is not unintended and one of the first challenges to overcome as a server community. We do however realize it is a problem some players would like to rather avoid and is currently too hard to configure easily being bound to the world size notably, hence a multiplier for the spawned food plants on world generation is going to be introduced that will allow server admins to configure this as they deem fit.

Originally posted by Bravo: 3) Claim paper changes means that farmers either have too small a field for provisioning early, or risk losing crops to griefers or people who... aren't very bright and harvest someone else's field. Whilst I appreciate some of this is "User error" in that settlements could provide papers to farmers or people could just have better manners - but balancing around good behaviour is not exactly a good idea.

Player Interaction is a base pillar in all our design decisions and the settlements system was made with it specifically in mind, its impact on how the game is played being fully intended. Success when playing Eco always and purposefully depends on how players interact with each other and if they manage to get a functioning society going - losing by failing to do that is a intended outcome of the game. I understand if you personally feel like that is not a good idea or fun to you - for that case we already have the option for server admins to configure the gain of additional, unrestricted claim papers that can be used anywhere, additional to settlements, like it was in Update 9. This allows you to be more self-sufficient as we intend, while still keeping settlement mechanics relevant and is a great compromise option for those that desire it.

Originally posted by Barometz: So the thing about this, is that there are very few sinks to drain rock tag items. Along with ore being harder to target for extraction, and thus producing more extra rock, the need for road has overall been diminished by the introduction of boats.

Storing excess mining products is an intended side effect of mining - generally we want to introduce multiple side products to all professions that have to be dealt with in the future - together with recycling and other options to minimize them. Getting rid of it completely, just as in the real world, will likely not be an option. This is part of multiple improvements to the "ecology" pillar that is currently admittedly lacking.

Originally posted by Barometz: I find this part extremely concerning. People generate enough conflict on their own. Encouraging conflict in this game is just going to make it less fun for everyone involved.

The main reason a cycle ends is because of player attrition. This attrition occurs due to burnout, because tasks are too tedious and time consuming, or due to conflicts with other players. This is not a style of game that people play to be stressed out, and adding external pressures to exacerbate community conflict seems like a really bad idea.

As noted further above, this is part of the core design of Eco. Eco was never made with the idea of not having any conflict in mind (and it always surprises me to see people that seemingly think it was, despite our constant communication on how we envision the game right from the start of our Kickstarter) - much to the opposite it is taking a lot of inspiration from games like Civilization or Settlers in its approach to a society simulation, just without any sort of actual physical violence and in favour of communication - which typically is also the key to avoid or resolve conflict. In Eco players with different opinions and from different cultures inherently need to play together - that is always creating conflict. Communication, the law system and the ability to settle and self-organize in smaller settlements instead of needing to debate for the whole server since Update 10 are solutions to that. It is also possible to turn any factors of the settlement system off if considered to be too hostile for one's own taste - like annexation.

Originally posted by Barometz: I know it takes a lot more time, but having this long format discussion seems superior to a "suggestions" board. People usually don't have a silver bullet for problems, but when discussions stay constructive I feel like a lot of good can come out of them.

We're always happy to do so as long as time allows (which for staff like Jens that are not tasked with any public relations is very limited) - but we also always face the challenge that especially on Steam forums a respectful discussion is more of the exception than the rule. This thread looks very good and I'm appreciating the participants being respectful and constructive - and detailed.

Which may also have to do with the fact that developers actively participating in discussions seems to be alienating to some people. (And isn't done by most developers anymore at least on Steam for very good reasons, as they can't stem the moderative effort to enforce their typically very basic community guidelines which we still try to do given the size of our game - yet they of course have no interest in partaking in discussions when the atmosphere for that is simply not fitting. We're just normal people as everyone else, often writing here in our free time and we can imagine better things to do than being hit with inappropriate posts.)

It is also always generally hard to do so, as no matter what we say it will always be a disappointment to someone (which game developers generally try to avoid) by the pure nature of the vast majority of players not actually participating in here and feedback being derived from many more sources than just any single platform we are active on - additional to intricate data players are not aware of and the fact that when making a game a big part of it is also the vision of the game creators. In Eco, for example, such a thing is the high link between the necessity of player collaboration and gameplay itself that gets regularly criticized here in Steam posts, but is also one of the points where we get vast amounts of positive feedback on for its uniqueness and play experience - just that you don't see that here very often, as happy players don't tend to post on Steam. This is exactly what we want to do - but we're always going to do our best to enable you to enjoy Eco in a way that is fun to you personally by giving you all the options we can, that is also a base principle of us.

For Eco it is also especially challenging, as we have a diverse player base that plays it for many different reasons - from expecting a simple survival building game like Minecraft where they can either just build along or beat the tech tree, to an economic or politic simulation or something entirely else. It's all of that, but every player with a preference to some specific part of the game has other desires and needs and naturally different views on the other parts of the game. Anecdotically, I personally found interest in the game many years ago for the political simulation and it is what still interests me the most - I love rallying people together to find compromise, see conflicts arise and people overcoming them as a community to reach the goal, while trying to leave noone behind.

And it always saddens me when I see people take the easy route out when facing such challenge - but I fully understand that some people just want to be left alone and avoid any conflict in a game. I just don't agree and it's not fun for me personally, I love playing Eco exactly for these things and if this hadn't catched my eye, my life would be different now. The stories told on servers through that system, no matter if losing or winning, made me learn so much and ultimately led to me working in game industry. I wouldn't want to miss that. And yet - it always stayed a enjoyable game for me.

Other colleagues were caught by the ecologic factors or love using the economic systems to become tycoons, and then there is colleagues that just want to beat the tech tree or hide in a corner of the world to make amazing builds as well. Even in our staff everyone has their unique main interests in the game. We try to make use of this to bring players with different interests together on servers, where they will typically end up taking roles fitting for their personal interests, ensuring there is people dealing with everything around.

A feedback tracker is hence a good way for us to gauge basic player interest in changes, improvements and feature requests (and prioritize on that when it fits the game) and also a good way for players to get a ballpark on how other players' opinions are on anything specific.

I purposefully left the more intricate balance matters uncommented, I'm sure Jens will try to come around another time once he gets time to answer these - given he works directly on that it just seems like he is way better suited to answer those.

I personally find it pretty weird to want a discussion, but to then proceed to personally attack your discussion partner by saying their view might be skewed due to personal interests trying to invalidate what they say on a personal level, while it is at the same time obvious that you are missing the necessary information for a big picture view and base all statements on your personal experiences and interests - which is absolutely fine, but not representative for the game. If you wish to have a nice discussion with me, you should at least acknowledge that I naturally come with a professional overview, have respective data beyond experiences available to me and assume that I'm able to separate different feeds of feedback without personal game interests playing a role for the goals we have in mind for Eco as a team. If i wasn't able to do that as you insinuate, I couldn't do my job. My anecdote was solely supposed to illustrate how different players and their opinions are, especially for Eco.

If a player wants conflict as part of their experience or not depends solely on their personal interests, sometimes even their mood on any given day - asking why anyone would want ("even more") conflict is irritating, there is whole games solely about that and they're very popular. I also always ask myself why people play a punishingly difficult game like Elden Ring - but most certainly a lot of people do and have tons of fun with that - I do absolutely not, though. And probably some reader will laugh and think what difficulty is he talking about :) Requests for actual violent PvP in Eco are common, there is a considerable amount of suggestions that want a full military system to "solve issues" they have with other players - arguing that would be just like real life. Many people have let us know that there is a general lack of conflict in the game, just as many people let us know they like (and prefer) the chill factor of the game especially on less populated servers - we love that Eco can provide so many different people with an enjoyable experience and always strive to improve that. A constantly desired feature for example is big (and even player-influenced) natural disasters as well, many of such that would most certainly create more conflict. Yet, we have no plans to either introduce PvP nor player startable disasters or damaging of property. We want to keep any conflict related solely to matters of society building.

Of course even that wide sourced feedback isn't always necessarily absolutely safe to depend on - a good example I don't want to conceal is when we introduced animals attacking players as a reaction of many players desiring more threats in the game. It turned out that people that didn't want that obviously had not provided any feedback against that so far, given they never had to deal with it to begin with. In the end, many people were happy to face more threat, but just as many were unhappy seeing their chill experience without dangers removed - we turned it off, as there was no easy way for making it an option and in the team agreed that it doesn't fit Eco - especially as most of these animals wouldn't randomly attack humans in real life. Yet, the wide sourced feedback allows us to typically make decisions that work well. Another anecdotical thing is that we about four times changed the behaviour of "ESC" when UI menus are opened. It would not close the backpack, so people reported it as a bug. Then we changed it so it would close the backpack, which caused a ton of feedback incoming that people wish to keep their backpack open all the time and hate the recent change - so we changed it back, with people reporting it as a bug again. Ultimately we settled on a pin feature so everyone can decide on their own if they prefer to play with backpack always open or not.

Yes, White Tiger houses a lot of civics experts, but so do many major community servers - especially those that use global federations for their server setup. Those tend to be the most popular servers in Eco and are absolutely not "a very small percentage of the player base". White Tiger is also the wrong comparison to begin with, as the amount or depth of civics on there is not anywhere necessary to have a good, simple, organized experience. It is a lite-roleplay server that focuses on civics usage to enable it's specific server concept surrounding the idea of "equity" and having a judicial system that is unique to it.

It is also questionable that servers with global federations would do that due to lack of interest in civics, when it's typically exactly the opposite - they are used so civics that are helpful for a good organization of very big servers or such that have been constantly reoccuring in a formed community can be implemented from the start, which is a valid way to play Eco. Many server communities don't like to implement their achievements from scratch on every new cycle and play with limited persistent world states, as does White Tiger, taking over some basic setup that has been agreed upon by players into further cycles. White Tiger has developed from a fully vanilla server to what it is now iteratively - and it on top is one of the examples that took a lot over, there is many servers that aren't as pre-determined, WT simply has gotten a story of a Federal Republic over time and worked out its own identity. That is fully in line with our goals of making server play generally be persistent over many months, removing the constant "resets" and all the problems coming from that.

True is that civics are very complex, intimidating and need learning (and of course can be improved by us as well) - they are certainly not the most popular feature in Eco, but it is a key feature that can (but is not required to) help server organization - and we are fully aware of those facts. But it also doesn't need everyone to deal with civics to begin with, as they are inherently made for their usage on servers where only a small part of the population is involved in politics, representative for others - just like in real life. The importance of civics isn't lower just because people actively working with them is only a smaller sub-group, ultimately everyone is affected by them and politican is a job like any other on Eco servers. Everyone being a politican would surely be a fun experience, but is neither necessary nor do I think it would be good for a server. Yet, referendums and direct democracy are also perfectly fine ways to organize (parts of) communities and is seen frequently by me. Just because more experienced people tend to make the setups, doesn't mean they would be the only ones dealing with it and the feature as such unpopular or irrelevant. If that was the case, block forms would be an unpopular and irrelevant feature as well, as the vast majority of buildings on servers that don't take steps to incentivize nice building tend to be very basic boxes, sometimes optimized for gameplay effects with the respective oddness that comes with that. Yet, we constantly get feedback for more block forms, as we do have a sizable group of people interested in building and those people can perfectly benefit people that don't care about that on servers in other ways.

Originally posted by Barometz: It also is probably telling that players are "constantly" saying that your vision for the game is -not- what players want (in regard to conflict). Just because an initial idea for a game exists, doesn't mean its a good one. It sounds like someone doesn't want to "kill their darlings".

Players are not constantly telling us that conflict is not what they want, I said people are regularly (which is not constantly) critizing the high need for player collaboration here on Steam. You have completely ignored all my other statements that made very clear that this is neither the majority on Steam, nor the majority of feedback in general. These steam forums for example have a notable overweight on single player focused people compared to the whole population of people playing Eco - which is also not surprising by the principle of people that have issues and are unhappy generally being more participative, while happy people tend to be silent. Especially as single player is definitely the weakest point of Eco, given development is not focusing on that at all.

Going on to then critizing the base idea of the game, insinuating it wouldn't be a good one is your fair right, but also the point where a discussion will ultimately make not a lot of sense anymore, as there is some base principles we won't discuss. You seem to have the interpretation that game developers develop the game that specific players want, but what we do is developing the game we want with the help and feedback of players that like the idea to improve the idea. The decision for or against conflict is not an improvement, but a basic gameplay decision as is the requirement for player collaboration. It's the base principles why we are making Eco to begin with. If you wish those to be removed or made irrelevant, I do indeed have to disappoint you, as we have no plans to do so - that is not the game we want to make. I hope that it is acceptable to you that as with most every other game developer we are creating a game as we imagine here and implement tons of different feedback to flesh it out, but also not implement feedback we don't consider healthy for the game or being against its ideas - we're not building someones dream game based on their wishes. (And if that by chance is the case, then due to us having the same idea for the game) Yet you also ignored that we do provide options for basically everything in Eco to configure it to your personal liking, which does include tons of options to make conflict less of a thing, if that is what you want to have. I mean, you wouldn't ask the developers of Battlefield to make a Call of Duty like gameplay experience out of it or the Minecraft developers to remove any fighting content, would you? Asking to abolish our core principles would be akin to that, though. And it's not very fair to reason that with "it's not good", when the actual reason is you not liking it. And yes, I know you can turn off hostiles in Minecraft, just as we give options to configure the experience on Eco servers as well.

Eco is a framework - servers using it to make unique experiences of their own is intended. You are supposed to use these options and find the servers that fit your personal idea of a society the most. Vanilla is _not_ intended to fit everyone equally - there is no generally intended experience, you and all other players together make their experience - vanilla servers are hence a wild west waiting to be shaped by you. If you'd ask us how Eco should be played, the experiences on major community servers would be the answer - and most all of them directly are continuous improvements to their concepts, originally spawned from "vanilla" worlds. White Tiger as the only one hosted by us is not only one of our main testing servers and a place where we regularly introduce new things that may or may not make it into the base game, but also a demo of what one can do with Eco.

We consequently also recommend players that have a hard time finding the best enjoyment on simple vanilla servers to try these out, and we are going to double down on that once Strange Cloud and our new server browser is released - with recommended servers. (Which also means that yes, we are aware that server browser needs a big improvement to make it much easier for players to find a good server for them quickly and we're working on that)

We create Eco as a society simulation for players that are interested in meeting totally different people, communicate, organize, roleplay, deal with and play through even frustrating arising issues and compromise to overcome a challenge together on public servers - using whatever means they deem fit, us providing as many as we can. Everyone that does not feel like they fit into this description is actively welcomed by us to play Eco as well and we constantly try to accomodate as many potential playstyles as possible with options - but the general development direction is summarized with my first sentence and players seeking for different experiences will be more likely to find them on servers that implement them specifically - of which tons exist.

And that does not conflict at all what we are seeing, especially as in opposite to what you said people losing don't tend to give up at all, it is in opposite very common for people to start over and try again. (And that actually also was part of the reason why there is a 30 day timer by default - experience, reflect, learn, try again, improve) As with all games, people nowadays don't tend to consistently play the same game all the time and as such after a intense cycle many people take a break - and of course, like with all (Early Access) games people often tend to play another round with the next update, playing one of the other hundred games on their pile. That is not specific to Eco at all, though. Yet, this is a problem we are aware of and wanting to solve with Eco Infinite, making "cycles" less of a thing, going more into persistent world that you can join at any time, not play for a while and come back and still be relevant and part of the community without any issue. The whole "cycle" idea indeed wasn't the best (but simply fitted perfectly when Eco was still a prototype for classroom use, where 30 days work well with project classes), as it inherently makes time a major factor that shouldn't be and makes the game competetive in a way it isn't supposed to be. (Noone was ever supposed to feel "left behind", but it is the most common criticism we receive for how gameplay currently works) Many of the changes we are currently implementing are required and preparing other work that enable longer lifetimes of servers, though.

So one thing we can certainly agree upon is that Eco is too time intensive currently - it might just not be obvious that what we are actually striving for is to remove the whole idea of "cycles", going into persistent worlds - probably best comparable to small MMO's. A big thing we want to get rid of is people getting exhausted with playing within the compact few week binges. Of course doing that requires a lot of content to be added and Eco being made fresh for other activites and goals than just hunting the meteor. As a community game it's well suited to reach for that, but even that will be controversial, as there is just many people that really enjoy these compact cycles every now and then and race through the techtree and have no interest at all in any other goals and challenges. Generally, we want to be a community game, and as such incentivizing roleplay and self-made goals within persistent, living worlds. That is not an easy thing to do though, as technically Eco can already be experienced over a longer time, people just majorly opt for the massive time investment in packed cycles. If you'd play out the whole thing over 6 weeks, it would look very different - that is also why we polished up the exhaustion feature lately. Some communities already do that, and they work very well. So, exactly what my colleague said: There is massive changes coming that we implement iteratively, which can very well lead to feelings like you currently have. Unfortunately, transforming Eco from a 14 day cycle game to a persistent world game is not a task that can be done with the snip of a finger. And even once that is achieved, most people still play multiple games in alternating ways and don't stick with one forever - hence people will always drop out. Making it easier and a fun thing for people to drop into running cycles is one of the key parts.

Also, if you want to ask Jens more questions - the livestream every two weeks he hosts is a good way to do so. (Next one should be this friday) In opposite to me he doesn't tend to also be active in community spaces outside of work time and aside of that livestream he is working mostly in the backend anyway. You can also see him around on Discord sometimes. That's definitely the better way to get more answers from him, given I can't promise you if and when he'll be checking back into Steam forums that is my domain. And seemingly I'm only "trying" to answer questions for you ;)