Originally posted by faulty_mainframe

All three of your 'explanations' are cognitive biases. The latter one is especially despicable.

No, they do not have to introduce microtransactions just because all cool kids are doing this. The next step would be gacha. Why nobody in the company has envisioned this situation back at the planning stage, we will never know. In the end, they will do as they please. But that does not mean we have to eat this brown substance of an explanation and ask for more.

No, cosmetics in the microtransaction shop are not okay. They should have been in the base game.

No, trying to shift the blame on the server owners is not okay either.

Originally posted by MatingTime

Honestly... no. It would be one thing if this is a newer game with hyper active devs that's just struggling for some unknown reason. The Finals is a good example.

But this game... as much as I love the core idea behind it. It has one of the slowest, disconnected dev teams I have ever seen hit the early access market, and we need to let it die

TLDR: For as long as this game has been out... it still has early alpha level problems.

The game has some serious problems with its balancing that shatters the gameplay loop, and has for years. By this I mainly am talking about how certain professions run the show while the others play support. Server after server dies within 3 days of starting because one guy with no life got 3 stars ahead of everyone else and is choking the server with their monopoly. Some of their existing professions arnt even finished, and the 10.0 update that took them nearly a year to complete introduced... boats? Who asked for that? The learning curve... I will never suggest a friend buy this game simply because the UI makes me want to chew my face off. It takes 3-5 restarts just to figure out the basics of what you have to do to partake in an economy because the game sure as heck doesn't tell you.
The economy panel has a thousand necessary improvements (why is it so hard to find a person's store after you discover they are selling something you want). Why is there no clear and upfront store ledger giving you a list of what you sold, how much you made/lost. What they do have is buried under the currencies hyperlink like button...

Originally posted by EgoExplicit

I think that they should sell their game to be reskinned into a game that people play. I understand that it started the way it did because it was sold to educational institutions as a learning tool. However, it is not appealing to the general mass gaming crowd in this present form.

Let a company put modern graphics on it, create a survival aspect where you can actually die to add a thrill to it and add some other elements like npcs and missions to spice it up and keep people engaged.

You can then use the licensing fee or whatever to keep your base game going. This game has more depth to it than any other game like it out there. No one else is going to create a game with this much depth to it. These other gaming companies are in it to put the minimum into a game to get the maximum payout. If you sell it as a game engine to be reskinned I think there are companies out there that would jump on it.

Originally posted by DNedry

You just don't get it. Anything I say will not help you understand either. What a sad state this industry is headed. Imagine getting on here and defending a giant game company for charging their players for things that should have been in the base game after 6 years of early access.

Originally posted by TheRedSpaceRobot

Fixed and added context. Apologies Dennis.

Originally posted by TheDarkOnee

Thank you for the boats! Having fun building our harbor town currently :)

Originally posted by dre9889

The developers of Eco need to sit down and have a long think about the core mechanics of their game. Marketplace is a band aid on top of a deeper problem: the core gameplay loop is simply not fun. When a game is not fun, it is obviously going to have cashflow and player base problems. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with MTX or a marketplace in the context of Eco, I just hope that the developers use the extra boost from this wisely or else the same result will come about.

I was mesmerized by this game when I saw it on Steam, and myself and a few friends put a decent chunk of hours in on a couple servers. The simulation aspect is amazing. Feeling like a part of a player-built economy is amazing... Performing nearly every job within the confines of a menu f**king blows. Smelting, machining, refining, all have the complexity of playing Cookie Clicker. There needs to be SOMETHING that requires more mechanical complexity from the player, even if that just means they are clicking ingredients into different buckets or something.

Edit: To clarify, I think every job role should have some interactive component. Hunting, gathering, logging, and mining are good examples of jobs that require at least some level of interaction from the player beyond clicking a menu. In my opinion, nearly every job needs to have a similar level of interactivity, or the core gameplay loop will simply never appeal to a wider audience.

Tl;dr in the current state Eco is Menu simulator and a snooze fest. Developers need to focus primarily on making existing job roles more fulfilling and getting players out of menus.

Originally posted by dre9889

First, I appreciate the reply. It is encouraging to see developer interaction. Thank you.

I have concerns with a focus on expanding the areas of the game that you are describing as "meta" - presumably due to their overarching influence on the simulation aspects of the game - for a few reasons. It's hard to articulate exactly how I'm feeling, but I will do my best.

My perception is that Eco the finished product will shine the most on high population servers. High population means more economy, more pollution, more politics. The meat of the game! The more people, the richer the simulation. Or so my assumptions go.

The simulation can be heady though. Not everyone wants to be the person proposing laws, or arbitraging different goods, or corralling people into alliances. Some people want to just go along for the ride. But how can they be expected to go along for the ride when the ride is so boring unless you are the one driving?

There is a reason that politicians and traders and truck drivers will never be larger employment sectors than production or service sectors; there will always be more followers than leaders, more buyers than sellers, and more producers of goods than transporters of goods.

These jobs are necessary and complex and they need to be in the game, but without the backbone of producers supporting the simulation, there is no substance. What is a politician without an electorate? What is a trader without anyone to buy things?

And here I will try to deliver my thesis:

Being a "worker bee" needs to be made more enjoyable if Eco is ever going to achieve its full potential. The systems that you all have built for being an entrepreneur, a climate activist, and a leader, are all amazing right now. What needs work now is improving the enjoyment for people who just want to go along for the ride.

Any and all jobs involving the production of goods should be fleshed out where possible. I don't know the best way to do this. You say that people dislike certain aspects of the more interactive jobs such as mining and logging. Maybe that is because the majority of feedback you have received about the game comes from people interested in being leaders or entrepreneurs, who are interested in the headier aspects of the simulation. The game can't just appeal to those people if you are to truly take off.

tl;dr I think that if production jobs and crafting jobs were made more interesting, engaging, or thoughtful for the player, it would do wonders for the long-term health of the game.

Originally posted by Decnav

I like building stuff. If my stuff wont be as nice because I didn't pay for the new virtual dress to put on my hewn build, it makes me a second teir builder.

I get why they want the transactions, I just dont want to have to shell out more cash here and there to keep up with having access to all the build materials and decoration items. I would gladly buy an expansion that gave everyone the same access to build / decorate items. I don't want access to items everyone doesn't have.

At 6700 hours on my main account, I got my money out of the game. If it pivots into a direction where I'm a second class builder, then ill move onto another game.

Originally posted by dre9889

I'll start my reply with a clarification: by no means am I suggesting that a large percentage of Eco players inherently wish to disconnect from the broader simulation. As you say, the game is ultimately about global collaboration.

The game is also a procedural voxel sandbox with survival, crafting, and building elements. Interacting with this layer of the game is more of what I meant when I say "worker bee". This is the physical layer of the game: our visual, audio, and kinesthetic window into the simulation. Without it, the simulation would be more akin to a web browser-based forum roleplaying game. It would stretch my imagination to believe that more players would prefer that type of game to one where we interact with the simulation in a voxel based world.

It does not stretch my imagination to consider that many players find the present physical layer of the game tedious. It is the essence of my feedback. Perhaps when people say that they don't like the physical layer, whether that be chopping wood or mining or whatever, it is because they haven't been opened to the possibilities yet.

Here's an example of Eco dropping the ball on physical layer gameplay very hard:

Mason Max sets up a work order where he requests that other masons contribute labor to a task of his. Mason Mary decides to take Max up on the work order. She travels across the map to the work site, perhaps gathering materials for the work along the way. She reaches the work site, and.... opens a menu, proceeds to click a single button 50 to 100 times (contributing labor), while occasionally closing the menu in order to spam click the mouse again (eating food).

Everything before the ellipses is so cool. Two players have come together, using a programmatic contract system and the free market, to accomplish some emergent task. Resources were transported and money changed hands, and the only thing motivating both players was their self-interest and collective interests. Brilliant.

Everything after the ellipses is so boring. Mary has spent her real time transporting goods and negotiating the work only to fulfill it by spam clicking a mouse, with no further thought or mechanical complexity.

I don't care how cool the simulation is. If at the end of the day, the voxel world has nothing to do within it but click buttons within menus, I will not remain captivated for very long. I didn't, and I think the same happens with a lot of people. The loss of captivation has occurred for every one of my friends who purchased Eco, at least 6 or 7 people.

The only players who regularly play, I think, are the people who can stand how boring the physical layer is. These are the diehard simulation fans. There are simply not enough of these people to support the feature set that the game will thrive in. Federations are not interesting when there are 8 people on a server.

The onus is on you guys to come up with interesting mechanics that will make the physical layer interactions more enjoyable. I'm just spitballing here, this is what I came up with:

• Add more physical steps to each job. Much like logging has chopping the tree, cutting into chunks, hauling the chunks. (Although I think there is way more complexity possible with logging i.e. sawing planks manually).
• Make these physical steps into their own little mini-games, where players are incentivized but in no way obligated to do well. For example, Machinists could play an auto-lathe minigame where they have to trace out the parts they are currently crafting. Doing well rewards bonus craft output or reduced calorie cost or something.
• Reduce the game's reliance on the current inventory system AKA magic bubble teleportation fields. Make players pick up blocks and feed them into machines. Give players the ability to craft tools and machines that speeds up, improves, or automates the transportation of blocks between machines.

Originally posted by Decnav

There is no easy solution if your looking for a continuing revenue stream from other than sales.

Like you said an expansion would split the game between with and without expansion, but players on each version would be equal

DLC allows no server version split, but you have people who can never get the cool thing unless the pay a few bux for this and that.

I love looking at other peoples builds to see how someone creatively use that thing in a different way to make it look better. Now the look better part might be they paid money for the better building materials and im still rolling with normal ashlar.

Not a fan of towns and all that either, but that was easily avoidable. This wont be. Ill be puttering in my steam car as the guy that bought the Lambo I cant make drives to his well adorned estate that I will never be able to match the materials of myself.

Sure sound like real life, but im looking to play a game.

The cost of the items isn't the issue, its me not having the same opportunity to build with the same stuff unless I pay, them I'm the elite guy looking down on the poor's

Originally posted by Paukinra

I think that the previous poster's idea sounds interesting, and aligns with what I pictured Eco when I backed it. Adding in interesting complexity to the crafting, turning them into something that is fun to do, would make the game more engaging. The current system of press go on a craft bench and walk away is what has lead to all the servers I have played with my friends ending around bricks/pottery level of tech. I as the logger/carpenter on the first server we played found the logistics of collecting wood and getting it back engaging (building logging roads and the like) but the workbenches just a bit of a 'click what friend has asked for'.

Neither me nor my friends have played a huge number of hours of eco, but we all want to - Minecraft with environment and economy is a great sell to us, but having proper crafting to go with the more complex building already in the game would be a way of keeping us playing longer.