[2020] Boats cancelled?

Hello Staines,
the only roadmap we have at the moment is this one: https://accounts.strangeloopgames.com/roadmap

It displays what is in progress at the moment, as in what the focus for the next update is. (In this case 8.2) We don't have a long-term roadmap at the moment, the listed points below "In Progress" are things we all want to do and want to know your opinion on, but they do not represent the order or likelyhood of if and when they get into the game - that is also stated on that page.

Boats aren't cancelled, but - as we've been stating since quite a while - will come later. Don't expect them in 9.0 or 10.0.

The focus on 9.0 lies on a new mining concept (see our social media for more details) and improvements for the law and government systems. Other notable changes will include fleshing-out work on professions, balance, recipes and several other smaller features.

Hello Staines,
i can understand your opinion, but actually do not have the same feeling.
Building bridges and transporting things with the goods with vehicles work very good for me and the players on my server.

Do you probably play on especially big worlds with low playercounts? When you choose the recommended world sizes for different player counts you usually should not have a problem with transportation and bridges indeed are a big project, but nothing too hard. Building infrastructure is also something we want to encourage.

Boats are a feature that require massive changes, from implementing water physics to adapting world generation once again - making old worlds no longer compatible - for in my opinion little benefit. The only point in time where i ever thought of boats being useful for me (and i have at least 1500 hours actually played this game) was the early-game, when no roads are established and boats could be used for early game transportation needs. In the later game boats only use would be to bring massive amounts of goods from one "continent" to another, then it needs to be redistributed by trucks anyway. When using fitting world sizes (which is recommended due to economical impact being very little when using too big worlds anyway) this is not really needed, though and also would save no to not much time, given boats would be way slower than trucks.

The two only real "blockers" are clay and iron ore. As server admin i ususally try to have the spawn in grasslands for easy access to coal with a desert or a rainforest being on the same continent and the missing biome being on another continent but reachable with a single bridge, that works perfectly. At the time you need gold and copper you should already be able to create more bridges in no-time when people are invested in infrastructure projects, where government comes in place to help you out. But even in times where i did not try to get a map layout like this we had very little problems with transportation - it just took one or two days more to get in touch with the others.

Please note that this point of view is from a multiplayer-only player. Singleplayer may indeed vary, but in this case we need to find a solution that is not necessarily boats, given our focus is multiplayer and how things work should not be changed because of singleplayer, we rather want to find different solutions to make singleplayer easier.

Just to explain to you, why boats have been moved to further away in planning, we see a lot of things we can add and improve that take less resources and have way more impact on how the game is played.

Hey both of you,
i'd like to join one of the server you play on in the future, i feel like there is very little use made of the features ingame, as you just told me if i ever have seen the road builders tearing down the forests - no, i actually haven't. (Though we never do roads with hewn logs, people don't get paid for using those - regulations) I play on a high population server with even more than high collab setting (and therefore even higher player loss) that is medium communicative (but STILL does only play 30 day cycles and actually it dies off way earlier, too!) and where people discuss where roads are going to be and lay out a district and road-laws in planning. I have the feeling you don't use these tools?

We usually pay for the infrastructure projects by government - that's a good reason it is there for. The people planning to skill in cement and basic engineering ususally start from day one with roadmaking and earn their money through that, so roads are pretty much completely done on day 7 on a 2,56 km² map. That's also when we usually reach steam trucks with our collaboration setting.

Actually, roads are usually a extremely good way to get money into distribution for everyone - cooks have to supply the workers, masons and lumberers are needed to build the bridges, basic engineering guys do the roadworks. There is very little professions that are not necessarily needed to engage in infrastructure projects.

The drop off you see is likely not related to boats, but due to the poor game balance when it comes to the later game in general and a non-working economy (not due to transporting issues, but due to the concepting and prices of it), as that can be seen on nearly every server. At a given point in time, players, especially the ones with less time, have problems to do anything meaningful in the game, as smelting and engineering start to become the only real interesting choices of what to do - we are aware of that issue and bringing more meaningful tasks and better profession layout to the game in 9.0.

Of course, even being community manager, i also can only give anecdotical evidence about what players want as i cannot reach the singleplayer only players, but i can reach at least quite some of the ones that are actively engaging in communitties and playing on servers and when i chat about boats most of them tell me that it would "just" be a really cool impressive feature (like trains, btw) that they do absolutely love, but that - in the end - is not much of a gamechanger for them, despite the early game where it would make things a bit easier. And when i ask the question what is more important - spending several months to just have boats with all the required backend changes and work to make them meaningful over the whole course of the game, or spending several months to have bug and performance fixes, balance adjustments, fleshing out professions and several other major features (even if it is government, which people often see as metagame) their choice is clear every time: The latter.

Missing boats can easily be offset by good planning and government funding, though. So i actually never really experienced any problems with that. The official servers also seem to work quite well when it comes to roads.

If you are having issues with too much water, you can also turn down the amount of water in the configs, to only have small rivers - and in exchange lower the world size. (More economical challenge, better performance) I know that this is a workaround, but it's one that works great.

@Staines:
No, that is not what i said. Boats are a planned feature, but one that has low priority at the moment due to the reasons i have stated. I also never stated there would be no people that feel the same like you. I know there are. But you need to understand that this still is not a majority of people.

I was just stating that i don't feel like boats missing is something like a bug (which some people requesting boats seem to state) - they are not a required feature to me which would cause it to have highest priority. For connecting early settlements we usually do a simple thing in just under an hour: Craft ramps, place them in a useful manner and build a basic bridge out of hewn logs over water. That enabled everyone on the servers i play on to trade with everyone in no time, travelling through the wilds and i actually see this happen on a lot of public servers. (Given i personally dislike unplanned roads and things like that, i notice it immediately) This is not much different from boats that also just use any river to get to somewhere, with no fixed "sea-roads" made. This limits the slowdown you are reporting massively.

On the world sizes i deem optimal for specific player counts this worked like a charm. When using bigger sizes, people need to take infrastructural needs into account when they choose where to place their starter camp - but that also is actually an intended feature, not a bug. It's totally intended that someone that lives at the other edge of the world has a hard time getting to other people - encouraging collaboration by settling down near each other.

Probably we have different views on what is an optimal world size?

@Mlaaan:
I don't think i'm fortunate to be able to, given i host my server myself (you're welcome to play there) and play on the official servers as well as the bigger community servers sometimes. Those are also the servers i'd recommend players to play on. It's a lot more of fun to play on servers with active admins caring and people being organised. But just to be clear, i do not have a single friend of my regular playgroups playing Eco.(Which is sad, but they have no creativity and rather play Battlefield …) My server has some permanent residents, but playing mainly with "publics" is intended. Publics, that won't be there for the whole cycle and may are never seen again on the next cycle. What i want to say: Neither my server nor i myself have a fixed group. It works nontheless, given some people being very invested in making concepts. And that actually is part of Eco. Mostly the admins do that. Of course playing on some random server where noone - not even yourself - is planning or using laws at all will feel odd, but that is one of the ways you can experience Eco. If you don't want that - start to plan yourself or visit a server that does the planning for you. Yes, that might need some tries, but you'll find one, i promise you.

I'll also be very honest: First thing when i get a new game is searching a community to play on. I'd personally never play on a random spawned server with probably first-time admins, given i'm administrating gaming communities for more than 15 years now and know that this not the best thing to do in any game out there. (And yes, i even did that for shooters back in the times they still had community run servers. Servers where agreements like you don't shoot someone when he pulls out the knife were a matter of honor! Those times are gone since at least the time where most games made knifes one-shot-wonders)

As for the water, that was a suggestion. I personally don't like those big oceans at all.

Regarding Sea-Otter: Those wastelands are typically. My server does have some basic constitution laws from the beginning, but none that would prevent that. Having a mess of stumps and pulp is totally common and not hurting. I don't see the problem with that. Later on, people will remove that stuff given they get paid for by a law.

It's just the fact that you state the early game would be a problem in Eco which i don't agree. I feel exactly the opposite - the late game being the problem, as of it being inexistant. And that's the experience i've been gathering more and more over the course of the six months i'm Community Manager, over the one and a half year i've been hosting one of the biggest eco servers out there and even more time in just playing the game. Sure, this cannot resemble how things are on random servers, but as i said - Eco is best played on community servers, no matter if you are or want to be part of that community. (And actually, most players on multiplayer DO play on the bigger community servers. Yes, there are way more random servers [most of them being empty]- but the player counts of the non-random servers are 6 to 10 times as high as on those "random" servers) There are enough community servers out there that love "publics".

Server choice matters. In any game. Especially in Eco. And yes, we'll have a lot of improvements in 9.0 for how to find the server you want to play on!

Also, please don't assume my opinion comes from the fact i'm the Community Manager. It's actually the other way round. I've been playing this game for hours, hosting a presumably cool server and been asked if i would like to do that. I've not studied community managment. I've actually agreed cause i love the game and do this next to my main job. I'm still a normal player - like everyone else.

All in all, i rather have the feeling that there is a big problem in server rating and choice that we need to care of, given how fun Eco is is largely dependant on the server you play on.

Dear Staines,
even though you deleted your post, i'll answer to it anyway.

I did listen to your concerns and i also did explain in very much detail that i do see those, but also why i don't agree with the results presented. If you are misunderstanding me, i beg for the bonus of english not being my native language.

In the end Eco has a specific vision and it's our job to get the vision into the game while making it playable and useful. Some changes are more important to be done earlier, some are less important to be done.Hundreds of factors play a role. Some changes can't just be made like some people want without hurting the vision. That's why we state Eco is made for multiplayer - multiplayer with a medium to large sized group of people. If we could make the game complete and perfect in a simple snip, we would do it. Unfortunately we are a little indie game company and need to distribute our resources where they are most needed. And where they are most needed is a mix of game design, different community opinions and their quantity. Of course, bugs and performance needs to be adressed, also.

And while the early game for sure could use improvements, i never stated it could not, i have the feeling that if early game works good or does not is greatly dependant on which server you join. Given we have an idea of what a server could optimally look like, we want to improve the ways to find a fitting server for the playstyle a player wants - and will experience a better early game then.

But comparing the early game with the later game, the early game is one of the most-fleshed out things, so the priority on changes there is not as high as changes elsewhere and that is also what the overwhelming majority of players that voice their opinions to me state. And 9.0 will start to address these problems with professions and offer more things to do in the game - cause that is something nearly everyone states to me. What to do on day 14 when we've been too fast in shooting the meteor down? How to keep people interested in the game, when they see their profession is useless?

That everyone takes hewn logging at the beginning is not a flaw from my perspective, but intended behaviour - it's one of the basic skills that will get more meaningful later in development for other professions.

I'm sorry that this does not fix the problems that you feel are most important first, but we need to make choices and those might not be the ones you would have done (given your review), but that doesn't mean they're necessarily questionable or wrong. I hope you can understand that.