Opinion on EcoCoins?

You can disable players being able to sell paid items to other players in the server config. (It's actually disabled by default)

Cosmetics work as their own objects based on a base object, they fully support all laws as well. Exempting them would not make sense, given the idea is to fully integrate them into the normal gameplay in all regards. They are not supposed to give any benefits - be it only that they cannot be targeted by laws in opposite to the base variants.

Clothing is something we could imagine as well, people will be able to give feedback during the playtests on what they would like to see in the Marketplace.

They are separate objects, they just inherit values from the base object and use it for crafting - as such they can all be targeted separately.

Configurability by the server was actually considered - it would require populating a config file with every single cosmetic variant, as the limits are set separately for every object and are different for at least every item category. That can become quite convoluted.

It would of course also prevent us from having special deals like higher limit purchases or packages, which we wanted to keep as an option for now. It is also debatable how players react when their purchased goods availability is different per server, directly supported by us, compared to only be restricted from selling them to other players which we can easily note in the purchase terms. There is a fine line between "players purchased something and expect to be able to use it" and "the items must follow all rules that every other does in Eco to not provide any benefits".

I suggest you bring that up in the feedback channels once the playtest starts, reconsideration isn't out of question. That's also the best place for "I want the cosmetic variant to have to be selected at the time of item creation" - as mentioned in a different comment, these objects aren't technically skins as our system is just not supporting something like that yet. Them just being treated like a crafting variant could also be a potential option for the future, I unfortunately don't know out of my head why that wasn't done - likely it was necessary to separate them for some UI features related to the Marketplace.

I can understand that - during the planning phase of the Marketplace we actually had the opposite concern - the system being used to prevent such items to be made / used.

We ultimately settled on the fact that Eco needs to stay Eco and that existing mechanics need to apply to those objects as they do to every other object, any form of malicious abuse will need to be handled through ToS.

It's still only a first implementation that works with our existing systems, given the objects aren't technically skins, but separate objects inherting from the base object. That may change in the future and has already been suggested to do, also for ease of use.

Locking gameplay content behind payment would not fare well in a economic community game. Introducing new paid professions and content would certainly work without splitting players onto different servers, but it is hard to make meaningful as we interlink all our professions and content to require the collaboration the game is about.

That would not be possible with paid professions (otherwise they would be necessary for progress), which in turn would make the appeal for such a profession that must then ultimately be fully optional very low - and if the benefits it gave are notable enough that there is big desire, it would understandably be considered pay-to-win.

That is just not what we want to do, any try for something like that in a game like Eco would ultimately end up in a split community, even when everything can be used on the same world. That is still as deadly to games long-term as it was years ago when multiplayer games typically still released expansions instead of battle passes with the seasonal content available for everyone. The industry moved away from that on purpose for multiplayer community and live service games. And while I can fully understand the dislike for those concepts, those that were done well had clear benefits for keeping together communities and hence game longevity.

As far as expansions go, players that followed us on Kickstarter might still remember that if Eco would ever get an "expansion" that would rather be a separate game that can be played fully standalone but optionally interlink with an Eco world - potentially similar to how ARK and other games do multi-server concepts, just more meaningful in design (instead of "go to obelisk and transfer some acceptable items and creatures"). The server software was built to support that, as can be seen on our Kickstarter page. What you would call "typical DLC content" was never planned for Eco to begin with, including for after release.

I'm also pretty sure that paid gameplay content compared to cosmetics would have a much, much lower acceptance as players do obviously still want more content in all regards - and rightfully so, given we are still in Early Access -, likely much more than some cosmetics that are specifically made for the marketplace. Eco had no real cosmetic variants aside of stemming from resource variants with the exception of maybe clothes that aren't even part of the marketplace yet - we had no plans for cosmetic variants of objects as part of the normal game at all. We also have communicated and stand behind the desire to add more content to Eco after release via normal updates, given the possibilities are near endless.

Cosmetics also allow us to deliver very theme-based content (as you could see in the stream examples) that isn't necessarily interesting for the whole or even bigger parts of the audience and that we would have never brought into the game otherwise, but feel can be beneficial for servers.

And it's necessary for the shares to work, as they will be credited in Eco Coins.