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Would you like to see pollution and ecological challenges become a more integral part of Eco, supported by in-game tools and systems for managing them?
FYI I am not SLG staff, I am just gathering this data for my own research.
External link →Would you like to see pollution and ecological challenges become a more integral part of Eco, supported by in-game tools and systems for managing them?
FYI I am not SLG staff, I am just gathering this data for my own research.
External link →The question is a bit odd as it seems to be missing context, as pollution is already a core challenge with real consequences and can be handled with systems like courts and laws when servers use the correct settings for their player amount, which barely any do.
I nontheless voted "Yes! - Make pollution a core challenge with real consequences." as the next minor Update happens to contain changes to those mechanics making them harder and trying to automatically adjust some things when servers were not configured correctly for the player count.
I agree that all mechanisms are in place, but it doesn't feel that way when playing the game. I have spent over 1k hours playing Eco (bought this game in December 2023) and have found that pollution is just a thing that happens on the side IF someone is polluting deliberately.
To expand, what I mean by "Yes! – Make pollution a core challenge with real consequences." is that you would have to put in a SIGNIFICANT amount of effort to have no effect on the environment as the game goes on. At the moment, you don't need to do anything because in order to cause any serious harm to the planet someone has to deliberately pollute and overproduce. And even if such player exists, they get banned for doing so disregarding that this IS the 'core challenge' of the game.
I may be playing on the wrong servers or bought the game at the wrong time (when pollution was nerfed) but that's my experience. What's hard to quantify in Eco is because based on the server people have wildly different experiences so that's worth taking into account as well.
That's exactly what I was saying - you are likely playing a server that isn't using fitting configuration for their player count. We've been constantly repeating and it's noted on the wiki that the ecologic part of Eco only works when the capacity of the world for handling pollution is in balance with the player count, e.g. mostly the server having chosen a fitting world size for the audience.
That unfortunately is not the case for many servers, as many communities value a higher space higher and opt for large servers despite lower player numbers. When the world size is selected fittingly for the player count pollution absolutely does play a role without anyone needing to pollute on purpose. That is well visible on many of the official server cycles, multiple per year ending in a flooded world. White Tiger requires laws to restrict pollution levels, otherwise it would drown just as well - it's a constant heated topic there, as the measures that tend to be taken are restricting players in their ability to craft things.
pollution is already a core challenge with real consequences
Ehhh not really. I think it needs to be dialed way up. I know people who have hundreds of hours in the game, myself included, who can count the number of times the sea level has risen on one hand, for example.
And how often did you play on a server with a world size that supported the player count and that did nothing against the problem? E.g. comparable to the official servers, not going beyond 1km² if there isn't at least more than hundred people, staying on 0.52 km² if its notable less than 50?
Also, it's kinda not the goal of Eco to have the world flood - data for official servers suggests the occurance is of a frequency as we expect it. We are not however responsible for the configuration of other servers - it's understandable and fully fine if those value other needs higher, but it has never been a secret or unknown that the world capacity needs to fit for pollution to pose any threat.
Would you mind linking to this on the wiki? I can't find it, and am curious what the settings should be for about a dozen players.
https://wiki.play.eco/en/Server_Configuration#Change_World_Size
12 players is still coop, so default size.
42/55 people seem to agree that pollution isn't hard enough via the vote.
And that's no surprise given what I already noted.
In my humble opinion, the default setting should be that pollution is based on the active player count. That is easier said than done, but I think it would reflect better what people want, like in the questionnaire.
Currently CO2 offset is based on the amount of trees in the world. It could still be part of the calculation to make it appear more real but the amount of active players would much better represent the challenge that you are facing in the game. Just my two cents.
The CO2 offset of plants is the factor we're going to make flexible based on world size to have a better representation even with over-sized worlds, also removing the cap to allow players to actually have impact by adding new plant life to the ecosystem, having a different means than pollution restrictions to address issues. Additionally all animals are supposed to actually remove plants from the world as part of their diet, which they currently don't do - so basically make sure that your fields are fenced in or there might be some losses, especially if there is no natural plant sources left. Without any food around, the animals will die, though.
Basing it on active player counts is unfortunately neither simple to do to begin with nor easy to balance, so that's not something we're planning. It would also partially remove player agency in pollution, if adjustments were simply made based on how many players are around instead of players actually being the cause of issues that they can also stop to be.
mostly the server having chosen a fitting world size for the audience.
Trouble is, it's pretty typical for a server to get 200 players over the first few days, and then end up with 15 actives in the late game.
That is no problem, the server size recommendations are based on the amount of active players in the second week, respectively whatever the typical point for the respective server is when the bunch people that didn't continue playing after the start is became inactive.
But then you have 200 people squeezed into a medium map for the first couple of weeks. Most servers use large maps out of necessity. Otherwise there aren't enough trees to chop, and not enough land to mine under.
That is not a problem either, but intended. See the official servers, space constraints and managing space are part of the intended gameplay. There is still enough space for all that you mentioned when using the recommended sizes as per the criteria I noted.
Actually the official servers fit pretty exactly into the player count and development you mentioned on a average cycle and additionally ban unclaiming of property for inactivity when the user isn't fully abandoned (either 5 or 7 days, not sure currently) in the rules, yet there is still plenty of space left, which shows there is no necessity for bigger sizes with a bit of space management - they use 1km² with default world generation.
Maybe you refer to some specific server - I don't know too many servers that have cycles where there is a "first couple of weeks", which hints at a long-term server. Experience there may differ, as those tend to naturally focus on core players after a while and to my experience often have massive beauty builds over time as a main factor for playing there. They're however not a common or very popular server type when put in relation to all players and Eco so far isn't made with that play timeframe in mind either, so it makes sense that those might need bigger sizes. I'm not too sure if ecologic issues really are a reason to play there especially in the later weeks when there is mostly core players left, though?
As I said in my original first answer I fully understand when servers prefer to have bigger world sizes and not deal with space management (especially when focused on large beauty builds) or simply prefer to have effectively unlimited space for everyone - it's just not the intent.
In the end we made Eco as configurable as it is so people can play exactly what they personally find fun - we're not judging there. But we unfortunately can't guarantee the intended play experience for every combination of configs that is possible.
To an extent, sure. But overcrowding can be a thing, too. When no one can do anything and they leave because of it, server owners tend to use bigger maps.
It's basically a choice between losing the challenge of pollution, or losing your entire population. And as you've already noticed, most people would rather give up the pollution challenge.
I never mentioned a specific server, this is something I see on a lot of servers. There are some that get like 10 players and then die, but there are several that get a huge crowd, then it dies down, then if you're lucky a few people will join in the late game. You don't see the same issues on official servers because you're always right there on the front page of the worlds page, so you tend to get more late game joiners. For most server owners, retention is a lot more important than it is on the official servers.
Overcrowding is one of the challenges to solve with the governance systems. If players do not want to deal with a specific challenge, then of course admins can make changes as they deem fit for their audience. But it is pretty easy to deal with as the problem isn't that big, especially since the spawning UI exists that distributes players around.
But I personally find it a bit weird to remove multiple challenges purposefully for the audience and then complain the challenge isn't there. And in opposite to sea level rise I haven't experienced an "everyone leaving" due to a bit of local overcrowding that rarely happens to begin with - as I noted a 1km² work is able to sustain a 200 player start with dropoff in week 2.
Ecologic challenge comes from location and player density, so does overcrowding. The two things have a relation.
//EDIT: The assumption that official servers would get more late joiners unfortunately is wrong. In the opposite they suffer a typical "switch to the next official server on next friday" syndrome, so are even more affected by the hard drop after the starting week than most community servers. This results precisely in a big amount starting out and then the dropoff hits heavy, as your example was.
Official servers are also only permanently visible in the "Your Worlds" screen, they have no advantages in the general server list where the vast majority of people look for servers.
Governments take time to get going. I don't always have the time on day 1, then by day 2 I'm surrounded.
They aren't purposely removing the pollution challenge. That's the one they want. Overcrowding isn't a fun challenge, it just blocks people from land, preventing them from playing the game. That's why people here are saying that having a separate config would be ideal.
With pollution, you aren't really prevented, you just have to be patient and slow things down, or plan things out so that during certain times of the day you're running half your machines. While that's going on, there's other stuff to do like building roads. I've seen a few servers where pollution became an issue, even on a large map, and it really was a fun challenge to overcome.
I think land management could potentially be a more fun mechanic if not for how populations tend to boom and then dwindle. But that isn't something you can really make a config for.
Overall, I think the main reason people use large maps is because it helps keep players around. Player retention is very important for a lot of servers. We aren't official and listed in the "my worlds" page all the time, so we don't see as many late joiners. It's pretty common to go from 200 to 15 throughout the game.
For now I think our best options are either large maps, or starter governments that automatically delete abandoned claims. No one wants to wake up and be blocked by claims just because they didn't get a government up fast enough.
Well, I already noted that we are going to introduce some changes that may help with your desire in regard to pollution, just keep in mind the scaling will be artifical and hence never working as well as recommended settings.
We ultimately have no statistical data that would back up any relevant issues with overcrowding, hence there is not much more I could offer to this discussion when it comes to that. I also have no personal experience as administrator of private and official servers nor as player with what you mentioned, I couldn't remember a single situation of overcrowding on recommended settings that would block a bunch of people to do something. The only (unfortunately quite frequent) cases I know is griefers that purposefully surround you and people that drop their homestead somewhere you wanted a road or something else but quit quickly, which is both inconvenient but happens on worlds of any size and can be resolved by the admin or a town government, the latter you can get up in less than 24 hours if quick or comfortably in less than 3 days. Towns sometimes can indeed get quite full (as intended, there is countries to split off), but that rarely causes issues and where it does there is solutions like influence expansion and districting available from the start. And in any edge cases talking is always the easiest and most straightforward solution, often people can move a bit when there is some specific thing someone wanted to extend to. Real problems we only see from conflicts between settlements that do not wish or are unable to find a diplomatic solution or work together for mostly personal reasons, as in compromise capability.
As mentioned, official servers get no notable amount of late joiners at all, that is indeed more common for community servers due to deeper relations with players (people are rather fine to join a "older" server if it's a known or their personal go-to server) and better support for late joining, especially with such that have leapfrogging mechanics. Permanent relations to an official server do exist with some players, but is rather rare (for the vanilla ones I was talking about), there is an extremely high amount of fluctuation compared to community servers. And there is absolutely no leapfrogging mechanics if players don't tend to invent some themselves, which is a rather rare occasion. Given they start in a regular weekly schedule it's absolutely common to wait for the next one starting as well, which unfortunately also is regular advice to new players on e.g. Discord by existing players. Generally late joining is something Eco doesn't support as good as we wished.
Sorry to resurrect this, but can you give an idea on the number or players you'd consider to be "coop", "small" and "large" for these world sizes? I'd like to try tweaking pollution settings to see how much of a challenge can be made, and this would be a good place to start. Also, these player numbers would only matter once pollution-capable things are being made right? Not from the initial server hoppers looking for a place to play :)
I have always gone for 2km worlds in order to have Earthlike maps with continents, and also because I've learnt that players prefer to scatter themselves and have a space of their own, regardless of skill level.
Players shouldn't scatter, that is the direct opposite of how the settlement system works (it's literally built to prevent that type of lone wolf scattering) and only detrimental due to long trading ranges - it always turns out annoying in the end.
As for the sizes, rough estimates:
Coop: < 20 active / unique
Small: < 50 active / < 100 unique
Medium: < 150 active / < 500 unique
Large: > 150 active / > 500 unique
Very large: > 250 active / > 1000 unique