Eco Dev Tracker

Water wheels create mechanical power and only in low amounts - you are supposed to switch to a steam engine later on and then over to the electrical power generators. A way to convert electrical to mechanical and the other way around is planned. (And then you can profit off wind turbines and solar generators)

As for hydroelectric turbines there is unfortunately no such plans. You can add it here, though: https://feedback.play.eco

Sorry to hear you are disappointed by that. Have you tried using aqueducts for your project? We recently fixed some wrong behaviour with aqueducts in Update 10.2, they should be pretty viable for most projects - though there is a few more issues tracked and also a task to make it easier to fill those up completely without needing to resort to some magic trickery as is sometimes necessary.

As for general water behaviour there is unfortunately no current plans to expand that beyond the capabilities it already has, which are similar to minecraft and for the purposes of Eco with the aqueduct available were the goal. We did discuss about a few concepts how that could be expanded, but for now decided against that in favour of other development goals.

When it's already up for debate, let us know your opinion specifically about some of the parts, if you want to:

• Global and personal tasks that provide towards global research progress and could replace tutorials and help people that are "What am I supposed to do now?"
• Research being dependant on whole server progress and freely pickable once unlocked for everyone
• Different things contributing to research progress - raw production, cultural efforts, ecologic state, economic power and potentially positive diplomatic interaction (which was not mentioned in the original post)
• Settlements as option to specialize on specific kinds of production, granting boosts to them and penalties to others
• Victory Conditions (including hidden ones) based on the achievements of the whole server
• The ability of the system to naturally make maximum efficiency and rush at singular people less valuable, also incentivizing them to focus on other thin...

Also - please feel free to hit me up if anything ever feels weird to you via DM or whatever way you prefer. I certainly do not want to confuse people and the situation of me working effectively two jobs at the same time is definitely not great - but if you hint a mistake or improvement option at me, I will most certainly try to improve.

It is an idea with some basic design made by Jens and me, it's been around internally for a while, but only lately got concrete.

That is a business related question I cannot answer, as I am not involved in that. But it is not far-fetched to assume that selling additional copies did work out as planned just fine for a long while until it did no longer. It is not uncommon for games to introduce additional ways for funding later in the development cycle when things change. Audiences for games are now different from ten years ago, they prefer different games and have different focuses on what they want to see in games. As such it is logical that when a specific timeframe passed to keep up with sales, the game needs to adjust to those new audiences if that is the only funding option or introduce new ones.

We have no intentions to introduce any predatory practices to the Marketplace now or later.

Your quote there is a personal statement I made in a discussion with you and that you take it out of the context it was posted in, that was clearly referring to how higher playtime is always an advantage i...

That is a misconception on how things work in detail. The official Animal Husbandry Kickoff meeting was on June 18 2024 - that is when development on it started for actual implementation into an update, as it is now coming.

That some art or design parts of that were already worked on before (as for many other features that will come much later, be moved around in planning or even dropped completely) isn't a contradiction, especially as you quote me with "it's coming". When Jens says he's working on something that does _not_ mean it will be making it into the game anytime soon. Boats were "worked on" as early as 2019. I also stated in other post that art has things done that you may not see in the next two years.

One example of that would be the "Education" feature that is basically nearly done for a year but as you know isn't there, even the option to enable it was removed. Might it still come? Yes. Is there any plans currently? No.

Also note that the feedba...

You are presenting the opinion of a single different user, while we have data available to help us evaluating things on a broad scope over all our users and additional measures that we use to evaluate decisions with players that haven't played Eco ever before. If one of hundred players would be willing to pay-to-play for Eco that is not a reasonable option, not even from a business standpoint. Just a far reached question: Would it be possible, given "MMO" is part of your name, that you have a bias towards the acceptance of monthy payments given that is very common in MMOs?

And I'm not sure why you read in a threat or intimidation into the words of our CEO - he was stating the simple fact that funding is necessary for the game and that without a marketplace that solely comes from new sales - which means that our development needs to be focused on that. I have already explained this multiple times though and the quote of our CEO just confirms that we rather want to have stron...

I appreciate that information, but the past cannot be changed and as such has little relevancy to a constructive discussion about the present, which is the only thing I can provide you with - I've not even been working here for the whole duration of the studio's existance.

Trading marketplace items is not possible by default, you would need to join a specific server that intentionally does that, which is shown to you. No official server will use that setting, but it is a setting that is useful for servers that do not have any competetive economy as they focus on roleplaying or different concepts on how to play Eco. Nontheless that option is still being debated and might not even make it to release.

There is no equal opportunities if you don't have the same prerequisites from which point you can use them and are also realistically unable to create them. That is a scientifically proven fact coming up regularly in real life politics. Your refusal of that is interesting, as that very point is one of the biggest problems in Eco and what creates the actual problems in a server that lead to player drop offs.

All data sources we have show that the single biggest reason for players leaving a server is the unfairness in prerequisites that makes them unable to enjoy the game, as others have vastly more progression or the edge in any and all competition. Resolving that via equalizing the opportunities is not realistically possible, as such holistic solutions will focus around making it impossible for people with better prerequisites to take over the control over a server and incentivize them to help those that don't have the same prerequisites, while improving th...

No advantages are being sold, all contents in the store are cosmetic and identical to their base objects in how they function.

And I've not only being working on the game for six years, but also an active player and server administrator for seven of them, well aware of the shortcomings of the game from both perspectives. I did literally agree with you about many of them.

I'm sorry if you got the impression I would avoid any questions, but I haven't noticed that, feel free to let me know when you notice that again.

It isn't correct that there is no financial incentive to change the systemic issues you talk about, as those are problems that affect any player - no matter if existing or new. But you are correct that for development of changes and features especially desired in the existing community there is no such incentive. And that means both of us have literally been saying the same thing, as that is what we have communicated since the first stream. Let me quote our CEO:

Reason we wanted to do microtranscations is to allow people playing 1000s of hours a way to continu...

You are again assuming we wouldn't be working on changes to game systems addressing problems you have identified, despite I have outlined that isn't true just a few posts before. At the same time you compare us to a company that was sold for 425 million dollars and has capabilities we can only dream of.

We are a small, independant, private development studio founded by former industry employees. I am not involved in business decisions, and neither would we publish internal details of such, but have you ever considered that what seemingly was obvious to you all along might have not been for us, for example because no data suggested that until it did? It is always easy to talk about things of the past when you know the present - but it is never of any constructive use aside of learning for the future.

You are also directly ignoring the majority of things I have said, tendentiously constructing a not actually existing threat of the game otherwise dying we would use to ...

I don't think it is up to me to make an argument on why something is not abuse, given you are the one postulating a thesis here - an alienating one to me, as it would make nearly every multiplayer game I played since Battlefield 2 twenty years ago having abused me, despite me never having felt that. In that game with Special Forces you got new weapons to unlock that could be used on the base game maps against people that didn't have the addon - as it was still called back then long before any marketplaces -, and as such also not the weapons.

I personally agree that additional purchasable items should not have inherent mechanical bonuses over base game items in competetive multiplayer games and that indirect bonuses should best be avoided to provide the game with the necessary fairness for the competition it is about. Eco neither offers items that have inherent mechanical bonuses, nor does it make indirect benefits unavoidable, nor is it competetive when it comes to the game...

What's unfortunate about a game that is based around the creativity and problem-solution ability of the players and administrators then, which was my original question? You made it sound we made the game like this so we can't blamed for something, while we made it because that is what it's supposed to be. That is what was intriguing me and why I initiated conversation.

Also I've never said that we wouldn't be responsible for gameplay and quality, we very well are for the base game mechanics and their ability to be used constructively as well as to guide and support player's in using them - which I already admitted is currently not sufficient and being worked on. Just not every problem in Eco is one that is based on mechanics, there is problems that solely arise due to specific communities finding together and fully intended to be resolved by them.

There is obviously no getting away from taking responsibility nor any intention to (otherwise we wouldn't currently talk in one of many feedback threads about it) and we have never argued that introducing a marketplace was done because others do so. The Marketplace was the outcome of a considered decision - it did play a role that as an industry standard there is data available for it compared to potential custom solutions (and I was comparing with pay-to-play, which is not an industry standard for games like Eco), but that wasn't what sparked the idea to have one at all, but financial necessity. You also have a clear personal opinion revolving around them that I personally don't share - Marketplaces similar to ours being abuse.

I in opposite do actively use them in such games where I have a high amount of play hours and would have been willing to pay more for the game to begin with if that had been possible (and I do so on kickstarter projects for successor games). Marketp...

Thanks for the feedback, I really hope someone creates a suggestion for it on https://feedback.play.eco - otherwise we may do ourselves - so we can see if that would be interesting to a wider audience. So far there is no similar suggestion that I can find.

You are effectively insinuating that the introduction of options would serve the purpose of being able to point with fingers onto others, despite it is always made for the purpose of players being able to adjust their personal experience to their liking and allowing a variety of ways to play - not rarely based on very feedback in the community to introduce such options - including from server admins that would like to customize the experience.

I have already noted that Eco is developed with it being a framework in mind and not as a sole linear game supposed to be played any specific way. Imagine you play a campaign of Dungeons and Dragons and your Dungeon Master makes use of some of the variant options, creates their own campaign with a custom world and own storytelling, prohibits players from using the newly introduced class in the latest book they got as it doesn't fit their world but allows them use a custom created class that they feel is a great addition to their world...