Yes, you can completely turn the marketplace on your server off, if you don't like it. You also cannot trade marketplace items or use them as non-owner unless you specifically enable either of the options - which is displayed to the user on the server list.
As for the reasoning I refer to plenty of other threads all around to not circle through all the same arguments for and against again.
I played on the Ember servers that did this and it really did encourage more play for a longer amount of time during seasons, so I'm excited at the prospect of this being natively within the game!
Mind noting in detail what parts they did and how they implemented that via current systems? (I guess some manual admin interaction would be part of that?)
Read moreOK so I powered up the PC to write this one and I hope I don't get downvoted into oblivion.
To mitigate solo players tryharding into one advanced field and creating a monopoly we could:
Make research and unlocking skills consume more time and resources. Even the basic resource skills would require research.
Create an modifier to research speed and amount of resources required based on a settlement cultural value (culture bonus for nice architecture plz), ecological impact, population, mechanical power, electricity and other factors you can think of to make researching while being citizen of an settlement attractive.
Make knowledge transfer organically from the first person that unlock it to his settlement and beyond. This way the tech will not get "locked" until another person researches it again or buys a skill scroll. The more goods made with that skill you sell the faster it becomes "common domain". After reaching some thr...
So you basically want to avoid the "hard" gate in server progress that the idea has? I guess it could be possible to balance spread mechanics in a way that power players are sufficiently migitated, but I think that would be very hard - especially when thinking of the system needs to work on different server sizes and with different compositions of players.
The general idea of knowledge spread between settlements is something I also considered, though, so thanks for that feedback :)
Read moreYou post here under the label "SLG Staff", but you constantly use your subjective assessments as a player and state that your position is not official. Then what is the point of our communication? I'm not interested in having a conversation about monetization and its methods with someone who sees nothing wrong with what I consider to be blatant abuse. You clearly aren't interested in my opinion because you keep claiming you have statistics and they are more important.
I'm not arguing that statistics are more important. But I don't understand why we're having this personalized conversation then. Just keep an eye on the stats. Right now your game has the lowest online since the release of Eco 9.0. For the first time in the history of your game, user ratings have collapsed. I'm convinced that the reason is the announced business model, even though you think it's harmless.
I will also try to influence the stats from my side. After all, it is important, as we are both co...
I have that tag because I work for SLG, but that does not mean that everything I say somewhere (especially when I specifically note "I" instead of "We" - I cannot on demand turn that tag off, unfortunately) is a direct SLG statement just because I work for it. Many members of our staff are around on some channels and engage with players on a regular basis, much of that interaction happening in our free time. Providing some insight and personal opinions by people working on a game can be very interesting to players, even if it is for some reason not for you - Reddit is ultimately a discussion platform, one of its very purposes is to exchange opinions. You posted an interesting thesis, I was intrigued and asked to find out what is behind. You asked me questions - I answered. I asked you questions - you answered. You brought up feedback - I made sure the team hears it.
I am not sure what your exact expectation was, given the company stance has been provided long before our dis...
Read moreDo you plan on making hydroelectricity a viable option for power? From what I see, you would need way too many water wheels to actually be able to power things
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:
Appreciate the response as always Dennis.
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.
When was this written? Just want to know if it is still hot on devs’ plate or it has no discussion value for a long forgotten one
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.
How could you initially plan a forever game without having an appropriate business model for it from the beginning?
On the other hand, for six years you told your clients that a single payment of thirty dollars was enough for your forever game. Now you are saying it’s not enough. Tomorrow you will introduce new microtransaction options, even more predatory than the ones currently proposed, because it still won't be enough.
I already understand that the official position of SLG is "The idea of games (be it Eco or any other) being an equal opportunity space is very commendable, but a dream that doesn't exist." After this statement, you can introduce anything into the game.
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...
Read moreRead moreEh, for the benefit of others reading, I'd take everything SLG-Dennis says with a HUGE pinch of salt. He acts like he doesn't know what's going on with the current development when it's convenient for him to do so, either here or on the Steam forums I've noticed.
Case in point, Jens had said on the developer stream months ago they were working on animal husbandry. Fast forward to the most recent official Eco questionnaire players were asked to fill out, one question was "what feature would you like to see?" with Animal Husbandry being an option. I mentioned to Dennis that it's kinda cheating as we know its already in development. Dennis' response was to play dumb and basically say "I am unaware its coming" which was just flat out wrong as it was then officially announced in a steam blog thingy mere weeks later.
Eco would benefit greatly from a proper community manager ala Satisfactory for example - with proper curated information, rather than Dennis saying one thing...
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...
Read moreRead moreLet me quote the member of your community:
Subscription model is more fair IMHO - you pay for a game you spend time with to be in active development and as a subscriber you can expect some level of support from the developers - bugs fixed, content added in regular intervals etc. Just like you pay for your netflix, cable, whatever.
A game that reached a fair version 1.0 can be left there and TBH developers have no obligation to work on it forever - there are exceptions on the market but not that many.
Financing prolonged game development from micro-transactions is not transparent at all - we (players) benefit nothing from the cosmetics if we don't buy them but we lose the studio effort that could be put in elsewhere - for example new content. Time is not elastic - if they dint hire anyone to make the stuff it means the effort was taken from the game development.
There is also the danger of the game being ...
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...
Read moreFor your information, CCP had 25 employees at the time of EVE Online's launch. They took out a $2.6 million loan from a local bank on standard terms. This dramatically differs from your company's history only in that they initially operated under a pay-to-play business model. And now you look at their position as something to you "can only dream of".
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.
That's not even funny. Where will a customer (player on the server) go, to the shop with 1 bed or store with several different beds with different skins so they can choose one they like the most? That's a direct advantage.
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.
Read moreIt doesn't matter what you, as a specific player, feel or don't feel. The fact that you are accustomed to abuses in games and have dealt with them since childhood has no relevance to our discussion. We are talking about the essence of processes, not your subjective perception of them.
I see a fundamental flaw in your reasoning. You believe that any game is unfair if it has progress because two different players have different amounts of time to play or started the game at different times.
In reality, the game offers these two players absolutely equal opportunities for each unit of time spent in the game. This is the basis of asynchronous gameplay, which your company offers to players.
It also doesn't matter whether in-game purchases affect mechanical bonuses or not. Not everything in the game is measured by concepts such as direct mechanical bonuses. If a person wants to spend real money on any item that materializes in the game after payment, it means that ...
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...
Read moreSome things are objectively bad and are not about debates or emotions. Not comparing, just illustrating the point:
A lot of people in North Korea don't feel violated, however the fact they don't feel that doesn't change the fact their regime is very bad.The same thing (but much less dramatic and not life threatening) is here. While you don't feel violated, selling advantages in the game is bad. And trying to normalize it is also bad.
No advantages are being sold, all contents in the store are cosmetic and identical to their base objects in how they function.
Read moreI know what I'm talking about because I play your game, have been writing about it for six years, and have organized long-term servers with significant achievements.
I apologize if my words seem rude. I get a bit annoyed because it feels like you manipulate arguments, evade uncomfortable questions, and speak in axioms where proof is needed. However, I'll try not to annoy you in return.
Let me give you a simple example. I paid you money six years ago. I've already gotten much more value than what I spent. But there are systemic problems that, as a player, I am unhappy with. From a financial standpoint, it doesn't matter if I'm happy or not. I've already paid you. I don't see any financial incentive for you to change anything for me.
You say you don't want to make an MMO. But I didn't ask you to make an MMO. I never once used the term MMO in my arguments. I wrote that you have spent three years developing very interesting systems that don't work without consol...
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:
Read moreReason we wanted to do microtranscations is to allow people playing 1000s of hours a way to continu...
Read moreI'm not talking about your intentions, I'm talking about the ecosystem that has emerged in reality. Shifting the technical tasks of maintaining server hosting to the players was a logical decision for a small company on start. But it led to the fact that along with hosting you naturally gave away control of the entire gameplay.
Along the way, you've unintentionally created a very toxic ecosystem of competition for users that kills most of those mechanics that make your game interesting. The game becomes a speedrun through the progress tree and destroying a meteor up to five players as fast as possible. You can kill boss (meteor) in any game that doesn't have the mechanics of currency creation, laws, countries, federations, and cultural influence.
You have the right to present your work as a framework, but I believe your systems lack the flexibility and level of abstraction that a framework is supposed to have. Players either use your systems or they don't because t...
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 ...
Read more
devtrackers.gg