The future of ECO

[IlBueganzi]

What will be the future of Eco? will there be a sequel? What are the programs?

Unfortunately I bought this game in its dying stage, I would have liked to discover it years ago. I also see that the development takes a very long time, I don't have much hope (indeed none given the general mood), also because in the last year I have entered the game around thirty times and 27 of these the game was unable to load the i public and private worlds.. well, if I could, reluctantly, I would ask for a refund for the immense inconvenience that this production and its management gives me.

[Nightwalker]

Early access hell, like so many other promising games where developers shifted from their original promise to backers.

Other option is they will leave Early Access before it is a polished game and without fulfilling most of promises. It will not be surprising if they just do some improvements to animals and say they are finished with Early Access while everything else remains the same.

[Cain]

still no trains years later insane

[Mighty Joe Young]

Originally posted by Nightwalker:

Early access hell, like so many other promising games where developers shifted from their original promise to backers.

Other option is they will leave Early Access before it is a polished game and without fulfilling most of promises. It will not be surprising if they just do some improvements to animals and say they are finished with Early Access while everything else remains the same.

yeah. friends and I tried it ehh for about a week. I'm no pro, but logging looks unfinished. Hunting is a joke...most animals don't flee and fishing is god awful. you can touch a fish without reeling and you get it lol

not to mention they go so deep into farming...like super realistic...then randomly state you don't need water...? i have to worry about locality and moisture...but i don't have to water?
fertilizing should be farming...waste of a point. and what does it have to do with making ponds?
you cannot trash everything in game, which they want it to be realistic...but again, there are so many unrealistic things with this game....so why not?
list goes on to be honest. I also don't like how your specific skill needs other skills to function. i figured the point of this game was to become a professional at something to help the community, but looks like I need 3 other players to even get started with my skill. Looking at cooking and smithing mainly.

[Py_Thony]

Originally posted by Mighty Joe Young:

Originally posted by Nightwalker:

Early access hell, like so many other promising games where developers shifted from their original promise to backers.

Other option is they will leave Early Access before it is a polished game and without fulfilling most of promises. It will not be surprising if they just do some improvements to animals and say they are finished with Early Access while everything else remains the same.

yeah. friends and I tried it ehh for about a week. I'm no pro, but logging looks unfinished. Hunting is a joke...most animals don't flee and fishing is god awful. you can touch a fish without reeling and you get it lol

not to mention they go so deep into farming...like super realistic...then randomly state you don't need water...? i have to worry about locality and moisture...but i don't have to water?
fertilizing should be farming...waste of a point. and what does it have to do with making ponds?
you cannot trash everything in game, which they want it to be realistic...but again, there are so many unrealistic things with this game....so why not?
list goes on to be honest. I also don't like how your specific skill needs other skills to function. i figured the point of this game was to become a professional at something to help the community, but looks like I need 3 other players to even get started with my skill. Looking at cooking and smithing mainly.

This is a concern I share regarding development 'thinking'.

There is great progress on points that absolutely do not interest me, such as electoral interactions between players.

But as of version 10 there have been no changes regarding the role of water in the ecosystem or related to overall terraforming.

The list is indeed long, elevators which are not designed to stop at one floor, constructions authorized on the high seas but no pump to empty large quantities of water or conversely no possibility of filling a hole to create a new pond.. etc..

But this is not a bug, but a way of seeing the game during its development.

I disapprove of the arrival of a market where I am asked to pay SIX euros! for a simple 'custom' wooden panel while I can always cross a bison which is just a featureless sprite.. Besides, we must preserve the environment to allow the species to grow, but no baby animals , no male/female differentiation, no breeding/feeding/etc. areas.

I am keen to think that ECO does not just want to model Minecraft to sell goodies in its market, but that on the contrary, it wants to be THE reference for community management of an ECOSYSTEM! ;)

For developers:
When we explode the meteor 40 times, the lifespan of ECO is based on the experience of solo players / with friends who manage a planet and not just a short mission.

My personal server is set to 1000 days, having construction sites modifying areas of 30,000 blocks, roads that go around the planet, an inhabited area in the open sea disbursed down to layer 1, etc.

And all that ruins the experience are those little things that are 'poorly thought out' at the start when launching a feature.

for example, why can't you take more than 3 blocks of earth with an iron shovel, but you can take FIFTY blocks of earth from the reserve with that same shovel?

I still have to say that this game is really great! but I seriously doubt the commercial turn that is taken before refining the details of the game.

At 25€ ECO is a golden game!
At 1000€ and more (for those who want to buy the store), ECO calls for criticisms that I would never have allowed myself to make before version 10..

[Astral]

You know what I find funny in the market, the official servers seem to not allow their own skins.
Which makes you think why am I paying for something that only works on custom servers?
At least that's my experience in SLG-Giant Panda.

[SLG-Dennis]

Originally posted by Astral:

You know what I find funny in the market, the official servers seem to not allow their own skins.
Which makes you think why am I paying for something that only works on custom servers?
At least that's my experience in SLG-Giant Panda.

Just as with all other settings, the official servers aim to provide a basic variety of different options for marketplace settings so players can choose on their own what they prefer. Here's an overview:

Coast Redwood: Marketplace enabled, Trading Marketplace items enabled, Using Marketplace items without owning them enabled
Dusky Robin: Marketplace enabled, Trading Marketplace items disabled, Using Marketplace items without owning them disabled
Dusky Robin: Marketplace disabled, Trading Marketplace items disabled, Using Marketplace items without owning them disabled
Sea Otter: Marketplace enabled, Trading Marketplace items disabled, Using Marketplace items without owning them disabled
White Tiger: Marketplace enabled, Trading Marketplace items disabled, Using Marketplace items without owning them enabled

Originally posted by Py_Thony:

constructions authorized on the high seas

This should not be the case. There is a config option that can be enabled to allow this, intended for servers that prefer the pre-boat experience, but that isn't enabled by default. Maybe you are playing on a server that has this option enabled?

Originally posted by Py_Thony:

But as of version 10 there have been no changes regarding the role of water in the ecosystem or related to overall terraforming.

You can vote on water physics and (suggest) other features you'd like to see on https://feedback.play.eco. There is also one for elevator stops. Unfortunately neither are currently planned.

Originally posted by Cain:

still no trains years later insane

Trains have always been communicated to be very unlikely to be added during Early Access. They are still up for vote and planned for some time after the release: https://eco.canny.io/admin/feedback/feature-suggestions/p/trains

[Afrozzi]

But years ago there already was already a vote presented to early backers to decide the most desired features, with trains presented as an option. Trains won. Was that completely ignored or just forgotten?

Then there was the interactive road map, "Eco Tree" that existed for years. That was removed because of a "bug" with the introduction of the new microtransactions back-end system. We were told it would be back soon, whatever happened to that?

Mostly recently we were told that full release would come late 2024/early 2025. Is that still the plan?

[RLeeErmey]

I love the game otherwise I wouldn't have put so many hours into it. But I find people play for half the cycle and quit. We need some sort of endgame that makes people want to come back even if the meteor is destroyed. Meteor fragments? Multiple ways to destroy the meteor (icbms?) Change it to a comet with fragments that hit before the main impact that will make things more difficult?

Then again sea level rising and destruction of stuff is demoralizing. So maybe make the impacts drop resources that people need badly for a t6 style stuff needed to destroy the main one.

Make the ending in stages is all I'm saying with randomness added to it. It'll keep people interested.


Also allow us to add a slider or ability to adjust ore deposit densities, sizes etc. Add more types of rock (Marble, Quartz) and gems for decor etc.

[SLG-Dennis]

Originally posted by Afrozzi:

But years ago there already was already a vote presented to early backers to decide the most desired features, with trains presented as an option. Trains won. Was that completely ignored or just forgotten?

That was a poll to gauge player interest for internal purposes at a early development stage about different, already planned features and did not in any way decide order of development nor was intended to do so - the feature scope was already determined, the poll helped us with internal decision making. When looking at implementation of different items from that poll you will notice that they have been all implemented out of order in a way we deemed fitting for the needs of the game, taking care about different interests to keep a balance about the different design goals of the game. Eco wouldn't work at all with just boats and trains, but no economic features that were voted rather low.

It is why I noted that trains are still a planned feature (in opposite to other features on the suggestion tracker, which also has the purpose to gauge interest but does not mean any specific feature will be implemented at all or next; even though we intend to implement most of the top-voted suggestions at some point) - already back then it was communicated that trains are unlikely to happen in Early Access by my predecessors, and by me since 2018. The desire for trains is understandable, but they are a major feature that requires notable changes to the gameplay to be of actual value to the gameplay, as the mass transportation they were intended for is currently simply not necessary. (If talking about actual trains as on the top of the list back then, not minecarts)

Originally posted by Afrozzi:

Then there was the interactive road map, "Eco Tree" that existed for years. That was removed because of a "bug" with the introduction of the new microtransactions back-end system. We were told it would be back soon, whatever happened to that?

That is still coming back, but as mentioned before has low priority compared to other tasks our web developer needs to handle first.

Originally posted by Afrozzi:

Mostly recently we were told that full release would come late 2024/early 2025. Is that still the plan?

Yes, though I already communicated last year that the exact date is unlikely to be possible to hold. There is however only few (~ 2-3) minor updates missing before the final major one that introduces Animal Husbandry.

[Afrozzi]

Nice to know 5 months later the roadmap is still considered not worth it to fix. I'm sure there is a mountain of work keeping the web developer busy.

And 2-3 minor updates needed... an entire skill rework to allow infinite star spending, pipes for oil drilling, and new disasters to keep endgame interesting. In addition to other promised stuff like new vehicles, polluted water actually having impact, and placing items anywhere. The skill rework alone should require months of testing, unless it is rushed out. We will be lucky if this is released by 2027 based on current pace of development.

[Vos]

Originally posted by Afrozzi:

Nice to know 5 months later the roadmap is still considered not worth it to fix. I'm sure there is a mountain of work keeping the web developer busy.

And 2-3 minor updates needed... an entire skill rework to allow infinite star spending, pipes for oil drilling, and new disasters to keep endgame interesting. In addition to other promised stuff like new vehicles, polluted water actually having impact, and placing items anywhere. The skill rework alone should require months of testing, unless it is rushed out. We will be lucky if this is released by 2027 based on current pace of development.

I was just looking for it myself today. What a shame as I was going to recommend to our server group but without a roadmap and evidence of the devs working on it there's no chance they'll bite.

[RLeeErmey]

Government workers

[SpaceCowboy7]

Seriously, a refund? You got to be ******* kidding me.

Its a great experience playing this game time and time again. don't like the game settings, or any items configurations ect, there are loads of mods to address this and build a world you would like. Or just go edit some files and place them in the user code folder, just make the correct folder and rename them from Coal.cs to coal.override.cs )e.g.)

[IHaveNoMercy]

Originally posted by IlBueganzi:

What will be the future of Eco? will there be a sequel? What are the programs?

Unfortunately I bought this game in its dying stage, I would have liked to discover it years ago. I also see that the development takes a very long time, I don't have much hope (indeed none given the general mood), also because in the last year I have entered the game around thirty times and 27 of these the game was unable to load the i public and private worlds.. well, if I could, reluctantly, I would ask for a refund for the immense inconvenience that this production and its management gives me.

You sound so entitled right now. The game is fine, Change the settings and host your own server if you dont like the standard. If you are disconnecting from servers, you will need to look into your router settings and talk to your ISP about that, you cant blame game developers. We dont share your issues, so you cant speak for everyone with a post like this. You cant buy a car from a dealership drive it around for a week and then go back to the dealer and say it wasnt for you. The money you gave them for the game is theirs now, you can learn to live without it, you bought a product/service. you are not just magically entitled to have it back.

[Barometz]

Originally posted by IHaveNoMercy:

We dont share your issues, so you cant speak for everyone with a post like this.

At no point does the OP attempt to speak for others, but instead they are sharing their personal opinion and experience.

This statement is pretty funny, because it's literally speaking for others, while telling someone they can't speak for others.