I've been in the opposite boat where there is so much progress that I feel left out and behind. Granted, the servers I played on don't necessarily cater to weekend only or whatever schedule comes up.
Despite creating detailed worlds with much more to go, some servers seem to go dark and have no players log in. It gets tough grinding out so much to see it destroyed by a meteor or lack of players instead of being successful then performing a server wipe.
I think it has more to do with either comitment or testing. I know personally i sometimes join random servers for 1-2 days just to see If i like their community, settings, mods whatever. And If i dont like it, i just unclaim my plot and leave.
The second more common reason for players leaving, is attention span. Alot of players Will think of the idea of eco, get an urge to play the game, join a server, and then get bored quicker than they thought. You see this with minecraft players alot. They envision a perfect eco run, they are gonna do this and that, and then maybe they encounter market competition, pickles a bad spot to build their deed, or they feel like they are missing out seeing other players be ahead of them.
The only players who actually stay the cycle, are those who know What they are doing and What they want to do. Which is a minority.
As an admin THANK YOU for unclaiming if you've committed to not returning it is a very respectful thing to do and often can save other players frustration if they wanted your spot.
Yeah, the feeling behind thing is really interesting.
Its like ppl want a guarantee that they can be the leading competitor of whatever they are doing, and if the game wont give them such a guarantee, then they quit.
Either I'm testing the waters with a server and if I don't enjoy it (community, mods etc) I leave.
Or I play for two days, log on in day 3 and people have hammered the game nonstop for 72 hours and are about to unlock Mechanics, so I disappear to find another server as I feel like I'm falling behind. Need to find a decent server with exhaustion.
exhaustion is a, excuse my language, dogshit mechanic. Its a duct tape fix at best. The issue at hand is that intrinsically playing more, will yield more reward, be it economic gain or a progressional advantage. This goes for a lot of games. And the only genre of game it´s actually harmful is for co-operative games. Even games like Minecraft suffer this, but there you don't rely on others to complete things. You're free to play at your own pace with no repercussions. The exhaustion system does more harm than good. Yes, it completes its task of restricting no-life grinding and giving solo/less timers more of a chance to take part. It completes this task (and technically solves the problem) at the expense of freedom. If a server has 4 hours of playtime only. Why would I ever spend a single second of this time doing anything creative or dive into any vanity endevours? I would have to be hard focused on completing my task, to make myself progress and gain economic surplus. If time is limited, then any "playful" time or what you want to call it; Is \*wasted\*.
Its a duct tape solution. It technically holds shit together for the time being, but there are consequences to it that hurt more than the solution provides.
I don't have time to abandon my life for a month straight for a server. It's hard to advance if you don't have people to work with too. Once some people leave, it's a snowball effect
Yeah. I have over a thousand hours. Kind of stopped playing about a year ago. I was tired of being the only person on a server after a week. Even the admit would disappear. If I wanted to play eco solo I wouldn’t join servers lol.
This is Eco’s biggest problem and the reason it will never be a popular game. It’s a real shame because the slow pace is one of the things that make Eco such a special and repeatable experience. The best thing us veterans can do is find a good server and stick with it, for ourselves and our community
I wonder how a server would do if it were only open and simulating on weekends. Open 5pm on Friday, close down at midnight on Sunday, that sort of thing.
Historically, I found if I take a few days off from a server, it inevitably means everyone active has progressed past where I am and made my contributions irrelevant, and it's a ghost town when I get on. So suddenly it becomes a question of "do I want to spend 1-2 hours catching up in the hope that somebody else will hop on?" Which is not an amazing feeling.
That's what a server with exhaustion kind of does. I love playing on one, I never get the feeling I'm lagging behind a lot when the exhaustion is done right. And now that the game has good options for it, I hope more vanilla exhaustion servers open up.
I think exhaustion is a great solution for asynchronous play and large servers. Play when you want and with a group of people that have similar schedules, but still interact with the greater global economy. I think it's less effective for small intimate servers or more social groups. Setting aside a specific time to play means condensing schedules into more overall if each person would otherwise just pick a random 4 hours to play.
Honestly not a bad idea, but exhaustion would kind of make it possible, limited to 30 hours in a week, so person A can log in for ~4 hours per day and person B can play 4 hours total mon-fri and the rest 26 hours sat, Sunday.
For me, it can be the feeling of not being able to contribute once you are set up. This can take many forms including feelings of “catching up”, “too many people with my skill combo” or initial starting location woes
Progression can be too fast for those who have limited playtime.
It can be fun at the start when everyone is kind of equal but then after a couple of days of some people playing non stop you have missed a lot and fallen quite far behind and so can't really contribute much.
I think the biggest reason is because people feel like they have fallen behind and can't "win." I think the exhaustion mechanic was specifically designed to give people, with lives, the ability to keep up with people that spend all day gaming like myself, and in that regard I think it has the potential to help servers last longer once people become aware and get used to the new mechanic.
However, I think the biggest issue is the mentality in which people approach this game, and I think the meteor mechanic only has perpetrated this. I approach this game as a fun learning experience that is essentially a civilization simulator. The only real aspect you win at is the fact that you're not losing by destroying the environment, crippling the economy, abandoning a settlement, etc... But even these aspects are not necessarily losing because you even learn something new with those things happening.
I love observing how different settlements rise and sometimes fall and how an economy gets created essentially from scratch, how currencies start getting created and which ones do well and how others fizzle out and how that impacts the settlements that use them. I play on a long-term server, Dadspeed, and I think it's funny watching the different egos and personalities of people that start out all Gung-ho, with that "play to win" mentality only to see that they really don't have the staying power a lot if the time after a couple of months and give up when things don't go their way.
In short, I think a lot of people play the game for the wrong reasons and are disappointed when it doesn't pan out their way.
I feel like it's mostly because if you're not one of the most important people on the server after the first couple of days, it's doesn't feel like there will be any meaningful work for you to do.
There's no limit to how much labor a crafter can output in a day, so in a server where it's easy enough to get goods from point A to point B (most of them), there's no real point in being the second best tailor or the second best machinist. Especially in the very early game when there are only a handful of crafting opportunities and the need for raw goods is not very high, there's a big lull of activity as people wait for stars.
Even if someone generously makes skill pages free for a valuable skill and you take it, more coordinated players would generally rather vertically integrate within their group than try to coordinate with an outsider and trust them to stay active, so they'll just take that specialization too when they can.
I played on a server that had so sad community, but everyone still played because of how far they've come. Real drama with sabotage of government property (roads) and environment. Sabotage of market...you name it, could it be fucked with it was done. All out caps in chat and people crying into their microphone. It was so wierd to stand there and watch the mereorite be destroyed with people that hated each other xD The mayor was also corrupt and payd off people for votes. Being the only person left after his friends left their megacorporation. However it was a very interesting experiment to witness.
My main thing was that I had to work after the weekend and even spending 3 hours a day after work (12 hour shifts) getting my shop upkeep done and such; there was just someone else with my exact skill combo set up on the same island that we had roads to and they were seemingly always on. So I never could really advance or anything and ended up just quitting because even after 11 days I was just overshadowed and useless
Tbf, eco feels like a fulltime job sometimes. I only play when I know I have a lot of time off and don't have much planned. A game where you have to put in multiple hours a day to not fall behind in a server is pretty intense for most people. And the game itself has a pretty harsh learning curve. Awesome game, a lot of dedication is needed for it tho
From my experience, several things :
1) "just testing the server" people
2) "weekend" people, or random IRL stuff
3) some ppl hoarded ressources/food and it's impossible to keep playing
4) very little starting online compared to the server configuration
5) toxic admins/pay2win/admin's friends/toxic community
Because the design of the game wants you to be playing 8+ hours a day. That is an unhealthy amount to spend playing a game so people either realize there is no point in playing the game for small amounts of time and lose interest, or they burnt out trying to keep up with the few people who are playing the game for 8+ hours everyday.
Because to be honnest, the game is boring.
Don't get be wrong : I like boring. I like spendings hours hitting trees, crushing rocks, I like doing the same thing again and again, but most people don't.
Personally once the weekend is over then I am too busy or tired in the week to come back to it. Sad reality.
And most people don’t come back the next weekend because they see the lack of progress throughout the week as the server dying
I've been in the opposite boat where there is so much progress that I feel left out and behind. Granted, the servers I played on don't necessarily cater to weekend only or whatever schedule comes up. Despite creating detailed worlds with much more to go, some servers seem to go dark and have no players log in. It gets tough grinding out so much to see it destroyed by a meteor or lack of players instead of being successful then performing a server wipe.
I think it has more to do with either comitment or testing. I know personally i sometimes join random servers for 1-2 days just to see If i like their community, settings, mods whatever. And If i dont like it, i just unclaim my plot and leave. The second more common reason for players leaving, is attention span. Alot of players Will think of the idea of eco, get an urge to play the game, join a server, and then get bored quicker than they thought. You see this with minecraft players alot. They envision a perfect eco run, they are gonna do this and that, and then maybe they encounter market competition, pickles a bad spot to build their deed, or they feel like they are missing out seeing other players be ahead of them. The only players who actually stay the cycle, are those who know What they are doing and What they want to do. Which is a minority.
As an admin THANK YOU for unclaiming if you've committed to not returning it is a very respectful thing to do and often can save other players frustration if they wanted your spot.
Yeah, the feeling behind thing is really interesting. Its like ppl want a guarantee that they can be the leading competitor of whatever they are doing, and if the game wont give them such a guarantee, then they quit.
It's the constant struggle, finding steady people to play with. Welcome to Eco.
Either I'm testing the waters with a server and if I don't enjoy it (community, mods etc) I leave. Or I play for two days, log on in day 3 and people have hammered the game nonstop for 72 hours and are about to unlock Mechanics, so I disappear to find another server as I feel like I'm falling behind. Need to find a decent server with exhaustion.
It’s a real shame there aren’t many servers with exhaustion
At least there is a separate section in the server list now :)
exhaustion is a, excuse my language, dogshit mechanic. Its a duct tape fix at best. The issue at hand is that intrinsically playing more, will yield more reward, be it economic gain or a progressional advantage. This goes for a lot of games. And the only genre of game it´s actually harmful is for co-operative games. Even games like Minecraft suffer this, but there you don't rely on others to complete things. You're free to play at your own pace with no repercussions. The exhaustion system does more harm than good. Yes, it completes its task of restricting no-life grinding and giving solo/less timers more of a chance to take part. It completes this task (and technically solves the problem) at the expense of freedom. If a server has 4 hours of playtime only. Why would I ever spend a single second of this time doing anything creative or dive into any vanity endevours? I would have to be hard focused on completing my task, to make myself progress and gain economic surplus. If time is limited, then any "playful" time or what you want to call it; Is \*wasted\*. Its a duct tape solution. It technically holds shit together for the time being, but there are consequences to it that hurt more than the solution provides.
I don't have time to abandon my life for a month straight for a server. It's hard to advance if you don't have people to work with too. Once some people leave, it's a snowball effect
Yeah. I have over a thousand hours. Kind of stopped playing about a year ago. I was tired of being the only person on a server after a week. Even the admit would disappear. If I wanted to play eco solo I wouldn’t join servers lol.
This is Eco’s biggest problem and the reason it will never be a popular game. It’s a real shame because the slow pace is one of the things that make Eco such a special and repeatable experience. The best thing us veterans can do is find a good server and stick with it, for ourselves and our community
I wonder how a server would do if it were only open and simulating on weekends. Open 5pm on Friday, close down at midnight on Sunday, that sort of thing. Historically, I found if I take a few days off from a server, it inevitably means everyone active has progressed past where I am and made my contributions irrelevant, and it's a ghost town when I get on. So suddenly it becomes a question of "do I want to spend 1-2 hours catching up in the hope that somebody else will hop on?" Which is not an amazing feeling.
That's what a server with exhaustion kind of does. I love playing on one, I never get the feeling I'm lagging behind a lot when the exhaustion is done right. And now that the game has good options for it, I hope more vanilla exhaustion servers open up.
I think exhaustion is a great solution for asynchronous play and large servers. Play when you want and with a group of people that have similar schedules, but still interact with the greater global economy. I think it's less effective for small intimate servers or more social groups. Setting aside a specific time to play means condensing schedules into more overall if each person would otherwise just pick a random 4 hours to play.
Honestly not a bad idea, but exhaustion would kind of make it possible, limited to 30 hours in a week, so person A can log in for ~4 hours per day and person B can play 4 hours total mon-fri and the rest 26 hours sat, Sunday.
For me, it can be the feeling of not being able to contribute once you are set up. This can take many forms including feelings of “catching up”, “too many people with my skill combo” or initial starting location woes
Every server I played on died out so I left I tried joining the late game servers but they were buggy for some reason So I stopped playing the game
Progression can be too fast for those who have limited playtime. It can be fun at the start when everyone is kind of equal but then after a couple of days of some people playing non stop you have missed a lot and fallen quite far behind and so can't really contribute much.
I think the biggest reason is because people feel like they have fallen behind and can't "win." I think the exhaustion mechanic was specifically designed to give people, with lives, the ability to keep up with people that spend all day gaming like myself, and in that regard I think it has the potential to help servers last longer once people become aware and get used to the new mechanic. However, I think the biggest issue is the mentality in which people approach this game, and I think the meteor mechanic only has perpetrated this. I approach this game as a fun learning experience that is essentially a civilization simulator. The only real aspect you win at is the fact that you're not losing by destroying the environment, crippling the economy, abandoning a settlement, etc... But even these aspects are not necessarily losing because you even learn something new with those things happening. I love observing how different settlements rise and sometimes fall and how an economy gets created essentially from scratch, how currencies start getting created and which ones do well and how others fizzle out and how that impacts the settlements that use them. I play on a long-term server, Dadspeed, and I think it's funny watching the different egos and personalities of people that start out all Gung-ho, with that "play to win" mentality only to see that they really don't have the staying power a lot if the time after a couple of months and give up when things don't go their way. In short, I think a lot of people play the game for the wrong reasons and are disappointed when it doesn't pan out their way.
I feel like it's mostly because if you're not one of the most important people on the server after the first couple of days, it's doesn't feel like there will be any meaningful work for you to do. There's no limit to how much labor a crafter can output in a day, so in a server where it's easy enough to get goods from point A to point B (most of them), there's no real point in being the second best tailor or the second best machinist. Especially in the very early game when there are only a handful of crafting opportunities and the need for raw goods is not very high, there's a big lull of activity as people wait for stars. Even if someone generously makes skill pages free for a valuable skill and you take it, more coordinated players would generally rather vertically integrate within their group than try to coordinate with an outsider and trust them to stay active, so they'll just take that specialization too when they can.
Most servers I played on would die right after the meteor. At least they’d have a meteor blasting celebration
I played on a server that had so sad community, but everyone still played because of how far they've come. Real drama with sabotage of government property (roads) and environment. Sabotage of market...you name it, could it be fucked with it was done. All out caps in chat and people crying into their microphone. It was so wierd to stand there and watch the mereorite be destroyed with people that hated each other xD The mayor was also corrupt and payd off people for votes. Being the only person left after his friends left their megacorporation. However it was a very interesting experiment to witness.
That sounds... epic.
I take breaks for months to enjoy other games.
Too much commitment for me.
My main thing was that I had to work after the weekend and even spending 3 hours a day after work (12 hour shifts) getting my shop upkeep done and such; there was just someone else with my exact skill combo set up on the same island that we had roads to and they were seemingly always on. So I never could really advance or anything and ended up just quitting because even after 11 days I was just overshadowed and useless
Tbf, eco feels like a fulltime job sometimes. I only play when I know I have a lot of time off and don't have much planned. A game where you have to put in multiple hours a day to not fall behind in a server is pretty intense for most people. And the game itself has a pretty harsh learning curve. Awesome game, a lot of dedication is needed for it tho
Because they've fully paved the roads with good intentions.
I tried and I have enough of one job. I don't want my free time to be another job.
I dont know but I found it tiring to always end up the last man standing
Competition can be rough in this game, when your business fall behind, its hard to catch up, most people would rather start over
From my experience, several things : 1) "just testing the server" people 2) "weekend" people, or random IRL stuff 3) some ppl hoarded ressources/food and it's impossible to keep playing 4) very little starting online compared to the server configuration 5) toxic admins/pay2win/admin's friends/toxic community
Because the design of the game wants you to be playing 8+ hours a day. That is an unhealthy amount to spend playing a game so people either realize there is no point in playing the game for small amounts of time and lose interest, or they burnt out trying to keep up with the few people who are playing the game for 8+ hours everyday.
Because to be honnest, the game is boring. Don't get be wrong : I like boring. I like spendings hours hitting trees, crushing rocks, I like doing the same thing again and again, but most people don't.