I got on the server few hours after start. There are already 3 people with the skill I want to take. All the other skills seems taken too. Bummer, let's find another place.
Every regular player of Eco by Strange Loop Games experienced this situation. The feeling is perfectly normal in the sense that we join servers to interact with other players. Skills is a big part of our role in the community. So when someone is already filling the role, our expectations to be useful plummet.
However, before you leave, please consider some of the following aspects.
-There is already a mason on the map and I won't make any money.
- So...is this a trading war game or a collaboration game ?
The more people on a server, the more chances you have to find projects, partners to meet, jokes to laugh at and beautiful things to see. The most exciting and satisfying games I played in Eco were on servers with populations of 20 and more active players.
Laws and macro economic structures become more and more interesting as population grows. A high population can also take more blows and drama than smaller servers. Finally, Eco worlds behave as open systems that need a constant input of time everyday: the more people, the wealthier the server is. So why leave for a small server with higher chances of failure?
But to reach these numbers...of course chances are you will have 3 farmers or 3 masons at some point. Yes there is a bit of stress at first, but eventually players have everything to make this work.
In Eco, players control the game entirely by their will to collaborate. The challenge with people of the same profession is how you all decide to play next. Will you play alone, secretly hoping for the others to leave so you can enjoy a monopoly ? Will you find a way for everyone to contribute ? Will you aggressively compete until only one remains ? These are the real questions...
Note that if competition is your choice, this will have impacts. For instance, putting 3 masons out of business in a community of 20 active players actually removes 15% of the active population. This will affect the food industry in particular but every profession may suffer too, which means more abandon. Those who play in teams will leave with their partners. Overall, competitive players are the main cause of negative loops that leave servers empty. If you landed in a competitive world and there are already 2 heavy players with your profession... yes you would probably be best elsewhere. But the reason for leaving is not because there are people with the same skills, it's because they never learned to share their toys when they were kids.
Ironically, having many people with the same skill or profession has many advantages. Eco works as a non-zero sum game. For instance, miners/smelters gain a lot by sharing their mine because of their complementary 6th level perks. Farmers can split some of the crafting skills (ex.: farming, fertilizer, milling) and pick up other useful skills such as mining and logging along with their farming profession. Players with skills requiring a bigger infrastructure such as engineers and masons benefit a lot from community factories or at the very least joint building approaches. Those who experience gathering missions or road building with their teams know how much fun they can get compared to worlds where players stay in their own little boxes. Lastly, playing an entire game of Eco typically requires a lot of time and daily engagement. Having more players of the same professions means people can take breaks or leave because of personal reasons without putting the server at risk.
Some skills are linked to items that we need in very high amounts while other skills are less called for. For instance, most houses need thousands of blocks, but only few couches. A cook/hunter can also easily feed 10 players if there is a good farmer around.
A funny thing is furniture makers and engineers use this low demand context to justify high profit margins...which in return creates more interest for their profession
If a community of 7 players has 3 chefs, this may give something suboptimal. Chances of tensions and lack of wood and minerals are likely. But again, as long as you see this and act together on the problem, you can win.
It is still easier to maintain peace with a skill balance. From experience, the equilibrium in a cluster of 7 players is about 2 players in the food industry (sharing butchery, agriculture and chef skills), 2 players in the wood business and 3 players in the mining business. But these ratio heavily depend on two things: gaming time and cluster location.
If one miner makes Eco his day job, he can easily replace 3 to 4 miners with a real-life occupation. Since he is the dominating player, there is little incentive to share and the other miners can quickly have nothing to do in the trading world. This is why servers close to failure are often left with the players who had the highest average of hours per day : unbalance caused by major differences in gaming time.
One thing I would like to ask developers is the addition of a player stat when you over above their name to get an idea of their gaming time. Something in the vicinity of average hours per day or per gaming session. In the meantime, you can simulate something similar by creating demographics based on the number of hours played. I would say between 1 and 2 hours a day is a small player and above 6 is more in the "rusher" category.
Many new players approach Eco like Minecraft and seek to make their own project. After a few games, they reach the novice state and finally see the advantage of trade.
However, selling items and getting more money seems to be the only thing they focus on after that. Also, many have learned to trade on highly competitive worlds and fail to see where this leads. More sells, more money and then more gaming time to make more sales. I regularly see such player accumulate resources (ex.: entire hewn stockpiles or thousands of bricks) or money until they don't know what to do anymore with it. Engineers are set on another path: accumulate the most iron and be the first to sell trucks.
I have seen many players spending well over 1000 hours on this game and they are still stuck into this obsessive behavior of crafting as many things as possible. Sadly, this approach is where the risks to the equilibrium and concerns for other players with the same skill are highest.
- I am so good at this game : I made 500 iron bars in a single night. All you have to do is buy it.
- Hang in there... our carpenter finally made his first latrine
Expert players, on the other hand, are the most likely to join community projects such as town hall, common research center, welcome stations, government positions. As an alternative, ambitious builders will join up on shared construction sites and take on large monuments and fabulous buildings. All these special projects contribute to a nice server, but take time. The thing is big players will use these projects to do something fun while keeping their skills available without trying to corner the market. This will leave some space for those with the same skill.
What I mean is there is more to Eco than putting a shop and attempting to sell as much as possible and it may not matter what skill you take if your time is devoted to special projects with others.
Comments
Post a Comment