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[PTTG??]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/382310/Eco/

Standard I-didn't-make-this disclaimer.

There's definitely something to be said for this game. It's oddly compelling just from the crafting perspective, has an actual non-ugly aesthetic, and the long-term goal of not getting destroyed by an asteroid gives the building, mining, and crafting a nice sense of direction.

Forsaken1111 is setting up a server. PM them for server and discord access.

The server is "Bay12 Eco Server."

[Kagus]

I remember reading about this way back before it was actually released into open Early Access, and was intrigued by the concept of "Minecraft, but with climate and ecosystem simulation". The concept of having a multiplayer community try and balance expansion with pollution and resource management struck me as a very interesting and also hysterically doomed idea.

The addition of the meteor struck me as... Rather tacked-on. From what I've read, the timer is also quite unforgiving and can't be adjusted. I've also head some complaints about the skill system, calling it a bit too restrictive in that it effectively limits players to specific niches if they want to get anything done. Not much an independent player can do on his own. I mean, that could be quite fun; I've always liked "communal" games in the sense of multiple cogs working together to achieve something greater. I guess I'm just not used to Minecraft being one of those games, heh.

But it's really just conjecture, as I haven't actually played it myself as of yet.

[forsaken1111]

Space Engineers tried meteor storms as a game mechanic. It never added much interesting gameplay, just punshed progress because the safest thing to do was to sit quietly in a cave

[xaritscin]

think i saw this in IndieDB some years ago. didnt know they had actually put in Steam, it has grown well it seems.

[Folly]

So it's a Minecraft clone with 30-day world cycles, and strong incentives to interact and cooperate with your community as you work towards common goals so that you can 'win' when your cycle ends.

Neat.
The $30 price tag feels a bit high for an Early Access small-developer game...but the reviews look solid, so I could get into it if there was enough interest from this community.

[PTTG??]

The asteroid timer can be modified. I find it an interesting idea -- save the environment from an asteroid without destroying the environment. It's not random; it's 30 days by default. It doesn't end the game outright (although it does ruin the ecology).

Apparently there are other ideas in the pipeline, too. Currently there's no real combat (there's hunting, but none of the animals are threats yet), but there are apparently plans for other existential threats. I for one would find it interesting to start in an ice age.

[Vivalas]

Huh this looks really cool. The economic side is extremely interesting though, what with creating currency and such. I kinda wanna play it just to become an evil rich dictator and doom the world.

[PTTG??]

Well I'm OK with anything as long as its a good story. I'll set something up this evening.

[Android]

i might be inclined to give this a try with you all. PTW

[FakerFangirl]

It's a nice game. I might play again but I have no friends and it really is a co-op.

[Mephisto]

Hey, Eco thread. Just what I've been waiting for. If there were a server, I would probably play on it. I'll throw out an offer to host as well if PTTG?? ends up unable to.

I'm curious if you gain skill points while offline. In a single player setting, you're playing for all 720 hours. Multiplayer, you're not.

[deoloth]

I haven't played it since early alpha, so any knowledge I have may now be incorrect.

Skill points were slowly gained over time, but you had to eat to maintain the rate at which you got them. More nutritious food, the better the skill gain.

Multiplayer is balanced so it would be hard for someone to be able to do everything skillwise, I think singleplayer is the same way at the moment but is getting rebalanced looking at the current patch notes.

[LoSboccacc]

how's singleplayer? this seems at it's core a collaborative game.

[Mephisto]

how's singleplayer? this seems at it's core a collaborative game.

Kind of tedious. It's basically multiplayer without the other people, and the server is only running when you're playing.

[Ygdrad]

I played this with friends in the past, and unfortunately, probably won't be playing more of it unless they make some pretty big changes. The whole real-time skillpoint gain(like in eve online) system ruins it for some of us. You'd hop on the server, do whatever work you need to do to make sure others have what they need for today, spend skillpoints, and then you have no purpose, there's nothing to do because nothing you do past what's needed means anything since progress is real-time. Without the skill system you blow right through everything in no time flat, it only serves to stretch out what little content the game has. It doesn't feel like a real game, aside from maybe building for the sake of building, there's no reason to do anything once you've met your quota, feels like those limited daily playtime korean or cellphone games with artificial minecraft flavoring. :/

Even the whole premise, eco-friendliness, doesn't matter too much. Since you've got no reason to over-produce, unless you're on some server with a ridiculous amount of people, you're not really going to wreck the planet as long as you don't do anything obviously stupid like completely strip the world of a certain plant. Speaking of stupid, pollution code is linked to the block coordinate system. Once we found out the smithing byproducts that were sent to a stockpile were spreading pollution through the ground, we tried a few things and it seems that if you put it in a cart, it stops affecting the world since the cart is not a block and therefore not part of its coordinate system. The carts were getting filled up and would be in the way so what did we end up doing? We dumped them all into a deep river with no adverse effect... :|