Eco Reviews

it's an ambitious concept that attempts to create a sandbox in which nothing happens without player input, while also ensuring no one player can do everything, and more or less nails it. this also makes it a uniquely complex experience, that requires either out-of-the-box thinking, strong social skills to get needed help, and/or a group of interested friends who want to play with you in a commune-style group. due to this "no one player can do everything" approach, you'll often find gaps in skill sets among the dedicated player base that can stall out servers for weeks, ending runs prematurely (which can be frustrating, but there's always a new server to hop in on). additionally, because you are not able to do everything, there are times where you will feel like you "cannot do anything," which requires a player to figure out that they have tunnel vision (because there is pretty much always something to do in Eco that can advance your goals, even if indirectly, and even if it's just "helping someone else reach their goals, which then helps your goals at some later point as well"). this game is almost antithetical to modern game design, which posits that players should always be able to reach any goal they want with any approach they want. that progress should be linear and measured in numbers, rather than thought of as observed change that creates opportunities. as a result, it can be polarizing. that said, I think Eco is a great way to open your mind. the complexity here is in how it forces the player to think outside of "collect x, sell y, get richer, win" as the dominant strategy in basically any game. the dominant strategy in Eco is the strategy that brings people together and keeps them invested in similar goals. and in that sense, Eco is more like real life than any other game you'll play.

i returned to see some disappointing changes. I hate the forced use of the ugliest tier 1 components for building. You have to build your first house, research and your first industrial buildings all ugly adobe. We used to start with seven different options. 3 types of Hemn log and 4 types of mortared stone. Now we only get one option at tier 1. You should have just added it as another tier 1 building option rather than change the system to force players to use adobe. The complaints have been going on for over 2 years and they refused to changed it back. its a weird hill to die on. People are waking up. You cant think your refusal the give players things they want and revert changes your most of your player base has complained about will cause to continue to support your game. You added micro-transactions to make up the amount you had lose had lost instead of listening to you player base.

I like the survival part where you spec into a skill and level up, but I cant stand the UI

WITH MODS! - Upgrades, bigger stacks, a custom power mod, ranching and cooking related to it. Single player with no mods was rough and I don't think I would have sat through more than 1 play through (i made it through like 2 days and 3 stars) with out mods or the amazing server I found to play on, Over 1000 hours, taken every skill, only took a break from playing due to the time commitment and my personal life schedule conflicts but 10/10 would recommend for your next addiction.

I started a small server in Eco thinking I’d just dabble in some community-building and environmental balance. Within a month, I was consumed. The server grew—funded by players who built. I became an admin, a mayor, a mechanic, a diplomat, a janitor. Every moment not sleeping, I was tweaking laws, balancing pollution, and trying to keep the server alive. Despite our best intentions, the world slowly died, The skies turned brown. Forests vanished. CO₂ climbed. We argued. We compromised. We mined deeper. We built more. And then we all gathered as friends and former adversaries, standing in the shadow of our mistakes—watching a massive meteor slam into the Eco we tried so hard to save. 5/5. Would lose meteor planet again - TownCraft Servers

I've played this before in the past with friends during the hiatus phase and had no issues. Now, coming back to it, it full stop crashes one friend's computer and a new friend I wanted to play with, I couldn't even connect to. Plenty of other games with less problems and it upsets me greatly, because of how educational and cool the whole thing is. Maybe a future me will be able to enjoy this game once again with friends.

Loved this game. I am sick of it now, but really enjoyed it when it was new to me. Brilliant idea with somewhat flawed execution. Would like to a sequel. 8/10

Not a bad game, but they really need to fix their crap. It's a little late in development for having items disappearing from inventory, hotbar slots locking up, vehicles with imaginary occupants, and now items failing to stack correctly.

Eco: The Ambitious yet Economical Nightmare First off, I'll start by saying I really love the concept of this game. I fell in love with it when a friend told me about it. I've always been a fan of deeply cooperative games like this. What I fell in love with though, was only the concept. The community in this game is, in my opinion, what ruins this game for me. I've played as both an average guy and a server admin, both were stressful, to say the least. I'm the type that disables the meteor; I've never liked speedrunning anything. I wanted to start a small community and slowly work towards building multiple cities where we rely on different cities for different jobs. That's the ideal, right? So, here's my problems with it; Average Player: The actual game itself isn't bad, as I said before, for me; it's the community. For example, I'm usually always a Day 1 cook, then I spec into Butchery (if no one hasn't by that point) since no one really enjoys that, it also doesn't pay too much unlike meta'd jobs like a miner/engineer. Though this might have changed since I last played it. The people in this game try to monopolize the market, on every server I've played, including my own. If they can't monopolize, there's about an 80-90% chance they quit and find a new server. It's especially disheartening when you pay for a server, tweak all of its settings, install mods, configure those, then you get fussed at because you don't let people monopolize roles. This is why all servers die after a week. People start setting up monopolies, and when others try to do the same, they quit because there's a group that only trades within that exclusive group. They'll have better tech than you because that group has more resources, letting them research everything on the server. This not only means they'll have vehicles a week before anyone else, but they'll also have advanced jobs before they start selling the research for it. Then, the prices for all of those materials skyrockets as a result. Server Admin: Honestly, this is where I started hating the game. All of the time I spent working with configs, server settings, and balancing the in-game systems, meant absolutely nothing because about 80% of the people left within the first 5-7 days. During my time as a server owner, my primary goal was balance, not bias. Even my own town was practically dead; myself, and maybe 2 other people, which were probably inactive. I limited people to, I think(been a while since I've played), a maximum of 4 jobs. Also further limited it so cooks couldn't become farmers/butcher, miners couldn't become whatever uses the most metal, etc., etc.. The people who were invested in the game and the community loved it, it meant actual cooperation. There was planned mayor meetings, global road construction initives, and a close community of just those ~6 people. I did not form a clique, I started this server with 1 friend, and I did try to get many others to join and to take part in server talks. But they wanted to monopolize the server and it's economy. I've never been a fan of the 'server government', I'm playing Eco to collaborate not dictate. With that being said, I was given 3 options: 1) Become a 'balance' dictator. 2) Allow all players to pick whatever role/job they wanted. 3) Full anarchy, complete player-ran governments or whatever they wanted. I went for both options 1 and 3. Option 3 was first, and I do NOT recommend it. A player put a law in that essentially kicked people the moment they joined the server. They were immediately banned, but the damage had already been done. My 2nd server I went with option 1, which was much better, but it still died within a week. Two weeks in, there was, on average, 5 people playing and all progress was frozen. Full Anarchy mode got the server full on days 1-3, (20 player limit, thanks to server host.) Being a 'Balance Dictator' got ~18 players on day 1, continued a slow decline through day 4, then plummeted to ~10 on day 5-7, which started another slow decline. This 'mode' was a lot more community-focused though and allowed much better collaboration, but most of the peoples greed and incompetence ended up ruining the server and economy. So, rant over. My point of this is I love this game. The concept of this game is amazing, if you can find a collaborative community, one that isn't greedy and price gouges, this would be an amazing game. I love the game and dislike the community. As with everything though, there are exceptions. I've met some smart people on Eco from all over the world, where their foremost thought isn't about money or efficiency, but cooperation. The way I feel like people in the game see cooperation is like a side quest, one they really don't want to do; like a fetch quest for example. In Eco though, cooperation is a [i]requirement[/i]. You can't progress if you don't cooperate, which is where cliques form, giving biased support to other people in the clique. It's the fastest way to ruin a good thing. Maybe in a year or so, I'll try finding a server again, but I can't promise anything. If you've read this far, thanks for taking the time to read my rant/review. Conclusion: As much as I hate it, if you aren't part of at least a 5 person group, this game most likely isn't meant for you. It's community is too toxic, greedy, and self-centered.

The devs are children, you report a bug they ban you, can't even play the game and it is not even released yet, do not waste your money on this garbage game or its garbage devs.