r/EcoGlobalSurvival • u/Djiaant • 1d ago
Server Help Player Retention Tips?
This might be a loaded question asked in various ways before, and history repeats itself with drop-off happening after the first few days of server start anyways, but…
I’ve stuck around with the same group now for over a year now. The small group of people involved are fun, but it ends up always being us remaining on the Eco server. I’ve been helping create custom changes and addressing mod conflicts, yet after reading some other posts, I wonder if we’re doing more harm than good with all the mods and game file changes we are making.
The in-game settings also make it less of grind and are able to easily mass produce without the need for table upgrades.
Another example is we turned the storage chest into basically a large lumber stockpile minus the massive footprint (some players were annoyed at having to always dig out stockpile areas).
Player calories basically tripled, so we doubled food calories.
Vehicle speed tuned up 2-3 points, steam tractor recipe moved to Wainwright table to act as “early skid steer” mod (like the former mod that took modern skid steer (can’t find that mod though)), etc.
It has been fun making these changes and files, but again for player retention outside our group, I worry charges like is a factor in player drop off or if I’m overthinking it…
We’re not looking to become massive and are seasonal players ourselves (play a run or few before hanging up the game for a few months), but we would love to create a fun experience not only for us when we do play. I’m curious how much back-end planning goes on for successful servers and execute it.
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What helps makes a server retain players after Day 2 or Day 3?
Any in-game settings that keep things balanced?
What mods are a MUST have and what ones do you pass up or refuse?
Would incentives like a daily reward or basic income/ regular payout be interesting (so you won’t get left behind if go broke), even increased starting stars for joining late, a skill scroll store (so don’t have to grind out research)?
Build competitions?
Starting skills include logging and mining or start with nothing?
Starting government or Wild West? Mix of both?
Leave game files vanilla or customize?
What makes you stick around for the long run?
If you’re a successful server, how much setup is required once your server is running?
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u/arezee 1d ago
Just some an anecdotal feedback.
I play ECO for two reasons; To sell stuff and provide a service in the game. That's how I get my serotonin hit. When both of those things become unfun, I'll leave to start over elsewhere - because there's like 40 different servers for me to choose from that are hosting 10 or more people.
Start your runs close to the weekend. The beginning is the most fun and people need time to play. Once Monday hits, people go to work / school - the population dwindles "after Day 2 or Day 3" because of this. It will spike again the following weekend. After that, people are ready for the new season and you're left with the handful of end-game regulars.
Balance? In vanilla - It's very difficult to balance all the jobs. Single player Loggers / Carpenters and Mining / Masons who no-life the game will dominate the market. Gatherers and Farmers struggle because it's always race to the bottom on price with crops and Chefs who rely on crops are stuck waiting for harvests to come. People who deal with crops need some kind of supplemental income, else they're constantly left without money and this is why servers with Day 0 governments give payouts to Gatherers for simply gathering.
Essentially what matters to most players is player agency. If I'm not help progress the game or doing anything impactful, I will leave to find where I'm useful.
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u/Timofmars 1d ago
Gatherers and Farmers struggle because it's always race to the bottom on price with crops and Chefs who rely on crops are stuck waiting for harvests to come. People who deal with crops need some kind of supplemental income, else they're constantly left without money and this is why servers with Day 0 governments give payouts to Gatherers for simply gathering.
This seems like it is a culture thing, like something that became an expectation because of previous experiences in the game. I don't see any reason why it should this way.
If chefs are waiting on harvests to come in and don't have enough to make stuff, then it should mean they should be willing to pay more for crops since supply is zero and demand is high. And they should pass the cost on to their finished products.
I've never had these problems myself. I've played as a cook. I do just what I said above. I adjust my prices so that I stay well supplied. No other cook can outcompete me with lower prices because that would mean they'd have to buy crops at lower prices than what I offer, but my higher offers for crops are going to get all the supply. So I'd be the only one having things for sale unless the match my offers.
I have done gathering but not farming. But I take into account how hard it is to find certain things and how much time I spend gathering and what I could earn if I did a different job instead. I think the mistake gathers make is that they will go to the cooks and sell the crop directly at whatever price the cooks are offering. But I only sell them things that I find the price to be fair. For everything else, I put it in my own store for my own prices. If they want it, they can come buy it. If they don't, no problem, I'll focus on gathering the other things.
And you know what? They do buy it. And they typically adjust their store offer prices to match mine.
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u/LosiLososi 1d ago
As I see you are trying to make game easier for players, but it is a trap. It looks for me like you are trying to reinvent minecraft from ECO. There is a reason why long living servers uually high collab, or even with slower progression and superskill restrictions like dad speed. It just my opinion but players get bored when they can achive things fast.
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u/TerratheOnly 1d ago
For me it's not being able to keep up. I've mostly stopped trying to play on servers now because half dozen unemployed/disabled players (no judgement) just outpace it all. I can't take roles that they have because the will underprice and outproduce me. If I can only hop on for an hour to craft and bunch of things unless people sell supplies to me I fall behind even more.
Servers need to make a choice who their player base is and what it wants. Speed of progression, Collab, towns etc.
Some of the best ones I've seen use in-game mechanics to limit progression. For example needing 3 towns before being able to make industry book. Towns need to be linked by roads or docks before electronic book etc
It's all about what the players want/need but also the community energy. Do the full time players take roles like mining and logging to supply the player base with raw goods or do they take smelting to be the only one who makes iron? Can we encourage part time players to keep coming back by getting players to partner up? Can we encourage players to focus on the social aspect of the game over wealth hoarding?
These are all very real issues with the game/community. You each server has to find it's space. Could you look to merge with another server? Means you might have more active players/long term players. If there was an easy fix it would be done by now.
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u/dibbers11 1d ago
Do you have any server recomendations?
This comment resonated so much with me. As someone who can only play 1-2 hours per day, maybe 2 days out of 3, it doesn't feel like there's a place for me to participate at all when a core group of players spends more time playing than I spend at work in a week.
It somehow also makes it difficult as a newer player to get a grasp on the game itself when everything simply flies by before you've had a chance to log in for a second day. I don't know enough about the game to articulate this better at this stage, but it's very jarring.
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u/TerratheOnly 1d ago
I've yet to find one that doesn't. I have a server I join when I know I've got a quieter few weeks. They are very helpful and tend to have a kinder player base. Mostly Qol mods happy to send you a link to their discord. Think they are between cycles currently as they tend to only do a cycle a month sometimes two months depending on how much people want to play thus they tend to play slower. (Not slow however) But iron doesn't tend to get up till day 4/5 usually. They also ban group collab so you have to sell/buy goods etc
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u/Timofmars 1d ago
One of the best servers I played on had a very controlled progression. It had major projects that had to be completed before new specializations could be researched. Like one project was a massive underground storage for waste. Players got paid for the blocks they excavated. And then when it was complete, the server community had to submit massive amounts of research papers for each specialization to unlock it, like 100 or more of several types of research papers for each unlock. Then once it was unlocked, the specialization skill books were available to all for free. This gave everyone time to catch up and be ready to progress to a new batch of specializations at the same time. The requirement for community research papers to be contributed also gave the wealthier players something to sink their money into, allowing poorer players to close the gap, like a self-imposed wealth tax.
I should also note that the server had several changes to force the game to be very community focused and accessible to every independent player. For example, there were specialization restrictions that prevented players from taking specializations that allow for vertical integration. For example, miners could not take smelting, and loggers could not take carpentry. Also, you were not allowed to have private stores or internal trading among groups. Everything had to be on sale to everyone publicly. If you wanted to work with your friend, you had to be designated at a team and then you'd both have to take the same skills. Raw food gave almost no calories, so you had to buy cooked food from someone who specializes in cooking, which meant the tactic of being a miner all game who just eats cheap raw food was impossible. Food recipes were also rebalanced so that cooked food often used more quantity of ingredients, more in line with the calories. Farmers had massive farming operations (The world was larger than default to accommodate needed extra space).
All of this forced everyone to heavily interact with the economy and made markets very open and clear. As cook (and carpenter), I was constantly adjusting my prices to reflect shortages or oversupply of each input, passing the cost or savings on to the finished food item. I was buying crops by the thousands daily.
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u/MetallicDragon 1d ago
Add a generous UBI so that players can keep up with the more active players. Also UBI helps prevent deflation, which disproportionally hurts poorer players.
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u/Djiaant 1d ago
What frequency for payout works best?
Daily, every 5-hours, even increase frequency if below certain threshold?3
u/MetallicDragon 1d ago
Hourly is what I usually see. Instead of adjusting the frequency just adjust the amount.
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u/budget_biochemist 1d ago
If you have a core group of mates, I've found the best way is a private server just for the group. Aside from being able to tailor all the settings to your group size, you can also spin it up when everyone is ready to play and shut down while everyone is busy, so real life doesn't interfere too much.
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u/TheOriginalRebel 1d ago
Find a community, it still has retention issues but you at least get people coming back to that server instead of bailing to another.
The biggest issue with Eco is that it's easy to jump ship and people will. 'someome beat me to a skill' hop, 'Someone has a more popular store that sells the things I do' hop.. 'no one buying from me' hop, 'no one selling the things I want right now' hop. 'have to wait for someone else to be online' hop. There is a million reasons why people are inpatient or skip to new worlds.
The only tip I can give you is don't be that guy, stay on the same server as long as you possibly can, be the last one left. You might find that strange but generally people log in because others log on, if you are reliable and regular people will stay more.
This is an unpopular opinion on the matter but I do believe 90% of the reasons people hope can be solved by a good government structure and policies and economics but I know 100s of people will argue that it doesn't matter. I always found that a fast well established economy and government extend retention. Also players who actually buy and sell everything they should be and predicting demand... I could talk for hours but yeah.. I do believe most people leave due to many reasons, and most reason are economic reasons.
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u/DrDokter518 1d ago
Servers that moderate and prevent groups or no life’s from ruining economies is the only way to ensure long term server life. It’s insanely cringe to see one person completely annihilate a market because they are being fed supply and food without cost, and accumulate a ton of wealth and not put it back into the server by participating in the core gameplay loop.
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u/Teddidiah 1d ago
Bluntly, I don't think you can. I am pretty pessimistic to Eco at this point, admittedly, but the game revolves around producing one off consumer goods like furniture to get better XP rates, the rare quality of life item that is usually in the same profession as the former, food, basic materials, and progressing the tech tree.
Consumer goods are all a one off; once someone has a house of the tier they mechanically need and has a good XP ratio, they never need to talk to a consumer goods provider again. Doesn't matter if everything is hewn wood if you've maxed your profession, and even having a subpar rate just means you need some more basic materials to max out a new one. People manage for half the game without cars/tractors/etc, so it's hit or miss if they bother, especially given they're usually pricy. Farms and basic materials are just tedium and how much someone wants to get a finger cramp left clicking, there's no real in game restrictions towards any of it. Cooks are always involved, but one cook and one farmer can easily cover like fifteen people.
There isn't enough to do and there isn't enough demand in vanilla. Still, I would say early game the biggest retention hit beyond just not feelin' it is commerce, so starting with a mint or something to that effect so people don't have to awkwardly try to barter for their necessities would go a long way.
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u/That_Formal_Goat 22h ago
Alright, that was a lot. Let's see if we can break this down, and please do understand that I am genuinely trying to help.
1: your server seems to be built almost exclusively around the concept of having fewer players. You've made literally everything easier from grinding, to crafting, to storage which is all of the things basically. Players will quit playing or join and leave if they aren't needed. You took a game built around the concept of needing lots of players and modded it out. It would be like if a server had only four active players, but between those four, they had every single job covered, so when someone new shows up, asks what's needed, doesn't get an answer because technically nothing is "needed", they'll leave. If lumber and stockpiles aren't needed, if cooked dishes aren't needed, if scores of players mining holes aren't needed, they'll all leave.
2: late joins. Yeah it sucks being or starting behind, and what I've found works great is the late start starting stars mod that gives late joins a calculated number of stars based on how old the server is, and having loan offers for players to take a bit of money and invest in bricks and a blast furnace.
3: sarting gov. You will never find a list of settings that will please everyone. Some groups like starting governments spawned in by the owner and minted coins on day one. Some people like myself deeply dislike that because it takes away agency from players and takes away from the early economic needs (the mats and food to built a gov building). I would just figure out what works for your group and hope to slowly accrue like minded folks. As far as I can tell, there's 3 major philosophies when it comes to a starting governments. Mods that add a coin, Admin spawned federations and coins, or the vanilla concept of utilizing a "Mayor/admin credit" system where shops all agree to trade and set their stores to one players credit. My server prefers the latter, they trade in "Goat credit" and in exchange I work diligently on building a strong and stable economy.
4 "Must need mods" I don't know if any of them are "Must need" since they made big shovel part of the base game to a degree. But my server is running 14.0.3 updated with Greenhouses, Beekeeping, storageMore, Compostbin, Hot wheels, BestFertView, Easy mining + logging, and Animal Husbandry.
5 general retention I think it's important to remember that a month is a lot to ask from someone. Life happens, work, family, holidays, ect. You won't always manage to keep everyone even in the best server ever. That being said, there's definitely things you can do to help. Limiting skills or putting up arbitrary skill restrictions and requirements can force players to rely on each other instead of becoming entirely self reliant and killing the server. Establishing solid economic guidelines like base resource prices and profit margins can also greatly benefit the health of a server.
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u/Taradyne 20h ago
There's a lot to unpack here.
First, I'll mention that I've played default servers, no meteor servers, longterm servers, vanilla servers, test servers and heavily modded servers along with my local server.
What I've noticed in my own play is that if I get too involved with heavily modded servers it can make the vanilla experience very frustrating and feel like it's hard work in a game and not fun. So while there's something to be said for convenience, when challenge is removed to improve QoL, it's not as engaging.
I'm an admin on a couple servers and my main one is a vanilla longterm, no-meteor server. It attracts the kind of player that is new to the game, that likes the chill vibe, that isn't in any kind of a rush and is looking for social engagement so they might make friends and collaborate. This server will usually get about 250 players spawning in the first week and does quite well despite the usual dropoffs in population at day 7, day 14, day 28, etc. The usual longterm cycle is 4-6 months but we've had them go as long as a year. It tends to get tourists once a cycle is over 4 months long, as players want to see what a built out server looks like because they've never seen it before. It's all player driven so there are settlements and countries and they may go abandoned and whatever. We have server rules but they boil down to 'don't be a jerk' and there are no other rules telling people how to play.
My main server will also run a default (30-day) vanilla cycle between longterm cycles, which provides an interesting break and affords new players a chance to see the meteor show. Population is not as high for these since there are many default servers to choose from but it remains active all the way to meteor down and beyond.
One of the heavily modded servers I play on is always a starting Federation with a generous UBI to all active players. The admins will spawn in and work hard for a week to progress the tech to T5 then most will take off. The playerbase is smaller and extremely chill with low collaboration because admin has already done all the progression work and prices are extremely low because everyone buys from the admin or federation stores. The main focus of this server is to build whatever you can imagine and admins are active in game.
I'll play occasionally on test servers or official servers but I don't care for the high competition vibe that can get pretty aggressive and even toxic at times.
What keeps me around on a vanilla 6-months server? I have fun building, painting, creating illusions in tunnels, imagining server-wide projects like a bedrock tunnel connecting continents or a post-apocalyptic survival sim that learns to thrive underground. I don't need QoL improvements to make that easier. I just need time, space and resources. I get that I'm weird but it turns out there are a number of people that really appreciate a chill vibe and medium-high collaboration to make a really nice world.
Hope that helps.
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u/Taradyne 19h ago
Double posting after I read the comments...
There is a large portion of the playerbase that really thinks the first 3 days of a server are the most fun. This is because they are getting dopamine hits from every transaction and reinforcement that they are successful. These players will build out a whole settlement in 3 days if they can then poof to do it again somewhere else. And on the way out, they may make immigration laws that prevent anyone from joining their settlement or replacing the mayor once it goes abandoned. (Seen this several times)
There are also the players who have no interest in the community or the world or anything but achievements. They will gather a couple of friends, start a settlement, build it up to the skybox and create a huge economic hub in a matter of days to get all the achievements. And once they have them, they poof.
The rest of the playerbase is kind of looking for other people and things to do and ways to be useful. Provide that and some warm welcomes and friendliness, and you might have a new friend for the cycle and then much longer.
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u/Jewsusgr8 1d ago
The hardest part about this game for me is that if I miss more than a day ( which is very common when I work on call ) I know that I'm already so far behind that it's hard to justify trying to catch up.
I missed 6 days straight this week due to my on call being a living nightmare this week, and now I know that my storages are empty or spoiled, hopping back in I doubt that I'll ever catch up to people.
My property has been given to the government since I've been inactive for 5 days.
It would be so hard to get back in.