Hello and welcome to the first Player of the Week page! This is to be a recurring thing, where people who positively stand out or otherwise deserve extra recognition are honored and immortalized here.

Last night, I sat down with Bartleby to both kick off this series, as well as get to know the player a little. My questions are in italic, while Bartleby‘s paraphrased responses are in quotes. Let’s jump right in:

Can you tell us a bit more about yourself?

Sure! I’m Bartleby, I’m part of the recent Canadian invasion. I’m in my early thirties, having played Eco before on other servers, but not a fan of single player. Multiplayer is where it’s at for me

Yeah, multiplayer is definitely where the ‘meat’ of the game lies – single player only goes so far unfortunately. What ultimately made you choose to join us?

I saw your Reddit post, and I liked how you outlined what to expect on the server, what changes were put in and where it goes from there. Many servers aren’t like that, where I would find myself not knowing what was going on. I wanted to be Engineer first, but then I saw there were already a few going that way, so when I saw the palace builds I knew there to be much demand for masonry.

It did take some time to adjust – despite your advance planning, it was a bit messy when people started pouring in and picking Mason as well, which led to the Mortar price wars. Also, I feel Freelancers are underutilized, as there’s often a call for more raw materials. It seems at odds with how players want to play Eco, and they’d rather process themselves rather than only gather raw materials and transport them to the processors.

It seems supply and demand are at odds – people want the finished products, but don’t seem to realize they too need raw material for any sort of finished product to come out. On the other hand, while I like how prices are very affordable and people are very active in the economy, it does seem to cheapen the experience a little when you don’t have to do a lot to get a finished product out.

Some good points raised! I do agree to the extent that planning only goes so far, and ultimately due to human nature and unforeseen circumstances, e.g. a sudden player boom, plans can quickly spiral out of control. For one, I did not anticipate competition in the Mason space to be that fierce, although I am glad it resolved well. It both excites and scares me a little to think what will happen when I return to Smithing next round –  competition is bound to heat up across professions, which is to be expected with multiple autonomous cities. What would you like to see changed?

I thought about changing some economic things around, for instance the crafting tables. It seems like there’s too much value placed on them, because the main economic activity is gathering; it’s what really takes time. There’s this thing where you don’t feel you’re doing anything, just put resources and start a queue, takes 5 minutes to make your profit while in the worst case the person mining/logging can take hours to gather the materials you use.. I would also suggest expanding the ability for people to rent out their crafting tables to people – it makes it so people don’t have to invest a large sum of money just to get started in Smith or especially Engineer, and allow them to get started with a much lower barrier to entry, despite starting later.

Thanks for that input! I agree that there is a disconnect between crafting something and seeing it being made – it would be nice to have it become some sort of mini-game where you would do the steps necessary in order for a finished product to come out. For instance heating up sand until it becomes liquid, then letting it cool off in a shape of your choosing to actually see sheets of glass being created. It would require a lot of programming or even modding to do, but definitely something to increase immersion a lot.

I’ll definitely look into renting out my mechanics workshop to recoup my investment, as well as enable more people to produce things. I hope the Smith does the same for the Blast Furnaces (and later Electric Furnaces) so that the world economy can grow in multiple areas. I think we’ll wrap up here, and let us all continue to work together!

My pleasure, and thank you for the recognition!