Mratthew

The crux of it is that it is just another Tycoon game.  There is nothing really unique from your description of it.
Could it be popular?

Probably. Tycoon games are fairly popular.  It just depends on the execution.

I'd like to see a culture like this as one of the places you visit in an RPG.  Not really interested in a game where the player's main task is promoting a political agenda, though.

Do you find the idea of the social gameplay uninteresting or is it another aspect? Because an RBE isn't meant to shift politics, its meant to shift society.  The aim of the player's character is to socially connect with characters to physically achieve technical projects, so in many ways it would play much like an RBE but instead of grinding combat you are fighting the social walls that people naturally put up when faced with an alternative to society organized with money. Grinding would be finding and keeping in touch with individuals that helped in previous successful projects, boss battles would be powerful corporate, banking and political figure heads. So instead of just stumbling upon an interesting place with a strange way of life. You get to physically alter this world, seeing the people, cities and planet change because of you're actions. The aim is to go beyond the existing power structure of the world (politics and money) and build answers to the problems we face as a planet. 

Thanks for the great feedback so far, please keep it coming!

an inclusive movement aiming to achieve a society less driven by unsustainable thinking that is normalized by our money driven frame of reference for survival

You using complex words, me is inferior brained being, me not understand

I guess I was just saying that the group doesn't exclude anyone or any other organization that takes an interest in it. The aim is to create a sustainable society that isn't driven by profit, ownership and the delusions of wealth. 

Id explore more multi-touch options that could have multiple players to use the same screen. Instead of sphere in a maze maybe players could guide a spinning top through a maze. The players need to tilt and gently touch the edges of the top, but not too much or it'll topple. It implements a timed aspect and players could earn different tops that are more effective for different aspects required to achieve each maze. The tapping elements could require two fingers to rotate and position and move small walls to guide the top along with the tilting. Cards could be earned/spent to keep a top spinning, wing cards could fly the top over walls and holes, hammer cards could break walls down but leave rough terrain (harder to navigate and slows down the top), etc. Let me know what you think.

Keep the basic bot-able skill of harvesting but make it worth next to nothing. Create a skill based (random timing based combo of keys, etc) system to increase yield. Upgrade the skill levels in the interest increasing the yield amount by completing more complicated skill based actions and a wider variety of them. The level system keeps players invovled in the process, the skill based controls makes botting more difficult. I'm fond of mouse drawing or line following tasks. With actual tasks such as fishing and harvesting, its the prep work that really matters so making the prep work a skill based meta on its own will help to keep botting at a minimum. Making accuracy an element will make player's feel accomplished even if they don't accomplish it at %100 and create replay to achieve the highest PB they can.

Hope that helps.

1. Make movement a toggle. That way the player can set a vector for their character then look around while moving forward (or backwards?), moving the upper body and head. If its gamepad controls you could double tap D-pad controls or press in the joystick button once you've set a forward speed. The character can easily re-orient by looking the direction they want to move and resetting the forward movement toggle.

2. Use one key for both but make it look and context sensitive. If the player looks down and hits (Y like you suggested) button the character ducks, if they're running the character dives forward. If the character looks at a ladder they hit and hold the button to climb. A multi-purpose action key.

3. Since your movement is already toggled I would use variable joystick controlled speed. However some players might get frustrated waiting for the character to get up to speed to set sprint speed. Holding the action (Y) button and toggle forward movement could set a sprint. This only becomes an issue near context sensitive things like ladders or consoles.