The Economist ~ Things the admins have done well
Spite313
Dear friends,
It occurred to me that I spend a fair bit of time criticising the game management for their proposals/decisions. For me, that is one role of journalism in eRepublik, and I will continue to offer constructive criticism and ideas in the hope that some of it at least informs their future decision making. However I think it’s also worth recognising that, whilst every change has its pros and cons, the admins have made some good decisions over the past 4 years. Here are some of them:
Fixing the raw material numbers - Day 3576
When the latest iteration of the economy module was introduced, raw materials companies were 100 times more productive, and manufacturing companies required 100 times as much raw material per product. This meant that the prices of raw materials were about 1% of what they are today. With food and weapons raw materials this posed a big problem.
I remember WRM being around 0.03 per unit most of the time. Because the smallest change in price you can make is 0.01, that meant that any upwards price surge involved massive spikes in production cost, rather than the usual gradual climb. For example, if your companies used (in old terms) 200k WRM a day, at 0.03 that was 6000cc and at 0.04 it was 8000cc. A 33% price rise is enough to cut or erase any profit margin, and because weapons had a much smoother price rise system it meant you were constantly worried about sudden price increases.
By knocking off a couple of zeros, the admins effectively added a hundred additional price increments for weapon and food raw materials. This small change made the whole industry so much better. Hoorah!
The Plato Foundation - Day 3550
I like the Plato Foundation, and not just because they gave me 500g for writing a tutorial. For me the foundation is a public recognition of something we have known for a long time- all of the best resources in the game are made by players.
The Foundation’s aims are to reward excellence in the game, and to fund projects intended to recruit and retain players. Again, this recognises that players are the best actors for increasing player retention. At the cost of ingame currency (gold) the admins achieve something which many other similar games pay real world money- pulling in new players and keeping them.
That isn’t to say there isn’t more to be done. I think two things which would work really well, and add to the idea of the Plato Foundation, are:
1. A dedicated advisory forum where selected players could input new ideas and be asked to review existing proposals by the administration (not the mod group as that is a different skill set altogether).
2. A beta/test server which would initially mirror the main server. This could then be used to make small tweaks to formulas, or even bigger changes. Clearly there are improvements to be made, but testing them in the main game is not practical.
Aircraft battles - Day 3164
Aircraft battles are one of the best features currently in eRepublik. The fact that they are mass-action, high involvement battles where all fighters can make a significant impact harkens back to the old v1 days. Aircraft rounds are often the most hard fought and exciting in ‘real wars’ and this is reflected in the fact that more and more countries are now developing dedicated air units.
The main advantage of air battles is that there is no strength modifier (or perception) which means that a brand new player can very quickly climb up the ranks and have a significant impact on the battle.
However there are some flip sides/further work which I think the admins would also acknowledge. Firstly the idea of ‘perception’ is a non-starter from the beginning and needs to be removed from the game altogether. Secondly, the success of air battles just highlights that the “division” system is no longer fit for purpose. It is now dominated by powergamers with maverick packs and farmed for medal gold, which surely is not the purpose of the game. With most of those players earning medal gold to pay for training (or in d4 having free training) the divisional system doesn’t even monetise for the game anymore.
The next steps should be considering how to monetise air battles, phase out ground battles and work out a way to reward those with very high strength following that measure becoming defunct.
Resource wars
Although I wasn’t around for these, the resource wars still have a huge impact on the game today. For me these were a brilliant way to reallocate resources and should be a yearly event. This would allow the current layout of resources to be organic, and to reflect the current state of game politics. It would also force countries to work together more, to make sure that they are in a position to benefit from any gains they achieve. A yearly event would give the whole game something to prepare for and work towards, and would no doubt be a good source of income as well. It would make sense to have it at the same time every year - perhaps in Spring or Autumn when there aren’t any major holidays.
Conclusions
I think the admins do have some good ideas. The problem is often that they don’t follow through. It is a basic principle of project management that after making a change you have a ‘bedding in’ phase, followed by a 6 month review. I think this should be a factor for all changes to the game. After 6 months, when all the bugs have been ironed out, the whole idea is re-reviewed to see what could be changed or done better, with customer input. This would sort out lingering issues like perception in air battles, or the existence of the air weapon industry, or the broken productivity formulas. Instead of moving onto the next project, pause and assess what small changes can be done to fix what we do have.
Thank you for reading,
Iain
Thank you to everyone who votes, endorses and subscribes. And thank you to those who take the time to give feedback in the comments. I do read all of them. Especially yours, n0s3y.
Comments
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Also positive articles yay! More of them.
awesome
Great as always
Tbh I expected this article to be a lot shorter xD
The Plato Foundation-sucks
Aircraft battles-shit (nothing change,players with packs easy win battles,need many players without packs to move wall+them need coordinated so very hard 🙁 )
Resource wars-sucks
Its clear that there are some "lights" in things that admin has done, but there are still very Big shadows, especially concerning the non totally implemented( and dunno why) cities and mayors update
Deploy objective one of most briliant ideas .
"...It is now dominated by powergamers with maverick packs and farmed for medal gold, which surely is not the purpose of the game. ..."
Oh, and all those powergamers playing with the IK destroying any hope for a new player to get a medal?
"..The main advantage of air battles is that there is no strength modifier (or perception) which means that a brand new player can very quickly climb up the ranks and have a significant impact on the battle...."
Quickly? Large numbers of new players can have an impac, growth isn't that quick, most that dominate the skies are again powerplayers (ranking up rapidly) . True you don't gold for training, no CC for weapons, degrading all that don't rule the sky to canonfodder with very little hope of ever reaching nr1. Players need to play for a community, but many also have a pride/ego which needs to be cared for at times.
With regard to IK: yep indeed. Divisions in general suck as an idea these days.
With regard to air: After a couple of months you can be doing 50% of the damage of a ten year old player. That's pretty awesome. And it's all about community and working together to win, just like old times. There isn't room for ego in battles imo. I used to fight as an anonymous soldier amongst thousands and it made me happy to just to win (or try to!) with my comrades. This culture of "everyone needs to be a battle hero" is what ruined the game. When I was a young player very few people had BH medals. They were rare and you were really proud of getting one. Now some people post 50 a day.
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vote o/
one thing admins didn't do right... no no wait the list is so long... i will start on my weekend and the admins with their lies and cover ups can do what ever they wanna do.
they don't really care about what we want in the game
they don't really see you and me and all of us (PAYING CUSTOMERS) as their "boss" in the end of the day.
they make tons of money selling cool apps and games on mobile - no community there to make them hire ppl, pay money, talk to and listen to... and why would they? small amount of ppl keep paying tons of money, getting spit on right to the face and keep paying.
i wouldn't listen to us also.
I've written lots of articles about things they could do differently, but sometimes it's good to look at the positives.
No development in aircraft module. But I guess they want develop it with BB so more kids will be able to change something in battles (Because if they do it right now it will be again very big difference between people that develop their air power and new so better to do it if game had at least 100 000 active citizens not like now)
But for BB we need something that can make motivation to one people stay here and invite new or ressurect olds and second people that would very soon after entering the game see how boring it is.
We need province ellections, they promice that us very long time ago.
I press my respect button F to admins for this new UPD but guys, you need to do more.
Agree- there needs to be more. But I'm not sure about having more elections solving it. Really to make the game more enjoyable they need to make it a team game again so we are forced to work together to win 🙂
It is one of steps, because on this point babies can go only in politic but if politic is limited by 40 congressmans and CP. Babies had nothing to do, they very soon discover that game is boring. But if they can became a governor of some region, congressman of that region they can found that game is interessting and probably stay here)
As long as a few ten tanks win battles, decide everything and in the formal roles are puppets in most countries even being a congressman or governor will be boring.
There is no another way. You or me newer reach someone that had 200k+ power, thats impossible. Games of this type cant work another, we can just restart the game but tousand donators would be disapointed/angry and live this game.
The only way that I see it is development of Politic and Economic module. So think about it, not all people in RL are warriors, yes? Same here not all can be tanks but same with RL they can be politics/journalists/magnats etc. Only problem is that this branches are highly undeveloped so there is no reason to play in this branches, so all branches became puppets of war branch. If you had a lot of power you can be politican and etc. Thats bad. I personally can love example president of Poland or France(RL) But im sure that they are not Schwarznegers or Rocks, they are politics so I believe that we ca develop that in this RL simulator game. All what we need it is will of developers, ideas is enough, believe me
Now the only module that is interesting and available for everyone is journalism, as long as we can believe there is anything interesting to write about. Because the personal conflicts of a few ten tanks which are by the way hidden before us, won't be that. And the game is mostly about them, the other ten thousand accounts are just to fill the statistics and to make look like as there were still countries and communities while these are disappearing because the game doesn't provide anything for them.
Thats why we need develop politic! There is nothing write because nothing happens! More seats more events like corruption , confclict for money, Political advertisement. Journalism cant exist without an events from other sectors!
I don't have the same opinion about Resource wars.
Well if it's done right it works. Unfortunately a lot of countries came out badly last time. That's why I think it should be a yearly event so even if you have a bad time during one war you have a chance to try again the next year to improve. This way it also reflects the changing population of the game. Imagine in 2009 Poland had about 500 players. A couple of years later they had 60,000. And if resource wars had happened in 2009...
You need to give people another chance.
Yeah, last time it was summer. Our president didn't even have a computer.
Yep- like I said it's stupid. The eUK has loads of fish and iron because our CP at the time didn't understand how it all worked 😃
Poi~
And,
Admins should denomination currency nominal, because too many zero in my acc
2 years ago I made a survey in eIran and most of players admitted that the main reason they are staying in the game is friendships they made here.
And its true in my case too. I have seen many people just staying because of this reason.
eRepublik beside the fact that it is a game, it has some social media like aspect too.
I have checked a few other similar games that they were weaker in this regard and they had fewer player as well.
But I strongly believe that this aspect of this game can still develop more. If they focus more on small political changes in parties, in their spamming criteria, in the way we can publish things, etc, this game can improve much more.
Imagine that there is a facebook like website which is a game too.
This will not only make the game more realistic, as in real not everyone is active in war/politic/economy, but also make the game much more populated.
More population also means more chance of income for the website.
I agree, community is the most important factor. And more changes to give us reasons to work together as a community is the best thing the admins can do for retention. That means reasons to work together as a party, as a military unit, as a country and as an alliance. All of these are important communities for us in the game 🙂
By the way, you are most welcome in our party community if you wish 🙂
o7
What do you think about the creation of new server where you would have the new players plus some from this "old" server with less experience or strength..., and on the "old" server you would have maybe couple of divisions, for packet players and non packet players?
I think the worry with new servers is it will split the community. One of the great things about erep is that like other MMOs (like EVE) it has one big server everyone plays on.
The problem is how to give people who spent years training something to keep them playing if strength is taken away as a meaningful value. I think there are lots of ways to do that. Ultimately the current situation where hundreds of accounts simply farm gold, which is turned to currency and sent to pack buyers... it isn't a long term solution. Either for the game (financially) or in terms of playability. We need more 🙂
maybe convert strength to perception and introduce more air battles into the mix, but I think that they will change nothing
o/
on day 3576 raw companies didn't became more productive, they stayed exactly the same production, just expressed in a different way
Yes they can still do good stuff but we haven't witnessed that in the last years, we (players) have asked for certain features and we have been ignored in our requests, so many of us just stop being positive and suggesting stuff.
best idea is resources wars to make each year - it will really bring more fun, players will be forced to be more active and etc. (more strategy, more communication inside) - good idea.
p.s. i saw opinion of different servers - it is bad idea - it can destroy community which left here (and it is most important point which is in erep)
i have an idea to give stronger option/bonus to fighters which are fighting for their country, for example a fighter could have double strength fighting for own country. (not only with legend bonuses but from beginning) - in such way will be more difficult to occupy a country (smaller/weaker one). It could be possible for air battles and ground
"The Economist ~ Things the admins have done well" - The Economist
Few and far between.
They have: Wrecked a perfect V1 economy and never managed to fix it; wrecked work skill bonuses and gave 5,000 storage in return for much gold spent by V1 players training work skills; Wrecked the simple fight anytime war module in 2 iterations 3 counting unused guerrilla fights; Hacked the game with eCroatia; Lost thousands of players; Given themselves every new bonus advantage in the book, Kept their "Orgs"; Let Paid staff "play"...etc etc etc
Unite and Attack eBukarest by way of "Thank You"..
The v1 economy was far from perfect. I don't think they've really got the economy right so far in the game. They'd need to start again, but after v2 they're understandably wary about trying.
Economy was perfect...until they went from 3 to TWELVE skills & wrecked skills too. Profit could be made from everything from Q1 guns to grain or bread...sooner or later and companies were easy to sell; Now no one can sell companies at all (price fixed) and new players can't make money from Q1 companies...They wrecked it.
yea! 😃 ina 😃