[tl;dr] How to keep lower divisions alive? - the Infantry Kit [edit]

Day 2,712, 21:12 • Published in Germany Denmark • by n0s3

Edit: Right after going to bed (sorry again, it's been quite late and my brain wasn't working properly anymore), I noticed this article is lacking a crucial information and thus misleading.

If you read this article, you might assume this pack to be my own idea. Well, you would be wrong. It's an official, but so far unpublished pack. I'm not at all in favor of it; I'm opposing it (hence the question mark in the title), that's why I'm publishing this article.


http://www.erepublik.com/images/modules/banners/infantry_kit.jpg

Edit #2: By now, all the graphics for the new kit have been uploaded. If you ever wanted to know how experience inhibitors look like, here you go:

Hi!

It's been quite a while since I've written my last (serious) article. However, before I get down to the actual topic, I'd like to thank dead dreamer for creating a new set of graphics for my newspaper - which I personally like quite a lot. If you ever happen to need some GFX work done, I suggest you talk to him.

Anyhow, what I'd like to talk about concerns eRep's most recent and possibly upcoming changes offers. As I'm a person who plays eRep to have some fun, the agony of the game which each one of us can witness these days bothers me. What bothers me the most about it is the fact that the administration knows the game is dying down but doesn't seem to be willing to make some actual changes to counteract this development.

The problem with economy is that it involves so many things that nobody agrees and everything can be broken easily so we are condemned to do it slowly step by step. I really think about it for the mobile version.
[GN #6] [EN/FR] Interview with eRepublik CEO : Alexis Bonte !

According to Alexis Bonte, the administration seems to be working on the feature that probably most of us are waiting for: an actual economy module. Admittedly, an actually working economic module is nothing you simply pull out of your hat; it takes time. I believe most eRep users understand that.

However, given eRep started working on it about two years ago, it's quite depressing that hardly anything has changed so far. Except for the reintroduction of houses (of which still not all are available), the resource reshuffle (which didn't fix things either) and - disappointingly - more and more offers, packs and stashes, not much has been done. The economy is still the same.



Admittedly, I still spend money on eRep - even though certainly not as much as others. Firstly, I haven't given up on the game yet. Secondly, there's still some fun to be had. What probably all of you have noticed is the fact that most packs and stashes (Power Pack, Assault Pack, Blitzkrieg Pack, ... ) engage you to fight. Hardly anything related to another aspect than the military one - except for the tycoon pack maybe, which - again - doesn't help fix the economy. In fact, it does the opposite by making the overproduction even worse.

The fact that those packs engage you to fight is also somewhat strange as people in lower divisions shouldn't spend all their available fights - if any. Most people suggest that new players build up some strength before starting to fight, for obvious reasons. This leads to a certain dilemma:

c) eRepublik.com is 7 years old and it's dificult to keep new players who have no chance to get closer to the old ones. But without new blood, the game becomes less interesting for the old players. We thought for a long time that if we made the game easier and more reachable, we would succeed it but the real main problem is this unreachable gap.
[GN #6] [EN/FR] Interview with eRepublik CEO : Alexis Bonte !

The unreachable gap Bonte speaks about has been tried to balance out by introducing different divisions, which was in my opinion a good change. However, it has led to a situation where people would, as mentioned above, mostly train and not fight until they're strong enough to dominate their division. But - sooner or later, every player (fortunately?) has to leave their division due to surpassing its level cap.



For the admins, the dilemma consists of one more factor: If people aim to build up on strength before fighting, they don't need to buy stashes or gold. If you merely train day after day, you don't need lots of energy bars because you don't use them. Eventually, that means less revenues.

Don't get me wrong: Having revenues is a legit goal for the game administration. Employees need to be paid, servers need to be kept up and running, some money might be needed to expand etc. However, it should be balanced out by the free game features. Something which is currently not the case. Instead, more and more offers are put up to keep the game alive.

It might have worked once, but you can't raise the level caps of the different divisions all the time, nor can you introduce more and more divisions. So if there are barely new players joining the game and actually staying, there must be another way to fix it - preferably (at least preferably for the game administration) not for free.



As mentioned above, low-level players don't have as much of an incentive to buy stashes as higher-level ones. So if you could fix the problem of low-level players reaching higher divs and make some money at the same time, wouldn't that be great? What I'm talking about is this: the Infantry Kit.

Mostly a regular stash including gold, bombs, energy bars, boosters and a health building. With one additional benefit specifically designed for players in lower divisions:

Giving users the option of simply not gaining EXP when fighting. Of course at a certain cost. I'll leave it at that for now.



However, I'd still like to state my opinion.
If the infantry kit is actually going to be offered like that, it's going to be rather disappointing. To me it would mean that the game administration is taking the easy way: Instead of actually trying to change things for the better, this kit would just create some (additional) revenues. It would make it look like even the game administration has given up on eRep as it currently is and not even trying to fix anything.

Yet, I might be wrong. As a regular user, I don't have much insight into the processes behind the scenes. Even more, I hope I am wrong.

At last, for clarification; whenever I speak of the "(game) admins/administration", I'm talking about the people in charge of implementing and changing mechanics in eRep as well as managing the game as it is. Even though it doesn't exactly have anything to do with the topic, I'm obviously not talking about (voluntary) game moderators spending their leisure time on trying to give as much assistance to each and every eRep user as possible. I highly appreciate their work and believe that users are often holding them responsible for things that they can't even influence.

~n0s3y

PS: It's 05:52am right now and I haven't slept in quite a while, so please forgive me any possible grammar mistakes or flaws in the continuity of my reasoning.