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With recent changes from our dear Admins we all ask ourselves what have they brought to us and what will the consequences be?

GUI Changes

If you were surprised like me the other day when logging into the eRepublik, you could notice some differences in the graphic user interface (GUI):


My Land in eRepublik - still the same game?

There is no more My places menu, only My land, with some buildings on it, three free spots, and an offer to buy some more land!? First association was, is it still eRepublik, or is this some other game? Isn't that eCityVille now? But fortunately, this still is eRepublik, but for how long we may all ask.

csebastian: It's like Farmville... ...but with fighting. 😛


Some other Ville Game...

The next change is that we now have the Wars menu. Well, not a menu actually, because there is nothing to chose on it, just a link to the page with list of active wars shown. I guess I wont use it much because the list tends to be very long, so I'll probably use only the Military Campaigns list from the Homepage. The Market menu has stayed unchanged, luckily for us!
The Community menu got some stuff from My Places menu, but not all of them, and probably some other as well.

For instance, there is no more My newspapers in that menu. I guess Admins have forgotten to put it in there, so you basically need to go through your profile to access your newspapers. Never mind, because I used to access my newspapers from my profile anyway.

Altogether My Community menu seems a bit overcrowded compared to the other menus. I hope that would be corrected by our Admins and become more balanced.

On eRep Forum and Wiki Changes

Plato: Improvements should be intuitive. These kind of topics are answered in case:
- a citizen does not have the time or willingness to read the information in the Wiki;
- a citizen wishes to provide real time feedback on them.

jamesw: You mean the Wiki which is constantly kept up to date by dedicated eRepublik staff who always ensure that it contains up to date information for players new and old...? Or do you mean the Wiki which is more and more out of date with every change, with 1 admin trying to whip a few nice souls into keeping a repository of knowledge for a website which doesn't even know what it is anymore?



eFooter - Forum and Wiki on the bottom of the page


The other changes are that the Forum page and Wiki page are moved from the Community menu to the bottom of the page, together with their blog, where our dear Admins invited us to vote for eRepublik as Best Strategy Game of 2011.

Forum has become more important for communication with Admins and Plato since Plato and Admins stopped issuing eRepublik Insider. On the other hand, Wiki has become less important with all those frequent changes, because it is hard to keep up to date. Admins now don't even make in advance public announcements of all the changes they introduce to the game and even don't make public all the formulas needed to calculate certain factors in the game. eRepublik API is also not offering enough, and that what is offered shows significant lacks in performance and reliability. So my guess is that eRepublik won't be the Best Strategy Game of 2011, after all. Not unless something dramatically changes in Admin attitude toward community.

eEconomic Changes

There are also some changes in the economic module of the game. Who wins and who loses with them?

Winners: new players and new company owners

It certainly brings us some good things for new players and new company owners:
starting your first business has become more easily than ever!
That means that people on level 12 could already open their first company with their first golds coming from each level upgrade.
Question for you, especially if you are a new player: how many days you needed to get from level 1 to level 12?

However, it also brings some risks:
will these young players be experienced enough to run their business successfully?

Often mistakes of new business owners

1. Liquidity Issues

Often mistake of new business owners is not having enough liquidity in company. If they don't have enough working capital, they could be too hasty to sell their products and go aggressively with product prices before their working capital melts away. If there is a significant number of such business owners, they easily engage in price wars.
The result: huge price drop, good opportunity for buyers of these products on the market for a short period of time, huge losses of all companies offering products and selling on that market at such low prices, closing many companies for some time, shortage of products, and rising of prices.
The solution should be to start your business with enough liquidity for at least 5-7 days of work.

2. Job Market Issues

Another often mistake of new business owners is offering too high salaries on job market when competing for work force, where human resources are scarce comparing to the number of companies. The result is similar as with not having enough liquidity; losing money for business owners if the costs of salaries (and possibly some raw materials) and taxes are higher than the incomes of the company on the market. In the same time, the other companies could not afford hiring the work force, and in the long run, all companies offering too high salaries will have to shut down, and salaries will drop soon more than needed because there are always some companies that go down with those who started such process in the first place.

So, before you put your offer on the job market, please, calculate your costs and incomes first. And your offer doesn't always have to be the highest one if you are patient enough. Also, when business owners search for work force, some tend to put offers on the job market for more people then they really need. So when you get some people working for you, please, remove your redundant offers from the job market. In this way, the salaries could stay in reasonable range, not exceeding the break even point.

3. Manager Work Consequences

With manager work enabled and unlimited number of companies owned, some of these mistakes could be avoided and these problems might be smaller. However, we could have some other issues and certainly some consequences.

It brings us more competition, more companies, more products, more job offers, less workers per company, lower product prices, lower salaries.

Losers: company sellers and resellers

What does it bring to older, more ambitious businessmen? What about buying some land?
What about selling companies?

The bad news is that, if you were unfortunate like me to invest in a new business just a few days before these changes were introduced and were unaware of them coming, while unannounced, you just lost 10 gold per company comparing to ones who waited. If you want to sell a q1 company worth 20 gold before, now you can only get 10 gold for it. If you count in the value of the land you might think that your investment has increased in value, but until you can sell your land, you can't completely return your investment directly, through sales, yet. The good news is that you still have three empty spots to build on them 3 more companies for 10 gold each.

Here is a Forum topic which covers recent changes and asks for 10 g refund per preexisting company. There is also a nice summary with Questions and Answers from Plato. However, there are still no official announcements on these changes.

Some have also suggested to introduce land market, too and Admins are considering it. Perhaps if you join this petition, we might help them to reach the right decision.

Pick of the week:

dado6612: Plato, please, delete yourself. Don't ask me why, too many reasons...

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Some suggestions on what we can do with empty lan😛

shaokann: Well man....u can grow goats on that land! 🙂

The_Clairvoyant: Land would have a meaning only if it could be sold, and only of there were limited land pieces per area. So the bigger the country, more areas -> more land pieces. Not many land available to buy? Price raises. Much availability? Land price falls. This will limit the number of companies too.

Misho: Admin, now people will move to a country which has the lowest country currency, like 0.06 god / currency and start their companies there - then move and relocate them. PROFIT!
The country which have the lowest currency will have 10 million more currency now - printed out from nothing!

QueenOfTheDamned: How much it will cost me to grow a plantation of slaves? I'm not very fond of your idea of creating companies, so I want to do something else with the land.

Alain Soral: We will organize a big TO of a poor country, then put the gold exchange to 1G= 0.001 local currency units, buy 50 Lands, and then go back to our original country/citzenship....that s will be good!

osvetnik25: If you don't want to be an economist anymore you've got several empty plots that you can't sell. SOLUTION1: Enable selling plot with company. SOLUTION2: Give people like William Thomas Riker posibility to retrive money from plots for example person x sell hi companies for n gold and you erase his empty plots and refund him 10 gold per plot.

Plato: Thanks for the suggestions! It is refreshing to see different opinions and thoughtful comments.

LavBoris: What should we do with land spots when we sold companies? Should we make eCemetery on them???

Plato: Thank you! Regarding the possibility to sell land, I already mentioned that the team will think about it... but as you can see in some of the previous comments, it can create more issues than it solves.

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On eRepublik eVolution

Plato: All the improvements are a part of a bigger project. When it will end, all pieces will fit together like a puzzle. Please have patience until further phases are implemented!

shaokann: They don't care about us. Maybe if none buys gold anymore for at least 2-3 months they will start thinking about us and they will start listen our opinion. Thanks!

Join Date: Plato go away, bring back the Admin xD

Adhoc Design: As web developers you should know that there is nothing more intuitive than a menu page. This change can be difficult to understand for newbies, btw. you move all the menus to one place with no logic or order. And of course I want my gold of companies back & what will happen with houses?

Sarevock: I bet these guys are trying to get more real money from us, but they dont know how to do it properly. I see these changes as a poor and failed attempt. Maybe im wrong.. but how knows, i might be right too.. Anyway I dont like this at all!

Jakoushirou: Another method of drawing gold from us. First, the possibility to work as manager, which has caused creating many companies for 20 gold (most players spend their gold for companies). Next, decrease value of company from 20 to 10. Result: Less gold (in cash and goods) in players wallets. If somebody doesn't have gold for new companies, why do they need a empty fields?

Pecuniam Enterprises: Just when you think the currency market isn't screwed up already.... the admins bring you this. Thanks for screwing up the game even further since your last change... If there is anyone who gets an award for constancy you guys would win it it hands down.

DeltaCROss: Admins, take Plato and give us Socrates! 😛

NoOnexORG: It's 18:00 Romania time - this is the time when Plato goes home while we keep writing here. This is the time when Plato stops reading. This is the time when Plato stops the changes. We have 8-10 hours without any changes. PLAY ON guys. Now it's our change. Who knows what improvement will have tomorrow?

Ivke Pivke: ovo svakim danom, sve vise i vise ide u hondurac.

NoOnexORG: If you lost it than someone gained it. It's compensation law. Things don't just dissapear. They EVOLVE, they IMPROVE. Ask Plato. That GUY knows business.

santirub: Try to do an Official Thread about this Plato, it's a shame to have to read a kinda faq in a user post. Communication is worst than never.

Pexera: 2) keep the land system, but refund 10 gold per company built before the update.
this solution seems the fairest and the less destructive for the game and the players.

Thanks, Dictator Plato

Whisky Warrior: Dear Plato, if you want to be fair, i can propose you this kind of solution...
1. You leave everything just like it is and you will get unhappy players. I am also one of those who invested in some q1 companies and as it seems now i'm on loss, but, i got 3 free land spots wich are just about all i have planed to invest in the future.. in 3 more companies...
2. You remove free plots, or you leave only one, so those who have invested in companies at the price of 20g (even q5 company doesnt now cost you 390g but 380 to build from zero) have oportunity to get one more company for 10g, and all others can get also ONLY ONE company without paying land plots...
3. refund 10g for each company created before this change.. this seems most acceptable... afterall, this is a brand new "feature" you haven't informed us about... with this you will show "good will" and you will keep your players happy... New players can now buy 3 companies for 10g, old players can also do the same, and they got their compensation because land has no value and can not be sold...
It is on you to decide... but solution lvl 3 is the best one for everybody...

Plato: Related to solution no. 3, if it would be implemented, it would bring another big issue - Gold inflation and MM destabilization. Thanks for the suggestions!

NoOnexORG1
Originally Posted by Plato
Related to solution no. 3, if it would be implemented, it would bring another big issue - Gold inflation and MM destabilization. Thanks for the suggestions!
Re-he-he-hely? And your action stabilized the MM market? Go take a look. What were yesterday's values? What are today's?
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!!! Finally, you're right. (NOT, just being ironic)

Philip Solo: Another major change to a game introduced without the slightest piece of pre information, no consultation with players, no notice and no explanation, after which players have to post to admin on the forum to find out what it all means. This is a really poor way of handling new change and ad-hoc unnanounced unwanted change for change's sake is a poor way of game development guaranteed to offend and confuse the player base. Then the forum link is removed from the community bar at the same time making us have to research player posted articles to get a link to find out what is going on.

Then we find out this is just another useless and complicated money making sink feature which adds nothing of real value to the game from a player perspective and simply yet again skims off our funds. The 'Land' concept is a contrivance which simply creates another non productive and unwanted step in the company creation process. I fail to see any real player value in the entire idea. Ok so a Company now costs 10 gold... and 1000 local currency. In my case UK, so this is 1000 GBP which at average conversion rate equates recently to between 15 and 18 gold. So actually.. the real cost of a new company is 25-28 gold so THE COST WENT UP by a large percentage !!

I have been in-game since March 2009 and worked pretty much non stop and only ever spent the GBP earned on food not ever fighting or buying weapons and even with that my saved funds are only a little over that 1000GBP.. so basically to open one company I would have to spent almost all the currency I have and would then have no operating money, unless I converted all the gold I have also.

Seems to me the whole thing is just another rip-off to skim money from players with precious little real value to us and gold/GBP just went up even further as a result.

Alain Soral
Originally Posted by Plato
Related to solution no. 3, if it would be implemented, it would bring another big issue - Gold inflation and MM destabilization. Thanks for the suggestions!

Gold Inflation and MM destabilization ? Actually it s alrerady the case since you have introduce the new rule yesterday !

You will give gold to people, the contrary will happen , the gold price will decrease...please learn the first basical rules of economy, thanks

fish_fish: hey Plato, and the GUYS: here's a proposal of a REAL LIFE web developer - for your little experminents (by that i mean this BS with lands and overnight menu changes) open a domain called beta.erepublik.com and do what the hell ever you want there.
leave the live game alone and DO NOT make ad-hoc decisions become alive without considering the implications it will have on players/customers. i've been playing every single day since summer of '09, and by your constant changes i've been "damaged" many many many times...

lets say strength gain: 1st injustice was the introduction of Lana - at very least we had info about that. the second injustice was your neglection of multiaccount usage within the battlefields in V1.5 (or whatever it was) - 200 multi's were active on one single field (i have a screenshot somewhere) and a few chosen ones who had the info about that gained strength that i needed like half year of training, everyday. even with user warnings about those abuse, you did nothing. it was "none of your business" and why would you even bother... i've always been con multi accounting and have created none in past two years, because it's plain cheating. go on, check me as long as you want i double dare you...

lets say learning and working skills: everyday in "time management" i had to have two hours (at least) if i wanted to have any progress in work skill...cuz the work itself did not bring any...and then, you revoked that change with the humblest "appologies" (talk is cheap, i say) to all the players.

lets say houses: i haven't had a house since v1 cuz it was ridicolously expencive to buy and no real reason to have. why? remember the health/happiness formulas? then again, glouriously admited failure...no need to go in details with this cuz i'm just to worked up whenever i recall those times...

after all being said i have just one question for you and your guys: why do You keep cheating your most loyal customers/players?

and to top it all - REMEMBER ONE THING: YOU NEED US, WE DO NOT NEED YOU! ))