An answer to Peregrine Open Letter ( or V1 - What's the meaning of a Release )

Day 343, 07:47 • Published in Ireland Ireland • by andredambreville
Dear Erepublik and Peregrine,

First of all forgive me for my poor english, but i'm not native from an english speaking cuntry.

2 weeks ago this game was in beta status, but as of 14th october 2008 Version 1 (V1) was released.

Peregrine wrote two open letters to the Admins (http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/an-open-letter-to-admin-692756/1) giving his advices on how to better the game.

Now, during Beta any improvement was welcome, but after a major release (as the one of half october) an IT technician, as Peregrine seems to be, should know that only minor tuning is allowed.

Just to point out a few examples...
This game, like reality, is built on capability from people to understands its basic economical, social and military rules in the first place.

An example? Peregrine points out as it's useless to ever by moving tickets of quality over than 1, because of the moving tickets system. Now smart people figured it out and invested in q1 moving company or maximum q2. Everyone not understanding it furhter upgraded it. Changing so deeply as he proposes the moving tickets rules would turn those investments in a mess... who kept the company at q1 would be very penalized, while he was smart to understand game mechanics. while who upgraded to q3 or q4, was not so smart and now get a big bonus.

But is right to change game rules like this? i think no. Erepublik is a society simulator. Changing a rule like the moving ticket one would be like, for instance, if in reality from one day to another air started to five three times more resistance to airplanes giving an advantage to some aicraft carrier who built before useless airplanes.

There are a few proposals from peregrine which are just some minor fine tuning, or don't focus on game balance (meaning they have the same impact on all players), i put among them :
- changing the quiz system
- changing congress size depending on country population
- adding a vice president (for country and parties)
- change in congressional elections

On the other end, change to the company system, for instance, would seriously affect people who already invested a lot of gold in the game, for example :
- changing moving tickets rules
- find other applications of weapons ( this could be good... but change the game balance anyway )

I totally agree with the micro pay structure he proposed.

So i basically agree with peregrine ideas, but i'd not consider the more radical ones or the one who would change too deeply the balance of the game.

As a bottom line, on the article Organizations in V1 (http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/organizations-in-v1-693587/1) admin stated a rule change :

- When you upgrade your company level, your queue is now reset to zero

In Ireland we were taking advantage of the previous behaviour to build the first q4 hospital. It was a documented behaviour in the wiki, so i again i don't think it was fair to change the rule without notice. This is a release. V1 is a release. Again i wanna remember, aside minor fine tuning and bug fixes, RELEASE whould be stable in specifications.
We take decisions based on what we think are the rules. if the rules are costantly changed, it's not fair not easy anymore.
Again i point out, it's a bit like rules of physics suddenlty changed in reality.
Or if just before running the 100m run, the olympics committee decided they are no more 100m but 150m... All ahtletes worked years training on 100m... so changing it would be an advantage for the less prepared of them.

Those are my two cents...

Regards

Andredambreville