Blamo's Suggestions to Improve the Game
Day 549, 15:54
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Published in Canada 
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by
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by Blamo Corp
BLAMO CORPORATION'S RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT has been working diligently to solve eRepublik's major dilemma: uninteresting market competition and diversity. What is the main problem? There is just nothing particularly distinctive about how markets operate in eRepublik.
Many wo/man-hours of research by Blamo scientists have finally produced some tangible suggestions. The following list is compiled below:
1. Employees working and living in the same region should have additional productivity. This bonus should be small, but beneficial. It will help promote job migration, a realistic behavior in real markets. An example bonus could be +5%.
2. Companies selling goods in different regions should have additional costs due to transportation. Again, this is a very realistic behavior that also creates market diversity in terms of space. More companies can exist and compete with each other if their location actually matters. An example of a transportation cost could be +5%.
3. Regions should have a varying "Hardship" which removes wellness each day solely by living there. This introduces realism, as well as a cost-benefit analysis in terms of the previous suggestions (should I live in x if it means I'll have additional productivity, cheaper goods, but be harder to live in?) Very cold, desolate, or disease-prone areas of the world would have higher costs to wellness, and the range could be around +1 to -3 wellness lost per day. This will make some areas highly attractive to live in, some very unattractive areas to settle, and some very conflicting. Of course, new players entering the game should have all this information displayed when choosing a region. This opens the door to "newbie" regions that are fairly easy to live in, and as boomers mature they can migrate to where jobs pay more but living is tougher.
4. Companies should have more options to attract customers. Such examples include unique product logos, and Product Dependability (a feature which means products are inherently defective, and the rate of this defectiveness depends on the company's investment to minimize malfunction). Such features have been described before in previous Blamo Corp press releases: http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/future-erepublik-company-modules-783697/1/20. Ultimately, this will further diversify companies and allow more chances for profit and competition to exist.
5. Moving tickets and gifts have little incentive to create higher-quality companies. Because of the linear increase in effectiveness, higher-quality gifts and moving tickets do not create incentive for companies to produce them due to non-linear cost increases. This has also been discussed previously: http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/revising-moving-ticket-quality-bonuses-785184/1/20. For gifts, a "gift cap" could encourage the existence of higher-quality companies, if each citizen could only give a certain number of gifts per day. This would mean that a player would want higher-quality gifts in order to give a higher amount of wellness per day. Another option would be that players can receive 5 gifts per day, which would mean 5 wellness from Q1 gifts, or 25 wellness from Q5 gifts.
For moving tickets, another option is this:
Q1 - Travel within a country only
Q2 - Travel within country and allies only
Q3 - Travel within country, allies, and neutral countries only
Q4 - Travel within country, allies, neutral countries, and enemies
Q5 - One-day pass to travel unlimited times to any countries
6. There is a strong need for another resource/product in the game. Examples:
-Fish, which could also be used to produce food and serve as competition for grain prices.
-Uranium and Nuclear Missiles. Uranium could be mined, and a Nuclear Missile Facility could build nuclear missiles. A nuclear missile, when launched at a region, would cause Quality * 10 damage to the wellness of every player in that region. A Q5 nuclear missile would thus cause 50 damage to wellness to all citizens of a region. Caveats: Players can use hospitals if hit by a missile, and defense systems would have an inherent ability to defend against missile strikes (Q1 defense system: 10% chance that missile will fail; Q5 DS: 50% chance that missile will fail). Players would have a one-hour warning if a missile was launched at their region, and a maximum of one missile can hit a region per day.
-Coal and Power Plants. Coal could be used in power plants, and power plants are built from wood and installed into a region. If a region has a Q1 power plant, then every citizen in that region will get +1 wellness per day. The power plant uses coal each day, based on the number of citizens of its region divided by 10 (1000 citizen region = 100 coal / day). Another option is that power plants could also use uranium for a somewhat cheaper amount, which would play into the modern dilemma of real-world politics.
Okay, that's everything that was proposed by Blamo's R&D department. Feel free to discuss in the comments section!
Many wo/man-hours of research by Blamo scientists have finally produced some tangible suggestions. The following list is compiled below:
1. Employees working and living in the same region should have additional productivity. This bonus should be small, but beneficial. It will help promote job migration, a realistic behavior in real markets. An example bonus could be +5%.
2. Companies selling goods in different regions should have additional costs due to transportation. Again, this is a very realistic behavior that also creates market diversity in terms of space. More companies can exist and compete with each other if their location actually matters. An example of a transportation cost could be +5%.
3. Regions should have a varying "Hardship" which removes wellness each day solely by living there. This introduces realism, as well as a cost-benefit analysis in terms of the previous suggestions (should I live in x if it means I'll have additional productivity, cheaper goods, but be harder to live in?) Very cold, desolate, or disease-prone areas of the world would have higher costs to wellness, and the range could be around +1 to -3 wellness lost per day. This will make some areas highly attractive to live in, some very unattractive areas to settle, and some very conflicting. Of course, new players entering the game should have all this information displayed when choosing a region. This opens the door to "newbie" regions that are fairly easy to live in, and as boomers mature they can migrate to where jobs pay more but living is tougher.
4. Companies should have more options to attract customers. Such examples include unique product logos, and Product Dependability (a feature which means products are inherently defective, and the rate of this defectiveness depends on the company's investment to minimize malfunction). Such features have been described before in previous Blamo Corp press releases: http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/future-erepublik-company-modules-783697/1/20. Ultimately, this will further diversify companies and allow more chances for profit and competition to exist.
5. Moving tickets and gifts have little incentive to create higher-quality companies. Because of the linear increase in effectiveness, higher-quality gifts and moving tickets do not create incentive for companies to produce them due to non-linear cost increases. This has also been discussed previously: http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/revising-moving-ticket-quality-bonuses-785184/1/20. For gifts, a "gift cap" could encourage the existence of higher-quality companies, if each citizen could only give a certain number of gifts per day. This would mean that a player would want higher-quality gifts in order to give a higher amount of wellness per day. Another option would be that players can receive 5 gifts per day, which would mean 5 wellness from Q1 gifts, or 25 wellness from Q5 gifts.
For moving tickets, another option is this:
Q1 - Travel within a country only
Q2 - Travel within country and allies only
Q3 - Travel within country, allies, and neutral countries only
Q4 - Travel within country, allies, neutral countries, and enemies
Q5 - One-day pass to travel unlimited times to any countries
6. There is a strong need for another resource/product in the game. Examples:
-Fish, which could also be used to produce food and serve as competition for grain prices.
-Uranium and Nuclear Missiles. Uranium could be mined, and a Nuclear Missile Facility could build nuclear missiles. A nuclear missile, when launched at a region, would cause Quality * 10 damage to the wellness of every player in that region. A Q5 nuclear missile would thus cause 50 damage to wellness to all citizens of a region. Caveats: Players can use hospitals if hit by a missile, and defense systems would have an inherent ability to defend against missile strikes (Q1 defense system: 10% chance that missile will fail; Q5 DS: 50% chance that missile will fail). Players would have a one-hour warning if a missile was launched at their region, and a maximum of one missile can hit a region per day.
-Coal and Power Plants. Coal could be used in power plants, and power plants are built from wood and installed into a region. If a region has a Q1 power plant, then every citizen in that region will get +1 wellness per day. The power plant uses coal each day, based on the number of citizens of its region divided by 10 (1000 citizen region = 100 coal / day). Another option is that power plants could also use uranium for a somewhat cheaper amount, which would play into the modern dilemma of real-world politics.
Okay, that's everything that was proposed by Blamo's R&D department. Feel free to discuss in the comments section!
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excellent suggestions
Excellent idea! That would make a great addition to the game.
They all look very good. Would be great additions.
Some criticisms that I have had are due to unfairness. I understand these criticisms, and want to emphasize that these suggestions are to improve market realism of the game. eRep is a simulated market/social environment, and these would introduce more realistic forces into the simulation.
Wow, I'm impressed. Great article, and great ideas.
Excellent except for the hardship part, that makes it harder for lots of people and may send other players away from vital areas.
That's exactly the point of hardship. Players have to a cost-benefit decision, which makes it much more interesting in terms of markets. Would it be more beneficial to start a company in a medium-iron producing region with very little hardship and lots of employees, or would it be better to start a company in a high-iron producing region with high hardship and the likelihood of having little local employees?
I don't know about that ticket scheme, but I really, really like your idea of a gift cap.
Can you suggest a different ticket scheme?
But dab, then it would be too difficult for new players, the government coming up with enough money to support them, and the death rate would be off the charts.
all in all it depends weather you want this game to be more realistic and harder, or less realistic and simpler. Take the Sims for example (a bit of a stretch I know 😛)The first version was quite simplistic, and was easy to play, however it quickly became dull, so they came out with Sims2 which was substantially more realistic (to some extent) and way funner to play, though it required more skill. I say complicate the game a bit so it becomes equally more interesting.
Duke, your criticism is noted. I have already addressed this above:
"...new players entering the game should have all this information displayed when choosing a region. This [also] opens the door to "newbie" regions that are fairly easy to live in, and as boomers mature they can migrate to where jobs pay more but living is tougher."
Some of these could work well, but others would just over complicate things.
thank you dabman
On moving tickets: I'd suggest moving tickets be used to move products to market. The higher the quality would allow more products to be moved and less damage to those products. This would make transportation a very important industry. Which it is in RL.
Also for each Raw material 2 products could be created.
Iron-Weapons and Ammunition-weapons expensive ammo cheap
Grain-Food and Alcohol(subtracts additional wellness but increases damage in fights)
Wood-I would add wood requirements to building a business as presently the Demand for wood is too low.
Oil-Moving tickets and Plastics usable as up to 50% of the production in weapon manufacturing or Housing.
That's a great idea, Sonny! I had thought about that, but couldn't figure out a simple way to implement like you suggested. The raw material thing sounds a bit complicated though🙂. It would be interesting, that's for certain.
@dabman IMO it's far too simple now for a game of such global scope.Don't get me wrong I like it a lot.I understand the reasoning, but people drawn to this type of game(ie no graphics,lots of reading) aren't usually intimidated by a bit of complexity. Of course what I suggest is insanely rough but perhaps if it gives one developer one idea it's all good.Hopefully with your article they'll take another look at the possibilities. Good post.