eRepublik Rising?

Day 948, 12:02 • Published in USA USA • by Judean Princess
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This week I’d like to do some analysis of eRepublik Rising. I won’t be telling you how it works, because there are a hundred articles (including some by the admins!) which explain all that. Instead I will be discussing possible problems that Rising is going to bring, and possible ways to solve them. I’ll also be looking at the direction the admins have decided to take the game in, and what that means for all of us. To do this I am going to be giving my opinion as a veteran eRepublik. Now obviously the beta is a beta so it’s not a finished model. I say this because I can’t talk about Rising with any real certainty, so the following is speculation based off of what I have seen so far and what may come. Hopefully this will help stimulate your own thoughts on the matter and mean that in Rising we have a better prepared population!



One of the biggest, and most intriguing developments is the focus on customization which will most likely revolutionize the economic modules. Not only are there now several different ways of fighting/healing-each way is customisable, fully dependent on the attributes one seeks to promote: for instance, food now increases both wellness and happiness. This should hopefully address some of the issues which the current economic module has suffered. It will also allow us, the user, to search for specific improvements in our characters: should we get low happiness, we can change our buying habits to increase it.

As well as this, we can change our behaviour to increase our attributes, or wealth. For instance, we can individually work, train, study, fight or rest for up to 12 hours per day: this opens the way for a much more engaged gameplay experience. Players who think strategically can definitely reap the rewards of this new, more detailed, module. Time management is another challenging aspect of the game in beta. You have 24 hours in which you can spend up to 12 hours either working, training, relaxing or increasing your work skill. So for example you could train six hours, work six hours, study six hours and relax six hours. However this is much more complex than that, as some tanks will be forced to spend more time training. This means they'll have to spend money on boosting wellness, as well as more money boosting their happiness back up because they only have 12 hours remaining to relax, work and up their skill. I'd imagine some will stop learning in the library to try and maximise both their income and their training. Still it will cost a lot of gold to do that, possibly as much as 5-6 a day before any battlefield costs. Mediocre players will be better off, balancing their day more will mean they won't have to spend as much, and if they don't care about boosters it will be cheaper. But for players determined to be #1 in the ingame stats it will be a long and expensive journey.



Another major issue which will effect all players in Rising involves the change in the economic module from a single weapon setup to four different types. At present we produce enough guns to supply global demand during wartime. In Rising all of these gun companies will turn into rifles, but many people will choose to be tank/heli/artillery specialists. This means there will be many more rifle companies than are needed to arm all citizens. Almost four times as many. In addition, iron will not be in so much demand as titanium will replace 50% of weapons demand, so almost half our iron companies will disappear. At current rates that means that about half the companies in the world will no longer be needed. What this will do to the global markets I do not know. The cost of replacing all of those companies with tank, heli and artillery companies would cost hundreds of thousands of gold.

The complexity of fighting will change the nature of war again. Citizen armies will become a lot more of a random factor. Fighting on a map necessitates a level of organisation which will require IRC usage simply to manoeuvre. A lot of it will be like RL, where a lot of the breaks made by attackers will be the result of random force movement during the battle. Smaller and more active armies will necessitate a greater expenditure of gold to compensate. This is a typical admin response to the game. Reduce ordinary player input and force a greater level of interaction with the game from 2 clickers. Admins have identified that 2 clickers are unlikely to buy gold, and thus are the least important citizens to them. This new module risks alienating casual, as well new, players altogether.



The focus on more dedicated gamers has came alongside the introduction of more gold boosters. These gold boosters are both very expensive and, in this journalist's opinion, poorly placed. Lana was strongly opposed by gamers, because it didn't just give players an ability to extend battle like tanking did, it became a necessity for soldiers to use it to maintain their strength lead. Far from removing the booster, the admins have multiplied it and added it to every part of the game - fighting, working, training, skill increases. This is a terrible idea as it forces players to spend far more gold increasing their skill than they ever hope to benefit from the boosters. It's a blatant attempt to suck players into spending even more real money. Rather than making the game more accessible and releasing cheap gold they've increased the cost of playing competitively further still. Simple game design suggests that the best way to encourage players to spend gold is to reward them for advancing through the game. But far from giving people more gold as rewards they've reduced it yet further. This is a poor idea, even from a business perspective, as poor rewards damage retention at all levels of the game.



My final thoughts on this matter are as follows. The admins have made the game far more elitist than it used to be. For players who are willing to spend a lot of real money, the game has a lot of potential. However, to unlock its full potential eRep now costs more than a real game of any kind to play (apart from those found in Las Vegas). The admins have forgotten that in the end its just a browser game, and if people are given such huge expenses they will either stop playing and give up, or just refuse to use the boosters at all. Firstly, the boost itself is rubbish, and secondly, maintaining it over long periods of time is so costly that it will quickly drain even rich citizens' bank balances. I expect that a lot of players will be forced to stop using the boosters, and have to watch other players overtake them solely because of how much money they have in real life, not because of their actual game skill. This could, in some cases, be the straw that breaks the camels back.

Picture courteosy of Amun Nefer
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