I am about to commit heresy - Q2 hospitals for all!

Day 822, 20:56 • Published in United Kingdom France • by Hell The Great

My fellow Brits, the eUK has a serious retention problem. Part of it is the learning curve involved with finding the portions of eRepublik that are interesting. The other portion of the problem with our retention I feel is the inherent nature of our Fortress strategy that renders the vast majority of the country barren.

Hundreds of new players are born into the wasteland every day in the UK, yet our retention rate is among the worst in eRepublik. This is NOT a coincidence. A moving ticket out of the wasteland costs more than 7 pounds. Most noobs are making 20 pence a day after taxes and food. This is why the eUK has welfare programs to get moving tickets out to new players. But this requires that those citizens get in contact with the welcoming committee. I have to wonder how often this actually happens with regards to the number of citizens born every day. I seriously doubt the welcoming committee gets 300+ ticket requests every day, and if it did that is almost 3,000 pounds a day in moving tickets alone for the government. Probably more as it would increase prices for tickets exponentially. What this say’s to me is that a large portion of our new players are remaining in the wasteland when they hit their level 5.

At level 5, as all know, we can fight. Of course, a common Noobish mistake is to fight without being in a hospital region. I’m sure we can all remember that first week playing eRep. I remember it took me 2 weeks to figure out where my newspaper subscriptions were, the battlefield looked like a bunch of pretty colors, and I bought a Q5 Gun expecting to be able to keep it for continuous use. We are giving our noobs far too much credit in thinking they have any concept what a Hospital is, What the Fortress Region Strategy means and what a Moving Ticket is for. But what every noob can understand is what the “Fight” button does. It is fairly self explanatory after all. What happens after they push that fight button is what worries me. They pretty much nix their wellness, and get the message “you cannot fight anymore”. They will also get fired from their job for being a low wellness worker. Combine that with the seeming inanity of this game as it presents itself at first glance, and you have all the workings of a rage quit.

We have discussed Hospitals in every region for months now, and most advocates of the policy have been delegated to the loony bin. I feel however that this is because nobody has actually tried to present the cause in a manner that makes sense. Retention makes sense, and our retention as a nation sucks. Every day is a baby boom in the UK compared to other countries, yet we are falling behind. Soon, even Austria will pass us. I have seen people trying to get a baby boom going in the UK through other methods, and I must now ask the question nobody else seems to be asking. If we have a Poland style baby boom, what will we do with it? Remember, Poland had Q5 Hospitals in every single one of their regions.

Admittedly, Poland only has 6 home regions and we have 51. But the argument stands. Does the welcoming committee have the infrastructure necessary to support a Poland style baby boom in the United Kingdom? Having 2,000 new citizens a day = almost 20,000 pounds a day in Moving Tickets and dozens of volunteers. If we follow laws of averages, a repeat of Poland’s boom in the UK could conceivably give us as many as 5,000 new citizens a day. Does the welcoming committee have the infrastructure for that many new citizens?

If the answer is no, then why the hell are you trying to start a baby boom if you are only going to watch it die? After all, if we are having crappy retention with a manageable 400 new citizens a day, we will have horrible retention with 2,000 a day. New citizens won’t get moving tickets, even if they ask for them and get pissed. New citizens will also fall into the trap and hit the Fight button while in the wasteland and join the tens of thousands of dead UK citizens that preceded them.

I understand the need for the Fortress strategy, but just look at London. The wall of this region is huge! Mission accomplished! We got a sexy fortress! Now for gods sake, take a look at the rest of the country. I can understand that we will need to retreat territory to absorb invasions, and that we cannot afford to spread our population around. That is why I am advocating Q2 hospitals. A Q2 hospital can be sacrificed in a way a Q5 cannot, because it does not cost near as much money (4,000 wood vs. 10,000 wood + labor). What a Q2 can give us in exchange for the investment is granting our noobs the time they need to build up wellness and money to buy a ticket to the Fortress regions on their own if the Government ticket program is slammed. Having population spread around will also be a non issue, since by its nature a Q2 will encourage someone to move to a Q5 region.

Let’s face it, not even pride will hold someone in place if they can only get 2 fights a day. Especially if we remind people how much experience gain they are sacrificing by being stubborn. We must also remember that the people using these hospitals will be noobs and thus not be offering much damage anyway. What these hospitals WILL accomplish however, is mitigating the loss of people to rage quits. A Q2 can give a noob a net gain of wellness after a fight, that a Q1 cannot and certainly what no hospital at all can accomplish. This will also set in place infrastructure to prevent our government from getting slammed if we ever do get a baby boom started.

Or, we can just go on pretending that this is not a problem.