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Plans for the first half of 2009
Dear citizens,
The eRepublik team wishes you all a happy new year and many accomplishments in your eRepublik careers this year. After considering the achievements of 2008 in the last article, we've decided to share our challenges for the first half of 2009. The priorities in the near future are:
- Improving the experience of citizens. The existing modules will be improved in order to make them more easily understood by new citizens and also to provide a better overall eRepublik experience.
- New citizen laws. The new set of laws will replace the eRepublik 10 laws we have now and it will bring a more complete coverage of the events that are taking place in the New World.
- Visual improvements. Usability and game experience can be upgraded by improving several visual aspects of the New World. This process will be a constant challenge for our team throughout the year.
- Tools for general managers. Yes, the inclusion of the famous company statistics is one of our top priorities as it has been one of the most highly requested modules by the community.
- API system. A teaser of the eAPI was released last year and can be found here. The deadline for this complex project is approaching fast and our developers are working full-speed on bringing this new product to life.
- Translation in other languages. No web project is cool enough without being translated into other languages. The first steps were done and 2009 will bring new languages to the New World
- Moderator module. This community module will help citizens perform moderation tasks. As the eRepublik community is a fast-growing one, these types of tools are highly needed in order to provide a more complete and timely moderation.
- A cool eRepublik map. While the wars are developing fast, the map of the New World is constantly changing and a cool system is needed in order to display the new borders of the eRepublik countries.
- Citizen ads. The possibility to promote your party or your company in eRepublik is something our team is very keen about, therefore ads regarding the entities in the New World will be one of our challenges in 2009.
- eRepublik shop. T-shirts, eRepublik passports and badges will be fun things to have this new year.
- Add new countries. After Slovenia and Croatia, several other countries will be added constantly in eRepublik. The next one will be announced here.
- War improvements. Improving the current war module is one of our main challenges and with the feedback received from you, we shall make the proper changes regarding this module.
- Customization. Citizen / game customization is something we will start adding in small increments throughout the year.
- Newsletters. One of the tools that will help citizens keep up to date with the latest news around the New World.
- Adviser system. The tool used in beta will be back in V1, but Plato will have a more complete and fun coverage of what's happening in eRepublik.
- Poll system. The poll system shall be used by parties, organizations and other entities in the New World and our team will use it to have a more complete view of the citizen needs.
- A new way to add improvements. Starting February the changes will be uploaded only once a month and announced at least a few days before hand.
New communication tools for citizens and improving the existing ones are also among our priorities. Along all of these front-end features, many other improvements will be made to the modules that are not visible by the citizens as these back-end modules help our team respond quickly to your needs.
All of these priorities are just a glance of what we expect in the next few months, several other features will be added in time. Remember to keep an eye on the eRepublik updates topic, the place where the new modules, features and improvements will be announced on a regular basis.
Thank you for your support throughout last year and together let's make the New World a better place.
The eRepublik Team
The eRepublik team wishes you all a happy new year and many accomplishments in your eRepublik careers this year. After considering the achievements of 2008 in the last article, we've decided to share our challenges for the first half of 2009. The priorities in the near future are:
- Improving the experience of citizens. The existing modules will be improved in order to make them more easily understood by new citizens and also to provide a better overall eRepublik experience.
- New citizen laws. The new set of laws will replace the eRepublik 10 laws we have now and it will bring a more complete coverage of the events that are taking place in the New World.
- Visual improvements. Usability and game experience can be upgraded by improving several visual aspects of the New World. This process will be a constant challenge for our team throughout the year.
- Tools for general managers. Yes, the inclusion of the famous company statistics is one of our top priorities as it has been one of the most highly requested modules by the community.
- API system. A teaser of the eAPI was released last year and can be found here. The deadline for this complex project is approaching fast and our developers are working full-speed on bringing this new product to life.
- Translation in other languages. No web project is cool enough without being translated into other languages. The first steps were done and 2009 will bring new languages to the New World
- Moderator module. This community module will help citizens perform moderation tasks. As the eRepublik community is a fast-growing one, these types of tools are highly needed in order to provide a more complete and timely moderation.
- A cool eRepublik map. While the wars are developing fast, the map of the New World is constantly changing and a cool system is needed in order to display the new borders of the eRepublik countries.
- Citizen ads. The possibility to promote your party or your company in eRepublik is something our team is very keen about, therefore ads regarding the entities in the New World will be one of our challenges in 2009.
- eRepublik shop. T-shirts, eRepublik passports and badges will be fun things to have this new year.
- Add new countries. After Slovenia and Croatia, several other countries will be added constantly in eRepublik. The next one will be announced here.
- War improvements. Improving the current war module is one of our main challenges and with the feedback received from you, we shall make the proper changes regarding this module.
- Customization. Citizen / game customization is something we will start adding in small increments throughout the year.
- Newsletters. One of the tools that will help citizens keep up to date with the latest news around the New World.
- Adviser system. The tool used in beta will be back in V1, but Plato will have a more complete and fun coverage of what's happening in eRepublik.
- Poll system. The poll system shall be used by parties, organizations and other entities in the New World and our team will use it to have a more complete view of the citizen needs.
- A new way to add improvements. Starting February the changes will be uploaded only once a month and announced at least a few days before hand.
New communication tools for citizens and improving the existing ones are also among our priorities. Along all of these front-end features, many other improvements will be made to the modules that are not visible by the citizens as these back-end modules help our team respond quickly to your needs.
All of these priorities are just a glance of what we expect in the next few months, several other features will be added in time. Remember to keep an eye on the eRepublik updates topic, the place where the new modules, features and improvements will be announced on a regular basis.
Thank you for your support throughout last year and together let's make the New World a better place.
The eRepublik Team
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Happy New Year to all of you!
Very good news!
I can traduce the game to Portuguese!
TURKİSH!
voted,
thanks Cristi.
i sent you a pm, can you check it?
@DomiBoss: I'm sure you can. Stay tuned
@BattalGazi: I'm quite late with the answers to my PMs. Please allow a few days to get over the post-holiday period
Sounds interesting. Good luck with that.
Happy New Year Cristi !
Hey
TRADE AGREEMENTS!
That sounds interesting too !
Cool
what is the API system ?
Thanks Andrei, hope to see you at the next meeting. Some positions needs to be filled in our team
Excellent article, thanks for letting us know - this is exactly what we needed to hear
That being said, changes uploaded only once a month might be overkill, a community driven game like this needs more activity and involvement, such a long wait period between new features/fixes might not be such a good idea.
voted
@sekretarz3: The trade agreements could be added to our plan for the second half of this year
@Bogdanovicih: Please follow the link from the article.
thx! It didn't work the first time!
@Christi
Thank you very much!
Looks great!
voted
looking forward to the new improvments
@BB: You played an essential role in this article. As for the monthly updates, it is something more professional that our team needs to get used to. As much as we want to bring more and more features, higher are the chances to have the new products not entirely... complete. Our desire is to bring as much modules and features as possible, that is what we did until now, but considering other variables (that we've put aside so far) believe me, this is the proper way to deal with it. As for the critical bugs, these problems will be fixed in real time.
Encouraging news. Thanks for the update.
@cristi
sure cristi ,but that was about a bug, i just want erepublik to be better
This sounds great guys, and gals.
Can't wait to see the first new feature.
Good luck!
Good Some necessary things there.
Chile is the next country to be added.
voted
a ver si es verdad
happy new year and good work!
Chile the next... when the rest of the future countries ?
Spanish: http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/planes-para-la-primera-mitad-del-2-009-traducci-n-del-insider--718292/1
Make the War Module your priority, please.
Sounds ambitious... I doubt those things will be implemented within the next two months. I fear it will take you all year, and in that case those changes are not enough. An overall redo of the system is needed. Minor cosmetic changes here and there does not cut it.
You are unfortunately also missing the greatest flaw in eRepublik: the user experience for new players. The number of active players is declining. The thing is, you are trusting that people will continue playing a game where they can only work and train, and their worth in battles is very close to zero while the old players dominate the political, economical and military fields. What exactly is the incentive for new players to carry on playing for a year to be able to do something noteworthy in this game? Some, like me, are foolish enough to attempt it but most players are not. More attention towards new players would be adviceable.
Happy new year!!
Sounds great. Really hope priority stays with players interaction in first place cause after launch of V1 huge part of that was lost.
Really looking forward to see what you have in mind ^^
Sounds Great
@pruden: new countries will be added on a monthly base. There is a good chance to have a package of 3 countries to be added in February.
@Erwin Schauman: Nowhere is stated that this whole list of things to be done is for the next two month. As you can see from the title of the article, these plans are for the first half (6-7 months) of this year. As for: "More attention towards new players would be adviceable." you are totally right upon this one. I do consider it myself one of the things that needs a fast solution, but also we will be careful in the future not to have these kind of problems. You're a smart guy, I have to say . Not many citizens notice this specific problem.
Thanks el de antes de el for the spanish version:
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/planes-para-la-primera-mitad-del-2-009-traducci-n-del-insider--718292/1
Sweet!
great!
what are you going to do about the decoder issue, although?
you are going to forbid it, right?
Voted.
Admin: If you share some moderation work with some citizen, you could be focused in design and programing work.
Everytime we report an abuse in a newspaper, report an multiaccount, and other basic reports like these some of your team is wasting time deleting something or temprary-banning someone.
Choose one or two moderator in each majoritary language and you will save a lot of time delegating that work. Thats the way other massive online games do. Think it.
@Cristi Badea: Great article, I like that you give us more information about your current work. You've been really quiet about that recently, and some of us was kinda wondering if you were still alive... Now, before you rush into anything and doing all changes and cool add-ons I have to URGE you to post an article about the new feature you're about to develop first. Don't even start the coding before you've posted an article (or forum thread) with a complete plan over the feature including purpose, features, effect, limitations and all of that. Why should you do something like this? Because then you get the chance to eliminate (well, that's optimistic, let's say reduce) dissatifaction and unnessessary features. By presenting the new feature and having a discussion about it everything will get a WHOLE lot easier, both for you and for us.
It's already proven that your past tactic to say "Aha, they want it like this..." and go ahead with the coding of the feature without really thinking it all thrue first. Instead I recommend you to say "Aha, do YOU want this? We plan to ... what do you think?", it would simply improve your work and our game experience.
Oh, and hurry up with those GM tools!
Best regards
Karl Holm
You could, you know, make MPPs less stupid, and make them for, y'know, protection instead of eventual aggression.
Crazy idea, I know.
Welcome Chile!
Anway, great news, voted!
Btw: "New communication tools for citizens and improving the existing ones"
Will this include group messaging? (A)
voted
Very GOOD !!
Voted ..
Good Luck ..
@Ernesto_Guevara: We are fully aware that it is something that needs to be done soon. But in order to give these privileges to some citizens, we need first to develop the tools for these types of actions and we have been working on these modules since we've launched V1 and we still have a few months work until we can release it. Is like building another website from scratch in the back and it takes time.
@Karl Holm: You have a point in your statement. But along the new features, as you could see from our plan there is a lot of time invested in improving the ones we have now. It is a process and as you said, we will consider the community opinion (just like we had done so far) during the development of these modules. In the end, you are the ones that will benefit from our actions and we have no intention to put aside all your feedback.
what about SOLVING BUGS FIRST and then make updates?
great...Maybe you sholud reconsider to bring trading agreements back too.
@Jazar: Just as a teaser, we're looking into having something more like a chat system and maybe more organized forum and an optimization of the current shout system. For the moment these communication tools are only on the blueprints.
@Cristi Badea
sorry could you answer my question? You might have not seen it
@jazar: Also I forgot, one thing I'm really keen about is having a very cool system that will optimize the conversations in article comments.
@chorrochibanga: We said it before and the new citizen rules will state it more clearly. Any types of actions involving uses of glitches that bring undeserved benefits to a citizen are punished.
ok, thanks then
that's better, there are no advantages to anyone that way.
jajaja chorrochibanga: you are being ignored LOL
admin: thanks for your answer. I am not the one who is suffering with tons of report messages LOL, so, hurry with it!, and you will be free to work in more profitable and enjoyable projects.
@Ernesto_Guevara
Not any more x)
great:)
@Christi Badea: Yeah, so why can't you announce your new features/improvements before you start producing them? Sure you get feedback and so on from the community on everything you implement, and when you start on these improvements you do two thing wrong: 1) You assume how we want it to be based on our feedback, and 2) by doing the first you'll end up in a bad circle that force you to take feedback when you've introduced something new/improved. This leads to even more time spent on the same old module that actually could have been as finished as it can be (the average player is satisfied with the module/feature). That will force you to redo one thing 2-3 times, minimum.
However, if you before starting the coding listened to the feedback you have already got about the current system you could make a summary and from that a plan on how to improve the feature/module, announce it official and let the players have another view on your planned improvements and recive further feedback BEFORE starting the coding. If you do this you will save a LOT of time in the end by not having to remake a module several times.
It's pure logic: Let's just say that you're house builders and got an assignment to build a house. Will you present the drawings of the house to the customer before you build it or will you build it and then ask the customer: "Is this how you wanted it? No? Well, I guess we'll have to rebuild it then..."
Am I still making no sense?
Finally, Cristi Baeda, if you need help with the names of the regions of chile, raw materials and things like that, just ask me.
We have a ver big community waiting for the creation of our country!!
@Karl: It was pretty clear from your first comment. And I do hope that you can understand that we can do this with specific modules and not with all of them. Also, some surprises are nice to have too, you have to agree But if we are talking for example about the GM tools, be sure that we will share with the community our plans before start coding it.
Chuck Norris: Are you from Chile? If so, someone from our department will contact you soon.
@Cristi Badea: Great.
The show must go on! ok!
So abusing glitches is illegal, but how about having a database with the questions and the answers, that wouldnt seem illegal to me, and much more efficient... How about that Cristi?
Yes, I'm from Chile, I already sent you a message about it!!!
Voted!!!
Noo, we need trade agreemants right now. In my belive its the most important future in the economy.
Everything is screw up with out them, people are buing stuff via the black market and the n00bs dies out since they dont know how to go around the import taxe. Its crazy.
Dammit Cristi, we cant wait 6-12 months!
voted!
you should consider as well create new features to be unlocked by the levels above 14... many people are already in levels 16,17 or 18!!!
@Luuklag: It is something we don't agree with. And punishments were already placed regarding this issue and we will be more severe in the future.
@Toothpaste: We have a monthly product meeting and I'll raise this topic then.
"Visual improvements"
New items graphics?
I saw a new house image :x
The war-module changes will include some kind of diferentiated training as was suggested in the Suggestion forums?
i mean, being able to train offensive, defensives and rebel skill considering the kind of wars we have now??
Cristi Badea, how can you be shure someone has a list with all the answers, since after a day or 10 i know most answers of the questions in my country inside out, dont need any help to get 5 supershots. Seems like something that isnt controlable to me.
GM Tools! Finally ...
George already said about it via ingame PM two months ago!
zxc
When I go to work each day, I don't like the fact that the "resign-button" is so close to the "work-button".
VOTE
Elections systems needs a simple update. Please, don't show election results live it only helps to cheaters. In Spain we suffered this problem for 9 months, and today is not an exception.
Sounds interesting.
Happy New Year Admins
Great ideas but is it V2?
If yes, V2 reminds me the first missile made by Germans during WW2.
I mean in the new war module is it possible to produce missiles by combining guns and hitting a wall? maybe it's good idea to have WMDs here!
Voted
I'm waiting for New Zealand...
And here I though citizenship was on the list.
Voted.
Good luck!
A list of must-dos for this year:
1. For the War module please, Please, PLEASE introduce some kind of a damage fall-off system, where added damage decreases as soldiers' strength increases. This will allow newer players to have a chance of "catching up" to the current "tanks" and actually be useful on the battlefield.
2. You seriously need to expand on the PM system into something resembling a true e-mail client. Simple things like multiple recipients, forwarding, CC/BCC, reply with quote, basic HTML/BBCode support would be tremendous. No need for complicated stuff like attachments and distribution lists. You've built a social community without the means to communicate efficiently. The Inbox limitation is not helping either. Couldn't you find other ways to bring in revenue?
3. Speaking of revenue streams. There is plenty of wasted screen real estate. Put it to good use and introduce advertisements. I think most people would gladly suffer the nuisance of ads to get back their 50-slot inventories and unlimited personal messages.
4. A concept of Voter Registration. Something that would require a preset time or permanent residence and a region's Congressman's approval to change. This will prevent voter fraud and stuffing the ballot by moving to a region/country for the sole purpose of voting for a particular Congressional/Presidential candidate.
A list of nice-to-haves:
1. Forms of governments other than Representative Democracy would be interesting to see in some form down the line. I can't imagine that this would be a trivial task to accomplish, but something to keep in mind.
2. Enforceable contracts. I don't mean more Admin intervention, I mean game mechanics by which the "guilty" party of a contract will be held responsible via wage garnishment or something similar.
V
Welcome Chile
Good Luck !
Sound's good.
I am waiting for improvments!
Tnx guys
Wish so, Hope so, ... so.
Please, CHANGE party system!
Its stupid, that antifascist party leader cant kick- out fascist from this party! And anticommunist party cant kick-out commie, too:) "Replace" before voting for congress its not enought. Party leader should do this- by himself or after party- voting.
Give us inside- party votings. About voting discipline of party members in congress (if they will break it- they should loose mandate), congresmen- candidate list and other things (like change party name, kisking-out members etc).
Half of gold from congressmen medal should go to party account. Give us new options to spend this money (like organisation, but with no option to be general manager), please! Party can support members with free- gifts, buy weapons for party- militia and other things.
What for i can make totalitary- far left/right party, when after even 100% support from voting i CANT change system to totalitary regime??? Give us this option and it will be moooore interesting for players! We will have some countries with no free-media, with banned parties...
And, for the end- give us oportunnity for civil war. No revolutionary war like now, when one country occupy other, but when one political force fight with other in the same country!
Like- when commies/fascists go to power and try to close free media or nationalize companies- people can make riots and take the power back:)
I think this things its no big deal to you guys;) And will give two things- for us it will be moooore fun, for you- more players and gold they will buy from you:)
Voted
Looking forward to it.
- New citizen laws. The new set of laws will replace the eRepublik 10 laws we have now
Why change it? YOU don`t play by old rules, so why bother with new one???
VOted
I can't wait!
I voted...Twice!!
Good changes=Better game.
Nice. Hopefully all of those things listed can be enacted by mid-2009. Good luck with the development
100th comment!!
Whoo-Hoo!!!