The Economist

Dear friends,

After my last article I noticed there were a number of comments on the lines of “you hated this change, and now you don’t want them to get rid of it”. I tried to explain my counterargument in the comments, but it’s pretty hard so I thought I’d address it in a separate article.

First however I want to ask you all a favour. This Saturday I would like all of you to participate in a little social experiment. This is part of my ~silent revolution~ against the admins. To participate, simply change your avatar to this picture over the weekend.

Ticket the admin with your concerns on Saturday, it is your right as a player and a customer (paying customer in some cases) to make your voice heard. Most won’t be dealt with by the admins themselves, but mass ticketing is one way to get their attention.


So going back to the main point of the article, first of all I’d like to talk about progression. Character progression is a key part of every role playing game. You start off as a weak noob, and by working hard over time your character develops, and you unlock new abilities, new skills, new goodies and so on. The fights when you’re a high level character or further through the game might be the same (in that the bad guys got stronger too) but you have a feeling of progression and achievement. People are naturally creative, and the feeling of creating a character which is your own sticks with us all. If we deleted the individualism of those characters, so each day your character remained exactly the same, most wouldn’t play very long. It is the long term commitment which keeps us playing and from the admin perspective keeps us paying.

Based on this principle, the things which should never be changed are things which contribute to progression, or are a part of progression. For example, if someone was to half your strength tomorrow (but nobody else’s) would you keep playing? Even if you are a relatively new player and (logically) it doesn’t matter, you would probably quit. Because your hard work has been undone, you feel like the concept of progression is gone.

When the admins changed the Economy module prior to V2, many of us felt like we had our progress in the game taken away. Work skills went crazy, the economy went even more crazy, and the whole system of running companies changed. Then many of us (me included) worked hard improving our work skill. I reached guru****** level, one of the top players in the game. That was taken away and my skill became the same as a new player. I understand the reasoning, don’t get me wrong- work skill was distorting the economy and made the game less attractive to new players who are the poorest. It was in a way a good move. The problem is that it stole a lot of hard work from people and the only reward was a few energy bars and a Q5 town hall.

When the module changed I adapted by buying 30 companies- a Q5 weps (which could employ 10 people), Q5 food, 6 deer, 9 rubber, 9 iron and some fish and Q1 food. Basically it was designed to maximise the production I could manage on just 300 health a day. I wouldn’t advise anyone to spend 525 gold on Q5 raw materials now- Q4 is sufficient for everyone. But at the time that was how the module worked. Then it changed, and my investments were useless. I had overpriced raw materials companies that couldn’t employ anyone. I had a Q5 which could only hire 5 people. So what did I do? I changed and adapted, made 2 more Q5s. Then came the Q6 offer, right at Xmas time. You know I do buy gold, though normally I only use it for tanking and keep my economic stuff separate. But over Xmas I want to spend money on family & friends, not on giving George Lemnaru a bonus.

So what did I do (and where is this story going)? I bought up saltpetres. At the time I got Plato’s message I had somewhere between 90 and 100 saltpetres, working towards a planned total of 147, which will mean I use 1800 health a day on my land. When you have something like 1.3m GBP of raw materials companies, it is a bit annoying to get a message suggesting that this might all be worthless fairly shortly. That’s why I was annoyed.



To go back to the main theme of progression, changing the economy module is fine. But the important thing is to change it whilst maintaining the feeling of progression for the player. You must also take into account the effect that the changes have on the wider economy. For example, Work As Manager (WAM) was an idea which fit into progression. You didn’t lose anything, you just got an extra worker in each company. But what this effectively meant is that each citizen made the bulk of the food they needed each day, meaning the food market became entirely dependent on an admin controlled bot buying it. This problem was expounded when they gave free food and grain companies to everyone.

The thing is, making changes that fit in with progression isn’t a hard thing to do. To gain inspiration, simply look at other online and free to play games. Most of them have a product store where you can buy customisations, cosmetic changes, extra features and so on. Customising weapons (like in V2) was a good idea badly implemented. They made it so you could mix different “features” on weapons, but then made it so that all of the “designs” except one were totally useless. So everyone just made the same type of gun.

Again the problem here (like I said last article) is both lack of ambition and lack of planning. The game has a lot of potential going from the basic premise of a real life simulator. But at the end of the day, most people’s ideas and ambitions are limited by the lack of ambition of the admins themselves. Because they have designed a game which is so closed and limited, it means that potential options for growth are also closed and limited.

To change this, the admins need to change the game. At the core of this must be the principle of maintaining progression, and indeed opening up new branches to progress down. Specialisation is a feature of all games. At the minute each of us progresses daily through training and fighting, and that is the only measurable progression. Stuff like Economy isn’t really progress, because anyone can walk in on day one and buy loads of companies. But what you need is to develop the game, not just support it.

Over the next few articles I’ll cover different areas of the game and compare them to how other games provide those same features (obviously not naming names in case I get banhammered by trigger happy admin types). I’ll also be sticking in a few of my own ideas on how to develop the game. Yes they might ignore me. You could always stick some links to my articles into your ticket on Saturday

So until then, take care! And happy Plato Day on Saturday

Iain