The Economist ~ Things the admins have done well

Day 3,923, 06:01 • Published in Iran United Kingdom • by Spite313
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Dear friends,

It occurred to me that I spend a fair bit of time criticising the game management for their proposals/decisions. For me, that is one role of journalism in eRepublik, and I will continue to offer constructive criticism and ideas in the hope that some of it at least informs their future decision making. However I think it’s also worth recognising that, whilst every change has its pros and cons, the admins have made some good decisions over the past 4 years. Here are some of them:


Fixing the raw material numbers - Day 3576

When the latest iteration of the economy module was introduced, raw materials companies were 100 times more productive, and manufacturing companies required 100 times as much raw material per product. This meant that the prices of raw materials were about 1% of what they are today. With food and weapons raw materials this posed a big problem.

I remember WRM being around 0.03 per unit most of the time. Because the smallest change in price you can make is 0.01, that meant that any upwards price surge involved massive spikes in production cost, rather than the usual gradual climb. For example, if your companies used (in old terms) 200k WRM a day, at 0.03 that was 6000cc and at 0.04 it was 8000cc. A 33% price rise is enough to cut or erase any profit margin, and because weapons had a much smoother price rise system it meant you were constantly worried about sudden price increases.

By knocking off a couple of zeros, the admins effectively added a hundred additional price increments for weapon and food raw materials. This small change made the whole industry so much better. Hoorah!



The Plato Foundation - Day 3550

I like the Plato Foundation, and not just because they gave me 500g for writing a tutorial. For me the foundation is a public recognition of something we have known for a long time- all of the best resources in the game are made by players.

The Foundation’s aims are to reward excellence in the game, and to fund projects intended to recruit and retain players. Again, this recognises that players are the best actors for increasing player retention. At the cost of ingame currency (gold) the admins achieve something which many other similar games pay real world money- pulling in new players and keeping them.

That isn’t to say there isn’t more to be done. I think two things which would work really well, and add to the idea of the Plato Foundation, are:

1. A dedicated advisory forum where selected players could input new ideas and be asked to review existing proposals by the administration (not the mod group as that is a different skill set altogether).

2. A beta/test server which would initially mirror the main server. This could then be used to make small tweaks to formulas, or even bigger changes. Clearly there are improvements to be made, but testing them in the main game is not practical.




Aircraft battles - Day 3164

Aircraft battles are one of the best features currently in eRepublik. The fact that they are mass-action, high involvement battles where all fighters can make a significant impact harkens back to the old v1 days. Aircraft rounds are often the most hard fought and exciting in ‘real wars’ and this is reflected in the fact that more and more countries are now developing dedicated air units.

The main advantage of air battles is that there is no strength modifier (or perception) which means that a brand new player can very quickly climb up the ranks and have a significant impact on the battle.

However there are some flip sides/further work which I think the admins would also acknowledge. Firstly the idea of ‘perception’ is a non-starter from the beginning and needs to be removed from the game altogether. Secondly, the success of air battles just highlights that the “division” system is no longer fit for purpose. It is now dominated by powergamers with maverick packs and farmed for medal gold, which surely is not the purpose of the game. With most of those players earning medal gold to pay for training (or in d4 having free training) the divisional system doesn’t even monetise for the game anymore.

The next steps should be considering how to monetise air battles, phase out ground battles and work out a way to reward those with very high strength following that measure becoming defunct.


Resource wars

Although I wasn’t around for these, the resource wars still have a huge impact on the game today. For me these were a brilliant way to reallocate resources and should be a yearly event. This would allow the current layout of resources to be organic, and to reflect the current state of game politics. It would also force countries to work together more, to make sure that they are in a position to benefit from any gains they achieve. A yearly event would give the whole game something to prepare for and work towards, and would no doubt be a good source of income as well. It would make sense to have it at the same time every year - perhaps in Spring or Autumn when there aren’t any major holidays.


Conclusions

I think the admins do have some good ideas. The problem is often that they don’t follow through. It is a basic principle of project management that after making a change you have a ‘bedding in’ phase, followed by a 6 month review. I think this should be a factor for all changes to the game. After 6 months, when all the bugs have been ironed out, the whole idea is re-reviewed to see what could be changed or done better, with customer input. This would sort out lingering issues like perception in air battles, or the existence of the air weapon industry, or the broken productivity formulas. Instead of moving onto the next project, pause and assess what small changes can be done to fix what we do have.

Thank you for reading,

Iain



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