Through the eyes of a beginner

Day 2,581, 04:49 • Published in Romania Romania • by C I P R I A N

Hi there.
First of all, I am a new player, most of you don't know me, so let me introduce myself.
My name is Ciprian, I am 22 and I am from Romania. I started playing eRepublik on 4th of june 2014, so 6 months ago.
I have managed, with help from my friends from Brothers in Arms and Brainstorming Party, to get full on TGs and be on my own when I have to extend my training contract.
But still, after 6 months of game (which for me basically means be on chats, because my „game play” consist on daily W+T only) I still feel that I didn't managed to fully understand the game.
So, this being said, in the light of recent news, I am gonna present my point of view about the last changes in the game.
Please remind that I do not pretend you to agree with me, as I do not pretend that my point of view is the real truth.
Also, please keep in mind that my english is not perfect. I really hope you will understand what I am trying to say.

In this article I am gonna try to talk about the last changes in eRepublik and how much those affect players and the game.

I know, there are already more than enough articles on this subject but... hey... is my first article and I have no ideea what to talk about. And to be fair, I didn't saw a little objectivity on those articles. Only upset people. (that means subjectivity)

And btw, if you can give me 25 comments from different players, I would be very happy, considering that I can't afford to „buy” those comments.

So, first change:

„Starting Day 2,610 (12th of January), Freedom Fighter, Mercenary and True Patriot medals will award you 1,000 Currency (instead of the current value of 5 Gold).”

So, at a first view, this isn't actually such a big change, you will probably think as I also did. But, most important is to see who are actually the players that are hunting those medals?
Most of them are either new players, either „little” players that do not have a real economic activity in this game, so those 3 medals were their way to make gold for new contract every month or to get some resources to fight for their country.
Then why is this a big change after all? Is it bad, or it helps somehow the game? Well, now is getting interesting.
Admins says that „these medals didn’t reach their initial goal: to help the progress of the new players”. Is this true? Does this change bring a better solution for those kind of players that I mentioned before?
Before this change 5 gold meant ~1000 CC at an exchange point of ~200 CC for 1 gold.
After this change has been announced, the exchange point increased with almost 23 cc, so now is around 223 CC for 1 gold.
Even if I hate math, I can easly see that the old 5 gold medals now worth around 4,4 gold. From this perspective, is a real bad change.
Poor players now make gold even harder, and rich players with thousands of gold on their account, now are even richer because gold worth more CC.
Thats the second impact that this change had on eRepublik, which I think is what admins really intended. Gold worth more. And I think gold is going to worth even more.
So, thinking on a calitative weighting, we see that admins wanted to reward those players (I think those represent the majority of players) that invest real money in this game. Please understand that this game still exist because of them. Ofcourse, this can be seen as admins want to force players that do not invest real money in this game, to invest now on. Both of views are subjective, and I am not gonna say wich is true, because both are equally true in my opinion.
Does this balance at least a bit the economy? A bit. Gold worthing more CC means that your effort for a BH medal, or others medals that still reward you in gold, is better rewarded. Ofcourse, this also mean that there will be more competition on a BH medal, mostly. That means there will be more items consumption for a BH medal.

Which bring us to the second change.
„Between today (2,579) and the end of Day 2,582, all food and weapon consumption will be doubled”
This change probably look like shit for everyone. Why? Well, because is not fair to consume more than normal, when your effort to produce or buy those items was the same. Ok, I get this. It is fine that most of you guys decided to not fight these days, „I feel you brah”.
They said that there is an overproduction problem. Which is true. That makes items worth less than they should, and that's why economy is broken. (sure, some of you have many ideeas, probably mostly of them good, to fix this)
But, corelated with the first change, what can we understand from this move?
If people would fight as normal, and even more than normal in those 3 days, I think something could get better than before.
But, if people chose to not fight almost at all, that means „stacked inventory problem” remains the same.
So, what I think we would gonna see after this, is gold from BH that woth more CC, means that players can buy more weapons, because they need to fight more for that BH medal. So, in a short term those changes only affect the damage players will do. It will be more damage, but at a same consumption, calculated in gold.
In a long term, that means after x months, market is gonna normalize. Using more weapons for a BH medal, means that at a some point, there will be no more overproduction and no more stacked items. But then prices for weapons will increase, and probably after another few months, we will come back at the start - overproduction, because people will buy less weapons.
So, if people would chose to fight more than normal this 3 days, even is a not fair move to double consumption, the situation that I mentioned before, the „effort to fix” economy would have probably a better impact.

My objective (as much as it can be objective) opinion is that admins tried something. But, however you take this, it is not gonna fix anything.
What they can do to fix the economy? Well, most of you have many ideeas. But in my opinion none can be implemented, so this is one way road for this game: Death. By making economic module easier, and military module the primary way to play this game, admins chose that this game have to die, probably without they even realise it.
There are so many ways to trick the economy module that now it is imposible to fix something.

This is my first article, this is my own opinion, I do not intend to convince you to approve me, but I hope that I managed to give you a perspective to think about.

Thank you for your time.