Join the new world

Firstly my grammarly extension is down so excuse all my grammar mistakes.

First off gnilraps came up with another scanting attack on Alexis Bonte and the game. So lets percolate through his gripes and see whether they are worthy of consideration. I will give him points for stuff he got right and none for those he got wrong imo. I know gnilraps has atleast a good industry /good fighting abilities and a relatively high political profile in the USA. So his articles other than say Yui who perhaps only have some political ability can be considered. The major thing he got wrong is the effect of certain progressions made in computing including facebook/android/and the increased capability of mobile phones.


Obviously the servers are still up and running. You reading this article is evidence of that.

The old game is dead theory. Yes although certain prices has made the economy really dead for the first times in a couple of years. I'm certain that players involved to a high degree in economics would have found an out. For, example I mostly used stashes. Food prices were, however ok. So by moving your production over to food one could have a decent income throughout the recession.

I will say therefore on majority of evidence this is wrong.
So 0/ n points


1: VERY OLD Images


This is the home page of eRepublik Labs, and their eRep-related image is OVER THREE YEARS OLD!

Notice the links to “Tactical Heroes”? Yeah, they shuttered that game 10 months ago.
I’m not sure what qualifies as “NEWS” these days, but I guess “old” news is still “news”. I guess.



First off there is Facebook. eREPUBLIK has quite an active Facebook page. Perhaps they don't have a dedicated web master anymore . Going the easier route of a junior employer updating on facebook. Lot less hassle lot less expense for them. Secondly, the one does not relate to the other. An outdated company website does not mean an outdated game. There is plenty of evidence of them working on the game. And each day I'm working in atleast 1 of them in the USA.

So even thoughthey have an outdated website. Given major updates that fact seems a but unrelated.

So 0 /17




2: Games that show a clear bias towards mobile apps

Check out the “Games” page.

It’s kinda nice that eRepublik gets 3rd highest billing on that page, but it is clearly the “sore thumb” on the page. Every other game (including the aforementioned and defunct “Tactical Heroes” which is perplexingly still linked) is a mobile app.

Do you wonder if eRepublik Labs is still committed to eRepublik the browser game? You aren’t alone. So let’s click the “blog” and see what we can know.

OH! It certainly does appear that they’ve visited their own website in the past year. Well, exactly one year ago actually. The last blog update is the year 2015 in review. Sadly, no mention was made of eRepublik. I guess 2015 wasn’t a year that eRepublik Labs did anything noteworthy in eRepublik. Now that I think about it, I guess they’re right.


This argument is again neither here nor there. In my viewpoint cheap propaganda. Everyone knows that with the global acceptance of android . The mobile game market is potentially very lucrative. Think of games like clash of clans/clash royale/boom beach(sorry i play mostly supercell games) and a smallish game company can become a billion dollar entity. So this focus of erepublik on mobile apps makes a lot of sense. Its the same as people going from standalone programs on their PC's to Internet apps and now going to mobile apps.

So 0/17

The blog thing - Again is blogs really that contemporary anymore. Do people still follow blogs? Maybe they abandoned blogs and websites all for facebook which has the capabilities anyway to handle all entries.

So 0/17


3: What have they done lately?


Should it worry us that the last meaningful award they are bragging about came to them in 2011 (scroll down)?

Maybe. Maybe not.

OK, maybe they just don’t pay that much attention to their web site. Surely they must be paying attention to the eRepublik game itself, right?




4: Nope.


Guess how many days it has been since they released Q5 houses? 784 Days.

Ok the problem I saw is that simply put Q3 to Q5 is economically unfeasible and even more so now with the introduction of higher salaries. Before they introduce Q6 and Q7 they must solve the formula Q3 to Q5 Houses economically feasible = formula.

In Serbia a lot of players uses it but not certain how they solve the ROI problem with Q3 and Q4 and Q5 houses.


0/17


.....I’m more inclined to think that they’ve got so many “back burners” at eRepublik Labs that they sort of lose track of how many unfinished projects they’ve actually got. And let’s not even start talking about Perception Training and higher Q Air weapons.

I cashed in my perception training fund as its logical that it won't be this year anymore. Just because a thing has not been introduced does not mean it won't be introduced. Perhaps its better to let them wait and fine tune it . Beta test before actually unleashing it on us.

I think there is a 99% chance that both will be introduced before April 2017.

0/17



How about the persistent problems with the battle clock? I don’t know about you, but I frequently wait for a new round to begin with the battle page open and the little countdown timer ticking down until the big button turns bright yellow and says, “


Have we figured out why there is such a problem? If it is a lag problem how exactly will they fix it? For, example the game hexball if you compete with a player in turkey he wins every game just because the servers is nearer Turkey than your own country. It has not bothered me it seems more of an irksome feature than a real problem. Its like clopoyaur one sees the winner before the announcement . Should clopo stop broadcasting or should we accept that lag problems will continue?
So 0/17

And how about the mobile version of the site? Surely a company which is putting SO MUCH ENERGY into the mobile platform would have deep insights and frequent updates to make our beloved game more mobile-friendly. Right?
wrong.
Very little has changed on the mobile version since it was introduced, at least from the perspective of this user. I still cannot access any newspaper, a player profile, any country data, any party data, any MU data, any storage data, or any employee data.


The mobile version was introduced a long time ago when accessing the game on a mobile device was still a problem. Now with android and Samsung galaxy /iphones it ain't a problem anymore.

Why run a mobile version when the normal version function just as well on your mobile phone.

So 0/17


And the global population continues to decline. This is the most difficult pill to swallow, because a declining player base creates an unsustainable environment. Already the worker pool is struggling to produce enough work tickets to support existing industries and prices have been in constant inflation for almost 200 days (since the introduction of Aircraft). But we have seen fewer and fewer player-driven activities in social circles. We have seen IRC become a graveyard for activity. We have seen user-scripts turn players into robots who don’t interact socially and are therefore of little true use to building a community. And we have seen Admin make decision after decision which has harmed the social aspect of the game, turning it more and more into a brainless clickfest

Here I would give him a point, though. Certainly, erepublik can do more to gather new users . However, the user count going down has a lot to do with the negativity spread daily though almost every feed in the world. Other games don't allow mod bashing and you criticizing their game. Erepublik does. Now the young player sees this and what must he think and do. There is a seeding period . I can remember for months I 2 clicked in the game. My first article was months after I joined. I did not think this was anything but a one-dimensional game. But there was no one really swaying my thoughts.

1/17

So let me offer a few rays of hope.


1: I have seen a few old faces emerge from eRep’s email blitz over their 9th Anniversary. Kudos to Admin for trying to resurrect the dead (would have made a better Easter promotion maybe?) It remains to be seen if any of these resurrected citizens will be inclined to spend money, we can hope they will.

Let us give him the benefit of the doubt perhaps this is erepubliks doing

So 2/17

2: There are some things they could do to stimulate growth.

They have not gotten serious about offering existing players meaningful rewards for accumulating referrals in a long time. The 5 Gold prize for the Society Builder medal might have been a lot of Gold 8 years ago, but it is the equivalent of peanuts now. Admin could get VERY serious about engaging us for referrals by offering MEANINGFUL awards like packs or big piles of gold. It’s up to them, of course, to police multis and I hope they do that. But you CAN motivate people to promote your game if you reward them handsomely enough. And if they would get creative with this it would help.


Yes ,certainly these rewards might be lifted. I never bothered like many to complete even 1 society builder. I don't feel a real need or think my friends would to play a game with them.

So let us get gnilraps another point 3/17

They could introduce the Q6 and Q7 house in such a way that would actually stimulate the economy. We don’t have enough Work Tickets right now. Make the Q6 and Q7 houses produce so many overtime hours that they become “affordable” the same way the Q1 house is. That combined with the added energy pool that a Q6 + Q7 could offer would stimulate both production AND consumption. But they’ve GOT TO ADD THOSE HOUSES.


Very good point . Yes certainly if a q2 produced 2 work tickets every hour a q3 - 3 a q4 - 4 a q5 - 5 a q6 - 6 and a q7 - 7 work tickets it might become lucrative. The problem then becomes finding a person willing to spend so much money on basically sponsoring unprofitable work tickets as work tickets have become unprofitable for them. 200 iep produces 12 q7 = 12 x 15 = 180 iep minus 20 cc loss


19 Q1 Air missiles - 3 Work tickets = 600 - 570 = 30 cc loss

And the problem is every time a new industry is introduced the anti wam group becomes extremely boisterous. Because it is too boring for them now we must all drop wam and trust on our social skills to make money.

The greatest day will come when Plato realizes these people are just clueless losers. Certainly, workers might have worked for say 5% of players in Version 1 but I doubt whether it was so universally accepted or that the people that hated it is still around.

No matter what you pay a worker he will drop activity and finally flatline at some point until you get another worker. And it is always you versus a commune. If I have 50 free workers getting 100 iep in commodities I can afford another 50 workers at 200 cc. Either they drive salaries to high or they drive prices too low but communes basically make industries based on workers worth nothing for the normal factory owner.

Let us give him though a point even if currently from one side this will work(the worker side)

4/17


They could make Perception Training a thing SOON. They just spent some effort resurrecting old players with their 9th Anniversary emails. Why not take this timing advantage and introduce Perception? The only meaningful thing for a resurrected player to do at this point is ATA combat. They will be so far behind in strength training that all the ghost boosters in the world won’t really help. But they can start ranking up in Air while there’s still time, and if Perception Training were to begin happening, who knows maybe some of these returned players might just buy in. Hey Plato, strike while the iron is warm!


As stated this will probably be introduced soon. This month however, I doubt it.
One gets old players with massive strength. Old resurrected players are actually mostly bought accounts. So I wouldn't worry about keeping them entertained they can just equalize by selling packs.

So no point here 4/17

They could fix the damned rankings so that Air Combat Kills and Damage showed up. I mean, this is a SOCIAL browser game, but if I do 30,000 Air combat kills in a week nobody will even know because I won’t even show up on the leaderboard. Come on, throw us a bone here. And realize that by fixing these little things it makes the game better for us to play! Do It!!!


5/17

They could kill off the Maverick Pack. I think I understand why it came, they wanted a new revenue stream. But time has now proven that the Maverick Pack has killed off the spirit of the lower Division players. People who had spent months and years hoping to “specialize” in lower division warfare were slapped in the face by Admin selling off access to lower divisions for 15 euro/month. Kill it off, Plato, and find a different revenue stream. I’ve got some ideas if you want them.

You say kill it off I say I want to keep on using it. Actually taking bh's from guppies isn't as easy as it was at the start. And as stated a hundred times the only player this has an effect on is players that used the infantry pack to not level to the detriment of lower strength players . So if you want to fix the UNFAIRNESS. Then it's easy take-back maverick but by the same hand take back infantry and have players level. Yes 3 years training wasted but then stop complaining about fighting people of your own strength.

No point here

5 / 17

They could start playing their own game again. It used to do a lot for the community when “Plato” and “Alexis Bonte” and other bigwigs would show up in the Media with articles and stuff. That gave the impression that Admin was noticing us and was interested in their game. Go ahead and make all the mobile apps you want, but if you’re not going to pull the plug on eRepublik, then at least play it with us. We’re a fun bunch!

Meh yes certainly admins playing with you would help. But i have seen the most biased actions from players from admins playing a game. Usually its also eating the food you prepare. But I agree admins should atleast come to game points where they see what we experienced so another point for gnil

6/17


They could create an entire new set of awards and medals. Lots of people play for medals. Have more media medals than the single lame Media Mogul award. They KNOW that media is an important facet of the game. Why the heck not create some new medals for it??? And how about some more politics medals? Make some medals for completing other ingame activites that require more than simple clicks… Seriously Admin, if you want to generate sudden activity, reward activity with medals. We like shiny things.

good enough point

7/ 17


They could award Military units with more than JUST shiny things. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of all the hardware EZC has won. But if each of those medals came with an injection of CC into our MU account? You’d better bet we’d use it to generate activity. Yep, we would. Because WE LIKE TO PLAY THIS GAME.

yep 8/17

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Is eRepublik dead or is it just cool to say it is death as if you operated a 10000 cc a day business in erepublik beforehand? The game is not dead in my eyes because if it where dead and too boring to log in I would simply stop logging in or log in less frequently. Which I don't so for me there is still some discernible goals I can achieve and whilst there is still something I can complete or some way I can be the number 1 in certain sections like the media(most number or 2nd most number of articles by a private citizen with No Carrier) I will keep on logging in this game. if your the I want everything today kinda player this was never the game for you to begin with. It requires time to develop an account like most good online games do. It requires time and effort and strategy to achieve new goals like a good online game should. If this is not your cup of tea go and play Farmville with gnilraps as that seems more his kinda game.