Should We Change The Way We Work?
Nikola barun Jurisic
It's been a while since I've written a serious article regarding game mechanics or any form of impact analysis. Primarily this is down to me wanting to keep my personal opinions and slandering separate from my current position as Australian President. In keeping with this stance, this article is going to look at a game feature that a small change could have a major impact.
The feature I'm going to look at today is one of the oldest parts of the game that every players uses, a key part of two-clicking, the Work feature.
Many of the older players will remember back in Version 1 when they used to have Work Skill, the higher your work skill, the more output you produced. Without any warning, this aspect was removed from the game and players were done out of years worth of a skill being built up. Similar enough to strength, the way this aspect was implemented meant that new players would always have a disadvantage and the longer you played, the better off you would be. Clearly this has its disadvantages as well as advantages. One interesting part of the way the job market worked back then was that differing skill levels had differing wage offers.
In the current system, a player clicks work and they just work. Every click is the same and no players productivity is different. This has caused the current issue of salaries becoming incredibly competitive and a race to the top of the job market. High salaries means high prices as well as forcing smaller players out of the market as they can't compete with the economic titans. Overall this makes the job market boring and requires little to no strategy when it comes to operating a business.
How would I change this?
Add a tiered level of output produced by players. Rather than basing it on skill, base it on Energy used.
When clicking to work, a player can opt to use a choice of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 Energy per click. Using 10 Energy will be a base but using an increased amount of Energy used results in an increased bonus production:
10 Energy: -10% production bonus
20 Energy: 0% production bonus
30 Energy: 5% production bonus
40 Energy: 10% production bonus
50 Energy: 15% production bonus
Regardless of how much Energy is used, players will be paid the salary taken on the job market or the amount set by their employer. In reviewing the amount of Energy used and its subsequent production by their employees, employers can adjust the salaries of their employees and will have to take a greater role in managing their employees to ensure they are paying them a fair salary for their production.
I believe this change would result in the job market offering salaries dropping by a large percentage to eventually plateau at a lower more affordable rate. As players take the current high paying jobs, they may have no obligation or loyalty to their employer and therefore work for 10 Energy resulting in their salaries being worth more than their production.
As a consequence their employer may fire this employee who then takes the next highest job offer. The cycle repeats itself and as a result initial job offer salaries will tumble down to where where the salary will be less in value than a 10 Energy output. It is then up to employees and employers to negotiate an increased salary in return for a larger amount of Energy consumption for a greater output.
**Please note the numbers used above are for example only and are entirely used to convey the concept without holding any real economic weight or calculations**
Comments
Not "irregardless"
just "regardless"
😛
too complicated so worker can work for 10 to 50 energy but still gets the same salary. you refer to production bonuses which is not implemented in the game. employee get 1 work ticket from employee working 1 time and worker can immediately work overtime and produce thereby 2 work tickets and then work a 3rd time and use 100 energy but give another work ticket.
all this will do, and given australia history of multies i wonder if this is not your goal, is help multi farms. lets say multi master like your kattiaa creates for you 10 workers you can get up to 50 work tickets as their goal would just be to create you work tickets. this would mean say you pay 20 cc er worker you pay 200 cc for 50 tickets meaning you get 35000 cc for far less than a normal player would pay for the same production..
honest player pays 15000 for 50 work tickets whilst you pay 200 cc so you can place same production and make profit from 201 cc versus his 15001
voted
Not a bad idea but i would make it 10 100 200 300 400 500 option or even more energy since 50 energy is nothing
Yeah the numbers are what would determine how this could work.
50 isn't much for most of us but the average player with no packs and lack of prestige points and thus low health regeneration might value 50 health. However 500 health is a lot to burn for just working but it could provide players a good income if they get the right wage and they organise with their employer a good income. An income they lose out on as they can't ever compete for BH's.
Interesting!
Maybe 10, 100 or 250 energy would be enough? 🙂
How about removing all manager work all together and changing the damn tycoon pack ?
Tycon shouldnt give free tickets and % bonus but lets say it gives and option to sell to administration at the lowest + 5% price ? That way normal players wouldnt get hurt.
Setting a rule that new players wont be able to enter the job market before they get , lets say 3hw medals, and during that period they "work" in a simulated company run by eRepublik giving them no wages and experience but counting as work days. In return for that "work" players would get some perks like travel tickets, food, weapons, extra points of strenght ectr (differentiate by each day) and these items have a special limit (cant be sold or donated) like the Plato's food company for an example but only used by the players (making multi farms harder to achieve). Make this work mission based each day and have people move to different regions doing this and that (making bots obsolete) thus making sure real people need to play. Add a difficult captcha for each work every day and even the extra works (except for bronze members) and implement SMS registration for each new account and have the existing ones do it aswell.
Stop multies and you save the day.
That would solve it all in a snap.
People revolt the moment you remove WaM and it also serves other purposes.
I don't think we should penalise new players because of multies, three months before a new player can start earning cc is ridiculous. Better admin work would solve the issue of multies, not changing game mechanics.
Interesting, but I don't think it would be the right solution to the problem.
New players should receive more strength and more energy before reaching certain level at the beginning..
A sort of a grace period for one month or more, if necessary.
So they have enough time to grow.
Now once you reach level 21 (which can be achieved in two days) you are on your own.
No more gold and no more fast advancement in the game.
The level you are should be the amount of energy required to work. It's as simple as that...
That way high level players would fight rather than work... That would bring some balance to overproduction caused by WaM.
The salaries would go sky high but the product prices would as well because the supply would be lower. And there would be room for profit for people who want to focus on economy.
good idea Shelby. i see how you made president. understanding economics. i support that idea. should have a warning how food works too. wasn't aware and almost starved to death from -no money no energy. should have a safety net for that re:clueless noobs like myself. i do like that you care enough about the game dynamics for all and not just what relates to you and your needs. more power to you Mr Pres.
sincerely