How Day 1297 Killed eRepublik

Day 2,566, 16:36 • Published in USA USA • by Gnilraps
Everything Goes To Hell (Mandatory listening)
Day 2566 of the New World
29 November, 2014



Day 1297 was the worst day in the history of eRepublik.

If you were eBorn after day 1297, you are playing a dramatically different game than that which we played prior to that infamous day. I believe that day 1297 was a significant cause in the demise of this game, and so for the next chapter in my informal ongoing series, I will tell you what happened that day and how it ruined what at one time promised to be a great browser game.

Day 1297 was the day Plato killed the economy.




Prior to day 1297, there were not one but two meaningful metrics that would influence how your citizen “performed” in the New World.

The first was (and still is) “Strength” which we all know about. Strength did work a little bit differently in the old days, though. Whereas it is possible today to gain over 90 strength per day, it was not always so.

Using standard strength training, you would gain as little as 0.04 strength (your daily gain was a factor of your total existing strength). There were “boosters” that you paid Gold for (daily) which would increase your strength gain by as much as 200%. Your choices looked something like this:



Obviously, people who were interested in pursuing a military career would have to decide how to budget their gold around daily strength training (which is actually very different than the practice today of saving up your gold to increase your training centers. More on this later...)

To this day, strength is the most valuable “resource” for your citizen specifically because of the daily limits placed on its growth. One cannot simply “buy” himself strong… he can only buy himself strong over time.

However there was, prior to day 1297, another valuable dynamic called “Work Skill”. And in just the same way that we trained, we also clicked each day to increase our Work Skill number.

There was a simple formula for work skill to increase. Basically, once you reached skill level 4, your skill increased by 0.02 each day. Plato had also introduced some boosters for work skill so that for 1.8 Gold per day you could boost your daily skill increase by 200%.

The Work Skill was a fantastic element in the game and it gave players a second career path option. Some Citizens never invested any Gold at all in Strength, they were devoted to their economic development.

You see, the job market was a very different experience for Citizens during the days of Work Skill. When you went to find a job, you looked based on your work skill. Higher skill workers got paid higher salaries because they impacted the employer’s production based also on their work skill. Not only did this make it more interesting to pursue a career as a highly skilled worker, it also meant that running a company was a far more complex operation. One had to balance many factors to succeed.

In today’s eRepublik, my Housing company produces the exact same output as yours, as long as we are both citizens of the same country. But under Work Skill, I could increase (or decrease) my company’s production simply by hiring differently skilled workers. As my economic stability increased, I was able to afford higher skilled workers. There was a legitimate career path to be pursued. Today it’s just pay for a company and click it.

You all know what a big deal strength is. Before the day 1297 catastrophe, there were two big deals. Strength and Work Skill.

On Day 1297, Work Skill was removed.




But the loss of work skill was only one of the horrible changes that came from Plato’s hand on that day.

Day 1297 was the beginning of the trend leading to greater and greater and greater daily energy (it was called “health”) expenditure. For quite some time, it had only been possible to “heal” up to 300 “wellness” per day. Using today’s vernacular, you could do 30 food fights per day maximum (fewer in reality due to work and training). Each night at reset, you got a fresh 300. This led to the practice among many to fight in battles that crossed over reset giving themselves that many more fights in hopes of scoring a medal. But I digress.

Day 1297 was not the first time Plato had increased the daily health limit. However it was the introduction of the “Town Center” buildings as well as other “Health” buildings that were so foreboding of the constant and essentially unlimited energy regeneration that typifies today’s game.

Plato attempted to console those of us who lost our investment in Work Skill by giving extra health buildings to Citizens based on their (now former) Work Skill. If you had a high Work Skill, you got a +100 health building. Others got +50 buildings. These were a horrible replacement for Work Skill, as they did not replace the most valuable thing – its rarity. In effect, they replaced our Work Skill with a slightly increased rate of ranking up. As things eventually turned out, this was totally useless.

But in addition to the Health Buildings, Plato introduced a “Town Center”. And here’s the rub – the Town Center was upgradable to Q5. Higher Town Centers meant higher daily Health Recovery.


No, that isn’t a House Manufacturing Company, that’s the old Town House that Plato totally regurgitated as his icon for a House Company. I guess money’s too tight at HQ to pay a graphics pro…

This is precisely where the game started getting out of control with respect to how it was to be played. Up until day 1297, you played the game by developing your Citizen with a kind of ePersonality. You essentially had to because you were not logging in just to click fight.

Admit it, many of you log in for no other reason than to burn your energy with fight clicks, then you log out. Maybe you watch the clock until it is time to refresh your energy… maybe you don’t really give a f*ck. But that stupid 6 minute timer is what keeps things moving in today’s game.

But before the massive daily consumption of energy took over the game, you literally ran out of functioning clicks. If you’d expended your energy, you were “done” for the day with respect to fighting and working. So you logged in to write or read articles, to find out what was going on with the political landscape, to see about new players who might have joined the game or your party… “Playing” eRepublik meant doing lots of other things besides mashing a dumb red button.


Today's eRepublik



It was only 35 days later that Plato nerfed the old Strength Training boosters and replaced them with upgradable Training Centers. Bye-bye Alexander the Great and Napoleon, hello Q4 Special Forces TG. Of course this change wasn’t on day 1297, but it is definitely tied to it. And it was utter ruination. It was not terribly difficult to afford a Work Skill or Training booster, at least once in a while. The maximum booster only cost 1.8 Gold. So players could affect their development without having to save up a massive pile of Gold first. Not anymore.

I cannot overstate what a huge loss this is for newer players.



It is no wonder that day 1297 also brought a 150% increase in production across the board for all buildings. Plato knew that with an increase in expendable energy would come an increase in consumption so rather than letting the economy catch up organically (thus also rewarding those of us who had invested in companies), he just took all the fun out of it and arbitrarily spun the dial up on production. If you’ve been reading my articles, you know that this is yet another example of how Plato consistently makes himself the main story line. Plato tinkers with the game. That’s the story line.

(Frankly, if Plato is going to mess with production, he should decrease it to 10% of its current setting. But that would be another article entirely.)



For those of you interested in seeing these historical changes as I reported them at the time, I will now republish my troll versions of his explanations. I changed a lot of the wording to reflect my thoughts about the wreckage Plato was causing at the time. I hope you enjoy this walk down memory lane:








Believe it or not, the 10 Energy Bars Plato gave out was a big deal back then. It was such a large number that the economists at the time accurately predicted a blip in weapons consumption simply based on people using their 10 Energy Bars.

Can you image? 10 Energy Bars today is nothing. That is how meaningless every click has become. Prior to day 1297 you had to measure the meaning behind every click you made. Now? SLAM THAT RED BUTTON and quick.



But there was one more thing that happened on day 1297 that, perhaps more than anything else, spelled the end of this game. On that day, the same day that Plato had introduced these massive game restructurings… He also closed down the forum.

That’s right, there used to be a forum similar to the one we all know about today (if you didn’t know about it, you can find the link to it at the bottom of every eRep page.) But on day 1297 we got the following message when we tried to visit the forum:

We know you like to hang out with us on the forum, but at the moment is not available because a few technical difficulties. (sic.)

Again, I offered my interpretation at the time:



And I was right. There were no technical difficulties at all, the forum remained closed for two years.

Day 1297 was a glaring example of how little Plato has ever cared about the players who came to this game hoping for a gaming experience that “offers a true second life.”







(Custom) Tracker courtesy of Mike Ontry's Hit Tracker.


You may now return to your regularly scheduled clicking