Crossroads: Fixing eRepublik

Day 3,054, 09:20 Published in USA USA by Gnilraps

Crossroads (Mandatory listening)
Day 3054 of the New World
March 31, 2016


Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Bonte Responds to Gnilraps, Gnilraps Responds Back
Part 3: Why the eRepublik Community Shrunk
Part 4: What Can Be Changed?



Part 1: Introduction


500 days ago, I published the first of a series of articles which chronicled the time period during which eRepublik shrunk from a huge player base to a much smaller player base. (In the 500 days since that publication, the player base has shrunk even further. I would guess this is simply due to momentum.) I believe we have come to a final Crossroads.

Later today (I am writing this while sipping my morning coffee) ClopoyaurTV will be hosting a live interview at eRepublik Labs (eRLs). I think one of the primary reasons eRLs is interested in broadcasting at this time is due to the storm of complaints I started with the publication of my last article, “Plato Admits eRep is Dead.”

Since my publication, Alexis Bonte has revived his ingame newspapar and published something of a rebuttal.

In this article, I will first respectfully reply to the Bonte article, then I will reprise several key points from my original series from 500 days ago. If I can call in during Clopo’s Interview with eRLs, I will. However if I am unable to do so, I hope that this article will be my voice.



Part 2: Bonte Responds to Gnilraps, Gnilraps Responds Back


In the above-linked article, Bonte says:

I’d like to point out to everyone one important fact that I mentioned in my post but that was left out in Gnilraps’ article. Yes, we failed with Tactical Heroes but we succeeded with Age of Lords. So now we are in a situation as a company where we have 2 successful games instead of one. We have learned how to be successful in mobile as well as browser.

An😛

Why should you care as an eRepublik.com player that Age of Lords is successful? Well, simply because that means that we now have more resources that we can re-invest back into new games and into our big brand, back into eRepublik.com. The point I tried to make in my post, perhaps not clearly enough, is that we were able to find success with Age of Lords in part because of all we learned first with eRepublik.com but also because of failures such as Tactical Heroes. These learnings will now revert to eRepublik.com.

Having now re-read Bonte’s aforementioned blog post several times, I cannot find any indication whatsoever in that post that would lead me to believe that eRLs had any intention of diverting its future attention back into the eRepublik game. I am glad to learn of his promise, but he should not have been surprised that anyone who read that post would walk away thinking something like the following:

“eRLs has built a company on the success of eRepublik, and has now turned its attention to mobile gaming apps.”

Amiright?

Please, Mr. Bonte, prove yourself right.



Part 3: Why the eRepublik Community Shrunk


Shortly after the move away from V.2, the following sentance was published in what was, at that time, Plato’s newspaper, the “Erepublik Insider”:

”So... here's the thing. We've messed up some features in the gameplay and we've complicated the game too much. We are admitting this to you…" (Bold emphasis added)

It is my contention that this was the mistake that has caused all subsequent errors on the part of Plato. Plato wrongly interpreted the cause of V.2’s failure. It was not over-complication that caused V.2 to fail.

It is very important to understand this point. What Plato thought he learned from V.2 has led him to over-simplify the game to the extent that what attracted the great players of the past no longer existed. Most people I talk to actually loved the complexity of V.2.

What was the lesson that Plato should have learned from V.2?

Players MUST be able to make informed strategic decisions in a game where social capital is the highest form of currency.

Why did so many people play eRepublik back in the “good old days”? We played because eRepublik provided us a platform to play a massively multiplayer social browser game. And the most important word in that sentence is “social”.

V.2 forced us to make decisions that affected our social standing without giving us any possible means of predicting how those decisions would play out! Many of us simply guessed wrongly when V.2 forced us to choose a path, and as our Citizens suddenly became less relevant. Meanwhile others who had guessed rightly suddenly had huge social advantages. It was emotionally deflating. The result was mass exodus.

But as soon as Plato “learned” that game complexity was the “problem”, he began the trend that has brought us to today: eRepublik is now little more than a button-mash. Click fight more frequently and faster than anyone else to win.

Here are some examples in brief of how the game has totally lost its complexity:

1: Worker Skill is gone
Worker Skill used to require all company owners to think hard about the economics of their corporate empire. Today’s eRepublik requires no thought at all.

2: Orgs are (basically) gone
The Org created a layer of complexity that encouraged team-play. An Org could belong to a community, and it provided enough exciting functionality that it created reasons to play. That has never been replaced.

3: Congressional Elections were ruined
The build-up to Congressional Elections where each candidate was actually campaigning for votes and competing for a seat against other citizens created MASSIVE SOCIAL ACTIVITY. New Congressional Elections place the activity into the hands of 5 citizens. Bye-bye activity.

4: Congress is (mostly) irrelevant
While the idea of a Dictatorship option sounds like it could create complexity, it has done just the opposite. Dictatorship has destroyed Congress. I don’t think a Dictatorship module is necessarily a bad idea, but the one currently implemented is a cancer for social activity.

5: Freedom Fighter
Perhaps this is a small thing, but it is on this list because it is representative of the bad thinking that has killed off a large part of the social game. The Freedom Fighter awards meaningless fighting. The Freedom Fighter Medal offers a decent return of cash to those who completely ignore the socially-derived battles and instead isolate themselves by clicking only on already-decided RW battles where their 25 (or 50) fights will do the most personal good. Who cares about important battles?

6: Weekly Rewards based on Fight Clicks
Want the best stuff? Mash the Fight Button as early and often as possible. Who cares if there’s an important battle to save up for? There’s no reward for engaging other players, just set your citizen to hammer the fight button. And what little social activity results from those few who attempt to set up an early-week Epic battle is no substitute for the massively social excercise of thinking through which of your allies most needs your damage and spending it smartly.

7: True Patriot
Think about it. Why waste valuable clicks where the social community needs them when I can rack up needed CC by clicking away meaninglessly in today’s useless RW? Gotta have that TP cash…

I’ll let you do your own thinking on the remainder of this list. I’m sure you also have some to add to the list.

8: Missions that have NOTHING to do with the eRepublik game
(“Ball-Kicker”, “Cupid”, “Batzooka”, etc.)
9: WAM
10: 4,800 energy recovery!!!
11: 80 energy recovery every 6 minutes!?
12: Destroyed International Monetary Market

Just think about how each of these has destroyed the Social game atmosphere. The list goes on.

OK, so my point here in Part 3 is that Plato convinced himself that what players were looking for was less complexity. Plato was wrong. As the game got more and more simple, players left in droves. Now there are not enough players remaining.

eRepublik is no longer a massively multiplayer online social browser game.

eRepublik is a multiplayer online browser game.




Part 4: What Can Be Changed?


I have never been a fan of “citizen-suggested game changes”. But given the tenor of this article, I feel that it would be wrong for me not to offer my suggestions.

Before I proceed, I want to issue one final complaint. However I make this complaint because I think it is intricately related to my main point and because I think I am speaking for a very many people right now - particularly the kind of people Plato is interested in keeping - the paying player.

My complaint
Despite the obvious decline in the quality of the social environment in eRepublik, as well as the perceived decline in the quality of the game itself, as well as the decreased attention given to the game by Admin, the cost of playing has risen. This is not a complaint about the rise in cost of playing. It is a complaint that the rise in cost has come during a period which has seen great decline in quantity, quality, and product delivery.

Many have left because of this. I have diverted most of my entertainment budget to other games. If this continues on a wide scale we all know that eRepublik cannot last, regardless of the good will and intentions of Alexis Bonte.

I wanted that complaint out of the way. Now here is my list of humble suggestions to Mr. Bonte, et. al.

1: Increase the player base
Before you dismiss this as an obtuse statement of the obvious, listen to me. This is more important than new missions, Q7 housing, redesigned maps, Pentecost-themed-Holy-Spirit-Flame-Shooting-Bazookas, or fancy new shiney buttons. We need you to find a way to market this game so that new players come. Spend some cash on this. This is, more than any other thing, your job in eRepublik. The remaining player base does not want to be 100% of your market. We want to grow.

2: Give new players a chance
Your Ghost Booster is an indication that you understand this. I humbly suggest a better idea than Ghost Booster. Re-Introduce Work Skill. By doing so, you create an important economic dynamic with a level playing field. Suddenly tomorrow’s new player has something that is just as good as Gnilraps, a Worker Skill of 1. If you play this right and really develop the importance of the economy, you will be giving birth to a whole new game within the game. But it will take more than just Work Skill…

3: Cut production to 10% of its current value
Yep. Make everything produce just 0.1 instead of 1. This creates an instant economy at the same time you’ve introduced Work Skill. Now a new player has a chance to become an important player within days of joining. Imagine a game where new players are courted by existing players like the hot girl at the high school dance?

4: Kill off bad Medals
Freedom Fighter? Fling it.
Mercenary Medal? Mangle it.
True Patriot? Torch it with Petroleum.

5: Fix Politics
If you want to keep the Dictator Module, find a way to balance it better. It is currently far too advantageous to have a Dictator. And if you have a Dictator, you have no Congress. So you’ve replaced the activity of 50 citizens with the activity of 1. Either kill the Dictatorship module or diminish its advantage (for instance, any Dictatorship causes a 50% decrease in economic production).

Then PLEASE bring back competitive Congressional Elections. This current Party Ballot system is TERRIBLE. Don’t you understand? You have to give us reasons to PLAY. All you’ve given us is reasons to CLICK.

6: Kill WAM
Come on. This one thing decimates an economy. In what universe can 1 citizen work 50 times in one day? Just kill it.

7: Emphasize Newspapers
You know darned well that the Newspaper is the hidden gem of eRepublik. Use it. Make Subscriptions count for something. Do this: reset all subscriptions to 0. Then, if someone subscribes to my Newspaper, they get an Alert (or PM) indicating I’ve published. That’s what a subscription is, dammit! And while I’ve got your attention, give me better publishing code. I want colored text options, imbedded video options, I want my background music to play automatically, I want to be able to code graphs and charts… Give me a newspaper I can really sink my teeth into. Can’t you imagine how much more cool this game would look to a new player if the Media looked like something out of 2016 instead of 2008? And bring back that cool thing that showed us when our articles were being linked in another article. That stuff encourages community you know.

I’ll stop with 7. I want this article to be noticed and digested, and it is already on the verge of tl;dr.


DON'T MISS THIS

Bottom Line:
I believe eRLs needs to introduce a new filter in its design philosophy. Every single idea or proposal for an update, mission, or change needs to survive the following question:

Does this update, mission, or change increase the need for eRepublik Citizens to interact socially and rely on one another in order to gain an ingame advantage?

If the answer is “No”, then trash it. If the answer is “Yes”, then BRING IT ON.

And the more you do to introduce systems that reward long-term social interaction... the better off we will all be.

And my personal note to Mr. Bonte:
Kind Sir, I submit this article with utmost respect. I want your success. Forgive me if I offend you with my bluntness, I am just a guy in USA who loves to play your game and is willing to pay for the privelege. I am sad about the quality these days. But I am still here for now. Let’s do something about this.
Sincerely,
Gnilraps




Thank you for reading, endorsing, and (meaninglessly) subscribing.

Now shout this:

Crossroads: Fixing eRepublik

https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/crossroads-fixing-erepublik-2590243/1/20




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