Last Leaves on the Tree

Day 2,550, 09:58 Published in USA USA by Gnilraps

Last Leaf (Mandatory listening)
Day 2550 of the New World
13 November, 2014



As leaves keep dropping from the trees of eRepublik communities, and as I am still hanging on, I wanted to offer a few thoughts about “what happened”. How did a game with such enormous promise, in an environment where internet gaming is on the rise, become such a poor shell of itself?

The briefest of answers is this: Plato slowly and steadily made this game revolve around what he would do next and as a result there is steadily less to care about what the other players will do next. That is the tl;dr version.



Tragic move #1 – V2
Little Drop of Poison

V2, as a disaster storyline, has been covered in so many eRepublik newspapers that there is no fresh perspective I can offer. In brief, Plato redesigned nearly every aspect of the game all at once, and did so with his usual lack of information enabling citizens to be able to make wise choices regarding how they should respond with their gameplay.

There were suddenly multiple options for what kind of military “equipment” your citizen would specialize in, multiple options for specialized company workers, and a battlefield that required intricate teamwork leading to success. In every way, V2 was designed to be exactly what eRepublik promised it could be, a community-oriented game which rewarded teamwork foremost.

But the community did not embrace V2. And I believe it is Plato’s misinterpretation of why we didn’t embrace it that has greatly influenced the game’s decline.

The Real Problem
With absolutely no way to estimate the lasting effects of your decision, when V2 came you were forced to make a permanent choice. Would you be a “Producer”, “Marketing Manager”, “Project Manager”, “Carpenter”, “Builder”, “Architect”, “Engineer”, “Mechanic”, “Fitter”, “Technician”, or “Harvester”? Think about it, if you were forced to choose right now based on not having any clue whatsoever what the market demands or earning potential would be for each of these jobs, what would you do?

Well many just rolled the dice, picked something, and because there was no real way to be invested in their decision they lost interest altogether. This was especially true if you found out that you had chosen a crappy career which you were now more or less stuck with. True, you could “train” your way into another, but you were then giving away the bonus you received by staying within your trade.

This was the problem both in the economic module as well as the military module. Nobody knew what the hell was going on, and those who gambled successfully by choosing what would end up being the best military and economic paths benefitted while many others simply quit the game.

In other words, the real problem with Version 2 was the near complete inability for the citizens to make wise decisions regarding their eFuture. This played very badly among people who were investing their most valuable personal resources – time and energy – into a game. There were plenty of other games which offered better information.

Plato’s Misinterpretation
But Plato got it all wrong. He mistakenly assumed that the reason players were leaving V2 is because it was too complicated. Here is a direct quotation from the (former) eRepbulik Insider newspaper:


”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)

There was nothing “too complicated” about V2 at all. In fact, Plato’s assertion that V2 was too complicated is really nothing more than a veiled insult… an inside view of what Plato thinks of you and me… we are simple.

And so Plato began to take eRepublic on the trajectory that has led to its demise: oversimplicity.


Tragic Move #2 – De-design
Yesterday is Here

With a greatly reduced community, Plato tried to revert the game back to V1 but with some slick new graphics.

One of the problems we all encountered, though, was that we had to “migrate” our V2 citizen – with their diverse attributes – back into the more simplified V1 type. Why was this a problem? Because not all migrations were equal. This is where some of us found out, much to our chagrin, that we had made been screwed over by the V2 process and we were now competitively behind those citizens who had lucked out with their choices.

But this was not a problem of lack of information, this was simply a take-it-or-leave it approach. As you look at my citizen today, for instance, you will notice that I am quite eOld, but if you compare my strength to other players who are as old and active as I am, I am not as strong. This, despite the fact that in 5+ years I have missed about 2 days of max training. Again, why am I behind? I got screwed by V2 and migration.

But many of us just swallowed the bitter pill and played on. After all, V3 still had lots of interesting features, among them was “worker skill”, a dynamic similar to military strength. The higher your skill, the more you produced for your employer, and the more salary you made. This made company management far more interesting than it is today.

But here began the slow dying.

Day 1207 brought the first set of “Missions” (everyone remember “El Dorado”?). Of course Plato was totally unprepared for his own missions and servers crashed repeatedly throughout the day. And while on the surface these missions seemed like a good way to generate activity, it was a bellwether of Plato’s new M.O. From V3 onward, Plato himself would become the story.

The missions had absolutely nothing to do with playing eRepublik, they were just activity generators. They stuck out like a thematic sore thumb. These and every set of missions ever since have been the eRepublik equivalent of the candy in the grocery check-out aisle. Nobody goes to a grocery story for a snickers bar, but there it is so you grab it. Among the roast beef, milk, bread, vegetables, fruits, and cereals, the snickers bar is a total non sequitur. The problem now is, the entire damned store is snickers bars and you can't find a loaf of decent bread to save your life!

Then just three days later Plato introduced “storage”, and with it a streamlined approach to doing “economics”. This truly spelled the end for orgs, and the new simplified approach put an end to the kind of creative tinkering it took to run companies well. It was easier, yes, but making a strategy game “easier” is like painting all six sides of a rubiks cube the same color.


Thanks, Plato. Tons of fun.

What has followed ever since has been a stream of simplifications:

The removal of Worker Skill.
The Goldification of training and production.
WAM.
Destroyed Congressional Elections.
Removal of International Markets.
Massively increased daily food fights.
Unlimited Energy Bar consumption.
Weekly Rewards based on fight clicks.
Etc.

Do you see? At this point the only interesting question is, “What will Plato do next?”

And eventually people stop asking.

Watch Her Disappear

Now there is no doubt that the community has shrunk to a new low just as it continues to shrink.

I think Plato has killed it.

And now as I watch you all disappear, I remember some of the great names of my ePast… names like Chutley, Jon Malcom, Joe DaSmoe, fingerguns, bigcdizzle,jerseygirldani, Hadrian X, PigNZen (yes, now edead), Vanek26, Blank Keating, s0beit, Darkskye, Emerick, Dutch Marley, CRoy, FireSand, Stanley Ibcus, ligtreb, dogpyle, SpeedcatMcNasty, Devin Kesten, AidenAstrup, Salinger, Soren Nelson, fluffydoorman, Mr Andrews, Mr. Booboo Kittybottoms, Samuel Seabury, General Robert Lee, Robert Grosseteste, Aeroner, stewy, and omg so many, many others… And these just off the top of my head…

But I am still with you here… the last leaves on the tree…


You may now return to your regularly scheduled clicking