eRepublik Needs a New Deal, Not New Updates
William Thomas Riker
The changes in economic modules I am about to propose might seem radical, and therefore unapealing. But all of you need to understand one thing: not everybody in here is supposed to do economy, let alone excel in it. The module should exist for people who like it and are good at this sort of stuff. Everybody being good at it, getting free gold all the time and buying and upgrading companies is unnatural, impossible, and in the end not fun.
Just read the whole thing, ok?
Go ahead, tell me there is no way in hell any of my ideas is gonna see the light of the day. Well, let me return the favor: you can stop playing right now then, because without some serious consideration and borrowing vrom V1, this game won't survive long.
LOCAL CURRENCY
We need local currencies back. Ratio discrepancies between gold and various currencies should start growing as soon as first TP and FF medals are won. Since one global currency will get divided 74 local ones, depending on the current ownership of currency, some of the will become scarce, others not, which will bring the Issue money Congress law back into first row.
Citizens will have an opportunity to earn money by trading in currencies, which will bring some of the fun and sense of accomplishment back.
There is fun in uncertainty.
PROGRESSIVE TAXES
It's simple, the more you have, the greater percentage of taxes you pay to your country. This would be a measure slowing the accumulation of wealth without really being able and resposible enough to use it properly.
Governments should have the power to set these taxes individually, but in a confined range, so a large number of citizens wouldn't change their CS. For example, if we have 10 tax categories, the poorest citizens would have their taxes set in 1-5% range, the next 6-10%... and the richest would have their taxes set in 46-50% range. Seems RL-esque enough. Some countries might develop into tax heavens, just like in RL.
Seriously, if you are winning 200 medals a week, every week, for years, you clearly have too much money that you can't even spend. I'm rich (well, not that rich, but I get by), and if this would help the game, I would gladly pay my due. Besides, I have brains and I will continue earning, instead of winning gold like the tanks do. If local currencies were to be reintroduced, taxation grade would be automatically determined by the summ of your gold and realestate posessions (since companies have fixed, public values in gold). Local currencies and items would be exempted, so there would again be space for earning some money if you are capable.
Currently, only medals that reward currency get taxated, but gold meals should be taxated as well. In fact, shortly after reintroducing local currencies, currenca gold ratios should restore to previous levels, and all medals could be returned to gold rewards.
REINTRODUCE ORGANISATIONS AND SHARES
For this to work, first, all companies in eRepublik should get dissolveed (full cost reinbursed this time, just this one time). Leave the 10 gold donation limit.
Dissable citizens from owning companies, bring back orgs. In order for citizens to jumpstart the economy, they will have to enter into joint ventures. 10 gold limit will prevent the rich from creating and mantaining monopoly. They will still have their wealth in gold, but won't be as able to invest it to make money fast.
If in doubt, google "shares eRepublik." You will get dozens of articles proving you this type of play worked. People would have 5, maybe 10 gold, and
Q1 companies' starting price was 40 gold (20 gold for the company + another 20 for Raw materials and salaries).
While shares and contracts might be ingame introduced, I'd personally prefer to leave it to the players. That way, with some risk present, people will join resources only with others they trust, making it more about friendship, game and fun, then about making money as quickly as possible.
SEPARATION OF POWER
People who control orgs should hold the title of a CEO (like in V1). Those which perform political duties (CP, PP, CM, party officials, government members) shouldn't be able to do the same economy (CEO) and military vise (Commander, 2nd Commander, Captain) and vice versa.
If there are 100 positions in eRepublik, with the separation of power, and 300 citizens, one third of them will get the chance to be active and run things. Without the separation of power, as little as 15 people could control everything. This way, more citizens would feel more important and indispensable to the Community, which would make them enjoy the game more.
Pretty much half of your senior staff.
BONDED PRODUCT QUALITIES
Weapons and Food qualities should be internally bonded. If you consume Q1, Q2, or Q3 Food (because those are the cheapest), you should only be able to use Weapons of the same quality. People who want bigger Weapons need to pay for bigger Food. People which buy cheapest Food, let's say Q1, can only use Q1 Weapons. That way lower Q Weapons and higher Q food companies could finally become profitable.
Depending on the math, that may not be enough. In that case, Weapons and Food qualities should be bonded to Houses. Since 5!=25 (5 different Qs of Houses you can use simultaneously), you would need at least 2 points to use Q1 Weapons and Food. Q1 House + Q2 House are equal to 3 points, Q1+Q2+Q3=6 (Q3 and Food available), etc.
Edit: Dio Hostilian's proposal to all companies producing different number of products of the same quality is better.
ULTIMATE GOAL
- gold-currency ratios restored to previous levels
- greater number of players active
- tanks will still be more powerful than the rest of us
- tanks will still buy gold and packs
- economic module will become fun again
- non-paying economic experts will have a fighting chance to succeed.
Haha, see?
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Live long and prosper!
WTR
Comments
pertamaxxx
"this game won't survive long"
I've been hearing/reading this since 2010.
the game itself is already dead
what you call game is just pixels and eternal boredom
since God knows when
Correction, I wanted to say that it is dead, and it won't get revived until a major change happens that complicates game, not simplifies it.
Oh... I agree only with the first condition. And the second one is exceptionally hilarious in the same way as it is IRL.
I disagree with progressive taxation iRL, so I don't see a reason not to disagree with it here as well.
Contracts and shares are a good idea, but without ingame contracts it is useless since there's a huge number of cheaters.
Bonded product qualities are also a bad idea. I would simply remove all quality from food and weapons and make higher quality factories simply produce more food. It really makes zero sense to have q7 food which is completely useless, just as it is nonsensical to have q1-6 weapons which nobody ever uses.
I also disagree with the separation of power. Let's say somebody invests his money into companies. That would make him completely incapable of leading a unit or entering the politics, and I don't really find that to be a good idea. Your intentions with that are okay, but it doesn't make too much sense in the game in my opinion.
The rest of the points are okay.
Oh, and Plato's never gonna listen to you 🙂
Contracts were a good point. They were successfully introduced in (other copy of this game) and were really helpful.
I disagree in re: taxation, but perhaps it could be something set by the nation? So they could choose whether to introduce flat taxes or progressive.
Contracts were cheaters' heaven because they were up to admins to resolve conflicts in V1 so when there were too many of them and not enough admins to deal with infractions, they became useless. That should become an in game mechanic and abusing/cheating the contracts would be impossible. Getting rid of ORGs was one of the biggest fails of this game and instead of adopting that 2nd level game mechanic that was invented by the players and implementing into a game, they totally got rid of it and made game and the economy module worse.
I also agree on he monetary proposal. Trading with the currencies was one of the great things of V1 and for a good economist, it was the perfect playground to study the effect of supply/demand of currency/gold, inflation and everything connected to it. And it was durring some of the worst RL economic crisis with some of the economic principles that were same in game as RL. I never understood why they did away with that for the sake of simplifying the game for the masses...
I agree with your idea of higher Q companies producing more of the same, better than mine.
However, about the separation of power: an MU Commander can invest money into companies, he just cannot run that company as a CEO, somebody else will do it. And politics and military don't mix,. In Croatia in V1, no soldier could've entered politics without getting discharged first. Now we have Gidenn-Samohajduk101 forming the Croatian government for more than half a year, and they go for the military interests, instead of serving the civilians.
Well, I'm an MU commander because I am bored with wars and want to set my own daily orders as I see fit (everyone in my unit is some form of commander for the same reason). If the game still made sense, your proposal would make sense as well. In the current state I simply don't care about any battle.
As for politics... There is a tiny problem with that. If politicians don't know nothing about military nor about economy, how would they know how to lead a country? Our current RL politicians are a shining example of people who know absolutely nothing except politics and they use their positions solely to increase their wealth. If somebody is good in economy, sure, he might misuse his position, but he might also have a better insight to make some positive changes.
Private, small MUs are different. I'm talking about the big ones, including the country's MU.
Politicians are not supposed to know anything about it, specifically the CP and the rest of his government. That's why he has a MoD that is an expert in that field. CP sets goals, MoD sets strategies. To be honest, every time we had a soldier as CP in Croatia, he knew nothing about the economy, and vice versa. CP is supposed to be a leader with doable ideas and who delegates jobs. He is supposed to know the people, meaning he has to be one of them, not one of the elite. His ministers are supposed to be experts in military, economy, public speaking (journalism), possibly memebers of the elite. Current Samohajduk101-Gideonn tandem in Croatia is the exact replica of Croatian RL government.
Znan da je ovo za sve gradane svih nacija, al jel mos i na hr. Neda mi se zamarat sa engleskim, ali sve u svemu dobar clanak😃
ne mere 😃
http://prntscr.com/goizku
Many good propositions but unfortunately, I think that they will don't care about... there is one thing that I would like to add, but it's only about the gameplay. I think that the powerups allow to switch divisions, would must allow ONLY to fight in the divisions, but not to take gold from BH. Like this, players will switch for fight, and not only for steal gold to the division 1 players... Anyway, great article, with really good argues! 🙂
trust me, they.. dont.. care..
🙁
Food/weaps has no sense, i think. Almost nobody use less than q7 weaps, so everybody should buy q7 food and the price will rise infinitely. That means, q1-6 wont be sold. Beside that, you wont be able to use your own production.
In general, acording to that, the people who cant win medals, wont be able to buy q7 food/tanks, so, if they fells er doesnt thinks in them now, with that changes......
And about of power separation... sometimes you cant found 10 guys who care of doing something in this game, so .... xD
You just said price of Q7 would rise infinately, meaning most people wouldn't be able to afford it, so they would buy q1-q6. Besides, Dio Hostilian made a better suggestion of all companies producing
... producing different quantities od the same quality.
An exception can always be made to the rule, but only in case there are no other people interested.
The problem is, in this unbalanced game, that no-packs players have enought problems yet. If they have no money to buy packs, they wont be able to earn medalls, and they ´ll have to fight with q1-6 food/tanks..... Will you keep on playing in this situation?.
That is what i mean.
Lol, what difference is there if I fight with Q1 or Q7? I can never win medsl, or even influence the wall. If you had 100 players like me in an important battle, we wouldn't matter at all. It's already like we are fighting bare handed compared to gold tankers.
Problem is that no-packs players have nothing to do besides military. You want no-packs players to be equal to gold tankers, I want them to still sucks at military module (like in V1), but I want other modules developed enough so they would play them and be more powerful thatn golden tanks there (like in V1).
That is your problem, that is the problem of all of you people: you just wanna all be tanks and win medals. You all think that only soldiers matter.
Yes, if these changes would happen, I would continue playing, cause I registered here for the economy, not military. Pressing Fight isn't fun for me.
I dont say visa and no-visa player should to be equal. I just say no-visa player have enought problems, and they dont need more, like suddenly be forced to do half damage, because they can only pay p5 food, and for that, they have to buy q5 weaps.
Excepto for D4, at less in d1-2, and some in D3 can take bhs with a normal pool, moreover if they use Ghost. At less, if they have enough maxhit (maxhit, another problem of this game, but we are not speaking about that now).
You can say which my problem is. I can say: this is the game we have, if you dont like it, leave. According with what you want, you dont care f* the damage of lot of poople, in a game 90% military, for fixing... what? economy module?, because you like it?.
That module probably wont never come back. Because the game, with this packs strategy, need the economy like it is. With lot of cheap weaps/food (so they cant change manager work, for example), and with no individual currence (because people need cc for packs, and if there are much difference among countries, people´d leave the more problematic countries.
You forget that you need q1-6 weapons for rockets.
Stupid article! 😃
Very good, great ideas.
V+S!
Interesting. I wonder about your views are on why these aspects of v1 were abandoned and if it was succesful at the time or not
Actually, these aspects survived into eRepublik Rising, and well into V3. They were abandoned because people asked Plato to simplify the game. Funilly enough, when Plato did just that, the same people left the game cause it was no more fun. So, it was a huge fail. Still is.
The most interesting about this article is that with the mentioned proposals the declared goals cannot be achieved. They may make the situation even worse, though.
I respectufully disagree. And it can't get any worse, this game has about 3000 active players (Gnilraps's analysis), the rest of them work, train, and fight to complete DO. If it gets worse, then it will get shut down, which in my oppinion, is better cause then we will finally be freeeeeeeeee
It can always get worse.
Idk, I'm not being held prisoner here. I still like this game and I want for it to get better, not worse.
Seriously, I live in a village that has a bigger population than the entire eRepublik. It can't get any worse. Nobody is held prisoner here, people just hope Plato will reinstate certain things that were actually good for the game.
"...not everybody in here is supposed to do economy, let alone excel in it."
At one point I had 65 employees making grain and 2 Q2 food. It took 2-3 hours each day to message people, fix problems, send help, adjust pay, etc. Then i had to move currency / gold around between my org and companies. I used much of my profit to reinvest in new companies and to help new players get started and those who were able to advance. When WaM happened all was destroyed. I had to fire some loyal employees because I could not afford to pay them minimum wage. :/
I do not know about "bonded product qualities". It would possibly help. I do remember buying Q3 weapons because it was the best I could afford, but I only used them when we were at war. Today pay to play is the only thing to do.
I had the same thing. I kept a spreadsheet to figure out what to pay workers (back when there were skill levels) and the economic model was far more interesting than the WAM & fight in pointless battles thing we have today.
I'll go ahead & disagree with the local currencies thought. While I did some triangular arbitrage back in the day, the weak point was the smaller countries. They just didn't have enough currency market action to make it not only worthwhile, but enough to function as a nation. The common currency we have now, while lifeless for making money, at least lets the small countries buy & sell gold.
Good point. Still, admin "adjusts" economic even today. Anyone who thinks that people building rockets takes care of WaM overproduction is sadly mistaken. I would think that a sliding graduant of relative value could be calculated and implemented which would make countries more on an even footing in the world markets. (If anyone doesn't understand what I just said, that's the reason why not everyone can excell if eRep had a realistic economy. 😛 )
Wilhelm Klink, eRepublik could always allow small countries to use local currency of another country (like many small countries worldwide use US dollars and euros) instead of their own, at least until they get more citizens (if ever). There is really no need to oversimplify the game.
In early 2011 I had around 200 employees in 40 of my Q5 Tanks, Food, Grain and Iron companies. I also had shares in other people's companies because they didn't have enough money to get their own, so I would lend them some part of the money, and would get a share of profit. And I had my own bank,
I was one of the richest guys at that point who never gave a single euro to Plato. All because I had brains. Off course he didn't like me and other players like me.
Dio Hostilian proposed another, simpler idea: instead of bonded stuff, there would exist a single quality for Weapons and Food, and higher Q companies would simply produce more of it. similar to raw companies.
I know we've not interacted often but now I know the reason you've been on my friends list for years. 😃
200 employees! Must have sent PMs for hours everyday. My respect sir.
I like the idea of single Q. It would not require major change to the program or the way it is played but would simplify what is unnecessarily complex.
I don't remember having to send messages, but I do know it took me at least an hour every day to set the pays (when you have a couple hundred workers, even 1 cc difference in pay those days meant huge difference in earning or losing money) and to set job offers (I was producing my own raw, so I had to balance workers in raw and products companies: there shouldn't be too much unnecessary raw, and again, no shortage of it or otherwise I couldn't produce finished products.) On top of that, I was to lazy to extract company profits through the market, so I would just press Collect and give the country my due taxes.
In my not so humble opinion, if V1 or V2 had survived, I would belong to top 10 richest players in the entire game who had never bought gold, and I would probably own the entire Croatian economy.
Guys, I just realised that I'm the one who broke the game. I remember studying the economics at the time during V1, understanding it all, and thinking about going into business. I never did because I raelised it would take up a bunch of time.
So Plato dumbed the game down - for me - so that I could two-click and still make all the food I could ever want (not weapons, obviously, since I never bought gold). So, I guess I should apologize to everyone.
v
Good stuff. Interesting read.
CC will never be back to previous levels because it doesn't make sense from erep's pov. Gold has a real, monetary value to the people who run the game. If you're able to acquire gold using cc, then you've effectively devalued gold and fewer (no one) would buy any.
You'd literally have to wipe cc from the game and re-issue it for this to work in any meaningful way. You can't wipe gold because people have used real money to buy it.
With all that said, I do agree with many of your points and would like to see a more comprehensive economic system like we had previously. Running orgs was fun and entering partnerships was a fun dynamic to the game. I hope the admins look at your post and take what you've said into consideration.
By dissolving all companies and creating them again jointly, we will only be able to use fraction of a gold. Only people who are giod businessmen will be able to utilize all of it in time. Tanks, gold buyers and pack players not so much. So they will have a lot of gold in cash. And if all medals were to give gold, they would literally have no source of currency to buy packs on the black market or to set CO. They would have to buy huge amounts of CC on the market, paying it with their gold.
Bring back local currencies!
For years I've heard that this will die and I'm still here 😛 , this looks like the of the predictions of the end of the world what they never arrive.
0/10
It's all the same
Reshape, retry
It's always somewhere near
It's only words
Rethink, redo
If only I could hear
It's only pain
You're trying to hide
It's all the same
Day after day
Night after night
Trust
Defenses down
I lost my way
You lost your ground
It's all the same
It's all the same
Tax thingy wasnt interesting , the rest are good ideas , specially about currencies and acitivity in monetary market
and admins need to make a use for lower grade weapons , cause people who are not tankers and want to focus on economy need to take something from their q3 company in order to change it to q4 and so on.
There was thing in version beta that helicopters and artillery and tanks had different uses and we fought in a strategic field and every player had 1 role , i was really interesting idea , dunno why people made so much fuss about it back it , i liked it 😃
That wasn't beta, but V2 Rising. I liked it, too. It had tactics.