[Series] Visiting eRepublik Labs [Part 03]
Day 3,319, 05:31
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Published in Germany 
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by
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by Master_rg
Hello fellow citizen,
you are reading a part of my series of articles about my trip to eRepublik Labs from 07th to 10th dec. In order to make it more easier for you to get in touch with every topic, this table of contents can be found on top of every article. It will directly link to the specific topic you click on.
Table of contents
1. Preamble and some rules
2. Clarification about some used terms
3. How did it come to that visit
4. What happened during the days
4.1 Wednesday
4.2 Thursday
4.3 Friday
5. Problems eRepublik is currently facing
5.1 Community
5.2 Economy
5.3 Military
5.4 Politics
5.5 Newspapers
6. Some quotes of players which appear regularly
7. Conclusion
#4.2 Thursday
The day at eRepublik Labs starts about 08:50 when the first people arrive at the office. Everybody gets a coffee, people are checking the services and think of stuff they should deal with today.
Around 10:00 there’s a small meeting with the whole team - it happens every morning. Our beloved admin gets all needed information in order to get a general overview of the current situation at eRepublik:
- What did the developers finish yesterday
- What are they working on today
- Did any difficult things happen at the support desk
- Are any events in preparation
- What should we focus on the next days
And indeed, here and there are mini debates about some parts and the strategy to follow. Also the support desk experienced a ticket which was quite difficult to deal with - players may have stolen money from a National Organization, but again: Plato handles it. He instructs the support team to investigate the case and help the community by reversing the transactions.
After the meeting more or less the whole team knew about the stuff the others are currently dealing with, so there’s quite a good flow of information within the team. Everybody starts to work again and I made some notes to ask some questions later as I didn’t want to disturb any of them. I also continued to work on a small presentation where I just wanted to list all the problems I am currently experiencing and seeing at eRepublik.
Some hours later, lunchtime approaches. People invited me to get something to eat with them but not today. I wanted to finish most of the stuff I recently had to deal with. So I continued to work and finished the basics after about an hour. I took a short break, went to a supermarket in order to get some stuff to drink and eat (also for the evening) and after about 20 minutes I was back in the office.
People came back from their break and again we started to have discussions and I have also been introduced to a new feature they are going to add to the game somewhere in near future. I loved the idea behind this one but somehow, I wasn’t convinced that people would understand it in its current implementation. Guess what: We discussed it. What should be changed at the interface, how could we add more information to the interface, what could be the best way to make the way of interacting more comprehensible, are we going to flood people with information, shall we add an intro or tutorial.. phew, it was somehow quite hard stuff, because “every user-interface you need to explain is a bad user-interface” - even though it’s true somehow, at a certain point you need to take a player’s hand and introduce him to new features. We didn’t find a general solution yet, but at least we managed to collect all the small things which could make live easier for the player.
Again time flies while having technical discussions with members of the team and all out of sudden it was evening again. Same thing as the day before: People slowly finished their last things they got on schedule for today and began to have discussions. We had some drinks, again I was asked what I would change at eRepublik.. so we played a small game: You are Plato for one day, you are free to change three things, what are you going to change? I am taking a sip of my drink and.. I didn’t had an answer.
I can literally see you, the reader, right now: Sitting in your chair and raging like “Hey german guy, the %§”! is just wrong with you? Fix economy, bring fun back to the politics and create a better way for new players to get involved in the game” - and I am aware of the things you mentioned right now, but you need to think about it in another way: What does “fix economy” really mean? Does it mean to reduce the overproduction? Does it mean that companies should be affordable for everyone? Would those changes really fix it or just only fight the symptoms of a broken system? Is economy really broken? What’s happening on the food market right now? If you implement idea A what influence does it have on the overall system? Also regarding the battlefiel
I hope you see that it’s not just like pushing a button in order to make the game great again. However: We found some things we could agree on: Like Guerrilla Fights are shitty, dictatorships are overpowered and may ruin a country's community, newspaper module is almost dead - and we talked about the air battles.. and especially the discussion about air battles were quite interesting for me as I started to think about it and was just like “are air battles really that bad?”. On the one hand old players just go all-in with their energy bars in order to reach a max hit value, on the other hand.. well.. even new players may feel to be involved in such a battle as it is not always about getting a sky hero medal, it’s also about having fun, about fighting together with your friends.. fighting for your military unit and of course: for your country. Well, what shall I say.. I thought about it for quite a while and was like: Yeah.. for me air battles are fun.
Tell you what: My brain was close to explode, I needed to skip this topic as it was just way too complex for an easy solution - and remember: We figured that out right at the beginning of the meeting. I mean.. dear reader, let us play a game: You are Plato for a day, you are allowed to change three things. What would you change? Keep in mind that there are some constraints: For example the time frame and the man power. Feel free to leave a comment but guess what: If 2.000 characters are enough to leave a statement about this “problem”, you are doing it wrong. But still: Leave a comment, both me and Plato want to see your idea even if it’s a short or just basic one. I will try to collect as many of them for a bigger discussion later in game or during live streams.. but I want you to agree to the problem, that there isn’t an easy solution.
Back to topic: It’s still evening, it’s getting closer to midnight - we had some drinks, we needed to switch topics just to get some kind of fresh ideas on our mind. We talked about Romania, about Germany, problems in our countries, compared it with each other, we spoke about our political systems and, of course: About our politicians.
Of course we couldn’t really forget about the latest elections eUSA and we were all like: Look, guys.. politicians are always like “we make everything possible” during the elections, and afterwards they are like “meh, it wasn’t meant that way” - and suddenly Dani (basically the project leader and the small version of Plato, if you think of Alexis being the bigger version of Plato (sorry for that guys
Even though I can’t tell you any details as it isn’t final yet: It’s a great idea, we had an awesome discussion about it and made a lot of notes in order to discuss it the next day with the rest of the team.
you are reading a part of my series of articles about my trip to eRepublik Labs from 07th to 10th dec. In order to make it more easier for you to get in touch with every topic, this table of contents can be found on top of every article. It will directly link to the specific topic you click on.
Table of contents
1. Preamble and some rules
2. Clarification about some used terms
3. How did it come to that visit
4. What happened during the days
4.1 Wednesday
4.2 Thursday
4.3 Friday
5. Problems eRepublik is currently facing
5.1 Community
5.2 Economy
5.3 Military
5.4 Politics
5.5 Newspapers
6. Some quotes of players which appear regularly
7. Conclusion
#4.2 Thursday
The day at eRepublik Labs starts about 08:50 when the first people arrive at the office. Everybody gets a coffee, people are checking the services and think of stuff they should deal with today.
Around 10:00 there’s a small meeting with the whole team - it happens every morning. Our beloved admin gets all needed information in order to get a general overview of the current situation at eRepublik:
- What did the developers finish yesterday
- What are they working on today
- Did any difficult things happen at the support desk
- Are any events in preparation
- What should we focus on the next days
And indeed, here and there are mini debates about some parts and the strategy to follow. Also the support desk experienced a ticket which was quite difficult to deal with - players may have stolen money from a National Organization, but again: Plato handles it. He instructs the support team to investigate the case and help the community by reversing the transactions.
After the meeting more or less the whole team knew about the stuff the others are currently dealing with, so there’s quite a good flow of information within the team. Everybody starts to work again and I made some notes to ask some questions later as I didn’t want to disturb any of them. I also continued to work on a small presentation where I just wanted to list all the problems I am currently experiencing and seeing at eRepublik.
Some hours later, lunchtime approaches. People invited me to get something to eat with them but not today. I wanted to finish most of the stuff I recently had to deal with. So I continued to work and finished the basics after about an hour. I took a short break, went to a supermarket in order to get some stuff to drink and eat (also for the evening) and after about 20 minutes I was back in the office.
People came back from their break and again we started to have discussions and I have also been introduced to a new feature they are going to add to the game somewhere in near future. I loved the idea behind this one but somehow, I wasn’t convinced that people would understand it in its current implementation. Guess what: We discussed it. What should be changed at the interface, how could we add more information to the interface, what could be the best way to make the way of interacting more comprehensible, are we going to flood people with information, shall we add an intro or tutorial.. phew, it was somehow quite hard stuff, because “every user-interface you need to explain is a bad user-interface” - even though it’s true somehow, at a certain point you need to take a player’s hand and introduce him to new features. We didn’t find a general solution yet, but at least we managed to collect all the small things which could make live easier for the player.
Again time flies while having technical discussions with members of the team and all out of sudden it was evening again. Same thing as the day before: People slowly finished their last things they got on schedule for today and began to have discussions. We had some drinks, again I was asked what I would change at eRepublik.. so we played a small game: You are Plato for one day, you are free to change three things, what are you going to change? I am taking a sip of my drink and.. I didn’t had an answer.
I can literally see you, the reader, right now: Sitting in your chair and raging like “Hey german guy, the %§”! is just wrong with you? Fix economy, bring fun back to the politics and create a better way for new players to get involved in the game” - and I am aware of the things you mentioned right now, but you need to think about it in another way: What does “fix economy” really mean? Does it mean to reduce the overproduction? Does it mean that companies should be affordable for everyone? Would those changes really fix it or just only fight the symptoms of a broken system? Is economy really broken? What’s happening on the food market right now? If you implement idea A what influence does it have on the overall system? Also regarding the battlefiel
😛What could new players do right now? Should they focus on ground or air battles?
I hope you see that it’s not just like pushing a button in order to make the game great again. However: We found some things we could agree on: Like Guerrilla Fights are shitty, dictatorships are overpowered and may ruin a country's community, newspaper module is almost dead - and we talked about the air battles.. and especially the discussion about air battles were quite interesting for me as I started to think about it and was just like “are air battles really that bad?”. On the one hand old players just go all-in with their energy bars in order to reach a max hit value, on the other hand.. well.. even new players may feel to be involved in such a battle as it is not always about getting a sky hero medal, it’s also about having fun, about fighting together with your friends.. fighting for your military unit and of course: for your country. Well, what shall I say.. I thought about it for quite a while and was like: Yeah.. for me air battles are fun.
Tell you what: My brain was close to explode, I needed to skip this topic as it was just way too complex for an easy solution - and remember: We figured that out right at the beginning of the meeting. I mean.. dear reader, let us play a game: You are Plato for a day, you are allowed to change three things. What would you change? Keep in mind that there are some constraints: For example the time frame and the man power. Feel free to leave a comment but guess what: If 2.000 characters are enough to leave a statement about this “problem”, you are doing it wrong. But still: Leave a comment, both me and Plato want to see your idea even if it’s a short or just basic one. I will try to collect as many of them for a bigger discussion later in game or during live streams.. but I want you to agree to the problem, that there isn’t an easy solution.
Back to topic: It’s still evening, it’s getting closer to midnight - we had some drinks, we needed to switch topics just to get some kind of fresh ideas on our mind. We talked about Romania, about Germany, problems in our countries, compared it with each other, we spoke about our political systems and, of course: About our politicians.
Of course we couldn’t really forget about the latest elections eUSA and we were all like: Look, guys.. politicians are always like “we make everything possible” during the elections, and afterwards they are like “meh, it wasn’t meant that way” - and suddenly Dani (basically the project leader and the small version of Plato, if you think of Alexis being the bigger version of Plato (sorry for that guys
😃)) was like: I am onto something. I know how we could be able to revive the community part of eRepublik and bring activity back into the newspaper- and politics module again.
Even though I can’t tell you any details as it isn’t final yet: It’s a great idea, we had an awesome discussion about it and made a lot of notes in order to discuss it the next day with the rest of the team.
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Comments
n0s3 is slow.
No Christmas present for you.
is that a threat?
terrorism?
heterosexual&real
**shots are fired
ducks are killed
Ducks hehe
When will water battles be implemented? Need to blockade some countries so they die economically xd.
fine print.
implement q5 q6 houses (promised more than 2 years ago), and q7 air wepon
"I am onto something. I know how we could be able to revive the community part of eRepublik and bring activity back into the newspaper- and politics module again."
>Put News on top of Campaigns on the mainpage
Woooow
such amazing
many activity
suddenly 3 articles
nope, i'm sorry :/
Did you keep a diary?
not really but i made notes about our discussions
Tell Plato to add Croatia in game!!!
1. Remove or minimize the P2W aspect of this game. Visas are too overpowered comparing to non-Visas.
2. Divisions by maxhit, no switching (MP).
3. Implement into vanilla eRepublik some features that are currently available only with scripts/external websites.
Please give us captain elections in MUs back. 🙂
Have you talked about how unfair is that some countries have 10 times more regions than other countries?
Slovenia is slightly smaller country than Macedonia, but has twice as much regions. Russia as biggest country by territory in eRep has 3-4 times less regions than USA.
USA is obviously the "leader" in this, and it is very imbalanced.
It has been 9 years, several resource wars tournaments during which I thought they could rearrange the regions, but nothing actually happened. Are there any plans for this?
Short answer: Yes we did.
would I like the outcome of it? xD
I don't think so because we didn't find a solution for it. But maybe you got one we could talk about? I mean.. you could give every country a fixed amount of regions.. but would that be the right solution?
I also talked about the wrong region neighbours and we weren't sure if this should be changed as every "fix" causes a shitstorm these days😁
Let's discuss it 🙂
add core regions owner swapping and stability : v
cCc Europa Universalis : D
Fixed amount of regions would do I believe. Balance in regions can bring balance in war, balance in economy, balance in the game.
For some months now, USA has exploited this the most. They have full 20/20 (or 19/20 regardless) bonuses ONLY in their core regions. My country has a capped maximum of only 4. No possibilities for a strong economy, like a strong country deserves.
But if lets say, USA had ~10 regions, they wouldn't be able to have full bonuses in their cores. They would have to attack someone and conquer resources (this is a war game, not Farmville, hope we can agree on that). That would be fun.
But the biggest change of that would be, someone could attack USA and conquer them too, without needing 2 months to conquer all their regions (as it is the case today). My country can be wiped in 2 days, while it would take 2 months to wipe USA. Forgive me, but I don't see at all how is this fair or balanced.
On the other hand, it wouldn't make any sense having a country which surface is larger than the moon's (aka Russia) having the same amount of regions as Greece, would it?
And correct me if I'm wrong, but with the last resource war, the real thing is about how many resources you got, not about the number of regions themselves, since there are regions without any resource on them. (I'm not really sure about it, since I've never tried to learn more about the "economahahahahahaaha module")
Although I'd agree that's a bit unfair having some countries with less than the viable amount of regions. P.ex. the total resources of the game are up to 20. You can place 4 of them in any given region. Which means countries would need at least 5 regions for all of them. And I can easily think of a country having not even half of that, Cyprus. 2 regions?! Like really?!
I think that the 4 resources in 1 region option was introduced only because of the lack of regions countries have.
But instead of this, they could have FIXED that problem permanently with adjusting the number of regions, in which case all countries would have equal chances, but won't have same resources, which would lead to more conflicts, more wars, more fun!
Having the same regions though, is pretty unbalanced itself. There are countries, which are by nature way way way bigger than others, why should they both have the same amount or regions? As long as they have enough regions to store all 20 of the resources it would be acceptable, but I guess that's just my opinion.
And I truly believe that there are more important things to balance before balancing the regions. Examples are: Divisions based on damage per hit, the non-existing economy module etc.
They could make something like this:
Every country (except maybe Singapore, I don't see how to divide it into more regions in a way that has any sense, it's a city state anyway) has a (same) starting amount of regions. Let's say 5, but it should be a number that would prevent situations where countries can be deleted in a day or even half a day.
Then, if a country has an area of 50k km^2 it gets one additional region
If area is at least 100k km^2 then two regions
3 bonus regions for 250k km^2
4 for 500k km^2.
etc etc
Numbers are purely made up, without looking at the map at all. I don't even know areas for 99.9% countries in the world. It's just a concept that can be worked on.
That would make number of regions in various countries a bit more even but on the other hand, large countries would still have more regions compared to the smaller ones and that would be fair as well.
P.S. Even RL population density could be taken into account.
Siberia is huge but is barely populated. So it could be divided into two-three regions only (just like the way it is now).
But USA Northeast is densely populated, it could be divided into more separate regions than USA Northwest.
free Kosovo from serbia, as it is since 1999!
Good articles 🙂
The problem with the game is pretty simple, at a certain point the admins decided to exploit what was a decent multiplayer game and turn it into a a pay-to-win game for there own profit.
They can't roll back the game to something fun without losing money, so it's stuck in its current broken form. They can introduce a load of new features and even if they are good, if the core gameplay remains pay-to-win it will ultimately fail.
You say that they discuss every thing they want to implement, right?
That is awesome 🙂.
Just explain me, how did they came to conclusion that Maverick pack is a good thing?
I mean, except from €€€ 🙂 ?!?
And why did they stop changing weekly challenge, stopped adding missions, events?!?
BTW great articles!
Luv it! 😃
Well I think the problem is, besides the current division system, the infantry pack which lead to an even more unbalanced situation. I think they tried to fight it somehow. Furthermore the damage should be capped by the highest hit of a player of the specific division who attacked there, so those battles aren't that attractive for high div players if they would need to invest a lot of EBs due to the capped hit.
Regarding the weekly challenge I can only say that they tried to combine it with those "pack trials" which was a good idea, but having a trial last for one hour is just like.. a bad joke.. so the idea was quite good in my eyes, but the implementation of it was.. well.. not the best one.
You also have to keep in mind that all changes need to be balanced somehow which can be a tricky topic from time to time.
Regarding the missions and events: Well, I have no idea, possibly a lack of time as it seems they are working on a refactoring / redesign of the website (e.g. the MU page and stuff like that)
As I may see, when Maverick pack was implemented, strong d2-d3 division in my country was died, people leaved this game, the same situation I may see in Georgia. I haven`t information about other countries, but that is fact.
Make energy bars consume food and watch the world burn 😃
The main problem with this game is the difference between gold/pack buyers and non-buyers. One person who spends a lot of money can do more than at least 100 other players together.
This is what destroyed the game.
I was an ordinary, free player for years, since the last year I've been a pack buyer. Difference is huge, much bigger than it should and must be.
Buyers, obviously, should have some kind of advantage so that there is a reason to actually buy something. I don't think anyone really has a problem with that. Because of those spenders this game is still running.
But instead of making free players useful and buyers even more useful they managed to make free players totally useless while spenders are overpowered, godlike accounts.
That's also something I mentioned, but in connection with the overall price: I mean you need about 30 euro per month to actively play this game - for me it's too much right now as the game, at least for me, doesn't offer stuff which is worth those 30 bucks. I mean I could invest my money into WoW and stuff like that: "Real" MMOs with 3D graphics and I would only need to pay about 15 euro - and may would get even more fun out of it than here.
And yeah, when I stopped buying packs it was like "the whole game just stopped because I can't do anything anymore". I mean they created eRepublik years ago and maybe it was cool to just need to do 2 clicks a day to "play" this game - but right now people want to play the game more actively.. and I am not sure if the huge advantages for pack buyers are the best solution for that.
Absolutely.
You can almost buy AAA game (forever to be yours + multiplayer gaming) for those 40€ you should/have to spend MONTHLY here in order to have pleasant gaming experience and avoid being totally useless. It's far from worth it.
There are also MMO games that you can play without limit for only 10€ monthly.
Maybe... maybe... if packs were 5€/10€... maybe more people would buy them or at least consider them buying.
Three players buying 5€ pack is more than only one buying 10€ pack. Plus you have happier, more involved players who finally have something to do here.
We've all seen huge "jump" in activity after those birthday awards (I think we all agree awards were much better than anyone expected). Why? Because now even ordinary two-clicker could make billions, could feel he is useful again. Because now everyone, every non-buying player could have had 60/6 recovery (which in turn forces bigger activity + more active market).
I think eRep should have bigger default wellness recovery and probably bigger default wellness "storage".
Isn't it stupid when you have 10/6, sometimes it takes 2.5 days to even reach 500pp?
12-13h to have full wellness and be able to deal 25-30M dmg 😃
Raise default recovery to 20/6, maybe even 30/6 for a week or two, even a month, default wellness storage to at least 1k well (currently it's 500 without houses and additional centers)... and let's see what happens.
"We had some drinks, again"
Are Romanian ppl alcoholic
Or just eRepublik staff?
Am I an alcoholic if I drink every evening BUT could still stop at anytime?
alcoholic is define as having regular drinks : )
Yeah and that's something I can't identify with: Because in terms of "having regular drinks" I would also be an alcoholic if I would drink a glass of champagne every new years eve - and just then. 😃
.. seems like I got a serious problem then.. 😃
xD
Oh boy. If you think that is alcoholism, then I have a serious problem xD
the same than erep stuff ; take care : 3
staff*
naja, ich werde das mal auf deutsch sagen. Ich bin nicht der älteste User in eRepublik (ich hatte auch einen anderen account, aslo ich bin etwas älter als auf dem hier) Als ich anfing hat Polen uns komplett erobert, außer Saarland. Es war für Länder relativ leicht eine Provinz dauerhaft zu befestigen und zu halten. Man konnte seinen Schaden, der kontinuierlich anstieg dabei zusehen, wie er Schlachten beeinflußen konnte und man hatte mehrere Arbeit-skills, die sich gegenseitig bedingten und man musste dies managen. Ich hatte damit mehr fun als heute, wo es nur um das klicken des Kampfbottoms + Packete verwendung geht, die man oft nur gurch gold oder geld bekommen kann. *Ich möchte entweder einen Fortschritt in meinen Skill besser sehen, oder meine Leistung besser sehen, dass ich wirklich etwas für mein land gemacht habe.* In der Beta phase, mit der Karte wo man sich darauf bewegen konnte, konnte man die wirklichen Erfolge eines einzelnen sehen, aber auch diese Art der kriegsführung hatte seine negativen Seiten.(aktivität ist notwendig um auf der karte sinnvoll zu sein)
Ich würde dementsprechend vielleicht nicht eine Luft und Boden kriegsführung einführen, sondern auf den Boden verschiedene Gebiete anzeigen, die man angreifen kann, wodurch der Gegner gezwungen ist seine Einheiten aufzuteilen, während der Verteidiger seine Verteidigung besser bündeln kann und so eine stärkere Verteidigung aufbauen kann.(eine Wall hochziehen kann) Praktisch sollten 3 angreifende Gebiete gegen 3 Verteidigungsstellungen kämpfen. Abe rder Verteidiger hat nur 2 selber hergestellt und die dritte ist die zwischensumme dieser beiden Werte.
Es ist einfacher zu verteidigen und die seperation der Gebiete würden die individuelle organisation der Soldaten erforderlichen. -> mehr community.