[Series] Visiting eRepublik Labs [Part 05]
Day 3,320, 00:06
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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
#5 - Problems eRepublik is currently facing
I think it should be clear that you could fill like hundreds of pages by talking about the problems eRepublik is currently facing. I would like to give you a basic list of things I have identified before and during my visit. Again: It’s not a complete list but feel free to leave some comments about this topic. It’s important to actively speak about those issues in order to get a better overview of the overall situation.
Last but not least I will collect all of your comments in order to create a solid foundation for a discussion platform about the future of eRepublik I am currently planning and working on. Get involved, state your ideas and opinions in order to create a better game for all of us.
#5.1 Community
This may sound harsh for some of you but I identified parts of the community as a problem of the game. Let me explain my point of view: Of course it is about being an active member of the community, it’s about discussions, fresh ideas, pros and cons but that’s not the part I am talking about: I am talking about trolls, hatred, exaggerated sarcasm.
Even though you don’t have to like and enjoy every update of eRepublik, I often experience the following situation: An update gets released and some people just go crazy - in a bad way, without even taking a closer look at it: “Again a shitty update”, “You %$”!$% it up again”, “Plato doesn’t care”, “Stop playing this shit!”.
I am asking you: Is something like that really required? Some of you may say: Yes of course as Plato doesn’t seem to care about the players - and I would may have answered yes in certain situations, but: Hatred can’t be the answer. Discussions should be the answer. What were bad and what were good decisions of this update? What are the resulting pros and cons? People, that’s what is needed, not simple one-liners like the stuff I mentioned above.
So you may ask yourself, how should eRepublik deal with those kind of problems? Well, I had at least some ideas which I would like to present you. Please keep in mind that this isn’t a complete list, during my presentation I wrote notes which could fill up a whole book - but at least it’s something that may helps you to get my point of view.
Transparency
- eRepublik needs to explain certain decisions
- They need to inform players about updates
- The changelog for example was a solid step in the right direction
- This also helps to avoid certain situations where people claim to know it better by just shouting out a one-liner how shitty everything is for like every 10 minutes
Optimize the communication with the community
- I suggested to get a community manager who takes care of informing players
- Deep connection to transparency
- Show the community that they are working on stuff, show the office from time to time, release some pictures with e.g. new features they are working on
- More often invite guys like Clopo or do livestreams on your own just to show people that you are still alive
- This doesn’t need to happen every week or every month, but may think of it on a regular basis (like maybe every 3 or 6 months)
- Players need to know what kind of problems exist in order to understand the overall situation
Add short intros or tutorials about new stuff they added to the game
- Example could be the introduction of holdings
- If players didn’t read the changelog or the forums they wouldn’t have any clue how to deal with this situation
- Even though an interface should explain itself automatically, you need to take the hand of the player from time to time, in order to guide him through new and complex features
New ways of communication
- It’s not about the way eRepublik communicates, it’s about the in game communication
- IRC is basically dead, the in-game chat (MU chat) isn’t the best solution, maybe add other external messenger services
- Problem: Is it a good solution if a new player is required to use external communication services when starting to play this game?
Reward active players who are actively integrating themselves into the community
- An example could be an increase of rewards of the Wiki supporters
- But: This also requires quality management as a high quantity (in terms of article editing) doesn’t mean that it’s actually an improvement
- Support your streamers (Best example: Clopo)
- Transparently reward your active newspaper writers (Donations by Plato are great but sometimes a donation (or its lack) isn’t understandable for everyone)
- But also reward players which are actively discussing ideas and new stuff on the forums, make communicating and discussions attractive again
Better use of social media
- Inform players about in-game events
- Anniversaries of important MUs is a step in the right direction
- Write some lines about important battles from time to time
- It has some kind of close connection to “Optimize the communication with the community”
- Maybe do short interviews with active players or link to them if this is done by the community
Dear reader, what are your ideas? Leave a comment!
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
#5 - Problems eRepublik is currently facing
I think it should be clear that you could fill like hundreds of pages by talking about the problems eRepublik is currently facing. I would like to give you a basic list of things I have identified before and during my visit. Again: It’s not a complete list but feel free to leave some comments about this topic. It’s important to actively speak about those issues in order to get a better overview of the overall situation.
Last but not least I will collect all of your comments in order to create a solid foundation for a discussion platform about the future of eRepublik I am currently planning and working on. Get involved, state your ideas and opinions in order to create a better game for all of us.
#5.1 Community
This may sound harsh for some of you but I identified parts of the community as a problem of the game. Let me explain my point of view: Of course it is about being an active member of the community, it’s about discussions, fresh ideas, pros and cons but that’s not the part I am talking about: I am talking about trolls, hatred, exaggerated sarcasm.
Even though you don’t have to like and enjoy every update of eRepublik, I often experience the following situation: An update gets released and some people just go crazy - in a bad way, without even taking a closer look at it: “Again a shitty update”, “You %$”!$% it up again”, “Plato doesn’t care”, “Stop playing this shit!”.
I am asking you: Is something like that really required? Some of you may say: Yes of course as Plato doesn’t seem to care about the players - and I would may have answered yes in certain situations, but: Hatred can’t be the answer. Discussions should be the answer. What were bad and what were good decisions of this update? What are the resulting pros and cons? People, that’s what is needed, not simple one-liners like the stuff I mentioned above.
So you may ask yourself, how should eRepublik deal with those kind of problems? Well, I had at least some ideas which I would like to present you. Please keep in mind that this isn’t a complete list, during my presentation I wrote notes which could fill up a whole book - but at least it’s something that may helps you to get my point of view.
Transparency
- eRepublik needs to explain certain decisions
- They need to inform players about updates
- The changelog for example was a solid step in the right direction
- This also helps to avoid certain situations where people claim to know it better by just shouting out a one-liner how shitty everything is for like every 10 minutes
Optimize the communication with the community
- I suggested to get a community manager who takes care of informing players
- Deep connection to transparency
- Show the community that they are working on stuff, show the office from time to time, release some pictures with e.g. new features they are working on
- More often invite guys like Clopo or do livestreams on your own just to show people that you are still alive
- This doesn’t need to happen every week or every month, but may think of it on a regular basis (like maybe every 3 or 6 months)
- Players need to know what kind of problems exist in order to understand the overall situation
Add short intros or tutorials about new stuff they added to the game
- Example could be the introduction of holdings
- If players didn’t read the changelog or the forums they wouldn’t have any clue how to deal with this situation
- Even though an interface should explain itself automatically, you need to take the hand of the player from time to time, in order to guide him through new and complex features
New ways of communication
- It’s not about the way eRepublik communicates, it’s about the in game communication
- IRC is basically dead, the in-game chat (MU chat) isn’t the best solution, maybe add other external messenger services
- Problem: Is it a good solution if a new player is required to use external communication services when starting to play this game?
Reward active players who are actively integrating themselves into the community
- An example could be an increase of rewards of the Wiki supporters
- But: This also requires quality management as a high quantity (in terms of article editing) doesn’t mean that it’s actually an improvement
- Support your streamers (Best example: Clopo)
- Transparently reward your active newspaper writers (Donations by Plato are great but sometimes a donation (or its lack) isn’t understandable for everyone)
- But also reward players which are actively discussing ideas and new stuff on the forums, make communicating and discussions attractive again
Better use of social media
- Inform players about in-game events
- Anniversaries of important MUs is a step in the right direction
- Write some lines about important battles from time to time
- It has some kind of close connection to “Optimize the communication with the community”
- Maybe do short interviews with active players or link to them if this is done by the community
Dear reader, what are your ideas? Leave a comment!
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Comments
PERTAMAXXX!
o7
thx..goodjob!
>publishing articles this early
how am I even supposed to be first
i'll send you a pn after publishing the next article tomorrow
talk about equality..
I bet it is racism
imma report it and get in touch with platon
Some of those issues are being solved.
They do have a community manager, he is not really bad, but the "Facebook" tab is a bit hidden to be fair. Also Clopo is being supported already. Every time he makes a GF competition he receives things from admins.
But yeah, some better communication would be better, neither the ingame messages nor the shouts work for long, deep and multisided conversations.
"They do have a community manager"
nope
"Also Clopo is being supported already"
indeed, but you may ask him about the work that had to be done previously in order to get the whole system up and running.
And it's not only about him, even though he is the most active eR related streamer and the reason for the "eRepublik" game entry at beam.pro - it's about supporting those kind of people in general as they plan and start events which should (or at least could) be done by eRepublik themselves.
Who is running their facebook page then if not a "Community Manager"?
Parts of the Community Support
some of the biggest changes did not go well
divisions for example was a good idea (maverick pack? I don`t think so) but not all of them are implemented perfectly
some of the (not so good) changes really affects players, disappoints them
not sure how can you avoid this though
examples?
Dictatorship and guerilla fights seemed like a great idea, before we knew what is it going to be like, the implementation has serious flaws
resource wars was great, but the outcome? all I see is that I produce 91% of what I could produce before this change AND I need to move to the holding every time
People don`t see the big picture. Like you said, people want to do better in the game
And then a change comes out, and they feel they are worse than before, and ... anger shouts ...
I think there should be a module where users add ideas what to implement in the game
Nothing will be even looked at, unless other users vote on it, discuss it.
Maybe at one point Admin could get on a good idea, draw up possible outcomes (good and bad) of a possible new feature, and throw it back again, re-voting by hundreds of players
Something like http://idea.informer.com/, but better, and inside the game.
Everybody would use their own login, no anonymus votes on future features.
I will talk about the MP/IK/division/guerilla stuff in the military article.
Regarding your "idea" module: Well that's exactly something I would like to provide with my external service which automatically includes the accounts of eRepublik-Deutschland.de - and only "linked" accounts are allowed to join the votings for example.
The thing is that you really need all pros and cons about a topic in order to fully understand it and that's something we don't have right now - which is, at least in my eyes, one of the biggest problems when talking about "new ideas" or "improvements".
Last but not least I think the community could get much more influence on the game (in terms of development) if we could just stick together and show that we are able to provide more than simple "one liners". In the longer run something like that may could even develope into something like a community council for example.
Admins where doing surveys during V1 to know a bit about the players opinions, they could restart that too...
that's exactly something I would like to provide with my external service
no offense, but I think this should come from "their side"
Something like the https://forum.erepublik.com, where we know who is admin and who is a regular user
I think that's a difficult situation right now: With this platform we can easily achieve some kind of full transparency and also increase our value as a community without having some kind of "bad influence" coming from specific parts of the game.
The current situation at the forums isn't the best one: Yes, of course there are ideas to improve the game but still: Many of them are just scratching the issues at the surface without having a closer look into the details. Basically you are not able to have an efficient overview. Again it's like the discussions about perception tg's: People are like "yeah training grounds!" without thinking about the consequences.
I want to strengthen our position as a community because at some point we (may) reach the following state: If eRepublik can't handle it, the community will do it - and then we may have our own game made from the community for the community.
.. and to be honest: If Plato fails again even though we are giving him literally everything, I may start my own game - based on the analyzed and evaluated feedback of the community.
no boobs - no vote !
blame CornelB for not providing boobs!
Ups, I did not expect this is so serious arcticle, Just realized this 😃
I aim to please 😃
https://imgur.com/vhOU0Mt
There are some little thing named "option".
For example that pop-up maybe some ppl apreciate that but for those who don't like it, why Plato don't give "option"to deactivate.
Other simple thing is when we work as manager, why we don' t have a simple "option" to activate/deactivate all companies?
Like that 2 simple things are many others but Plato don't want to help us, and we must to search and test different scripts. It's so hard...??
Totally agree regarding the options.
Regarding the work as manager, what do you mean in detail? because right now you can select/deselect all companies (http://prntscr.com/dmivvv)
Scripts are also part of an article which I am going to release later in time, however you always need to ask yourself if a new player is completely aware of the consequences of certain actions. Switching sides on the battlefield for example: Is he aware that it costs currency or flight tickets when using scripts?
But again: You are completely right that they need to add more options where players can decide on their own what they want to see.
My mistake I have not seen till now. Thank you.
The changelog was indeed a good step, however changing the changelog whenever it suits your needs does not exactly give people a lot of confidence on the content.
(changing rules after an event starts.. etc)
I understand that it can be necessary due to unexpected results, but a lot of people feel cheated anyway and mistakes have been made. That should be addressed.
I have somewhat of a split opinion on the rewardsthingie. :/
"- I suggested to get a community manager who takes care of informing players"
I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE
Also god bless you for identifying "Better use of Social Media". I've found that the posts/tweets are fairly inconsistent with each other, among other things.
Let's rather have a real community manager like XtaSia back in the days.
I can be your new XtaSia.
Except the female part :/
By real I mean someone who works there fulltime and gets paid for it.
No offense.
On my first steps here SHE was the one who helped me, and here I am.
I mean, I wouldn't be the first overseas person to work for eRep Labs.
you also have no idea how much i actually want the job
you don't have the boobs, you are not qualified for the job.
I think, they are burned out, from energy, ideas, and everything. Your article is prove this for me (until) The mighty God/Santa/Plato see your pain, but how difficult this game and how hard to change anything in proper ways.
I belive you're simphatised with rl eRep team, but *years* gone away, and every changes just destroy the base of erep's community. Every number is prove this hardly. Why should be believe in another promise, without proving?
After I read your article, we can get benefit from your last job interview at Bukarest, if you got a job from them, maybe you have a power and energy to clean out Augean's stables.
If you get the designer position in erep, nor another games like Age of Lords. I belive you don't like sarcasm, but I really interest how percent of full time workers works on erep. One designer and one programmer? Everybody else in another project?
Well, I wouldn't say that I am sympathizing with the eRepublik team, I would say that I am aware that they are doing a hard job and that there aren't easy decisions. And again: I also had the point of view which was literally like "they don't care anymore, they don't know what's going on at eRepublik" - but as I mentioned it in the articles: It's different.
I am aware of the situation that promises were made in the past, that they implemented changes which didn't really help (in terms of the overall situation) - but again: I am doing this here because I want to do it, I am not paid by eRepublik and my visit wasn't a "job interview" - it was a visit in order to give me some kind of insight into the things happening behind the scenes.. and that's something I want to share with you.
Again: I am not promising anything, the only thing I am trying to do is to push the discussions about the future of eRepublik on the next level without one liners which don't help anyone.
I can just tell you: If Plato will still behave the way he did it before (like literally ignoring ideas of the community) some bad things will happen. This huge project is personally my last try to create a better gaming experience for most of us while also trying to get the community back together as ONE community.
pay-to-win is doomed to die, look at all those MOBAs that arrise, free-to-play that have millions of dollars on pool prizes for the best
Fair enough, thank you!
I don't know, many small details would help us and the game itself.
do you remember this newspapers? Older players would have to remember...
https://www.erepublik.com/en/newspaper/erepublik-insider-81/1
Activate it... talk to us actively, tell su what do you prepare, show us some screenshots. Live along with your community!
But, i guess that biggest problem today is:
divisions system. No new players. No new players because of current pack/division system. When newbie finds out he is in the same division with TugAvenger, most likely he will quit. This is the main problem.
Other thing is erepublik mobile version. Today everybody uses smartphones, why don't erepublik labs create a new erepublik mobile app. They had expirience with other mobile games. Why can't they create mobile app that can merge on some way with desktop version... but with extra options like work/train notifications /full wellness/ Epic battle notifications etc. Why don't you implement autofight options on this mobile version, auto eat energybars... etc.. This will lift up the game, people would use less time, and would play happier. Think about it 😛
I already gave tooooooo much suggestions to erepublik team as i don't get anything from it... Maybe it is time erepublik starts communicating with players via erepublik insider, and reward us players fith free packs, gold etc for making some good improvement ideas to developers and admins...
I will talk about the divisions stuff in the article about the military module, but basically you are right: Why should a new player start to play this game? Again, compared to 3d MMOs (WoW for example) you pay about 15 euro a month and get a lot of fun. In order to enter the funny area here at eRepublik you need to invest at least about 30 euro - every month. That isn't funny for me to be honest.
Regarding the mobile version: I think they do huge steps in the right direction. If you take a look at the new MU page you can see that they are (at least) trying to put it all together into a "mobile friendly interface"-like environment. Furthermore the usage of AngularJS on their side can improve the development of a mobile version (short version: there are wrappers you put around it and then you can release it as a iOS/android/windows app)
We also had discussions about releasing a real mobile app but we didn't had a real outcome of it. Would it support the growth of the game? Indeed - but do you need growth right now when new players got no clue what they should do? I am not sure.. however: At least the way they are currently improving the things on their side (backend including internal apis, angularjs) could help them in the longer run to implement a mobile version.
You are right. It isn't funny to pay 45 euro/monthly to play like pro 😃 even more if you want non important stashes... but currently maverick/powerpack/blitzkrieg pack is a must have if you want to h ave full "gaming expirience" here...
Community directly depends on division systems... if you don't have newbie division, than you don't have new players... if you don't have new players, every game is decreasing and dying. More players - more money.. even with smaller pack prices 😉 Smaller pack prices - more players buying it...
This is first step to see "Erepublik great again" 😁)
I shit on Blizzard and alike companies, I play Paladins with No.7 world rank and pay 0 euros, I watch people of my town in Boston Major Tournament on Dota 2 with 0 euros. The cancer of League of Legends also needs 0 euros.
It's true that community has a sarcastic and cynical attitude. Players also don't have metrics and most of them aren't aware or interested in big picture, fact that each module should reconcile at the end. So, explaining reasoning behind a decision makes things easier.
In addition to that, don't let anyone fool himself (maybe beside eUS or few others) eRep is no longer a community game, it is intentionally and lucratively transformed into a game solely glorifying personal achievement therefore created a group of top players (not big fan of term but yes whales) . And no wonder changes are tuned to ensure their continous entertainment. Like Maverick Pack or Dictatorship, these are changes only to keep them busy.
Don't get me wrong, eRep is an old game having metal fatigue. So you simply can't please everyone especially if gap is that wide. In that pov, air battles are a nice move but even it is highly criticized by "whales" demanding air training. Just I seriously doubt eRep is able to get fresh blood for a long while which leads them into a vicious circle.
PS: I am not getting into "fix economy" part as you'll probably will at next articles.
do you want to know my point of view? there are tools like CB and erep-dutch which includes a lot of what people wants 🙂 they must look the them and try to integrate in their own product because all these external products appear from the people requests.
look for example at communication: cb has a mass mail, everybody creates some common messages in order to improve activity for congress, party or army. why plato did not include such features directly in the game? it is obvious that everybody want these!
v
Community? - Add Kosova.
not a real country
I appreciate your effort bro, but I think a serious point is missing.
In this game "communication" is not a door to interact with the admins. It's a barrier to stop people doing that. The overall problem of the game is that admins and players are on divergent roads and they showed us many times that they don't want to follow the same road again, so they basically try to annihilate any attempt of having them taking care of the community again.
Take a few examples. They created divisions and all the community asked them to base the divisions on strength or on the maxhit, but they thought that if they accorded that change, training grounds wouldn't have been anymore a must, and many wouldn't have bought the golds for it, so they decided to let a huge number of players stop playing, but to keep the wrong feature. Then, when many players adapted and just w+t to have an useful account in their division, they introduced Maverick pack to change division easily and go for BHs in other divisions. Again the community was against that, but they didn't want to remove it, and they accepted to lose a part of the community for some bucks. I could make hundreds of examples to you. There were a huge number of players only interested in economy, and the admins destroyed the possibility to grow with economy, since it prevented golds' purchasing. They lost those players. And that's why they don't fix economy. The holdings, for example, are just meant to establish as stronger some countries with bonuses (what a coincidence: Romania and its allies). Nothing to do with a better economy, since the result it's having is just to raise the prices of a few primary goods which newborn players would need so bad.
It's useless to try to make admins and players work together to heal the wounds of the game, because it's admins wounding it from so long. They just need to step BACK.
Hope we come to the question of "what does fix the economy mean?" in next article because I seriously doubt community thinks alike in that case.
I am very open to any solution. The main thing is "let again players build their treasure with efforts instead of with bucks only". And don't think this would be a bad marketing move. Whales want glory, and they can't have it if there is noone to watch them buying golds and winning rounds. In a few months the glory will vanish, and with it the gold buyers.
In order to answer some of your points I would like to link to my comment to show you my thoughts about that: https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/-series-visiting-erepublik-labs-part-05--2624830/1/20#comment41188667
delete maverick 🙂
only after they delete infantry kit 🙂
lol we payed for be in low divs because we didn't know that time can come when someone 999lvl legend37 can pay 15 e and can be in all divs.....if you wanted delete infantry kit u could to talk when the pack was new, bye 😘