[Series] Visiting eRepublik Labs [Part 09]
Master_rg
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.
#5.5 Newspapers
Newspapers were a great part of the game some years ago: Players got informed about strategies, there were (and still are) awesome analyses of in game events or the gameplay in general - but still: It isn’t that attractive anymore. Why? Well, there are several possible reasons for that: You don’t need that detailed analyzations anymore because you can get a lot of stuff from tool pages, there aren’t that many things that happen in game, discussions in the comments aren’t that easy to handle - and there’s no real motivation to run a newspaper.
However, even though I already mentioned some problems, let’s make a short list.
Players don’t get rewarded for creating articles
- Maybe increase the amount of endorsable money
- Decrease the amount of needed followers for a MM Medal
- Maybe release some smaller achievements like “get a certain amount of votes” or “get a certain amount of comments” (yeah, the last one is a mission, I am aware of that)
- Maybe create a connection to other modules (like influencing the stuff that happens in other modules)
The interface for creating articles is just outdated
- Every forum as a better functionality than the current “write an article” interface
- Add the possibility to add more dynamic content (Youtube support was a good step in the right direction)
- Add the possibility to run polls easily right in the system
- Add modern HTML5 features
The current implementation to keep track of articles is just confusing
- Add easy ways to keep track of the latest articles
- Is it really required to hide articles which are older than two days
- Make articles sortable regarding the release date
- Add a way to follow articles to get informed when comments are added
So, phew, a lot of problems and ideas to deal with them. But again: It is just a general list, it’s not even close to completion BUT at least it’s some kind of start. All those points I mentioned above were discussed with the eRepublik team, for some of them we already found possible solutions which may get implemented in future, on the other hand there are a lot of issues you just can’t find a way to deal with in just 3 days.
Again: If you are aware of other problems and got ideas how to fix them: Please leave a comment and put as many details into it as possible. That way we are all able to analyze the stuff that happens around us and may find a handy solution
🙂
Comments
1 v+
#dailyshitpost is not a newspaper. but our editorial office supports this article
hello
GO AWAY U MONSTER
also endorse mastereRGe, u pizzaman
Would love if it were possible to write articles only for your country/citizenship - sometimes its not all yout write that is supposed to be for the world to read.
This way the papers would be of more national importance, the way of communication in a country, instead of numerous ingame messages where theres a limit on receivers.
More ways to edit, make your article look fancy and interesting.
I agree on lowering the number of subs for the MM, and maybe make some new achivements possible to reach by being active in the media 🙂
Look, on this topic, i can see no drawback at all from doing anything, yet they dont do anything at all...
For example, in order to make less active countries more "attractive" and not so ghostly... they could leave articles for more than two days if there is no new article.
They could also allow the goverment to have a Press Ministry that can "pin" articles so tutorials made by countries, military orders, important articles from the national ORGs stay more or less time active.
I made a dozen suggestions on this topic on one of the earlier articles, but the fact is i can keep making suggestions forever since there is literally no negative consequence on improving this.
The interface for creating articles is just outdated
This😁
Endorses are a great addition. Maybe bigger endorses? Not bad. But, in my opinion the biggest problem to press is the lack of activity in the game. We write about the game and if anything interesting happens, we have almost nothing to write about.
PS: Spending hours writing something just to get a few votes and comments, well, kills the want of writing, so the whole community should work in this. Not just admins.
Well, there are some good suggestions like "pinning articles" which is especially valid for newcomer articles.
What I don't like about current module is restrictions on editing or deleting an article after certain amount time, I get that it's mostly about SEO purposes but still I'd like to get these features back.
MM medal doesn't serve the purpose anymore especially after it is exploited by players using scripts. There is no point in subscribing in a newspaper if you won't get notified when an article pops out. I'd not be sad if it was gone at all.
Article creation interface is visually outdated but just fine imo, unless you recommend something like Markdown instead of BBCode. And I am against adding too much tag (there is not even one tag at Facebook after all) , even not sure of Youtube one. But polls is a good idea 🙂
Btw, dunno if it really worths the trouble but there may be a primitive analytics feature informing about number of visitors and their countries.
Maybe things in the game that are actually worth creating articles about? The best strategy atm is spend as much money as you can and click the fight button, nobody needs an article for that.