Make guerrilla great? Maybe

Day 3,754, 08:20 • Published in Romania Romania • by Nicolae Crefelean

So Clopoyaur thinks he can persuade Plato to #MakeGuerrillaGreatAgain (although it never was great, to be frank) if we gather enough good ideas. I have my doubts but I'll bite. Let's see what Plato will do next. It's a lot to talk about, hence my article instead of a comment.

There's a thing called a SWOT analysis. It's done in business to highlight a project's or business':
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
- Opportunities, and
- Threats

So here's my take on each criteria, against the guerrilla fight module. It's not intended as a complete analysis, but rather a few points that make more sense in my opinion.

Strengths
- it's a player-vs-player feature, more than mindless clicking as a show of strength, energy and inventory stuff, which is appealing to players who want some strategy and a diversion from the . It's about skill in choosing actions and weapons based on range and the next move of your opponent;
- it's the only game-in-the-game playable (when it works) against the eRepublik routine;
- it has reliable counters for the wins and losses, which easily makes it suitable for competitions outside eRepublik;
- a match is limited to 20 time-limited rounds, which is nice because it prevents the fights to become chess games - move it or lose it.

Weaknesses
- bugs and annoyances (finding opponents, inventory, miss chances, almighty Storm Assault Rifle, etc);
- very few play it (due to issues);
- the damage bonus makes the guerrilla fights unwelcoming to new and less experienced players;
- encountering players with Type X items that cannot be bought, makes for an unfair fight, which makes some people stay away from GF.

Opportunities
- there are still active people in this game, so the guerrilla fight module has plenty of potential "customers";
- the annoyances are well known and they're not hard to fix;
- bored players are very likely to try something new, especially if it works well;
- if the module gets fixed and improved, it will bring a lot of fun and activity back in the game, and maybe some optimism about the game's future.

Threats
- Plato

As you can see, I didn't want to take the SWOT analysis too seriously because it's more fun to write freely about this module. There are two critical issues that must be addresse😛

1. Remove the dreadful bonus
Kill it, because the active players would have too much of an advantage over the others. If two players end up with the same damage at the end of the guerrilla fight, the winner can be the one with the biggest difference between wins and losses. If even that is equal, then the next deciding factor is XP. If that's equal too, go for strength. Still equal? Then go for the eRep birthday. Equal again? Then pick the longest nickname. 😁 Equal? Give them both a win. 😁

2. Fix the Storm Assault Rifle
It's plain stupid to hit with it at any distance. There's no excuse, it must be fixed.

And now here are a few suggestions:

A. Replace the miss chance with variable firepower
Instead of 75% chance to hit, make that 75% of the nominal damage. This way the damage will vary, and the players will be forced to have different types of weapons so they can fight more effectively at any distance. The game will be more dynamic, less predictable, and more fun. Details in the images below.

B. Dodge (with grenades) should always cause the enemy to miss
The point of a dodge is precisely to make the enemy miss. If you miss to make them miss, you miss the fun, and a grenade. If you know they'll miss, using the grenades will play much better for a strategy.

C. Introduce the Concede button
Leaving the fight makes sense when you're obviously getting killed, so why not end it immediately instead of fleeing and wasting the opponent's time 3-4 more rounds until the game "sees" that one player fled. You probably don't like your time being wasted either, do you?

D. Penalize the ones who flee instead of conceding
Wasting anyone's time should be a no-no. You can't win? Then push the Concede button and grant your opponent the victory, so you can both move on to another fight. It's only fair. But how do you penalize the fleeing ones? Well, make them kill 10 opponents instead of 5 for their next GF. That will teach them. 😛

E. Merge the used equipment
It costs money, so it makes sense to allow the players to merge their stuff. There's just too much waste currently, even considering the storage slots.

F. Group the identically used items
There's no point in using X slots for some storm assault rifles that have (just an example) 2 clips + 2 ammo left. So if you don't let the people merge the used equipment, at least group the identical ones and allow the players to delete whole groups.

G. Make all Type X items available to buy
Stop the nonsense of the ultra-special-and-rare items. Do you actually want everyone to give this module a fair shot? Then act accordingly and allow everyone to buy everything. It still costs money and gold, which the "big players" already have tons of it, but at least the little guys don't have to wait some frigging rare and random power spin or some event to be able to start on the right foot a guerrilla fight.

H. Offer a 5g-worth "Guerrilla Hero" medal for 50 victories
50 matches take plenty of time, let alone 50 victories. So a medal is a reasonably good incentive for people to fight to win. It only seems an easy way to get gold if you expect to win everything, and you have an obscene amount of spare time on your hands. Other than that, we're talking about a minimum of 3-4 hours of intense play for one medal, if you're lucky enough to win them all. Besides, the premium equipment for 50 wins costs more gold anyway. 😛 No retroactive medals, obviously.

I. Leaderboard and decorations
Give the people one more reason to engage in battle: more bling in their profiles.

J. In-house guerrilla competitions
Why not make them official? At least from time to time, when you see fit.

K. Invite a player to a guerrilla fight
So you see someone on the battlefield and you'd like to invite the player to a fight? Click the "Invite to GF" button, which should only be available to players with a positive +100 (win-loss) GF record - to avoid abuse.

DETAILS

A. Miss chance replaced by variable damage
The Storm Assault Rifle (SAR) could have 100% damage at the ideal range, and down to 50% damage at the extremes of its range interval - let's say +/- 90 meters. So the effective range of the SAR would be between 415-685m. Any closer or further out would be out of range.

According to the real life I know this is stupid, especially when we know the damage is much higher at close range, or point blank. But these suggestions makes sense when you want to make people use most of the arsenal, and not try their best chances with the stupid SAR, which turns any strategy to crap. So if the weapons diversity becomes essential, we might get an extra slot to carry weapons in the fight.

Here's a proposed variable range:


And here's another way to look at it:


I know removing the bonus will get some people angry, especially those who fought a lot in this module and gave their best to increase their win ratio. But the players having bonus 2 already have a lot of experience. They will most likely win in fair fights anyway, simply because they know how to play. And if a few of these citizens stop playing guerrilla fights because the game becomes fair for everyone, then no problem. At least they will be replaced by hundreds of others.

Please note: these are all suggestions. Feel free to tweak whatever you want. We'll see if and what will be done. But at least we can say we tried.

Cheers! o/


Make guerrilla great? Maybe: https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/2665579