A Revisit to Alexis Bonte
Day 3,308, 15:01
•
Published in USA 
•
by
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by Yui MHCP001
NOTE: Most of this was written in the month of September, mostly the Body paragraphs before September 5th. The introduction and conclusion, along with any update past and including the Military Page revamp were written on December 9th.
In systems of power, protests are inevitable. Even eRepublik itself has had its own protests, such as the 2011 eRepublik Rebellion, where Presidents of many countries came together, promised to have no wars, and signed a charter, citing the problems they believed to have existed within the game at the time.
It was quite the party.
About 9 months ago, Gnilraps published Plato Admits eRep is Dead. In it, he talked about an article written by eRepublik founder Alexis Bonte, called The End of the Mobile Games Gold Rush, R.I.P Tactical Heroes, which centered around the failure of their first mobile game. Gnilraps’ article went on to claim that eRepublik was dead, for it was only being used to fund other eRepublikLab games.
A few days later, Antonio Wimer published his interaction with Bonte regarding Gnilraps’ article, in Plato Denies eRep is Dead. You can read Bonte’s response in the article.
To elaborate more on his response, Alexis Bonte revived his account (which is surprisingly not dead as of Day 3307) to publish for the first time in over 5 years, eRepublik.com: Where We Really are…. He talks about having different games under the eRepLab’s name has the potential to give the developers fresh ideas, and that new technologies can be learned, which will bring eRepublik some benefit at some point. He also mentioned the success of Age of Lords, another mobile game of theirs. He says that what they’ve learned from the sucess of Age of Lords and the failure of Tactical Heroes will be applied to eRepublik.
Bonte identifies eRepublik’s main problem, the fact that while their advertisements (allegedly) work really well, and that people are interested in the concept of eRepublik, players simply aren’t coming back. However, he declares that since they now have experience in matching a new player’s expectation, “...[they] now have a higher chance of getting it right this time.”
He claims that they are in a better position to make improvements, both to newcomers and to old players. He also maintains that they will give their all to not only reach the 10th anniversary, but also grow both the game and community, while also building up 3 or 4 successful games within the next 18 months.
Bonte backs these assertions that they will give eRepublik more “resources”, by applying their new knowledge from their previous games and taking more risks. An especially important part of this is when we will see changes. While he says there will be no “radical changes” immediately, we’ll see key changes in a few weeks and months, and that they’ll be deployed progressively to be tested from a mechanical standpoint, and from our feedback and how it impacts new players.
He finished the article by explaining that the top priority for eRepublik is to find ways to grow the community again, and that it will be the objective for all of their work.
With the halfway point of the original 18 month goal here, it’s time we go into review of these past few months, giving them the feedback that they so desire. It’s time for rapid fire mode.
March 22nd, 2016 - The Ghost Booster
April 5th, 2016 - The Developer Log Begins
April 20th, 2016 - Resource Wars: Prologue
April 29th, 2016 - Resource Wars 2016 Edition
May 5th, 2016 - Resource Wars Update With Questions and Answers
May 10th, 2016 - Division Switch
May 5th to June 5th, 2016 - Resource Wars 2016
June 3rd, 2016 - Resource Wars - Epilogue
June 10th, 2016 - Gold Endorsements By Plato
June 25th, 2016 - Economy Changes
July 15th, 2016 - New Industry and Aircraft Battles
July 19th, 2016 - Aircraft Battle Announcement
July 20th, 2016 - Aircraft Military Ranks and The New Battle Console
October 27th, 2016 - Military Unit Page Revamp
November 4th, 2016 - Emojis
November 19th, 2016 - 9th Anniversary of eRepublik
As of this article, this is all we have received in updates, according to the corresponding section of the forums. Let’s break them down.
The Ghost Booster: This update was intended to help close the large damage gap between senior and junior players. “When activated, the Ghost Booster gives you 30% of the biggest damage/hit of the Citizen who fights in the same Battle, Round, side and Division as you.” While this seemed to be a good idea to close the gap on paper, the paper quickly burns when you realize that higher strength players will get the same benefit, which simply makes it an inflator of damage overall.
In the same update, the eRepublik stepped in and refunded 10 million CC in total to tens of citizens due to a fraud case, and extended the Blitzkrieg Pack sale as a result of the fraud. Good on them.
Developer Log: This is a step in the right direction in terms of communication of updates. I had a problem with its’ inconsistent post timings, but they’ve consistently posted within 6 days of the new month for the past 4 months, so I can’t complain anymore.
Resource Wars and Division Switching: In the Prologue post, they gave us a very rough roadmap of the next two months, focusing on strategy and addressing issues brought up by the eRepublik Community:
-New Industry
-Resource Wars 2: Electric Boogaloo
-Hints of a Military Module shake up
-Productivity values would change with the resource wars
-Companies no longer travel with the player, other Economy changes
-Region specific taxes
-Regional Governments with elected officials
-Changes to Travelling
-Full-Scale battles between 49% and 51% are now treated as Epics.
The next forum post gave us a few additions:
-Taxes apply to COs and Currency Medals
-Civil War cost increased to 1 million CC.
-Upcoming Dictatorship Upkeep Fee
-Upcoming Division Switching
When Division Switching came, it was fine. We all assumed it was just for the month of Resource Wars, and at the time you had to destroy Objectives to switch to one division, and you were capped to a max hit in that division.
The event came and went. In my opinion, it was a massive success. It spurred massive activity, and was the most challenging and strategic thing to happen in eRepublik in years. But it wasn’t all fun and happy…
Gold Endorsements by Plato: Nice way to interact with the community who loves to write. It should really be a permanent thing.
Economy Changes: The first complaint is how long this took to come out.
The update, actually put into place on June 30th, implement Holding Companies, which are established in the region that you were located at the time of creation, and are where you put your actual factories. If you wish to move your factories to a different region, you must pay again to create a new Holding Company in a different location, and then pay more to move your factories. However, many people were confused on the initial implementation, having to turn to fellow players on how to do it correctly. Poor communication lead to poor reception of these Holding Companies.
This update also brought pollution, which I still loathe to this day. It maxes out at 25%, scaling with the previous day’s production of that specific product. They also split the resource bonus into two: Country and Region. The Country bonus went up to 100%. If you had a Very Rare, Rare, Uncommon, and Common somewhere in the country, you had a 100% Country bonus in that type of resource. The Region bonus goes up to 18%, with needing the same combination as the Country bonus, but in the same region, to reach the max. However, since pollution’s maximum percentage is higher than the Region bonus, this made the common strategy of setting all of the same type of resources (i.e all food resources) into the same region the most inefficient way to do it, after the resource setting already happened. Basically, it made no sense.
New Industry and Aircraft Battles: This update brought the Aircraft module to light.
The purpose of the new Aircraft module was to give an even playing field to new and old players, so that they had the same impact on the battlefield. However, the Aircraft module is nothing but a reboot of the Ground module. As time goes on, the gap between new and old players will continue to increase, with the cap being on the maximum Aircraft ranking, at least until Perception Grounds come along. Speaking of which, where are they? We were told that they wouldn’t be available at first, but it’s been 5 months.
While the purpose of the Aircraft module was to give an even playing field, the admins threw that out the window in the same update. This update brought along with it the Maverick Pack. The Maverick Pack, as most of us know by now, allows us to switch divisions at anytime we wish without any additional costs.
Military Page Revamp - Pretty, but the only useful thing about it is the fact that now after battles, you can see how much was spent on COs by the Military Unit.
Emojis -
9th Anniversary - Nice rewards, best anniversary in years to be quite honest. Quite liked the TRUMP bomb. No anniversary achievement this year though, what the heck?
Alexis Bonte told us that eRepLabs could have done better, and that it was their aim to do a better job for us and for eRepublik. He said they would use new knowledge and technology to make eRepublik better, including retaining new players. They would give more resources, they would take risks, they would get fresh ideas.
Alexis, where is this so called new knowledge?
Alexis, where is this new technology?
Alexis, where are these risks?
Alexis, where are the fresh ideas?
You and your eRepublik team have left us, the community, feeling cheated. You promised us so much, but left us with very little 9 months later.
We don’t have Q6/Q7 Houses, even though their assets are still in game.
We don’t have Perception TGs.
We don’t have a better system for new players, thanks to the Maverick Pack allowing Tanks into the lower divisions.
We don’t have a working economy, thanks to the new industry stretching the already falling amount of work tickets.
We don’t have Regional Governments.
We, generally, don’t have hope for you, Alexis Bonte.
But I do. It’s why I became a Game Moderator.
I have hope that even after over 9 years of development, that you can vastly improve the economy module.
I have hope that you can improve the political module.
I have hope that you can improve the military module.
I have hope that you can improve the balance between new and old players, and free and paying players.
I have hope that you can tell us why certain previously-mentioned features, like Q6/Q7 houses, will never come out instead of leaving us in silence.
That’s what the 2011 eRepublik Rebellion was about.
They hoped that you would be able to see their organized protest as a sign that changes needed to be made.
They hoped that you would have an open discussion with the community about new features, and old ones that needed changing.
They hoped that you would balance the free and paying player back then.
They hoped.
And from what I’ve read about the event, you, along with the eRepublik team let them down.
I hope that a 2016/2017 eRepublik Rebellion isn’t needed for you to see our concerns yet again.
I hope that the eRepublik team will not let us down again.
I hope that this game is fun again, for every player, old and new, free and paying.
-Yui
In systems of power, protests are inevitable. Even eRepublik itself has had its own protests, such as the 2011 eRepublik Rebellion, where Presidents of many countries came together, promised to have no wars, and signed a charter, citing the problems they believed to have existed within the game at the time.
It was quite the party.
About 9 months ago, Gnilraps published Plato Admits eRep is Dead. In it, he talked about an article written by eRepublik founder Alexis Bonte, called The End of the Mobile Games Gold Rush, R.I.P Tactical Heroes, which centered around the failure of their first mobile game. Gnilraps’ article went on to claim that eRepublik was dead, for it was only being used to fund other eRepublikLab games.
A few days later, Antonio Wimer published his interaction with Bonte regarding Gnilraps’ article, in Plato Denies eRep is Dead. You can read Bonte’s response in the article.
To elaborate more on his response, Alexis Bonte revived his account (which is surprisingly not dead as of Day 3307) to publish for the first time in over 5 years, eRepublik.com: Where We Really are…. He talks about having different games under the eRepLab’s name has the potential to give the developers fresh ideas, and that new technologies can be learned, which will bring eRepublik some benefit at some point. He also mentioned the success of Age of Lords, another mobile game of theirs. He says that what they’ve learned from the sucess of Age of Lords and the failure of Tactical Heroes will be applied to eRepublik.
Bonte identifies eRepublik’s main problem, the fact that while their advertisements (allegedly) work really well, and that people are interested in the concept of eRepublik, players simply aren’t coming back. However, he declares that since they now have experience in matching a new player’s expectation, “...[they] now have a higher chance of getting it right this time.”
He claims that they are in a better position to make improvements, both to newcomers and to old players. He also maintains that they will give their all to not only reach the 10th anniversary, but also grow both the game and community, while also building up 3 or 4 successful games within the next 18 months.
Bonte backs these assertions that they will give eRepublik more “resources”, by applying their new knowledge from their previous games and taking more risks. An especially important part of this is when we will see changes. While he says there will be no “radical changes” immediately, we’ll see key changes in a few weeks and months, and that they’ll be deployed progressively to be tested from a mechanical standpoint, and from our feedback and how it impacts new players.
He finished the article by explaining that the top priority for eRepublik is to find ways to grow the community again, and that it will be the objective for all of their work.
With the halfway point of the original 18 month goal here, it’s time we go into review of these past few months, giving them the feedback that they so desire. It’s time for rapid fire mode.
March 22nd, 2016 - The Ghost Booster
April 5th, 2016 - The Developer Log Begins
April 20th, 2016 - Resource Wars: Prologue
April 29th, 2016 - Resource Wars 2016 Edition
May 5th, 2016 - Resource Wars Update With Questions and Answers
May 10th, 2016 - Division Switch
May 5th to June 5th, 2016 - Resource Wars 2016
June 3rd, 2016 - Resource Wars - Epilogue
June 10th, 2016 - Gold Endorsements By Plato
June 25th, 2016 - Economy Changes
July 15th, 2016 - New Industry and Aircraft Battles
July 19th, 2016 - Aircraft Battle Announcement
July 20th, 2016 - Aircraft Military Ranks and The New Battle Console
October 27th, 2016 - Military Unit Page Revamp
November 4th, 2016 - Emojis
November 19th, 2016 - 9th Anniversary of eRepublik
As of this article, this is all we have received in updates, according to the corresponding section of the forums. Let’s break them down.
The Ghost Booster: This update was intended to help close the large damage gap between senior and junior players. “When activated, the Ghost Booster gives you 30% of the biggest damage/hit of the Citizen who fights in the same Battle, Round, side and Division as you.” While this seemed to be a good idea to close the gap on paper, the paper quickly burns when you realize that higher strength players will get the same benefit, which simply makes it an inflator of damage overall.
In the same update, the eRepublik stepped in and refunded 10 million CC in total to tens of citizens due to a fraud case, and extended the Blitzkrieg Pack sale as a result of the fraud. Good on them.
Developer Log: This is a step in the right direction in terms of communication of updates. I had a problem with its’ inconsistent post timings, but they’ve consistently posted within 6 days of the new month for the past 4 months, so I can’t complain anymore.
Resource Wars and Division Switching: In the Prologue post, they gave us a very rough roadmap of the next two months, focusing on strategy and addressing issues brought up by the eRepublik Community:
-New Industry
-Resource Wars 2: Electric Boogaloo
-Hints of a Military Module shake up
-Productivity values would change with the resource wars
-Companies no longer travel with the player, other Economy changes
-Region specific taxes
-Regional Governments with elected officials
-Changes to Travelling
-Full-Scale battles between 49% and 51% are now treated as Epics.
The next forum post gave us a few additions:
-Taxes apply to COs and Currency Medals
-Civil War cost increased to 1 million CC.
-Upcoming Dictatorship Upkeep Fee
-Upcoming Division Switching
When Division Switching came, it was fine. We all assumed it was just for the month of Resource Wars, and at the time you had to destroy Objectives to switch to one division, and you were capped to a max hit in that division.
The event came and went. In my opinion, it was a massive success. It spurred massive activity, and was the most challenging and strategic thing to happen in eRepublik in years. But it wasn’t all fun and happy…
Gold Endorsements by Plato: Nice way to interact with the community who loves to write. It should really be a permanent thing.
Economy Changes: The first complaint is how long this took to come out.
The update, actually put into place on June 30th, implement Holding Companies, which are established in the region that you were located at the time of creation, and are where you put your actual factories. If you wish to move your factories to a different region, you must pay again to create a new Holding Company in a different location, and then pay more to move your factories. However, many people were confused on the initial implementation, having to turn to fellow players on how to do it correctly. Poor communication lead to poor reception of these Holding Companies.
This update also brought pollution, which I still loathe to this day. It maxes out at 25%, scaling with the previous day’s production of that specific product. They also split the resource bonus into two: Country and Region. The Country bonus went up to 100%. If you had a Very Rare, Rare, Uncommon, and Common somewhere in the country, you had a 100% Country bonus in that type of resource. The Region bonus goes up to 18%, with needing the same combination as the Country bonus, but in the same region, to reach the max. However, since pollution’s maximum percentage is higher than the Region bonus, this made the common strategy of setting all of the same type of resources (i.e all food resources) into the same region the most inefficient way to do it, after the resource setting already happened. Basically, it made no sense.
New Industry and Aircraft Battles: This update brought the Aircraft module to light.
The purpose of the new Aircraft module was to give an even playing field to new and old players, so that they had the same impact on the battlefield. However, the Aircraft module is nothing but a reboot of the Ground module. As time goes on, the gap between new and old players will continue to increase, with the cap being on the maximum Aircraft ranking, at least until Perception Grounds come along. Speaking of which, where are they? We were told that they wouldn’t be available at first, but it’s been 5 months.
While the purpose of the Aircraft module was to give an even playing field, the admins threw that out the window in the same update. This update brought along with it the Maverick Pack. The Maverick Pack, as most of us know by now, allows us to switch divisions at anytime we wish without any additional costs.
Military Page Revamp - Pretty, but the only useful thing about it is the fact that now after battles, you can see how much was spent on COs by the Military Unit.
Emojis -
👌
👌
😂
👌
👌
9th Anniversary - Nice rewards, best anniversary in years to be quite honest. Quite liked the TRUMP bomb. No anniversary achievement this year though, what the heck?
Alexis Bonte told us that eRepLabs could have done better, and that it was their aim to do a better job for us and for eRepublik. He said they would use new knowledge and technology to make eRepublik better, including retaining new players. They would give more resources, they would take risks, they would get fresh ideas.
Alexis, where is this so called new knowledge?
Alexis, where is this new technology?
Alexis, where are these risks?
Alexis, where are the fresh ideas?
You and your eRepublik team have left us, the community, feeling cheated. You promised us so much, but left us with very little 9 months later.
We don’t have Q6/Q7 Houses, even though their assets are still in game.
We don’t have Perception TGs.
We don’t have a better system for new players, thanks to the Maverick Pack allowing Tanks into the lower divisions.
We don’t have a working economy, thanks to the new industry stretching the already falling amount of work tickets.
We don’t have Regional Governments.
We, generally, don’t have hope for you, Alexis Bonte.
But I do. It’s why I became a Game Moderator.
I have hope that even after over 9 years of development, that you can vastly improve the economy module.
I have hope that you can improve the political module.
I have hope that you can improve the military module.
I have hope that you can improve the balance between new and old players, and free and paying players.
I have hope that you can tell us why certain previously-mentioned features, like Q6/Q7 houses, will never come out instead of leaving us in silence.
That’s what the 2011 eRepublik Rebellion was about.
They hoped that you would be able to see their organized protest as a sign that changes needed to be made.
They hoped that you would have an open discussion with the community about new features, and old ones that needed changing.
They hoped that you would balance the free and paying player back then.
They hoped.
And from what I’ve read about the event, you, along with the eRepublik team let them down.
I hope that a 2016/2017 eRepublik Rebellion isn’t needed for you to see our concerns yet again.
I hope that the eRepublik team will not let us down again.
I hope that this game is fun again, for every player, old and new, free and paying.
-Yui
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Anyways there's noone left to make that rebellion anymore I guess....sad but true.
I was VP during the rebellion, the talk with some erep representative literally took less than 5 minutes after which he parted the channel and most people gave up.
ain't nobody got time for that.
tl;dr please. ❤
TL😉R: It took 4 months to finish this article, stop being lazy 🙁
o: !
inb4 fired
inb4 fired
I only understand that we need more moderators and more hope
❤
inb4 fired
inb4 fired
interesting but they did a lot of work including Holding Companies and aircrafts a new mu look. both you and gnilraps look at q6 and q7 houses. but with most of the higher type houses being uneconomic i dont know whether we want q6 and q7 perhaps as toys for rich players. there was a brief boost in the economy after aircraft it got cold again.there was now a slight increase and some items is skyrocketing. i dont think its entirely dead it has it ups and downs.
obviously a lot of things is still on the cards. plato probably prioritized some over the others but then again this is an entirely different game. the game has fundamentally changed. for example we may see economic wars soon where countries join together to subjugate an country with bad economic policy.
>interesting but they did a lot of work including [...] a new mu look
Wow.
they brings stuff out and then make improvements based on user feedback. nothing wrong with that.
Good article, but nothing that has happened over the last 9 months has improved the game nor does anything being suggested look likely to do so. Problem is erep is hostage to Gold/pack buyers who have a vested interest in keeping things as they are. What is needed is a way to allow new players and existing players who do not have 100k plus strength in Div 1 an opportunity to forge a way of playing that gives them a chance. The problem with the air battles is that everyone started the same, which sounded good, but just meant the rich could buy their way to success. This should have been limited to new players or capped so you could not use gold or bars or something. Maybe there should be a new beginner division for young players that is time restricted - 30 days say so that people can actually get into the game before they move into Div 1. Maybe this should allow for extra strength increase so that when they move into Div 1 they are potentially competitive - all I know is, if I was starting now I can't see me staying more than a few days.
Base division on influence. Been saying that for ages. Oh, and scrap the division changer.
Well... We must be fair about them. Erepublik is old and the problem is keeping both paying/old and free/newbies players satisfied isn't really easy; and as time goes by it gets harder and harder. Personally I think their efforts in 2016 was a step ahead, compared to the past year. Specially this aerial battle has activated more players who couldn't do anything in ground battles before, and were either 2 clickers or dead. ALTHOUGH they could do MUCH BETTER... They haven't even designed a simple leaderboard for air fighters :/ and many more that you've mentioned some of them
The game is stale and boring, not a lot of innovation to be had, its been like this for a long time. A total overall is required, but that would kill the game if tried nowadays. The only choice this game gives you is to strength train for longer then those around and above you, allowing you the chance to move up the ladder. Not exactly awe inspiring and not exactly a great method of retention.
Needs more than just war to make the game interesting. The politics module could do with an entire overhaul, as well as the work and media modules. Seems to me that the politics module was far more interesting in the earlier incarnations, where you actually had to put in a bit of work to get a congress seat rather than just sit in a top 5 party.
A pretty new skin for the MU page and the odd change to how battles work (division switches, "new" epics) just isn't going to cut it, sadly.
Creio que deveriamos ver qual são os erros atuais do jogo e colocar em uma carta e enviar a eles, e vamos fazer mais Barulho, vamos fazer manifestações contra a administração do jogo!
V+
Your article is appropriately respectful, so you should keep your mod position.
They don't hire, or keep, mods who point out their lies and biases too loudly, so be careful.
Good article. The American dream is indispensable here. Needed fresh blood. Plato, should provide some form of loan for beginners to build a training center (this is core). They need to be given better and more generous mission for new players. The first training contract and IK (and a year) for new players must be given free of charge. It should protect the first division of MP. A virtual assistant is also indispensable.
Restrict purchases IK for old toys from DIV 1! Restrict stay in the first division protected.
After must aggressively enter the digital marketing on the social networks (eg Facebook, Twitter, etc.) as you like Wargaming!
o7
you can protest and write as long as you want but, until some *censored* stop buying all this useless and overpriced stuff from plato, nothing will change...
o7
- Resource Wars 2: Electric Boogaloo
You need nothing else to earn my vote.
God bless
I'd make a serious comment, but it would only fall on deaf ears. My largely dead friends list appears to have come to the same conclusion and they gave up and died.
You reap what you sow. Treating folks like idiots and expecting them to pay again and again for crap - not happening anymore. Our real life media and politicians are finding that out too.
Two fundamental issues are ruining for a lot of people IMO.
1. The pack for CC treadmill. Must min BHs to pay for next month's pack. Loyalty and patroliotism? Nah, screw it. Solution? Stop allowing lack purchases for third parties.
2. The new v old strength divide. Nobody will ever catch a 7 year old player for strength because the rate of strength increase is constant. Solution? Make training and fighting exclusive. If you train one day, you can't fight. Or if you fight one day, you can't train.
🎅
Hi Yui.
As you outline in your article, we have indeed made several updates to the game over the past few months, not all are the best and it would be great to do more but i think you would agree that most go in the right direction. We have indeed increased the resources we dedicate to erepublik.com and will continue to update and improve the game. The number of daily active players has actually recently started to increase again. We still can do better of course, but we will continue working to build on this. Regarding mobile, we need to find the right way to do this. Not as simple as it sounds.
The vast majority of updates have been cosmetic, geared towards whales, or patches over past mistakes.
If you would like to have a substantive conversation regarding the state of the game and what the playerbase will respond to, there are many older players willing to come to the table and discuss the many iterations (good and bad) of eRepublik, and where we think the game can be improved.
Tell George we miss him.
As Pfeiffer said, there are plenty of us old players that would love to be you and the Labs' sounding board and we're not going to say 'get rid of buying things'. We know that monetization is a 100% necessity. I'm a dev/PM, I get it, but there are ways to do it without alienating people that don't wish to spend and newer players (until they are more comfortable spending money).
We've been around and clearly we want to enjoy the game and see it succeed. Many of us have spent thousands of hours playing this game and building up our communities. Those communities are slowly dying off and we don't like that either. Is that recent uptick in activity true activity? Are those newer players actually engaging with the community at large both in and out of game?
There are things that need fixed that you and the community as a whole has seen for years. Let's work together to get it done.
Hello Mr bonte
dont you think that it could be because you were giving 90 gold and multi accounts with fast damage (bombs) and gold are awesome?
Maybe you are going in the right direction, anyway as you can see in the battlefield visa players are those who make the difference. Its quite interesting to see how two or three players are able to equal or beat the weekly damage of a whole active community as the eSpanish is.
Perhaps appart from packs and other visa stuff, you should try to develop something for non visa players (do not speak about aerials, because its the same there, big visa players are those who move the damage)
right now you should try to develop something which could make non visa players to participate actively in the comunity (perhaps with some very little payments or even nothing) at the end if you depend from big visa players, each of this players who leave the game is a highlightable money that you stop earning.
Its just my opinion, but I think you have been focusing in just one part of the players, instead of looking for whole comunity. From my point of view, this is not a good way of managing your business, but knowing that i am repeating myself and its not my business, I wont say anymore apart from my opion
regards!
You could have a bigger impact on things by simply not spending loads of Euros on this game. Look at your enhancements, you have every pack.
You are the problem, same as the Admins.
yeah, game is going to work without money.
keep dreaming. Visa will always exist.
Visa didn't even always exist. Back in the day gold purchases were limited to promote equality.
And it took a lot of work to get around the limits. You had to spend some gold to open an org to buy more gold to send it to yourself, and then you had to do it again.
AND that didn't mean crap on the battlefield, as you could only use a set number of health packs in a day, regardless of how much money you spent.
It's one thing to give those who spend money an advantage, it's another time entirely to not have a cap on said advantage.
The people spending hundreds of Euros a month are the problem, as they simply reward the bad decision making going on at eRep Labs.
Thank you for your response.
Sure, they're a step in the right direction (Except Maverick Pack, gigantic step backwards), but the step's length is extremely small in the scope of things.
But how is it a step in the right direction to tell the players that X and Y are coming soon, but then never release them in the coming months?
The players are tired of waiting for things they were told would come. They want real time frames. And when something interferes with the time frame (like with Regional Governments and Q6/Q7 Houses), all we ask for is an explanation. Maybe you don't want to implement Q6/Q7 Houses because you believe the economy would not support it properly. If that's so, then TELL US! Most of us would understand. We'd rather have an explanation than having the assets sit there, grayed out.
And yes, the active players have increased, but it also increased from March 30th to April 12th, before decreasing by about a THIRD over 8 months. This can be chalked up to either a natural spike, or the 9th Anniversary rewards. (Source: http://erepbox.russianwill.ru/content/citizen/citizen.shtml)
Communication is key. Perhaps it's high time for another eRepublik Summit , or an interview with Clopoyaur to talk to the community again. Bring back the blog (http://blog.erepublik.com/), with interesting infographics and interview with players once in a while. Interact with the community! A great many of us appreciate it when you do.
aka
http://i.imgur.com/vAdp76W.gif
Mr. Bonte, it is great having you comment. We need to "see" you around, even if you "hire" someone to play your account for you so to speak. It is important that you show players your own passion for and involvement in the fabric of this gaming environment. Keep it up!
Agree 100%
Mr. Bonte, I also want to say that I am trying to be as helpful and hopeful as Yui is here, I'm just not as good at it. I'm a curmudgeon so even my most cheery efforts tend to sound like a grinding axe. I'd also definitely be willing to add my voice to other's in the manner proposed by Pfeiffer.
Good article, Yui!
Thanks :3
Well it's good to see Alexis Bonte has responded to the article and we can hope that they are prepared to engage constructively with players who are themselves prepared to make constructive contributions.
Personally I think changes to the ground battles are now going to be difficult to effect because those players who have progressed along a path involving Infantry Kit and Maverick Packs are not going to appreciate their efforts being undone - particularly the Infantry Kit. Reworking the divisions e.g. based on strength or influence is going to be counter productive.
This means concentrating on the air battles and other general changes. For example, I would introduce divisions based on rank and perception should be (if introduced at all) similar to the V1 strength so that you gain quickly early and only very little as you progress - basically whatever is needed to ensure players are moved up through the divisions and new players can always fill in and be effective early in their careers. Then change the rewards for Hard Worker so it's every 10 days or a bigger reward for 30 days. The Super Soldier reward should be for training days not Strength. What about a test server to trial changes?
Very good article and analisys.
I would like to add some throughts:
I personally would like to see increased the power of political decisions ingame and this would include, regional taxes and regional governments, mentioned in this article.
Dictatorship rid the elections multi accounts, but made useless congress, CP, laws, and only 1 guy (the dictator) enjoys the decision taking. This basically deletes reasons for play the game. Dictatorship overthrow is very difficult for an average group of players.
The modification of economy with the holdings, I don't consider it bad at all, but clearly gives Big advantage to countries like eUSA wich have all resources in natural regions. This change harms small nations that don't have any advantage to compete with big countries.
Rebellion, as a mass thing, isn't working fine.
I have some idea that would really work.