Join the new world

Community is the most effective way of retention there possibly is. Whether people decide to climb the political ladder or the military, it is always the community that keeps people coming back. Well that and Cannon-Scooters.


Oh, maybe not

One of the things I always tried to do as Minister of Home Affairs was use the military as a tool to keep people playing and coming back. While not always helped by command or MoDs advertising their own branch of the government, something which I did a bit of when I became CO of training, getting people to interact with other people was key. When I first started the Navy did this very well, which I dare say wasn’t the case at the end of the UKAF, because there was interaction between people and what was arguably what kept myself, and many others, playing eRep. Now, however, we’re relegated to the UKSF as the only official military of the UK (who once boasted one of the oldest national militaries) who have certain requirements to fill which leaves new players who can’t do as much influence to join up to the various MUs.

Something which is more or less over looked, probably due to people having chosen as soon as they’re the right level, is encouraging people to join and take part in parties. I always see a lot of mass PMing telling people to join the forums. In my opinion, as much effort should be put into messaging people in parties and telling them to get access to their party forums. This is a key way to help improve activity on the forums and in game, it’s just like the military in the sense it has a community (that is more tightly knit) except that there will be far more people whose goal is to become CP rather than a CO or the MoD and that is something we should play off, without active players we’ll really be defenceless.



Having no UKAF causes a host of problems domestically and the way it was done has caused problems with fighting at a time where we’re trying to get rid of out occupiers. One thing that has occurred due to lack of communication is that people have been left in the cold and have been told the bare minimum. As commander of the UKRP MU, I have been given access to the military command forum and the thread in there is 5 posts long before someone comments that they’ll just do what cabinet decided. The shift of blame in this case has needs to go to the MoD(s) for not informing command on what was happening, which meant they couldn’t pass on information to members of the UKAF. MUs have now taken on the slack which presents another problem. Ignoring the lack of co-ordination meaning people are fighting all over the place and not focusing on places, politicised MUs are emerging. To take the UKRP as an example, we have the UKRP Militia. The fact it’s the “UKRP” Hydra means, obviously, we’ll not get many people from TUP who’d like to join. Similarly, TUP’s MU will naturally not get many UKRP candidates. This cause polarisation for party members and where as if they’d have joined UKAF they’d interact with opposition party members, even so far as making friends with them, they’ll now become segregated from one another, fuelling and even greater UKRP vs TUP split. While not apparent now, if this is left to its own devices with no interaction from the government to encourage interaction this is the direction it will surely go. Who knows, perhaps a greater split will increase retention too; however the split is an unhealthy one.

I believe it’s very much in Kravenn’s, and the rest of cabinet, interest to make sure this doesn’t happen. Something I and Jamesw independent of each other proposed to Talon (The Minister of Finance) was about sharing companies with each other. In return the government would help subsidise it, which will cause co-operation between MUs. The government needs to steer towards more schemes such as this to the MUs that they have, too eagerly in my opinion, been forced to take the strain to make sure they don’t fail like UKAF did. They just have to make the right choice.


Ethan is ashamed to admit he's dyslexic.

I hope people read this and think about it (and hopefully agree…), it’s not a criticism of anyone in particular, though perhaps a criticism of what people have done and the way in which they did this.

Cheers, and keep on troopin’

Beta o/