Open Letter To Admin
Day 4,860, 13:09
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Published in Canada 
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by
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by Thedillpickl
Dear Administrator,
I'm going to send you this letter publicly. Hopefully it will stay up long enough for others to see it. I'm going to remain calm and use polite language. I trust you will respect that before you mindlessly ban my account as well.
Here's the link: https://youtu.be/8scSwaKbE64
He's a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody
The incident this afternoon was illuminating. Not knowing the particulars my guess is that it would have taken a considerable effort to individually change all those accounts to permaban. Did you truly believe that no one would notice hundred+ accounts would be unbanned and minutes later permabanned?
I don't care about the political side of this. I don't care about the nepotism implied by some folks. To be honest, I'm not particularly concerned about the game itself. My ire is roused at the ineptitude, your blatant and continuing disregard for those who play this farce of a fair and free game. I've played here for over ten years and have seen it change from an interesting simulation with admins that provided a route of communication, who actually listened to their consumers to a holocaust of epic proportions.
Marketing 101... Page one, first sentence... Give the customer what they want. Obviously there are provisos, we don't give a child all the candy they can eat. Still, the opposite is also not done. If it's a candy store, and the child would like a piece of taffy, and he has his penny, you sell him the taffy. Don't get all smug, lecture how sugar is bad and hand him a toothbrush! (Damn, I'm doing my best to remain civil.)
To the point, if you want to follow your precious TOS then by all means do so. Comb through the accounts, regardless of any consideration and get rid of the lot. Whatever the infraction! Clean your house! Do not play the hypocrite. We can tell.
And please, don't attempt to appease by hosting an event with a ridiculous amount of EBs and stingers. The above parable is not meant to infer that some goodies will make us lay down and be good little children.
You've taken a helluva hit from those of us who actually buy stuff. The screenshots are going around. We can see the effect. Yes, profit will eventually come back as people forget.
My question is simply "Why?". Do you enjoy pissing people off? Or possibly you are control freaks? Let's hope that our admins are sane, rational people who will realize this type of interaction cannot continue. We want to build the game, do you?
Best regards,
Thedillpickl
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Usually I would never ask, but please repost this.
Open letter...
https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/open-letter-to-admin1-2731885
Dear Plato, I love you!
Please don't hit me!
o7
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o7
"My ire is roused at the ineptitude"
Flamming. BAN BAN BAN.
You betcha.
I should take bets on how long this stays up.
o7
Signed.
P.s. justice for real robots.
🤖
I don't think anyone actually works at erepublik any more, it feels like the whole thing is managed by an AI algorithm.
I think there is some truth to that.
My guess is that it's a skeleton staff who keeps things running, and who are occasionally told what to do by bosses who don't know a damned thing about the game.
Oh, they care. We're the amazing legacy game that continues despite everything. I was reading somewhere that games like eRep rarely last more than 5 years. We're an oddity. But you are correct, about bosses who don't give a damn.
The "whole" thing, not.
But what i suppose: partially, you are probably correct.
Example: when we had the terrains many months ago, i suppose an AI did bring it to the game. The supposedly AI does have a "calendar".
I suppose the same for the resource wars.
So...if (if) my suppositons are true, i may estimate that resource wars comes to the game in every 4 years
suppositions*
It's probably run by a couple of corporate type people who have no vision or real interest in the game, most of the day-to-day decisions are probably purely data driven or automated, like power spin, if total cc>x run.
Be funny if they found a metric to figure out how annoyed people were, they could probably use the daily word count for the word 'Plato' or 'admin'.
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Maybe there was an AI that brings to the game most events, following a schedule. Supposedly just a few things of the events are manually handled.
Maybe there is*
Just out of curiosity, what do you suggest that should be done to the ones that took advance of the so called bug?
Something, to be sure. When admins screw up by making live changes to the game that are not properly tested I would think they would at the very least apologize. Ban hammer is not an apology.
I've seen gold taken away. I've seen skill/strength/rank/level taken away. I've personally had one of my early articles removed, 3 day temp ban and 7 day media ban for making a rude remark about Romanians back when they owned eRep.
There are ways to take away ill gotten advantage without destroying player base. Multies are a different story. Players with multies still exist. Just because "one side" feels justified in having a superior attitude, saying "serves you right" doesn't impress me. I'd still be upset whoever had there account taken for no good reason.
Sorry to go on, hope I properly answered your question.
👏👏👏👏👏
You should have stayed civil......... A little less 😬
Admins don't deserve all the good vocabulary you used
Left overs from not so far distant communisim .. the mentality of control..nepotism .. and smugness
This is spot on.
Following your metaphora, if kids ask some wine, the bartender has the duty to not give them the wine.
In our situation, the kids took the wine by themselves. It's really hard to know what to do, as a bartender, in a situation like this.
Sorry, but I must ask two questions to properly reply to your comment.
1. Why are there kids in in the bar?
2. Where are their parents?
In any event I will disregard the fact that they are thieves.
You may find it sufficient to review my reply to le.ninja's comment above. I've not said that something should not have been done. Also note in my article I agree that admin has the ability to enforce their TOS. My complaint is I don't think it proper to pick and choose what to enforce and whom to enforce it upon.
o7
I say we call Diogenes and get him to streak past Plato's house.
Ha ha ha
~hyuu~
o7
Signed.
P.s. I doubt their income will ever coke back, ot will take a big hit and keep shrinking. Like the population, and the power disparity from now on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT9xuXQjxMM
.
😂
There's always Age of Lords or World at War.
LOL
they upset the balance caused others to overspend was flippant and boastful about their deeds. not one made it public then and they gained a legend rank a day and probably for 4 months they ruled the weekly challenge gained immense amounts of money which they probably invested into more nefarious plots and schemes we dont know of.
i have already seen dynamight in another account. most of them probably had 1 or 2 old accounts lie'ing around. feeling sorry for them is feeling sorry for your pancake stuck on the ceiling..it will return in an indigestible form... their the main reason stuff like the top 100 challenge became impossible for most players. they reaped the reward in probably an understaffed game where handling their cases took up valuable time. best solution is perma ban they will anyway be back in one of their old accounts or buy another old account and then be back at their old ways.
i also dont agree that admins knew about this. if you check the logs of that update released in october 2019 and remember those days there was a lot of shouts about captchas which were not working for many players. you can also check the main forum where is their public article outlying the exploit.
damnit inbetween 200 of them you didnt even get 1 honest person that could do the correct thing?
"they upset the balance caused others to overspend"
Regrettable, but practically no way to fix unless you arbitrarily took their gold, assuming all was gained illegitimately. Isuppose you could give a thousand gold to everyone still playing but that would not be fair either.
"was flippant and boastful about their deeds."
Also regrettable, but again how to fix? It's not like we can go to their homes to give them a whack.
"not one made it public then and they gained a legend rank a day"
Remove the rank.
"probably for 4 months they ruled the weekly challenge gained immense amounts of money"
That quite possibly could be tracked as there are a limited number of winners and action had to be taken to reward them with a know amount. So remove the winnings.
I don't feel sorry for anyone. Every time this happens, no matter the alliance/group our game suffers. It's getting worse each time. I blame admin for not doing their jobs right in the first place. The anomaly that allowed this should not have been tested live in the game. Mistakes happen, but for (as you stated) 4 months?! Can you, with a straight face, say that admin has no obligation to check on recent changes to see if they are working as expected?
"i also dont agree that admins knew about this."
Great, let's assume you are correct...
Unfortunately the assumption is invalid BECAUSE WE ARE HERE TALKING ABOUT IT. If admin is unaware of what happens in the game it's pointless log in. They have to be monitoring and patching things when they break or the wheels would fall off. (Apologies for the CAPs, I felt emphasis was necessary.)
I'm not interested in someone's bad behavior. It is a fact of human nature. Common civility is uncommon today. Polite discussion is difficult, if not impossible. The golden rule has turned out to be tarnished brass.
What I am interested in is admin doing their jobs. If getting rid of people is part of it so it shall be. But do it across the board, no favourites. Don't wait until a huge reaction is called for. And above all, maintain the game in a way that fixes problems before they explode.
only way to cure their deeds where a perma ban unfortunately. what measure would be fair for a player that suddenly boosts his account, everything after a date? im afraid i would have done exactly the same only 2 weeks back not now. there have been players admitting this in a article or 2. their gain is difficult to compute their reasoning sinister. their motivation greed and self interest. did they tell the world where every mu in the world informed. no so it was a little secret for themselves . did they return bh's they gained when using the exploit. no, did they return regions. no . did they take steps to safeguard their accounts. no . did they use this in real battles versus real players - yes. did they have any regrets . no. what was the purpose of their boastful gloating?
when i encounter something that is dodgy i go to my core principle of no cheating. i usually reject it then. in the end you are the person that must ensure your account does not transgress the laws. so whatever argument we might think off to blame admins the root cause of the perma ban is the players own transgressions. its not like this is 2 day old accounts these are players that are many years in the game. you sre trying to portray them as the innocents. sorry not buying it.
"you sre trying to portray them as the innocents"
I can accept your post up to the last statement. It is inaccurate in a most severe way. I would say those banned were a major portion of the player base, the game will definitely change because of it. Their choices and admins response are significant.
Very true what you said. Whoever manages this game is a snowflake with butcher behavior. I think it is out of control the whole situation. But yeah tons of ebs and stingers will make us forget. We are cheap. We sell our friends. And enemies. Truth, justice, fairnes, equality? Good customer support? Please....
Watch your messages, give it a week.
that is only the tangible damage they did. lets think. im not talking about fenoglio though:
1. 200 players gaining how many bh's a day at the expense of other accounts
2. gaining a rank that gives them n more battle hero a day each day until their accounts where perma banned.
3. causing other accounts to spend thousands to compete against illegal damage in each and every battle they fought - 200 players can fight almost in every battle in a day.
4.taking region by region of their enemies.
5. 1 to 4 caused how many honest players too quit?game is rigged admins sentiment.
6. how little they feel about small countries . dynamight would each time he got elected impose a trade embargo against ireland. and south korea.
7. for 4 months they ruled all battles. yet again how many legit accounts would give up and seen other gaming shores.
8. a online game is a delicate ecosystem. you can just dump the town waste into it and hope it will recover.
this is not kid buying candy this is grownups poisoning the town well.
lastly you say 4 months damage is done i dont agree . remember they gained top legend rank and best damage in the game and now had 200 such ranks versus opponents. but for the rest of their time they scored x amount of damage more than they would have pre exploit.if people stop buying packs because some people *.. the game that is their choice. People do silly stuff all the time. im thinking of buying more packs to counter all the sympathy for the criminals in the game.
*not kill
Look here, I'm happy to rebut your comments above. You presented a reasonable argument to my article. However I'm not interested in a tennis match. At the moment I have life issues that require my attention. I'm not dropping everything to beat the dead horse.
Feel free to vent. Pixels are cheap. 🙂
you spend time on your opinions yet dont have time to discuss it? this was a massive block of "upgraded accounts" you can see a zombie commenting already below. this is an opinion piece if you dont have time to defend your opinions dont express them. i think my arguments disseminate the central thesis of the "oh so innocent children that got caught with their hand in the cookie jar" that you are trying to promote. go and read the updates and announcement thread about this very same update. we were 2 months in. like a new program there are bugs. on a programmatic basis how do we come to the exploit anyway. and on that so specific set of variables. it was 3 x 100 energy bars (anniversary pack) 5 minute accelerators(anniversary pack) cancelling inbetween but why if it was cancelled with that particular set of variables did the program keep on doing damage. for me this screamed big trouble if they were caught. like a valet parker taking a maserati for a joyride. you see even if admins handed them the keys those were a very expensive car to drive between all the palookas in their volkswagens , fords and pick up trucks. but you are entitled to your opinion. just ignore my comments if you dont want to invest time in it or can't really disprove it. 🙂
"you spend time on your opinions yet dont have time to discuss it? "
I did discuss it. You just didn't like what I said. It's not my job to provide more than my opinion and defend it, once. I've done that.
I was released from the nursing facility Wednesday. I am trying to arrange my life to live with my cousin as I cannot live by myself any longer. Congestive Heart Failure and diabetes, pluse certain heart conditions take up a good portion of my day. eRep and my health are about all I do anymore. I hope that explains why I don't wish to continue plowing through the same minutia.
well rl issues aside lets just agree to disagree for me i think the players are to blame for you admins are to blame. well good luck with your health issues. if one says that?
I remind you that I'm not claiming the offenders are innocent. I am claiming admin could have handled this better and should have caught this sooner. But as you say, we simply disagree. As the old saying says "Opinions are like ass holes, everyone has one." 😁
And thank you for your kind wishes.