Join the new world

Before I start: Here's some deadmau5 for you.

So here I am. I've been browsing the news boards lately (one of the only things that is continually updated with *good* content), and I've been seeing a LOT of articles about Plato, the admins, continual updates, and so on. So not wanting to be left behind by all these rage-quit articles, and the such, I decided it was time to give my opinion about Plato, this game, and some other stuff too. This is not a rage-quit article. I’m just explaining why these changes are so bad.

First, let me start off with Plato. Many people have been saying that his continual changes without consulting with the players of this game, (or as Plato calls them, revenue-boosters) are going to be the downfall of this game. I agree. But surely the reason that most of these players fell in love with this game is because of Plato's ability to make a community that stretched continents, crossed language barriers, as well as unified people that would never be unified otherwise. So what happened?

Well let me go through the reasons for this sudden collapse of support for Plato:

This:

is, or should I say was Plato's newspaper, the eRepublik Insider. It was a way for the admins to not only explain some of the major changes and features in every update, but to get the player's feedback on them as well. It was a good idea. Having player's feedback helped them decide what to change, fix, improve, or get rid of altogether in future updates. However as you can see by the last article posted, it was last updated 9 months ago. This is a problem. 9 months ago, the connection between the admins and the players was severed. 9 months ago, they stopped checking to see if it was a good idea to get rid of work skill, or introduce a town hall, or have two-for one bonus events. 9 months ago, they began the downfall of the players' morale. Now as you can see by the comments posted in the article, Plato was still very much hated at the time the article was posted, probably one of the reasons they stopped posting them. Nobody likes to get yelled at continuously, even for things that were their fault.

Now let’s go back through some previous updates mentioned in the eRepublik Insider which were good updates by Plato.

-Adding a daily tasks bar.

--This was a good idea. Not only does it add features to the game, but it also makes two-clicking that much easier.

-Adding a map.

--Yes. Just yes. Not only does this strengthen the bonds between countries, alliances, and the eWorld as a whole, but nothing motivates me more than seeing half of my country turn a different color-an enemies color.

Now, let’s go through some of the more recent updates.

-Free factories, and resource farms.

-- This has to be one of the worst things they could have possibly done. Not only are they betraying some of their most loyal players by giving 1-day players the chance to be as productive as the people who have played for years are, they also screwed the economy (food is now worth about a dime), put overproduction to an unprecedented level, (people are now handing out free food so they have space in their storage), and reduced a lot of the strategy of this game. The majority of dedicated players in this game do not want free stuff. This game requires a lot of commitment to be fun, and by handing out the things people want to work for, they've taken away some of that fun.

Analogy time:
Imagine you are a kid. You're walking home from school one day and you happen to pass by this really awesome, totally rad bicycle in the show window of a sporting goods store. Now you think to yourself, if only I could have one of those bicycles. I'm sure it would help me get to and from school faster, and have more time to play this awesome strategy game online when I get home! And then everybody will think I'm super cool for having it! Now obviously, you want to get the bicycle as quickly as possible, so you ask your parents, and they say "No, you'll have to save up enough money for it in order to get it." So of course, you save up enough money for that bicycle, and you buy that bicycle, and you cherish that bicycle every day, because it means something to you, and you had to work hard to get it.

Now imagine that your parents decided that instead of you saving up for that bicycle, it would be a great idea to get you that bicycle immediately! Of course you're thrilled about it, and immediately go use your bicycle, which is a great thing. But as you're riding home you notice that somebody else is on the same bicycle getting the same benefits that you are. So you ask your parents and they say they thought that bicycle was such a good idea, they decided to buy everyone in town that bicycle! Of course you’re still excited about having that bicycle, and you can still use it to get to and from school quicker, but it doesn’t mean the same thing when everyone else has one just like it.
This is very similar to the situation in eRepublik. No longer does having a factory and some farms mean anything at all, because every person that joins will instantly get one, and they will instantly make enough food to support themself. This was like a slap in the face to people who already owned that bicycle and who had worked so hard to get it. Now it meant nothing.

Back to the updates:

-Free candy bars.

--No. As stated earlier, most players in this game don’t want free stuff. And 15 candy bars? Doesn’t that seem like a bit of overkill? I mean this makes getting Battle Hero or even Campaign Hero medals insanely easy for newer players as they can fight 15 times as much as the players who already used their bars in a different battle.

-A town hall.

--I like the idea. It allows more experienced players to regain more health, for a cost which only they can afford. This is a good idea among all these bad updates, but I haven’t seen any articles praising the town hall, just articles lumping it in with the rest of the updates as a terrible idea.

-Getting rid of work skill.

--Ooh. Bad idea there. Let’s go through this one. First, it gets rid of the thing that many players have worked up towards in this game, higher productivity. And making up for deleting it, they added in higher productivity, meaning that the person that joined yesterday can make just as much food as the guy who joined two years ago. This is a problem. Creating equality in this game is a bad thing. Players don't want to be equal with other people, they want to be making loads more money, food, and ultimately succeeding more in the game. But it’s not too late!

Solutions:
Now besides the obvious, “Revert to V1” solution which seemed to make players the most happy, there’s a number of things Plato could do to win back the players’ love.

1. Bring back work skill. Work skill is still recorded, and I even encountered a bug where after I completed my daily tasks, I returned to my home page where I clicked on "get reward" and was awarded 10 work skill points. This would relieve many of the players’ grumbles about Plato and would show that Plato is listening to the players.

2. Bring back the eRepublik Insider. Plato came up with some of his best (and worst) ideas while using the feedback received from this paper, and a simple article explaining these new updates and the reasons for why they thought they would be a good idea, would also help players’ morale, as well as lay the foundation for future updates.

3. No more free stuff! Players in this game don’t want to be given a billion things that untimately take away from this game! It’s like when playing a game in “sandbox” or “god” mode. It’s really fun at first to have everything unlocked, being the ultimate player, but after a while it loses its fun because it’s no longer a challenge.