Why noobs get confused.
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by Charles Martel
It's a fact. Noobs don't like erepublik. There are thousands of inactive citizens who only played for a day or two. Maybe a friend invited them. Maybe they found it by themselves. But many countries have an employment rate that is way too high. In this game, the employment rate is more of a measure of activity than economic strength. Belgium, Chile, Poland, and the USA all have unemployment rates over 60%. Noobs don't like the game, and it's obvious why they don't.
This is part one of two articles on why noobs don't like erepublik:
Imagine you're a new player who just joined the game. A friend invited you a couple days ago, and you just got around to joining. You see the bars at the top, and you manage to get a job and work on your own. But you can't find your profile, or how to change your picture. And you don't know how to buy food. Any experienced player could tell you to look in the wiki, but you don't know how to ask an experienced player.
Here's what I propose should be done to provide better information to new players:
1. Make the wiki more open. Let all erepublik players level 4 or higher edit the wiki. The admin should also appoint moderators to the wiki. There already is a lot of vandalism, but there are players who want to fix some of the bad wiki pages that don't, because they don't want to send a letter to admin to get approval to create an account. It's a horrible way of making the wiki a community effort, which is what it should be. Vandalism would be fixed much quicker if there were more players editing the wiki. Just look at the page for "Goons", a group that has had a serious effect on many countries: http://wiki.erepublik.com/index.php/Goons. It was the same way it was when I joined, and it isn't going to change unless the admin changes the rules.
2. Add a new option under community: "Help", a link to the help forum. I didn't find the help forum until the second week. There is no help option anywhere in the menu bar.
3. Instead of a letter sent by the president, the admins should let the president write an "welcome" article that stays permanently on your home page. Many new players can't even find the letter that is sent to all new players.
4. Include links to the wiki in this article. It's great to tell someone to buy food, but they might not know how to do it. The wiki has detailed information on this.
The changes would provide new players with the information they can't find right now, and quit for that reason.
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new world war
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/new-world-war--739784/1/20
starting wages are crap too, minimum wage is less then the cost for food. If that doesn't piss off people who actually figure out how to play then I don't know what will.
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/maine-crongressional-platform-739527/1/20
i hear that daisy.
I don't know, I mean, I was able to find my way around the marketplace and the profile manager pretty easily my first day.
I do think that the more n00b-friendly we can make this place, the better. I for one proposed the idea of taking a selected handful of n00b-friendly articles and guides written by players and providing new citizens with a way to browse these readings. These articles are generally pretty high-quality stuff, but they don't stay up long enough for n00bs to get a serious benefit from them.
Even with our non-profit companies giving a living wage and gifting food, we see around 40% inactivity / death for new players. On the flip side, we are seeing our first graduates come out of the companies and go into the free market!
But you have to remember that not all inactivity comes from confusion, or low wages. A large number of people do not enjoy the game's format, and there is nothing that can be done about this.
http://bighorn.point2jesus.com/viewforum.php?f=9
I think I already commented on that article.
And you know, while I understand the benefits of active game-players, I think what I'd like to see more of is active newbies in the community. It seems like the only ones I see stating their opinion are the high-level eRep vets and the 7-8 citizens sitting at, or near, my level. People really need to understand that it's the community that builds this game, not the numbers on your stat card.
I joined this game yesterday and i have a small hold on it
i can get around pretty well,have a few friends and i agree with the low wages...too low for granted
I would say lower food prices a bit or increase wages a bit...or both would be even better
The wage is not that low...think about it, u start out with 5 USD which you should use all of to buy food (around 4 units of Q1 food). It will take you 3 days to get to a better job with higher pay and another 3 days for you to get to another skill level with even higher pay. You should be able to survive with more and more money saved up by the days. The wages for skill of 0 is right since they don't produce much for their wages to be any higher.
I came to eRepublik, didn't really know what it was except that it was a social thing. What social thing means to me is that I need to figure out some way to communicate with other people or I'm going to be really, really bored.
So I did my to-do list, got some experience, and then I checked out every single link there was at the top of the screen there. The menus come down automatically when the mouse hovers over it. I found 'media', 'forum', and 'blog' in the Community menu. Do people really fail to look through the potential options, especially in a game that left me thinking, "Is that really it?" If they are, do we really want them here to run for Congress and debate tax policy?
Maybe on the to-do list, "read a newspaper", "check out the forums" or something? Or even, "read the newbie introductions"?
Like Kreamz says, in a matter of week you could be at 2.00 skill, with a job that currently pays $4 a day. This would afford you Q2 food and you would still be saving $1 a day. In 20 more days, you will have 5 gold! But the majority of inactives just find the game uninteresting. There is no visual action and they just bail.
Newbies need to be engaged. They need to find a purpose. They need to meet some people in the first couple of days and feel like they belong to something. 2-clicking is the way to inactivity.
THere just isn't that much to do wihout l33t skills and resources...
Vote!
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/-o-pr-mio-saiu-venda-dos-bilhetes-para-o-sorteio-de-28-de-fevereiro-de-2009-739977/1/20
Can the admins also do a clean-up so that all the dead and inactive citizens till now so that they are excluded from any statistic and their profiles deleted ....
Lets have theactual numbers ...
I still am two clicking. When I first joined, at least working meant answering some questions, albeit boring questions, but something than just clicking. They need to make working and training more than clicking. Maybe revise the trivia system, or add some sort of game that would take some skill.
Admins allow the inactives to stay so they could say they have a lot of players playing this game.
Can't imagine you talking like this in real life, plus how many people that you invited had this problem? ~It requires MMO experience?~
Do you really need actual numbers?
I think 2 months to die is a good amount of time.
As I said, this is part one of two articles, the second of which will be coming out soon about why noobs don't enjoy erepublik
Eh, I'll just ask you tomorrow. Aren't you glad I didn't die so easily?
Silly things I did when I started, because I didn't get it:
Took a skill level 0 job in construction, because it was the highest paying, not realizing there were no construction jobs then available in skill levels 1, 2, and 3.
Thought that my experience level (the little green number on your avatar) was the same as my job skill level.
Took a job in a Q2 company just because it had the highest wage, not realizing that meant I had to buy Q2 food.
Trained every day because it was on my "to do" list, even though I couldn't afford Q2 food.
Quickly made up a name at random, not realizing I'd never be able to change it.
Located in my RL state, rather than Florida, home of our only Q5 hospital.
...and many more. Some of this I could have found in forums or wiki, but it apparently didn't jump out at me at the time.
Noobs are noobs, and we will make our hilarious mistakes.
Uh, just realized, noob is not = newb. Hope you didn't get the word Noob from AOPS.
As someone recently new, I was able to find the wiki, but it wasn't very helpful. most articles are stubs, and full of holes, and I don't know which ones to read.
I'm brand new. I really want to like the game, but the article hits the nail on the head. Am I pointing and clicking for two months before I level up enough to truly "play?" Is this a game, or just a glorified chat room dressed up as a game?
Just curious.