An idea how the game can improve
smash3r
In a few day, i will reach my 12th birthday in eRepublik. And in those 12 years, I've been playing intermittently. I think one of the main reasons is because the games repeats itself over time, and even if admins tried to introduce new features, the game has remained more or less the same for the last few years. When i came back in the beginning of the year, the only major change I've found in the game was the introduction of Air Battles, and i don't think that it was that much of a change. My idea with this article is to create a debate about new ideas to make the game more dynamic over time, being equally fun to all users, new or old.
PART 1
And this is my first point: The game is not made for new users. If someone starts playing today, they will be overpowered by older accounts. Most of new users only login 1 time, after that they will never come back. I've tried to convince a few friends to play the game and the only ones that stayed, were the ones that have already played eRepublik in the past. With no mechanics to catch up, the game is stalling because there will be no more Tanks in the future, its impossible the way the game is made.
With this i introduce my first idea: Seasons.
eRepublik should have its own history, driven by what happens in the game - whats the citizens in the game do. Wars and Major Events should change the world, creating new dynamics:
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💪Strenght Caps: The idea is to make something similar to level cap in WoW expansions: every season strength caps at higher values. It can start at 280k, then next season at 290k and so on. So when you reach this point, you cannot train anymore. This mean we have now a catch up mechanic: New accounts can continue training the whole season and being able to, eventually, become relevant in the game.
- ⭐ Legends Reset: This is more arguable, but resetting all accounts back to Titan*** every new season allows more freedom: Citizens can choose to fight for a different country - its healthier than being stuck for the same country forever. Smaller countries, they can even hire 'mercenaries' to fight for them. With this we have another semi-catch-up mechanic, and some nice races to see who reaches first the new legends ranks. Of course this could imply some changes in the system - maybe smaller caps between Legends and some bonus for those who are currently high Legend rankings.
- 🛡️ Alliance Bonus: One of the major problems Legends introduced, was the almost uselessness of Alliances. With 200% Max Bonus for country, its almost worthless to fight for your allies - unless its an Air Battle. In order to bring back this dynamic, Countries in the same Alliance can win bonus over time, based on the damage they do in the Alliance battles. To prevent abuse, it should be impossible to DoW/NE/AS countries in the same Alliance. This would bring new dynamics in terms of Wars, specially Training Wars.
PART 2
I could list more ideas, but i will stick with those 3 for now. Continuing with the Seasons idea, and to give a better picture how it could work in terms of storytelling (this game has so much potential.. but lacks on that), i created a small introducing to what i call
eRepublik Season 1: eVolution
In the last few Months, epic battles have devastated the world. Soldiers of CODE and ASTERIA have fought bravely, but in the end, there was no winner. The losses were already too big for both sides, the costs of war were already overloading many countries, making many armies to retract. Things seemed to be calming down, but one day everything changed.
Seismic Institute of Azores registers activity. 5 minutes later, more. 7 minutes later it continues. After one hour, over 65 reports lead to an obvious conclusion: Something is wrong.
After a few minutes, reports of the same events happening in other points of the Globe arrive: Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Falkland Islands.. Its not only in Azores. And then, the CrazyMadScientistPussyCat69 ears a loud BANG
💥, looks at the window and a gigantic structure, similar to a Volcano, rises from the water, not far from the Island. To the bewilderment of the scientist, it was not expelling lava, but some strange green glowing compound.
Shortly after, governments across the globe started to issue war orders: They must control the new territories before their enemies. Before sending an Air Strike to any of this new territories, they need to collect an insane amount of energy in order to be able to safely control and develop new technologies around the new compound.
All new zones start as neutral. First two countries to land on the same zone will fight against each other over the control of it. From the moment anyone controls any island, and since every country is so eager to control them, determination against the controller will rapidly increase over time.
Due to the nature of this new zones, the first round will be fought as an Air Battle, followed by 3 fast ground battles of 60 minutes each, winning each round the country that accumulates the most points by 60 minutes mark. Countries can queue up on attacking the controllers of the zone, allowing for non stop battles for the control of the new zones.
Each territory will give a different boost for the duration of the :
- Azores - Energy Regeneration Boost
- Japan - Energy Pool Boost
- Sri Lanka - House Energy Pool+Regen Boost
- Indonesia - Ground Hit Boost
- Falkland - Air Hit Boost
Who will conquer and control the new territories? Will any nation be able to control all 5 territories at the same time?
CONCLUSION
So this is a basic (and very bad written hehe) kick-off to my idea of eRepublik Seasons. Create new game mechanics and objectives, that allow more dynamic strategies and battles, with catch-up mechanics and boosts to empower every citizen and country, with a nice storytelling can that evolve with the actions on the game itself, making it fun for everyone. You can add continuity between seasons. Using my example, countries controlling the zones for more minutes can have specific rewards at the end of the season, or special boosts for the upcoming ones. There is a world full of possibilities to make this great game, into an even better one!
TLDR: I was bored today.
Comments
Nice read 😃
Regarding the strength issue. New players should just start at a flat high rate of like 100k, and any strength gain should be relative (i.e. the highest strength players would gain way less than those at the bottom). Also, a popular suggestion for half a decade has been to sort divisions by strength instead of level. But with Mav that is kinda useless.
Legend reset/change and alliance mechanics are rational ideas but we all know that will never happen either as that will make the current tanks and paying costumers angry. They will never want to lose their relative superiority 🙂.
Your 2nd part is nice and build upon the last event (which was a surprising plus). They should do more things like that. The way you propose it, however, would only work pay2win in hand, as it obviously will be the one who spends the most winning these territories (or, if things are continuing like now, who paid the most $$$ for insane shadow boosters) 😃.
Yes, the last event was one of the best things that happened in the game in last months. But it lacked community engagement. It was all about ourselves. I think one of the best things of the game is the community, and the environment we have around discord or telegram. Bringing this type of engagement in order to complete objectives within the game, makes it so much funnier.
Regarding the Pay to Win, i think its all up to the way things are implemented in the game. Shadow Booster is a very toxic mechanic if its available with €, but i think its kinda okay on Special Weekly Challenges, accessible to everyone. Regarding my ideas, the way to make it softer and available for everyone to experience it (even smaller countries like NL 😛) its to introduce mechanics that make it even - in the example i give, having increasing influence against countries that control those special zones (and maybe never dropping), will lead to a point in time that smaller countries will be able to give a fight. Of course bigger and powerful countries will be able to win it more times, but allowing everyone to experience it, would make you feel good, even if only for a few hours 🙂
Also, the games needs to stop being afraid of big whales. The packs already give them a nice and steady income. Increasing the players base, would allow this revenue to increase. This is healthier for the game in the long term, because the way things are at the moment, there is no much future. The strong players will always be the same, and as they leave the game, there will be no new players to replace them because no one can catch up 🙂 So in the end, there will be a few strong and overpower players, playing the game alone. This is not good for business and its much better to have a stable and steady income revenue. They can mitigate the impact those catch-up mechanics have on older players by giving them special rewards or compensations. The long this goes this way, the worst it becomes.
Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday mate!
Had a similar article for us small communities based on an account after the disasterous v2 XD - https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/loyalty1-2693727/1/20
nice to see some are still kicking at least o7
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Nice read. I think the fear of making unhappy the 'VISA Players' is killing the game. Every possible solution to current problems is denied by the simple argument of "VISA Players will quit if X or Y is implemented". I know eRepublik needs the money. But maybe if they cared about the whole player base, you can have more transactions, even of smaller amounts, to compensate some hypothetical loses.
The game has reached a point where there only a few citizens have good enough strength, simply because they are here for longer, and new players will never be able to catch up - and this is comic in its own way, because even if they spend all the money in the world, they will always be way. Just think about this: someone who played for 3 years, the max strength they can have is around 100k. Thats nothing! Totally useless for Ground Battles. How can you ask for players to play the game, and spend money here, if they have no opportunity to play it? Air battles allowed new players to have some fun. But lets be real, its not enough. Some battles end before reaching the 2nd Air Round due to epics. So while a few can have fun all rounds, i'm only allowed to play 1 or maybe 2 rounds in a battle?
In the end, whales made the game possible, but are the poison that its killing it as the same time.
Good ideas, but admins care only about money and the reason why the game went into this direction is this is what the main sources of income expect. Basically erepublik is boring and unplayable for anyone else than them, but as long as they pay admins don't care.
With all the farming in TW's, most of LXX are not even buying that much stuff in the game. They can farm CC via TP and gold via Medals. I think the pack solution is much more healthier for the game, it keeps a steady income - its much better than be based on peaks. Also (you can ready my comment above) fear of that big whales is killing the game.
I agree with you that the game would be healthier and more sustainable in the future if it would allow experience for more players and the income would be also based on more players. The current one is not a sustainable model but the game administration is just some low paid eastern-European workers whose logic probably is just to make as much money as they can as fast as they can so they won't put any effort into changing this.
The game turned completely towards individual gameplay in favour of big whales with the end of the MPP system (until that more or less communities were fighting now only a few legend tanks). Admins did this intentionally exactly because their logic is to base their income on big whales.
i really like that
o7
firstly.. remove all bots..
secondly.. add double authentication to prevent multi registration..
we need fair game.. it's ok pay for win as long it is fair..
I dont think bots and multis are the biggest problem right now - they are a problem of course - but if you fix the game to be playable by everyone, the impact of bots will be reduced.
how do you see double authentication working? I for one am not willing to give my phone number to plato. or any other shady online game for that matter.
I must admit that even though "not popular" ideas seem to me to be great for giving a feeling of being able to reach or be able to play decently vs. whales.
HBD o/
Nice. Plato should read this!
They can also just make it so that when you fight your strength temporarely decreases after each hit. Let's say for every 50 kills you lose 10k strength for 2 hours. That way everyome can get BHs as farmers will just get weaker 🙂
Actually this is extremely valuable, and fits the 2019 state of the art revenue model in free videogames, eRepublik did some steps in that direction changing its revenue model from 99€ gold packs to monthly 10€ packs but they stopped there and just reduced the amount invested into the game and allowed whales to buy tens of accounts and pay for them all. I think they just considered the game has burned out its playerbase and is just trying to keep whales in
I like what you have smoked. But I think it's just a beautiful fantasy
And Happy birthday!
Some interesting ideas, but unfortunately I don't think we'll see any major changes in the game.
Cool, some interesting thoughts. I would like to see some natural disasters on the countries with larger populations, so they could not fight, so their allies would have to defend them while their enemies attack. This would be a nice test of emergency preparedness and who all is paying attention. Plus make some good warsies. 😃
Thanks for the interesting article. and HeB.
Excellent article! You shouldn't be giving out good ideas so flippantly. Never sell something you're good at for free 😉
These are some awesome ideas!