[FoW] Last call, Plato!
Don Croata.
Hello everyone
Regardless of your nationality, citizenship, MU or a party if you’re still here and playing this game it means you’re around because of one of three reasons. Either you met too many nice people you don’t wanna leave or it became such a huge habit you don’t wanna get rid of because it gives you some ‘other life’ where you can do some other things. Third reason are the rarest one, it’s only few players around here that wants to compete, plan, organize and work by game mechanics in order to achieve some goals. There’s probably not more than 20 players who are here for this reason.
When I joined Erepublik it was the opposite. Most of the players joined & stayed here in order to organize into groups, plan on the ways of fighting, compete with their friends and do things as a community. It was the original reason to stay for almost everyone who played v1. Why is that so? What changed so much over all these years? I’m not sure if I have the answer on that question, but I’ll try.
What kept nations active?
This game used to be a strategy game. It had you thinking about things. You had much more options and you could focus on many other things than simply fighting in a battle. For example, you could play with monetary market with more than 2 currencies. You would need to look into how specific countries are doing and predict more than one thing to make an informative decision on what to buy & what to sell. Then, if you’d make some money by trading you could’ve spend hours and hours thinking about where to invest the money because there were so many options. You had to think about the game and your own decisions were something that’d give you the advantage over the other players.
Back then MPP’s, alliances and other stuff were worthy. No matter what you do, unless you’d tank tons and tons of gold you could only fight once or twice a day. You had to think about where to use one of those fights. Imagine if you’d have to fight only once a day now? What would you do for the rest of the playing day? That fight was worthy and each fight was much more valuable to your country or an ally. Fighter’s strength and rank wasn’t that important as game was focused more on communities instead of individuals. Few new players would easily outplay the strongest tank of the country. Communities were forced to work on their population. Nowadays game isn’t forcing communities to do anything except the useless TW’s that serves no other purpose than gold farming. That gold will be used in a battle in which you’ll take some region without causing any significant damage because only 10 players will suffer from no production after you’d take that region. All we’re doing here, at this moment is for nothing. There’s no greater purpose, there are no big goals. There’s no available long term strategy or community projects. Sure, the players also stopped caring that much after so many years, but the main reason lies somewhere else. Plato turned the community game into the individuals game.
An individual used to invest its time and make decisions in order to gain more money, gold and expand its economy first, employ other people and then repeat the process, but in a totally different way. Wars used to be significant, economies could been devastated after some big battles and each battle was important. Resources and bonuses meant 10 times more than they mean now when everyone can simply sell a pack or earn the money by fighting in a useless TP battle with no other meaning except the fighting itself.
What changed the game we all fell in love with?
The moment when new players became irrelevant this game has been doomed to fall. Parties, organizations, projects, individuals and whole economies used to rely on new players. Since new players used to be highly important in every segment of the game communities were kinda forced to bring them to the game. Some individuals would pay large amounts of RL money, not to the game, but to the RL newspapers, portals and forums in order to promote the game and its communities. New players always brought new ideas, fresh blood and finally much more reasons to play. Imagine sticking 10 years in this game simply because of the same people you’ve met such a long time ago. Now imagine the joy of communities getting new players who are joining that community and enriching it.
If you’d write an article over 2000 players would read it. The feedback you’ve been receiving, the comment wars, debates and discussions were spectacular. Getting among the 40 people in the Congress was a great honour so every congressmen tried hard to stay in, to contribute, give ideas and advices. Some individuals would spend hours on the forums, debating on how to make the country better. Parties had over 1000 members, I remember the Polish political party that had more members than there are active players in the game today. Yeah, those were the good times when you’d meet a nice new person every day. When new players fought for the power and when Governments could choose many different things.
I even forgot to mention that alliances would last for a long time. You would never be able to meet everyone in your country, imagine how hard it would be to meet everyone in opposed alliances or countries. It was a much bigger joy to fight them, now its weird to fight against people who are or were your friends. Battles had more strategic options, now its just about opening the battle on time.
Is there any hope for our beloved game?
I’m not sure. Each one of us still finds something to keep him around, some small community, few people he likes to spend his time with. I’m the type of a person that always tries to animate others, develop the projects and make some mark in the community. Those things are getting harder and harder. Take my MU for example. We’ve gathered over 40 active people in a short time. We organized ourselves, we’re having a great fun in the channel, we’re joking with each other and follow the priorities. But when the day ends new one starts. Everything you do isn’t nearly as important as it used to be. So what if we conquered Belgrade. So what if we attacked UK for the 1000th time. Nothing will change. It probably won’t be much fun because all the resources, accounts and people are already well known. Not a single new player will be able to change the fate of those wars or contribute more than making a few thousands in the air round. Which is nothing really. There are still the other three ground rounds where everything is already well known.
We’re meant to buy packs in order to have more energy and compete with having less people than the other side. Then again, the other side has like 500 active players. We have 400. Maybe I even said too much. It’s not the game in which you have the chance to change your own destiny or a destiny of your country. Personally that’s what kept me hooked. The MU, country and friends only kept me here after the game has changed.
In conclusion, there’s only one thing Plato and game developers are able to do in order to change things, attract new people and create some new sparks. Create the NEW eWORLD of Erepublik. Let’s start from the beginning when the new players will be meaningful again. Just copy the game we had in v1, its game mechanics and much needed collectivism was what made this game great. You’ll still make some incomes, your business will still have profits, you’ll promote and gain players again. You’ll make less, but you’ll have a long term strategy. Just gives us few more years of that old passion we used to have. Maybe it’s just me, I was 17 years old when I registered, maybe I was easier to be impressed with back then. But apparently I’m not alone considering such a few people are sticking here with me. Not a single copy of this game will ever reach Erepublik, it’s only Erepublik that’s able to give us that old feeling. In the name of all players that left this game after loving it once - let’s have some fun again.
Last call, Plato!
https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/-fow-last-call-plato--2701547
ADD NEW eWORLD!
Yours,
Don Croata
Comments
tl;dr
What would be the profit for Plato?
What were the Plato's profits during v1?
They've managed to create a big and successful company based on a v1 success of the game.
Yes.... 10 years ago.
Yup, imagine the possibilities he'd have with so many people now. Promotion, marketing, social network potential...it's very much possible.
People prefer another type of games nowadays, browser games are falling.
It would be good if they made it only for mobile players (and if they make a GOOD mobile app)
Maybe people younger than 20, I believe that's the minority. Browser games backed up with a good mobile apps have the future.
V1 is not the solution. Massive overproduction, newbies not being able to catch up to the old farts, newbies not even being able to enjoy all parts of the game from the beginning and the problem of not enough income for erep labs.
I don't remember massive overproduction during v1. I think I even couldn't afford weps to fight with them. Newbies would be able to catch up if you'd be getting less and less strength per train over the time. You'd be able to keep the advantage, but not too much. It's not a significant change, it's something Plato could've learn from its mistakes.
So let's have a look what people were able to do back then:
Work once, train once, fight 5 hits (if hospital available) and maybe a 6th time with gifts. Basically you're done within 5 minutes/day.
After the first few days, everyone gained 0.04 strength/day or 0.16 when training with gold. No decrease over the time.
People produced based on their workingskill, at the end, everyone maxed out all three of them. Houses were permanent so as soon as nearly everyone had a q5 house, the skill was dead.
You were able to use 5-6 wpns/day which was less than you produced. Same goes obv. For the raws needed. Hospitals and defense systems were used by countries only, they were more or less permanent as long as you didn't lose the fight for that specific region where it was placed.
For sure, V1 had very good parts(multiple rws, attack costs, retreating from the battlefield, voting system) , but saying it'd be the solution for bringing back all the fun is bullshit. You'd need a mix of current version and V1.
Fair enough, I can agree with it. If it worked perfectly it probably wouldn't be changed, but now we at least know what's to be changed.
I don't mind doing everything within 5 mins if the rest of the gameplay is fun as it used to be.
Production formulas, training calculation and other stuff would require a shift from what it used to be.
"No decrease over the time." It did decrease over time. From 5.00 to 6.00 for exampel you only gained 0,01 Strenght per day and from 6.00 to V2 you gained zerop, zap, nada strenght per day.
If 1 ≦ s If 2 ≦ s If 3 ≦ s If s ≧ 4, then B = 0.04
So it took 17 days do reach 4,after that, 0.04/day.
Although you are wright, I would rather play a v1 version when any dmg counted and when you were limited on how many bars you could use/day .. limiting the number of bars would give the newbies more to catch up to the old farts.
After you hot conversation with the Romanian player about existing of bot army in some countries my hopes was that you will mansion it in this article. Because using bots with combination with some scripts, multi accounting and some other not fair practice ruining the game. Actually the admins ruined the game with not doing their job properly. That is demoralizing a lot of the players and leading them to stop playing the game, to stop buying packs. The new players also are demoralized from the lack of fair play.
I couldn't agree more.
completely omnishambles that they have no idea how to get out from
nor the human resources or finance for it even if they did
Samo ukloniti divizije i ukloniti zajednicku valutu i nek igra krene o7
Novi igrači opet ne bi imali što raditi..
Imaju šta raditi da se sa njima ceram za BH 😃 malo snage imam a mozda kad bi admini ubacili da se za 9€ kupi 100k snage ko na nekoj igri (necu reklamirat koja igra) i onda bi se mogli raspravljat o daljnim temama i o packovima i o svemu bi se dalo raspravit 🙂
Divizije nisu loše, Maverick jeste.
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I feel like i wrote this article.
So many things are wrong in erepublik today.
Let me explain this in my words and I hope some of you will understand me:
Today this game is like watching a movie.
Things are done in a certain way and there isnt much room left for improvisations.
You gotta do your works, all the fights that dont matter at all and... Thats about it. It takes up your pc for the entire day and it just runs for no good reason other to shoot constantly in battles that dont matter.
Back in the old days.. well...
It was like reading a good book. Things use to be left for you to imagine.
You had some daily routines that took a minute or two and after that..well the fun could start. Imagination could start.
Players had all the freedome to write, organize and develop without limitations on what you need to do all day long.
"I feel like i wrote this article."
I understand that feeling after giving the best possible way to compare it.
plato dont give shit, about this game...it's not even a game, its a a project to make money 😉
o/
o7
NOW THE GAME IS LIKE MULTI ACC'S WITH SCRIPTS AND 10 BOYS IN ALL EWORLD WITH BILIONS OF DAMAGES, HAIL UN THE FAIR.
It has been a while since I upvoted one of your articles. MPPs useless, market, currency ... all gone to hell. The last straw are those bloody bot farms. This is bloody retarded
There's no strategy now. It's how has a bigger Johnson and faster script.
You leave script to fight with x5 nothing else.
I haven't played in v1 and I don't know how looked.
I don't even know why I started, only thing that keeps me is community.
o7
o7
Amen! 😛
There isn't much that has to be changed . Remove MP so no more switching divisions. Add what you had promised long time ago - Aircraft training. Add advanced weapons for air ( one star, two stars , three stars ... etc. Make limit that one player cant use more than 200 or 300 energy bars per battle so there will be more players. This alone together with some improvements on strategy rather than credit card will make this game more attractive than ever. Also this is very important, we need option to have a congress law to mute some players for one week or two weeks but no more than two weeks in a month similar to temporary ban.
The game is rigged/database permissions, our bad.
Changes?
I would start the changes by removing the donate button in order to reduce the level of bullshit.
Pishing is not allowed by many games for a good reason, the lack of that rule promotes multi-account
vote
Great!!!!
We had these kind of last calls few years ago... but i see pluto is still milking us 🙂
I quit buying packs because Plato doesn't care about the game.
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o7
Sve se vrti oko ekonomije i ratovanja, ovo je tako ograničen život, elektronska republika bez previše sadržaja. Novine više nisu novine, 25 komentara svi žicaju umjesto da napravi igra smjernice hoćeš biti novinar ekonomist ili vojnik, ali te tjeraju da budeš novinar koji ne želiš biti pa žicaš komentare. I zašto vi ja dodao 100 prijatelja koji su isto lažni ko ovi na facebooku. Dakle zadaci su smiješni. A imaju prostora proširiti svjetonazore, nek ubace realnije stvari. Mogli su s tolkom lovom koju su zaradili što god su htjeli. Ja kažem osim što plaćaju domenu oni ne ulažu više ni u marketing igrice a kamoli u sam razvoj igre. Zato ja potrošim 10 min dnevno max, toliko i oni ulažu dnevno svog vremena u razvoj igre. Tužno jadno. Dosadno.
So much potential. Few improvements
I will likely get shot at for saying this, but if you all stop paying for packs etc then the income from eRep will fall and then they may be forced to do something.
I stop paying into the game too.
You literally made me almost e-cry and it's not a joke :3 Old good damn times of Spoland, Croland, etc. With normal battlefield that united people, remember the times when Poland had 60k (SIXTY THOUSANDS !!!!!) of citizens? Jesus. Where is this eRepublik?
This was such a good game, it's unbelievable how easy was to fk it up 🙁
In memoriam
As if they care.
They found some suckers to pay every month, why should they deceive them ?
The game is dead
There will be no coming back, no new server
Just deal with it
And leave with good old memories
Talán.