[eJSF] The Gap and the Cap. What step?

Day 3,625, 04:19 • Published in Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina • by Fanaxidiel

Hello friends,
let's try together to analyze "the days of Mayhem", as it was widely considered a test on a possible game development that should help new players to be able to "make the difference" again.

The first step to review something is setting some "criteria" which should guide the overlook and the judgement.
I guess that we can generally use two main criteria to see if a game development is really goo😛 the GAP and the CAP.
- The Gap is what increases some players' chances to make the difference because of some specific reason (they struggled more, they paid more, they are more intelligent or else..). If you don't have a gap, you can't ask to the players to struggle to create it or fill it up. So a gap is needed.
- The Cap is what puts a limit to the differences between players, and gives more chances to the new players to make the difference too. If you don't put a cap, sometimes, the gap goes too far, and discourages some players from playing.



Erepublik has, as everyone can see, a problem of excess of Gap, since the new players can hardly make the difference on a battlefield, and the other modules of the game are secondary in respect of the war one. So there's a lack of interest in growing up an account, because the Gap can't be filled anymore.

The Days of Mayhem tried to create a different situation, substantially putting a Cap to the strength of developed accounts. The ability to divide strength was a little sop for the old players, who had to chose how to distribute skills among several terrains. The changes in strategy that this could have implied were too complicated to be fully disclosed in a few days, and, as the title of the event stated, we have seen a few days of real chaos.

First of all it's nice to recognize that the admins tried to do something for the "not-so-developed" accounts. This step should have been taken a long ago, but nevertheless it's a good step, and I personally thank them for taking care of the newer plyers. We have to notice, anyway, that the event wasn't well balanced and that many players actually stopped fighting. This also brought a huge fall in the markets, especially talking about Q7 weapons.
More in general eRepublik needs a solution on the long term, that can help new players to make the difference despite of the gap and the old ones to save their benefits for struggling and spending so much for their accounts. A fair solution wouldn't delete all the efforts of the old ones, and wouldn't prevent the new ones from making the difference too.



My proposal for the future is to create some Mayhem rounds in every battle. There's no need to make it complicate😛 it could be some recurring round, as it's for air battles, assigning 22 points the second round, the sixth and so on. The hit would be based on capped strength and the epic battles (like it should be in the air ones) would be made with a total amount of hits and not of damage. All the players would have a chance and even the lower strength players would be interested in packs and candies, since they would have the chance to rule a battle, win a BH or anyway be helpful for their country. The strategy would require a bigger coordination to have the proper players online at the right time, to win some round. The players with older accounts would still have many rounds where they would challenge each other, and win medals, but they would enjoy their gap for 1/3 only of the total points. Terrains have showed to complicate the battles, maybe too much. They're not essential to this proposal.

This solution would probably help Plato too, in three ways:
1) he would enjoy new customers from the lower strength players' crowd, who would start buying the packs, being finally be able to make them worthy to be bought
2) the new customers would increase the overall competition and force the old players to increase their efforts
3) there wouldn't be high internet traffic peaks (don't forget that Plato is relying on AWS Servers, which means more resources used, more money to pay) since different players would join different epic battles

I don't pretend to have a solution. But I'd like to read some citizen's feedback about this idea, hoping that the renewed admins' interest for the new players won't harm the old ones, making it possible for us all to rebuild together our community and enjoy many years more in the new World.

Have a nice game!