Script wars! Have we had enough? [BBC]

Day 1,125, 09:59 • Published in Romania Romania • by dsalageanu

I started it as a harmless comment, but it turned into a larger point of view. Here are my $0,02 on scripts:

Every professional soldier / commander is actively seeking any possible loophole in order to increase the advantage of his own team. If scripts are usable, then we have them and they have them. I'm not talking about any particular battle-script, but tools in general.

We were building prototypes years ago, I can definitely imagine that similar things (or way better ones) are still being used today. Everybody remember the "operatiunea mamaliga"? That was a script used to donate q1 food in order to fill the inventory of enemy tanks. In effect, it was a dramatic tank jamming weapon, which limited the effectiveness of tanks to the size of the initial weapons inventory. It won some battles for us, generated some frustration. Quickly after that, the Indonesian army started to use volunteers to manually achieve similar effects (although less effective). Eventually CAPTCHA was introduced for all donations, rendering our weapon useless.

I wrote once a brief history of such operations during my active time in Erepublik, feel free to read it here: http://tinyurl.com/2welh2f

I've said it before: whatever CAN be done, WILL be done. We (EDEN, PEACE, ATLANTIS, whatever Erep multi-national elite we are referring to by "we") always outnumbered (and outgunned) Erepublik developers, due to the following two reasons:

1. This is a true social MMPORG. Human intelligence + social interaction + REAL WORLD IDENTITIES = massive hardcore motivation. The "I'll die on your throat" kinda motivation. Ugly to mess with.

2. Regardless of the bunch of kids playing this game, it is still an adult playground. Adults tend to have lots of shiny toys like skills, money, companies, enterprize-class infrastructure, access to data centers, employed programmers and much more. AND a stupid agenda, like having fun.

Every time the developers worked for and with the community, things were goo😛 population was growing rapidly, the new world was thriving. Of course, lots of this growth was lost due to the inability of the game to retain newcomers (although supported by MASSIVE efforts of the community itself, think Labour / Education Ministries across the world, just to name one example) or because of sluggish administration - but this is hardly our fault.

Every time the developers (say management) did things against the community, things turned ugly. There are really few options left for doing something good out of this (same as years before):

A. Work on the game balance and mechanics. There are lots of brilliant and simple ways to restrict the usage of scripts and clones. Find them. Or crowdsource the problem, I'm sure we can find a way, given a proper motivation (a clean game maybe?) . But in order for us to follow, you have to lead.

B. Listen to the community. Don't do what the community asks for, but do what you know they want. Human interaction, human intelligence, real drama in a safe environment. That's what I would pay for. The game is, after almost 3 years, quite playable and enjoyable. It would be a good time to consolidate and improve, now that most ridiculous ideas are out of the way. Think bugfixing, 6 sigma, thorough marketing and great community moderation.

C. Get rid of all the human interaction component and do another Shitville, that would work brilliantly. Well, without us, but it may work. Hell, I know so many games that are producing billions without having any human interaction / multis / scripts, etc. Oh wait, there're all on Facebook...

Cheers!
dsalageanu