[eRep] Down, Down, Down
Gnilraps
Day 3307 of the New World
December 9, 2016
I am concerned about the future of eRepublik.
Obviously the servers are still up and running. You reading this article is evidence of that.
And it would seem that someone checks in on us once in a while. The 9th Anniversary thingy, though underwhelming after all, at least shows that eRepublik still shows up on a to-do list at eRepublik Labs. There’s also the Developer Log which shows that someone on Admin is doing something one out of every three days. So we’re not dead just yet.
But do a little snooping around.
Start with the eRepublik Labs Web site. Here’s what I foun
😛
1: VERY OLD Images
This is the home page of eRepublik Labs, and their eRep-related image is OVER THREE YEARS OLD!
Notice the links to “Tactical Heroes”? Yeah, they shuttered that game 10 months ago.
I’m not sure what qualifies as “NEWS” these days, but I guess “old” news is still “news”. I guess.
2: Games that show a clear bias towards mobile apps
Check out the “Games” page.
It’s kinda nice that eRepublik gets 3rd highest billing on that page, but it is clearly the “sore thumb” on the page. Every other game (including the aforementioned and defunct “Tactical Heroes” which is perplexingly still linked) is a mobile app.
Do you wonder if eRepublik Labs is still committed to eRepublik the browser game? You aren’t alone. So let’s click the “blog” and see what we can know.
OH! It certainly does appear that they’ve visited their own website in the past year. Well, exactly one year ago actually. The last blog update is the year 2015 in review. Sadly, no mention was made of eRepublik. I guess 2015 wasn’t a year that eRepublik Labs did anything noteworthy in eRepublik. Now that I think about it, I guess they’re right.
3: What have they done lately?
Should it worry us that the last meaningful award they are bragging about came to them in 2011 (scroll down)?
Maybe. Maybe not.
OK, maybe they just don’t pay that much attention to their web site. Surely they must be paying attention to the eRepublik game itself, right?
4: Nope.
Guess how many days it has been since they released Q5 houses? 784 Days. And during those 784 days we have been staring at the slightly faded images of the Q6 and Q7 houses that they’ve obviously made some type of plan to release. Do you actually believe that their plan was so far reaching that they thought, “let’s wait 785 days, THEN release the higher Q houses!”? I don’t. I’m more inclined to think that they’ve got so many “back burners” at eRepublik Labs that they sort of lose track of how many unfinished projects they’ve actually got. And let’s not even start talking about Perception Training and higher Q Air weapons.
How about the persistent problems with the battle clock? I don’t know about you, but I frequently wait for a new round to begin with the battle page open and the little countdown timer ticking down until the big button turns bright yellow and says, “Next Round”. Then I quickly click that button in hopes to be the first person to start fighting in the round, thus establishing my place for the Sky Hero (or Battle Hero) medal. BUT WAIT!!! Someone else has already done 8K damage with their Aircraft? How did they get 8K damage in when my battle screen clearly shows that the clock has only JUST started ticking? Easy answer, they battle timer has been screwed up for as long as I can remember.
And how about the mobile version of the site? Surely a company which is putting SO MUCH ENERGY into the mobile platform would have deep insights and frequent updates to make our beloved game more mobile-friendly. Right?
Wrong.
Very little has changed on the mobile version since it was introduced, at least from the perspective of this user. I still cannot access any newspaper, a player profile, any country data, any party data, any MU data, any storage data, or any employee data. I can’t vote, buy a company, access a map, or convert my CC into Gold on the mobile version. I suppose it is worth noting that I can buy gold there though. Hey Admin, please tell us how many people are accessing eRepublik via the mobile version. I’d like to know.
And the global population continues to decline. This is the most difficult pill to swallow, because a declining player base creates an unsustainable environment. Already the worker pool is struggling to produce enough work tickets to support existing industries and prices have been in constant inflation for almost 200 days (since the introduction of Aircraft). But we have seen fewer and fewer player-driven activities in social circles. We have seen IRC become a graveyard for activity. We have seen user-scripts turn players into robots who don’t interact socially and are therefore of little true use to building a community. And we have seen Admin make decision after decision which has harmed the social aspect of the game, turning it more and more into a brainless clickfest.
For these and actually several other reasons, I am fearful that eRepublik may not be worth playing at its 10th anniversary.
So let me offer a few rays of hope.
1: I have seen a few old faces emerge from eRep’s email blitz over their 9th Anniversary. Kudos to Admin for trying to resurrect the dead (would have made a better Easter promotion maybe?) It remains to be seen if any of these resurrected citizens will be inclined to spend money, we can hope they will.
2: There are some things they could do to stimulate growth.
They have not gotten serious about offering existing players meaningful rewards for accumulating referrals in a long time. The 5 Gold prize for the Society Builder medal might have been a lot of Gold 8 years ago, but it is the equivalent of peanuts now. Admin could get VERY serious about engaging us for referrals by offering MEANINGFUL awards like packs or big piles of gold. It’s up to them, of course, to police multis and I hope they do that. But you CAN motivate people to promote your game if you reward them handsomely enough. And if they would get creative with this it would help.
They could introduce the Q6 and Q7 house in such a way that would actually stimulate the economy. We don’t have enough Work Tickets right now. Make the Q6 and Q7 houses produce so many overtime hours that they become “affordable” the same way the Q1 house is. That combined with the added energy pool that a Q6 + Q7 could offer would stimulate both production AND consumption. But they’ve GOT TO ADD THOSE HOUSES.
They could make Perception Training a thing SOON. They just spent some effort resurrecting old players with their 9th Anniversary emails. Why not take this timing advantage and introduce Perception? The only meaningful thing for a resurrected player to do at this point is ATA combat. They will be so far behind in strength training that all the ghost boosters in the world won’t really help. But they can start ranking up in Air while there’s still time, and if Perception Training were to begin happening, who knows maybe some of these returned players might just buy in. Hey Plato, strike while the iron is warm!
They could fix the damned rankings so that Air Combat Kills and Damage showed up. I mean, this is a SOCIAL browser game, but if I do 30,000 Air combat kills in a week nobody will even know because I won’t even show up on the leaderboard. Come on, throw us a bone here. And realize that by fixing these little things it makes the game better for us to play! Do It!!!
They could kill off the Maverick Pack. I think I understand why it came, they wanted a new revenue stream. But time has now proven that the Maverick Pack has killed off the spirit of the lower Division players. People who had spent months and years hoping to “specialize” in lower division warfare were slapped in the face by Admin selling off access to lower divisions for 15 euro/month. Kill it off, Plato, and find a different revenue stream. I’ve got some ideas if you want them.
They could start playing their own game again. It used to do a lot for the community when “Plato” and “Alexis Bonte” and other bigwigs would show up in the Media with articles and stuff. That gave the impression that Admin was noticing us and was interested in their game. Go ahead and make all the mobile apps you want, but if you’re not going to pull the plug on eRepublik, then at least play it with us. We’re a fun bunch!
They could create an entire new set of awards and medals. Lots of people play for medals. Have more media medals than the single lame Media Mogul award. They KNOW that media is an important facet of the game. Why the heck not create some new medals for it??? And how about some more politics medals? Make some medals for completing other ingame activites that require more than simple clicks… Seriously Admin, if you want to generate sudden activity, reward activity with medals. We like shiny things.
They could award Military units with more than JUST shiny things. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of all the hardware EZC has won. But if each of those medals came with an injection of CC into our MU account? You’d better bet we’d use it to generate activity. Yep, we would. Because WE LIKE TO PLAY THIS GAME.
Do you hate us, Admin? Please don’t. We like your game and want to play. But we feel remarkably abandoned by you these past couple of years, and we’re starting to get restless.
3: I will say this. If Admin can make some exciting improvements to this game, restoring some of its sociability and user experience, I will start spending money on it again.
Did you hear me say that Alexis?
You may now return to your regularly scheduled clicking
Comments
Read, Vote, Shout
https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/-erep-down-down-down-2623394/1/20
Save eRepublik
The article has many good points (I don't agree on the perception training ground thing, because this game has already a huge gap between newbies and elders, and though I am an old player I can't think that erep will survive if new ones don't have a chance to feel useful too).
Anyway the main point is: UNTIL WE BUY THEY WON'T CHANGE.
So happy that you decided to stop buying as I did. It's the only chance we have.
Dear Alexis pls contact me!
And again!
One could argue that they are holding off on making higher quality housing companies available for upgrade, because it would take a "free gamer" that long to acquire that much wealth for an upgrade, same can be said for aircraft qualities.
My argument is to design the higher Q products so that they are actually not so out of reach. The products that is, not the companies.
Well cart>horse
and redesign q2..5 with the same thing in mind. then everybody would have 4 digit (or 5 digit) health.
Its Christmas time try to be happy
You should come back to eUSA
He's cockblocked
I would love to come back.
Will you help him?
Gnilraps for CP," Gnilraps for Chick Pardon", I would love to be press secretary, and despite my best efforts he will/would win
Oblige actually Pardon me like 1 year ago. Good Times
Merry Christmas CG.
Merry Christmas to you too. I feel like we have not talk in a long time. How is life?
I did notice one thing - when they gave us the extra energy bar for the anniversary, the economy perked up. People were actually using more food and weapons.
Otherwise, I'm thinking that things are circling the drain. They had a good thing and killed it with too many changes.
I agree!
I even suggested them my idea about changing Maverick pack(not turning it off), but they are still thinking about it(at least they said that)...
As i see they do not care about this game, although they earn quite some money from it!
And i can`t understand why? Why they don`t want to earn moaR money from it?
more rewards for referrals is a bad idea. go back a few years into the west which introduced a new referral system. at about 1000 you would get an elephant that would travel the map at 2 times any ingame horse. at about 10000 the user would get his own world and might invite players to play with him by passing tickets.
a player abedy ran a info site called thewestinfo.net or something like that. after the introduction of the new referral system abedy got quite eager about it. you see it was not only invites but people progressing in the game. so to the bottom of his site. he played his refferal link and players that came to his site clicked in that link and joined the west. and abedy;s referral points grew and grew and grew. abedy soon reached the magicaal number and was perma banned by innogames for use of multies because according to them they were never serious about that reward as according to them it was impossible to achieve.
i called the idea the whoring out of the game. the community manager called me a weasel because of that. in the end everything i said was correct. games are always liue'ing to the customers.
however the west had the words people in moderators i have ever met in my life they basically perma banned anyone that was keeping the game alive. and their moderation never made sense. here atleast our moderators somehow get things right.
Maybe they could encourage referrals by offering a way to help us FUND our own offsite campaigns. If Admin agreed to pay for a Youtube ad or a portion of it, for instance, I would do the work of putting it out there where I might get it noticed.
The story you tell of abedy sound awful. I would just like to see eRep make some kind of effort. Others can get creative about how that might look. I'm looking for action from Admin is all.
yeah their relations soured and he was doing the most for them as he kept a great site with all updates. i am not one for sending a ton of links out so not certain how one should approach that. yeah perhaps if they ran ads in certain channels we would see more people already. innogames did it to death with forge of empires - briefly had me on there again. i think your talking about partner sites which they might fund if you contact them. or you could open the site and ask them to place paid ads there.
I played TheWest... it started turning into a pay-to-play (decently) game, and I caught a popup ad for eRepublik.. I left TheWest and never looked back.
at the time (early 200😎 eRep was still good for non-paying players.
I was the famous Jakkals in the west they even banned my name from the site.
I ran a handful of small and medium sized towns.. infamous for an Easter Sunday Massacre which virtually doubled my territory.
You are spot on with the Social Theme in your charticle. All the newbies are not writing here in Japan, interacting with their peers, hell even the Parties are stagnating rubble before the all mighty Dictatorship. Something is bound to change, or will it?
hurry back and stay next time
mobile version though is not fair comment. its a very old feature that has become redundant with the introduction of android. running the full version in a browser does not lead to any problems on a mobile.
perhaps they could bring out an app version of the game. erep labs the website. think its nearly the same thing. more people are reached on facebook which is much simpler to maintain. twitter i know alexis bonte had a twitter account and there was some twitter action from some communities but its a static newsfeed. erep does not have the volume of news to maintain followers in twitter.
as to app versions - yes i have seen this as well they are developing mostly android apps currently. but then again a game like clash of clan and clash royale have millions of users so mobile app development is mostly the path most game companies will follow. payment is much easier. so yeah i see where your criticism is coming from but in my point of view lots are a bit unfair.
no it isn't redundant. sure they shouldn't be making a separate version for the mobile, but they should make the existing one be responsive. when i open erep on my mobile, i can't see anything before i zoom in on what i want to click on. that's a ridiculous design from a pre-android time.
i still have galaxy s4 for me the game is ok on a mobile not the same but then again im on computers the whole day. on a tab i dont think there will be much difference.
Well, it depends on the size of your display. I still have Galaxy S2 because it works. I am planing on buying an S7 soon, because, well, I think it has a bit better battery life, but I really dislike the slightly larger screen it comes with. I believe S4 is about the same size as S2, so it is comparable to my experience. I can do everything on the phone, but what ever I want to do requires me to zoom in that specific part of the page and that is annoying and not required with modern HTML and CSS that support media queries and responsive design.
well zoom is just pinching your fingers together so that does not bother me.
It's not hard to zoom, I agree. But try looking at some decently made responsive website on the mobile and you will immediately notice the difference. No zoom should be needed unless really necessary (like for zooming a map).
Ney
I still have all my notes, any time someone of consequence at eRep Labs wants to talk.
Let me save you the trouble with the answer to every suggestion ever made.....
Hello,
Thank you very much for taking the time to send us your suggestions. We will take your opinion into consideration and will see how we can use it to improve the game.
We advice you to post your suggestion on the designated parts of the eRepublik Forum so you can get some valuable feedback from the community, which can possibly help us to further develop the idea.
https://forum.erepublik.com/index.php?/forum/10-the-new-world/
Best regards,
Your eRepublik Team
I have collected many of those.
[removed]
Post on the forums.....where all good ideas go to die a slow, painful death.
That's what forums are for silly Druid.
Actually we do check out and review ideas and suggestions, tks 🙂
@Alexis, it almost never feels that way though.
Getting my endorsement in before Plato endorses article.
I tried to walk the line between expressing the community's rage and offering hopeful helpful input. I want Alexis to read it.
A) he might read it but wont care as his back is too sore from sitting on his bulging wallet.
😎 someone else will read it for him and deem it unimportant
C) Noone reads it and the game remains the same on its neverending downhill spiral to death
Im betting all my money on C. Ill even borrow a small house loan and bet on C
Truth
Great Article as one of the returning players would like to stay around for a bit.
Damn!
Hello.
Unfortunately, all true.
And unfortunately too, they will do nothing about your excelent suggestions, as usual.
Voted and shouted.