Dead Bodies Everywhere
Day 790, 15:16
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Published in USA 
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by
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by Joe DaSmoe
Stack'em high boys, lets build a fortress!
Currently there is debate being spurred about hospitals, citizen retention, and America's activity level. I figured I'd weigh in on the matter.
For a long time, old players such as myself and up and comers alike have trumpeted the call to move to our fortress regions. It's a good idea in principle, fortress regions are important, but is it working, does it help retention? We gain hundreds of players a day and every day hundreds of citizens die. America has been a revolving door for many months. I think its time for a change. Many new players are unwilling to move or don't understand the need to move and/or have a strong attachment to their home state. (I myself was reluctant to move when I started) We need to give these people a chance to figure it out before we shout move or die.
Citizen retention is the single most important aspect in growing a successful community in eRepublik.
We can rank up our active citizens through military organization, encourage activity from within political parties, and even encourage newbies to stay the course through mentoring and government aid programs. All of these tactics are good and form a solid foundation for us to build upon as a nation. But these aspects alone are obviously not producing the desired effect. If they were, we would have far more active folks.
The problem is what do we do about the hundreds of players who slip through the cracks, the new citizen who gives up after only a week or a few days of playing?
I believe the current discussion on Q2 hospitals is a start.
I myself have been guilty many times in the past of shouting down the need for more hospitals. Well my friends, I believe its time to try a fresh approach because what we have been doing for damn sure isn't working. While I wouldn't support the placement of Q2's in every state, I feel that strategically placing a few in high RL population states would be a good barometer to see if the plan could help retain some rookies.
Another issue I believe is hurting us is our tax system.
I will likely catch hell for this from military folk and congressmen alike who feel any drop in revenue would be devastating to them or their programs. Coming up on a year ago, the treasury was robbed and Congress initiated the PANEC tax plan as an emergency measure to refill the coffers. Income taxes have been at or above 20% every since. Economic gurus and congress members have kept our import taxes extremely low and allowed our markets to become flooded with foreign competition, all under the old more stuff > gold theory. Then we have the 12% sales tax on the only absolutely essential item, food.
Companies either go under, barely break even, or even sell at a loss to stay afloat. As a result, wages dip lower, taxes stay high and people walk away. Think of it like this. A new player signs up. He looks around a bit and finds a job, making barely over one dollar a day. He has to eat, with his hard earned 80 cents in hand he spends 66 cents on some food. Of course this improves over time, but you can see the dilemma. As a rookie you are thinking wtf is the point of this? He looks at housing, Q1 house 100 bucks, guns, gifts, tix, all look as if they will take weeks to save up for. Skill seven jobs only pay in the 20's and it takes a long long time to gain work skill. Confused and broke, they find the game boring and quit.
I feel ya Hulkster
We have had a solid year of high income taxes, low imports, fortress strategy.
Yet we still hover around 20 thousand people, stuck in limbo, losing as many and sometimes more players than we gain. A couple of days ago I dug into my friends list. On my citizen account I removed 250+ dead citizens, this is the second time I've done this, the first time I found about 200. On my org account, about 75 of nearly one hundred former employees of mine were dead. I would like to see someone like Frost with his enormous friends list dig into his and see how many are dead.
The overall point is this. Its time to take a different approach. Even if these new ideas don't produce the desired results, at least we can say they were attempted.
Lower taxes, reduce foreign competition, build more Hospitals.
Good Luck America
~Joe
Currently there is debate being spurred about hospitals, citizen retention, and America's activity level. I figured I'd weigh in on the matter.
😃
For a long time, old players such as myself and up and comers alike have trumpeted the call to move to our fortress regions. It's a good idea in principle, fortress regions are important, but is it working, does it help retention? We gain hundreds of players a day and every day hundreds of citizens die. America has been a revolving door for many months. I think its time for a change. Many new players are unwilling to move or don't understand the need to move and/or have a strong attachment to their home state. (I myself was reluctant to move when I started) We need to give these people a chance to figure it out before we shout move or die.
Citizen retention is the single most important aspect in growing a successful community in eRepublik.
We can rank up our active citizens through military organization, encourage activity from within political parties, and even encourage newbies to stay the course through mentoring and government aid programs. All of these tactics are good and form a solid foundation for us to build upon as a nation. But these aspects alone are obviously not producing the desired effect. If they were, we would have far more active folks.
The problem is what do we do about the hundreds of players who slip through the cracks, the new citizen who gives up after only a week or a few days of playing?
I believe the current discussion on Q2 hospitals is a start.
I myself have been guilty many times in the past of shouting down the need for more hospitals. Well my friends, I believe its time to try a fresh approach because what we have been doing for damn sure isn't working. While I wouldn't support the placement of Q2's in every state, I feel that strategically placing a few in high RL population states would be a good barometer to see if the plan could help retain some rookies.
Another issue I believe is hurting us is our tax system.
I will likely catch hell for this from military folk and congressmen alike who feel any drop in revenue would be devastating to them or their programs. Coming up on a year ago, the treasury was robbed and Congress initiated the PANEC tax plan as an emergency measure to refill the coffers. Income taxes have been at or above 20% every since. Economic gurus and congress members have kept our import taxes extremely low and allowed our markets to become flooded with foreign competition, all under the old more stuff > gold theory. Then we have the 12% sales tax on the only absolutely essential item, food.
Companies either go under, barely break even, or even sell at a loss to stay afloat. As a result, wages dip lower, taxes stay high and people walk away. Think of it like this. A new player signs up. He looks around a bit and finds a job, making barely over one dollar a day. He has to eat, with his hard earned 80 cents in hand he spends 66 cents on some food. Of course this improves over time, but you can see the dilemma. As a rookie you are thinking wtf is the point of this? He looks at housing, Q1 house 100 bucks, guns, gifts, tix, all look as if they will take weeks to save up for. Skill seven jobs only pay in the 20's and it takes a long long time to gain work skill. Confused and broke, they find the game boring and quit.
I feel ya Hulkster
We have had a solid year of high income taxes, low imports, fortress strategy.
Yet we still hover around 20 thousand people, stuck in limbo, losing as many and sometimes more players than we gain. A couple of days ago I dug into my friends list. On my citizen account I removed 250+ dead citizens, this is the second time I've done this, the first time I found about 200. On my org account, about 75 of nearly one hundred former employees of mine were dead. I would like to see someone like Frost with his enormous friends list dig into his and see how many are dead.
The overall point is this. Its time to take a different approach. Even if these new ideas don't produce the desired results, at least we can say they were attempted.
Lower taxes, reduce foreign competition, build more Hospitals.
Good Luck America
~Joe
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go for broke!
DEAD BODIES!!!@#$!$#%!#^&&*(*&^%$ #@!!!
Taxes or hospitals will not get more Americans to stick around. The problem is we aren't doing anything, and people are bored.
FOREVER YOUNG!
I remember all the congressmen wanted "PANEC REPEALED ASAP" Whatever happened to that?
Oh my ! A yank with half a brain !
That's rare 😃
SHOW ME THE MONEY!
I obviously disagree Woxan, you say we arent doing anything, yet we are actively fighting abroad with our military and aiding our allies at home through MPP.
America can't be on the offense infinitely. I know war war helps retention but don't you think a little more coin in people's pockets would help as well?
>>Taxes or hospitals will not get more Americans to stick around.
Check out the most recent forum thread on this topic.
http://eusforum.com/index.php/topic,17693.0.html" target="_blank">http://eusforum.com/index.php/topic,1769[..].html
I've been selling at a loss since I started... The low import tax is killing me in the weapons market
We cant expect noobs to contact mentors, we have to go to them, train them into the game, if we gain 10 people a day its a good gain.
We aren't doing anything on the home front, or with our allies MPPs (Greece is more or less a training war). That's how you retain citizens.
If you want taxes lowered, pick which military boys you want to kick off the rosters.
Doing something won't retain players who can't fight anyways, Woxan. We need to do something like build a some Q2 hospitals to keep new players alive long enough to understand what is going on and how they can get involved in our country's system.
voted
The citizens that will use the Q2s are the ones who would have figured out that they need a ticket. Placing down low Q hospitals (which is a waste of GOLD, and for those who do fight, a waste of potential damage, and a blow if we have to retreat that region), will not help retention in the slightest.
Woxan you of all people know we have plenty of funds coming in. Even if the drop in taxes lowered revenue short term, the potential gain in active citizens would offset the loss if not exceed it.
i still dont understand why they dont move to the fortresses. When begin playing the first thing i did was buy a ticket and move to Florida. For me the most important thing was wellness so I just moved and learn how to use the hospital. Maybe we just need to say in the welcome email that if you dont move, you just die.
Taxes will not raise the number of active Americans, Joe. I won't comment on the level of funds coming in, other than it's been relatively lower ever since HLJ.
These are great points ... enjoy sunny Spain! voted
Woxan
-Also dismissing any ideas outright is ridiculous. You seem so certain it wont help retention, yet we haven't tried anything except giving away tix and food. What about the citizen who dont wanna move, those who don't go to the forums and seek free food/help? We just let them die without even giving them a chance to figure out a Q5 region is where its at?
Cause yelling it at them via the media/pm's sure as hell isn't working.
Well Woxan, although the military actions of the eUS may be slow at the moment, this is not always true as everyone may know.
I was lucky enough to have a friend tell me to start in Florida, but I for one support the idea of putting Q2's in higher population areas such as New York.
However I do agree that if a player is intelligent enough to use a Q2 hospital, they might as well move. This does not help the person who fights for the first time at level 5 and then cannot fight ever again. Maybe if they have that little extra amount of time from that boost of 20 wellness they may be able to be reached and evacuated to a fortress state.
good point Marcus. ^
Of course I seem certain it will not help retention. Remember the times of scrabman and Sam and Justin? Our retention was in the shitter. The primary reason it went up was because we were invaded. Direct war or a dynamic war fought through MPPs keeps citizens around, as they are curious.
Would it be better to fork out thousands of GOLD for dead citizens, or spend some on getting people tix and food and using the rest for better goals?
No it would not be better. But hanging half of our population out to dry is no good either. We could at least try to save a few thousand people, and buy only 3 or 4 hospitals if we put them in the more populated wasteland states.
The hospitals will not magically make peopel stick around. People quit because of boredom, not because of hospitals.
For every hospital we place down, our already strained Fortress states (Cali and Karnataka are too low), will cease to be fortress states. We will lose our strategic advantage over our states and our hospitals will be like Kansas in the great war: easy pickings and a great way to deal a blow.
My point is that the strategically placed Q2 hospitals may save at least a few thousand people to the point where we can get them to a fortress state. It would by no means be permanent, and it seems to me the cost is worth it.
And don't say hospitals have no factor in retention. If a noob has no knowledge of the game and fights in a non-hospital state, they drop below the point where they can fight. Seeing as how fighting is the most interesting part of this game, this may result in a rage quit.
I would also make this point. Unlike me or you Wox, not every single citizen is interested in war. Many wanna stay where they are, network, make friends, work, make money and build wealth etc.
As it is now, thats awful tough to do in the US and has been for a long time. Why is it that powerful countries around the globe have lower income taxes and high imports?
That all I add for now, gotta movie Im dying to watch 😃
^ That is also true.
How would they save a few thousand people? Do you think the 400 citizens/day we get ALL stick around and ALL quit because there's no hospital?
Over half of them don't even work or train the first time. Another 1/3 don't come back for day 2, and most of the rest are gone by level 5, leaving a handful of citizens around. Of those 400, we're lucky if 30 stick around.
See Poland, Spain, Romania, even the Huns. Ok going for realz now
And of course only 400 people join on that one day. No one will ever join our country after that one day.
Unless we get invaded, those hospitals could be standing for quite some time. I say a few thousand looking into the future.
Well then we may as well hand Karnataka over to Serbia then. Even though we'll lose it with our <2k population, Texas and New York will have their hospitals!
@Joe, our economy is the most efficient wartime economy and helped us win the war when our domestic production went to nearly zero. The problem is we are not fighting any serious conflict through our MPPs or directly. This drops consumption, and citizens sticking around.
I fail to see how keeping a chunk of citizens alive longer, possibly long enough to get them interested in this mundane game, is the same as defeat in our other fortress states.
But this debate is meaningless anyway, I know nothing will change. We will keep our 3 Q5's until someone kicks down the door and reduces us to one state again.
Boredom is what is making the citizens leave really. It's the same regime every day: Aegean Island's are attacked (Which are starting to be training wars really), work , train, look at a bunch of minor battle, read the newspapers if your not a 2-clicker, and go do whatever you do in real life, then sleep, wake up and do the same thing. If we had other epic battles like Hello Kitty, Lion King, or California, our population would stay entertained.
Polish babies are having fun as they recently just crushed Germany and are looking through to the eUK. We need to do something other then attack the same country every day.
awesome article!! i definately agree! maybe woxan and jude connors have forgotten what its like to be a noob
We need people who would work to eliminate PANEC as our economic impetus, because it is NOT an impetus any longer... It is squeezing the eUS dry of its vitality...
In Dasmoe we trust
If you want to keep citizens I think personally you need to engage them early, like make them feel they are apart of something. That's my take.
I'm a firm supporter of a few Q2's in wasteland states that really have some pull into the game; It would really give the newbies a chance of surviving, as that extra 20 wellness can really come in handy for them; I can't imagine being screwed out of your fighting wellness right away.
As far as lowering the fortresses goes, I don't see where the idea that their population would fall; that would mean people are moving out of it, for what??
The point would be to keep the players that DO stay, and this really could help retention rates, in the game and give them a chance to start an eLife on the right foot; assuming there isn't anybody helping him already. They'll obviously be moved into a fortress state at some point, so why not give them the chance to not auto-fail?
I agree with all but the hospital part of this article maybe if the admins made it easier for new players to see where the hospital is like right after you fight and where it says your damage you did then have the link under that then i would say yes to your hospital idea. but right now noobs don't know where to go to use the hospital all the noobs I help out are having a problem finding that.
also I would like to add that I have been helping a lot of noobs lately and only a couple of them have actually continued playing i provided them with food, moving tickets, advice, and gifts if their wellness was low. I did all i could even spent all my money to help retain those new players and it failed. Lowering taxes could help because players like to feel like they have money to do things with but then again could have no effect whatsoever.
just though of the song
"Bodies"
you know,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO_QntXc-c4" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO_QntXc-[..]Xc-c4
Right on Joe.
I countered the oppositions arguments to the Q2 hospital additions in my article here:
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/q2s-for-8-1146620/1/20" target="_blank">http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/q2s-[..]/1/20
Low import taxes are killing business.
I can't sell my product overseas due to their import taxes, but I have to compete with Mexican companies at home?
Something's not right here.
I don't get it, why don't you place Q5 hospitals in every (original) region and get it over with? We did that a year ago and it took us less than 6 months. You have 5 times more regions and probably 6 times the active population, so it's gonna take a comparable amount of time. At the peak of our empire, we could produce 2-3 Q5 hospitals a month, taking into consideration that we also had a constant Q5 Def System production (which is useless nowadays).
If I were you, I would set up a national contest, coordinated by the congressmen, in which every region that has a population above a certain rate (you can set additional conditions in average wellness or other stuff) gets a Q5 hospital. Then, you can allocate some resources in local currency for the congressmen to work with and take care of their population grow and retention (organizing gift shops, encouraging new players to join parties or army units, blah).
This strategy needs to be supported by all governing parties, as it will take many months to implement it, but it's also doable. There are institutions in eRomania that have an 18 months continuity in a very aggressive political environment, so no worries there.
Fantastic article. I am glad you chimed in on this topic! I agree that the U.S. government needs to take a look at these suggestions!