Join the new world

The eRep team recently announced that the cost of MPPs will rise from 30G to 100G per MPP. Not only is this increase substantial, it is unwarranted and will cause serious damage to many areas of the game. The admins say that this could make things exciting. However, it seems as if this, like many of the other updates, it's half-baked and will fail to live up to its promises.
Let’s look at the likely results that will follow:

1. Fewer Countries

This is probably going to be the most striking change. Most small countries are just keeping their heads above water as it is. In order to maintain MPPs under the current system, some even have Congressmen donate part of their 5G back in order to pay for MPPs now. 100G per MPP makes this even harder, if not impossible. Many countries, like Denmark and Belgium, opted to give either all or part of their territory away to another country as a protective measure. This trend will only accelerate under the admins new “idea”. Small countries simply won’t be able to afford the costs of upkeep.

It also damages the goal of creating new countries. It is hard to see how eRep can release more countries with this change. It is true that a new country cannot be attacked for a certain period of time. However, in that period, it is nearly impossible to build up sufficient population to stave off a PTO, much less withstand physical invasion. Given the lack of revenue that most new countries face, this is yet one more nail in the coffin of country expansion. It is often joked that places like eAfrica would merely becomes eRep colonies just like in RL. Charging ridiculous rates for MPPs guarantees it. Few people will want to joint a country that cannot survive.

The other side of this coin is that countries like Romania, Hungary and Indo could become even larger. Some say eRep could shrink to 10 countries. I doubt it would be this drastic. However, a 20-30% reduction in the number of sovereign states is not out of the picture. How this actually creates excitement, I fail to see.

2. Strengthening the Superalliances

There has been considerable unease with many with the whole idea of the superalliance. While many countries signed up to Eden and PEACE, there has been some opposition in domestic populations and there are a number of countries that opted for neutrality. There were even some attempts, like Sol, to set up alliances of neutral countries.

With this change, many small countries will need the superalliances even more. As they won’t even have the money for numerous MPPs, they will need the blanket of PEACE or Eden protection just for survival. Even if they can’t get the MPPs, they can at least get the benefit of the mobile troops if their territory is threatened. It is hard to see how further hardening of the PEACE/Eden axes is more exciting.

3. Further Economic Stress

The eRep economy is piss poor. Everyone by now is aware of the serious problems that arise under the current econ mod that this game runs under. The change only exacerbates this stress. First, governments in most countries have seen a sharp reduction in revenue due to the falling prices of goods and wages. Economic planning is far more art than science in this game as it is due to the limited econ mod. However, increasing the burden on states at a time like this seems to smack of the admins using the econ mod they created to set countries up for the fall and then use the MPP cost to move in for the kill.

Furthermore, if countries opt to simply cease to exist and merge with other countries, then it increases costs on GMs because many of them may have to purchase additional trading licenses. This actually might not be such a bad thing since there is an extreme oversupply of companies at the moment. However, the oversupply issue has not effected small countries that badly and GMs based in small countries that merge will likely be disproportionate effected. they will be thrown into countries which likely have extreme oversupply and will likely be driven out of business. Exciting? I think not.

The truth about this change is that the average player will not see much, if any excitement from this. The negotiations on any cost sharing, decision to join an alliance, or country merger will be taken by those that run the country. Any wars that result will likely be region swap wars and the planning will be in how to actually accomplish this without triggering trade embargoes that automatically result from war declarations. The average player will likely see their home currency wiped out, their business costs increased, their citizenship changed or some combination of the above.

If the admins were worried about MPPs, they could have limited their numbers. If they wanted better economies of scale, they could have focused on the econ mod instead of twitter buttons. This change is little more than a prophylactic measure that fails to address the real issues that have caused eRep to stagnate recently. Scrap the increase and focus on getting a better war and econ mod.