The Game Dies A Slow Death

Day 874, 01:13 • Published in India Serbia • by Ind1anMartyr
WARNING : Before you begin, please note that this is a very boring article and is about game mechanics and general frustration about why the game is taking a nose dive. Its very long and winding, and I am not sure which among you would find it worthwhile reading. If long articles are not your thing, please skip it but if you are passionate about the game, please read and pass it around. Thanks!


Hi guys,

As we all know, games have a limited shelf life and usually MMOs have it much longer simply because of the friends we make and the relationships we develop that force us to stay in the game in the hope of meeting up and teaming up and sharing a word or 2 with friends. That is the reason some oldies continue playing and putting in comments here and there, just as a way of saying hello.

Why do games have that limit to their life? Its simple because games are just bundles of code with set behaviours and responses and after a while the player exhausts all possible permutations and the novelty of the game wears off. An MMO like eRepublik is special in its concept as it tries to mimic the social fabric of life and its very interactions across a global audience. That is the reason that it has so many possible outcomes of every action that a player does amongst his group ingame.

Another important aspect of keeping the excitement of a game alive is its achievements that allow people to strut their wares and be praised. Usually in eRepublik, about 6 months of aggressive play are enough for a player to have achieved everything and unless he is more involved with nation building, his interest starts waning and some players start drifting away. The ones who have been passionate with all aspects of the game though still stay involved and focused until eventually something happens that really turns them off and pushes them out and ends it for them.

This is not a treatise on why it happens to most, but I felt it was time to write what has pushed me away despite wanting to stay on for the love of the game. Perhaps it might echo the thoughts of a few others and pass a vital message to the moderators to help make the game better.

Gameplay mechanics making PTOs ridiculously easy is the biggest reason for me to throw in the towel. In the beginning few months, I enjoyed it immensely and was involved in everything and volunteered for everything. Being in the games industry myself, I tried to do my small bit by regularly buying gold as a homage to the great work done by the coding team. But 7 months of fighting off PTOs against various groups of idiotic gentlemen has taken its toll on me. It has sapped my will to do anything and I do everything mechanically and do not even wish to log in much or read my messages.

I do not blame the PTOers....in every game there always exists a group on the "dark side" so to say. (thats social strategy) but surely the game mechanics are all wrong if it makes it so damn easy for every idiotic Tom, Dick, harry, Channer, MAFIAer, loser PTOer to get stronger and keep trying week after week on end! The game design is at fault here with too much emphasis put on trying to get gold sold rather than trying to preserve those that play.

Whilst real life obviously helps nations that are big and strong, with all this hoopla about "real life should not be dragged into game"; ironically the game itself crushes those nations with low population without giving them any chance to succeed thanks to its flawed processes. So it effectively glorifies bullying more so because of the lure of selling more gold. (After all, logically does not more players mean better chances of them buying gold? ergo more sales) Nothing wrong with this thinking (after all we all live and work to feed ourselves) but the balance has to be adjusted with well thought out checks in place.

Some good suggestions were made to try and helps the game designers decide the balance but they have all fallen on deaf ears! The designers seem to think a glitzy v2 will be the be-all, end-all...and that current players will hang around licking their lips in anticipation.

That is so wrong!!! Since the last 2-3 months have you not seen the number of people quitting? not only in india, across many nations and yes, moderators I know you are aware of it, but ignoring it for now because you have your heads up v2 and will not be moved away from that in order to address v1 gameplay flaws.

The basic tenets of a successful game are 2 fold -> (there are more but im not talking sales and marketing or packaging here)

1. Ensure end user satisfaction and continued participation by being responsive and pro-active.


Having a well oiled support structure and constant bug fixing and well-thought out gameplay tweaks and suggestions I have been an avid reader of the series of excellent suggestions by Lt.Scheisskopf, hardly any of which have been implemented, let alone discussed! Instead some really silly changes such as the infamous subscription button, were brought on without any logic!

I had suggested in a comment once to increase voting age and to break up gold via referrals such that no one gets 5 gold within a week for making multis. This was echoed by an article and an open post on the forums as well by someone else (I think it was Woxan or Cerb when Australia were being PTOed)

(SIDE NOTE : These same PTOers (the channers) are now in india and while I would say they just cannot win, this time I really wont bother. @ Moderators, please try and get their asses banned so they can feel the pain! 🙂 )


Anyway to continue, that article gave hope...but what did the game designers do? Instead of waiting for a week to get multi gold or to create a PTO voting army, as long as you have unique IPs, you can create a voting army in 2 days! lol...talk about things going south! Its obviously good to allow citizens to fight from day 1, but like I always said, why not make people earn the right to vote at a certain age only! Everyone knows that in the first few days, citizens do not know much about politics or the nation, to be able to vote responsibly and surely the one in the game for the long haul will not mind getting voting privilege at lvl 13-14! ...which is something very basic which a game designer should know and think up himself.
..

2. Always be sure that a new module implementation (especially an online tool) will be buggy despite intensive internal testing.


Putting all your eggs in one basket and hoping v2 will excite everyone so much that all players who had quit will come back to the game, is a pipe dream. Its more likely in fact that you will be swamped with support tickets about rule explanations and browser lockups due to the insane amount o scripts being run. You could effectively end up pushing people out of the game even more! (as has been evinced by the huge exodus of players, especially from Iran who believe the new game will be highly bandwidth intensive and would probably concur with them) As it is, even the current version of the game scrips chew up and accentuates the Firefox memory leak, causing me real grief and im sure a number of users as well.

Nuff said though, I will probably keep 2 clicking till I can be bothered and buying gold (cos i still support the game) but really for me, the PTO scenario has made me so sick of this game, that I have no social interaction, and no interest in fending off arguments by noobs. on top it, a lot of some very good friends have left the game and I do not feel like discussion or argumentation to explain a point anymore.


This is not a goodbye or an "I QUIT" grandiose article cos all of that means nothing for me ... I dont look for messages of sympathy and I dont care if people wish to criticise my actions or deeds in the last few months - to them i say "SHUT THE F88K UP! I and chill" . Its a game and if I feel like, I will play or click as and when I might feel like it but what brought this article on was simply that I feel for the game coders and designers who started off with a wonderful idea and it gives me great sadness to see the game plumbing the depths.

Save the game from dying a slow death!!!!


Oh and...save India from dying a slow death!! Serbia PLEASE ATTACK US!! We will give you gold 😉

adios and thanks for reaching this line to the 2-3 readers who did bother! 🙂

Au Revoir.