The War Module - History and Analysis

Day 1,044, 08:00 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Dishmcds
A friend of mine asked for some input on the new changes to the Arena War Module, so here's some light analysis and history behind the module itself, and where it comes from. While some of the improvements are good, I think personally some of them went a little too far in simplification.

Disclaimer: This article is very very long.

The Beta PvP

In the Beta Module, it was entirely PvP with no "battlefield" at all. It was a screen showing the number of people in the queue, and showing where you were listed in order to fight. Opponents were chosen by when you entered the queue and what position you were in, and if no opponent was available, you sat at the top of the line (or wherever you ended up upon entering) waiting for the other side to get some fighters.

It was turn based, although automatically generated, much like the new PvP module of V2 was, showing how many points you hit for, and so on. It also showed the advantages that you received from your Weapon Quality, Strength, Rank, and so on (I wish I had a screen cap, although I think Emerick saved one of them from long ago somewhere on the US forums). It was during this module that the "Meatshield" tactic was developed (originally by /v/akistan's Glorious 300), where you'd send all your top fighters into battle with no weapon, doing as much damage to everyone as possible. Once you fought, you were removed from queue. Then, they'd send their medium and lower strength in to fill up the queue before the higher strength people could regain their wellness and fight again. This was also helpful in using their weapons, as production back then was much harder to achieve in mass (although there was no limit on employees either, which made it a bit easier on a pinch). During this time, the gift and food bombing tactics were also developed (once gifted, you couldn't heal so you watched the queue to see who fought, and sent gifts, and then filled their inventory with food so they could refill with weapons since there was no delete option).

Overall, the Beta PvP was raw, but the concept was good. It allowed you to choose your opponents for the most part, and required large organisational skills to put together units of people (unless you were Indonesia, and your entire population logged in at the same time). Wellness Packs were released shortly before V1 if I recall correctly, which brought "tanking" into play (originally called "pulling a Nave" due to his battles in Budapest), and made wars much more expensive to fight since you had to spend gold to kill fighters.

Tearing Down the Wall

Once the apparent glitches and bugs were brought to the front of the battles in the Hungarian Invasion at the end of Beta, and the war module was brought to a screeching halt, the Wall was introduced (with Trivia, which was eventually removed). Trivia was country based, so whatever country you lived in determined your questions and total damage. Sucked for mobile armies, since most people either couldn't understand English, or used the decoder, and was removed (since this isn't exactly a game driven largely by intellect). The wall worked well for most of V1, until Gold was so easily produced with shoddy economic formulas and credit cards that it made most Defence Systems and Hospitals too easy to replace or defeat. It turned every battle into a battle of two clickers and gold. Large countries relied on heavy two click damage and last minute tanking, small countries died in battle. The trick to determining who would win was still determined, as it was in Beta, by when the battle was started (funny how that still works today, right?). Whoever had the battle in prime time largely won (some battles, that people stayed up for, which didn't happen as often as people might want to think).

The problem with the Wall was largely based on Economic issues. After two years, an overly simple economic module made it both too easy to earn gold for countries to use, and too hard for new players to be successful (older players had long since saturated markets, built their capital, and had excesses so large they could fight every day on maximum and still make large amounts of money). Once Erepublik had grown so large, and it was so easy to cheat (multi-accounts still produced gold, wall size, and cost to start battles), that the Economy just wasn't going to sustain anything for much more than a few months. Essentially, the Version was only good for 6 months, and we had to sit through it for more than a year, showing it's problems. The Hospital and DS industries were dead, and were only useful for countries to run (or Max's Credit Cards). Furthermore, the advantages to DS Systems had been outdated for almost a year due to higher damage outputs, simply because people were growing older and stronger.

Tanking would cost roughly 120 Gold per person in this version for one day's worth of battles (40 G for weapons, 80 for WP), making it expensive to do so. Initially, this was good, as most countries tanked few people in battle, and only at the end if necessary. Towards the end, most countries had built so much gold, there were battles that literally blew 20,000 G or more in tanking costs alone.

Essentially, this version should have been released earlier, modified, or replaced sooner.

The Battlefield Emerges

In V2, they modified the economic and military modules, which offered the game some complication. Some liked it, some didn't. They added new weapon types to stimulate industry (reduced saturation in the weapons markets to some degree), and offer a different type of military strategy (weakness and strength to differing weapon types). No longer could you just fight anyone, you had to be smart.

The problem was, the only two types of weapons really worth anything were tanks and helicopters. Helos allowed for greater movement, tanks could destroy anything because the damage output formulae were completely unbalanced. They reduced tanking costs by reducing the amount that each WP cost, and doubling it's health bonus (.5 G for 20 wellness instead of 2 for 10). That, along with the addition of multiple uses per weapon decreased the cost of tanking, allowing individuals who were not "tanks" from V1 the ability to afford to heal throughout the battle. Eventually, they implemented the food consumption rule, which is the first viable, non-Gold expense that can increase Health throughout the day, meaning countries now have a way to use their local currency in battle, instead of Gold.

There were two large problems in the first introduction of the V2 war module. The first was the time zone to activity level (there was a massive decrease in active players, combined with the time zone advantage basically meant you just gave up on any battle started outside your time zone). This meant we were at levels of activity just over what we had in Beta, dealing with economies and military tactics that required huge amounts of troops. This just wasn't very feasible. The second was the formulae problems in damage (among other things).

Reintroduction of Gold and the War Module V2.1

In the V2 war module, there was a Rocket Launcher Booster that helped you in winning a battle, but it wasn't necessarily a sure thing. It did 20 damage right off the bat for 1.49 (iirc) G. Now, to the current module, there's an "Instant Defeat" (should be KILL, but meh, Broken English FTW), meaning I could use no weapon, and hit the button and defeat my opponent. This brings tanking back to a larger role in war, and two clickers back into prominence. From what I can tell, your opponents are chosen at random, which takes most group strategy out of the works, and essentially you just hit the new Wall, fighting in some PvP action that you have little control over.

So How Do We Improve It?

1. Go back to the Original PvP module, with the Queue, just make it prettier. All the nice things that you’ve implemented are great for PvP, so by simplifying it the way we have, you’ve basically undone all that, and gone back to one that most people won’t want to play again.

2. Remove the "Instant Defeat" option. People will buy plenty of Gold if you add in some National Expenditures as well as the personal purchases (such as "upgrade from Low to Medium for a Month for X Gold). You don't need to oversaturate the war module with gold purchases, most new players buy small amounts of gold as it is.

3. If you're going to offer me multiple types of weapons, please allow me to choose my opponents. Having the different weapons makes no sense if I can't choose who I fight.

4. Fix the formulae for damage and productivity. Fix the economy, fix the war module. Fix the war module, fix the economy. They are, regardless of what any moralfag wants to say about war, mutually exclusive concepts. They always have been, and always will be what drives every single module in this game, including the political module.

Peace Out Once Again,

Just Another Guy

Sorry, no pics. It was already long enough.