The problem with eRepublik
Nicolae Crefelean
Instead of a simple comment to this article: eRepublik[.]com where we really are... (BB-code rendering bug here - I linked to the article, and enclosed the whole title with the URL tags but it only picked up the eRep domain - changed it to [.] to trick the BB-code parser)
First of all, Alexis, thank you for reaching out to us.
The overall feeling that "eRepublik is dead" is a constant in years now. Being afraid not to ruin the balance is justified, because of the past of the game. However, everything you said starting with your blog post should be backed with facts. By the way, try to click your own link (to your blog post) in the article to understand what issues we confront with in the eRepublik media and how we have to avoid using "https" in links in various places (articles, comments, shouts etc) just to allow people to reach our links.
Back on topic now. While the "balance" fear is justified, there are a lot of places where eRepublik could've been refined but were ignored in years. The number of characters in article comments are not counted properly, the dreadful "CSRF attack" is still not being properly taken care of, and multiple small bugs ("thousands of paper-cuts") make eRepublik bleed all over the place and no one seems to care. But then we got new buttons.
We need a polished game, a properly balanced and stable guerrilla module, and why not an overkill of attention to the small bits and pieces of every module that would never ruin the balance of the game but make things easier for everyone, from new to old players.
There's no MU storage, there's no custom daily rewards set by the commander(s) for the MU members. How about settings DO rewards based on strength, division, whatever else? The old players are getting tired of manually handling donations that could be so easily automated in-game.
How about a media module that makes more sense? You should love it when you start writing, not hate it because of the poor CSS integration in the preview or the CSRF issue while writing longer articles. Regenerating the token in the back-end and picking up the article content in the front-end automatically would be way more civilized.
How about a proper clean-up of the HTML/CSS/JS? The game gets more and more bloated with stuff that's really really old. I've complained about those things in the past and many of those issues are still present today. While the mobile UI is rather useless than useful, loading the desktop UI will take a huge toll on mobile data because of all the relics in the front-end code.
Can you believe this message still lives on? It's in the code, along with others:
var company_create_same_industry_error = "You cannot own two companies in the same industry.";
Mobile? Most people wouldn't bet on eRepublik Labs fixing that. We appreciate words/plans, be we need facts. It just doesn't make sense to have components in BETA stage for years. That's not an excuse for such a long time of poor functionality. Unless there's a concrete plan to actually finish and polish those components in a reasonable time-frame, there's no point in releasing something that only adds to the existing problems of eRepublik. That's because it only shows again and again (read "proves") the lack of proper interest in the future of eRepublik. The mobile version of the game should've been spotless by now, but no resources have been allocated to that and this game is stuck in a desktop browser. With so many people on mobile devices today, the game should run flawlessly on mobile.
The new users would rather go to similar games (clones) than staying here, because they have a chance to be relevant on the battlefield. The divisions were broken from day 1. Anything non-variable is meant to "break". It's simply a matter of time. The game can generate money even if the divisions are based on strength or they are "dynamic", based on multiple parameters. I'm sure you kept noticing how a lot of people are here for the community. A key component in retaining new players is easy communication. Make it easy for them to get useful information from players. The private messages are not flexible enough, the chat is not good enough, the mentorship program is not good enough. Then what?
Communication is not just messages. The media module can serve as a communication platform. You can notify/alert the players when a subscribed newspaper has a new article. You can make it easy for all the players (old and new) to view the welcoming messages set by the president. You can help everyone contribute to ideas and/or decisions by national/international referendums. You can make it easier to MU commanders, party leaders and presidents to communicate more easily (broadcast) messages to the people under them. Keep the community alive and it will be easier to keep the new players. You can keep the people more interested in the in-game activities by creating a user-competition module, where people can participate with articles (links) and the others can vote. Set some custom rules or start with a small set of predefined ones (based on feedback from the community) and make it easy for everyone interested to donate money into a competition wallet, from where the prizes will be awarded automatically at the end of the competition. Makes it as easy as possible for any user to organize a competition in this manner and you will see the value of that pretty quickly.
Integrate eRepublik with online streaming platforms. A minimum would be some BB-code buttons to link to twitch, beam and other platforms, then some tags to automatically get the number of viewers/subscriptions per show/recording. In the competition module make sure you can add a link to the stream, another one to an online poll, another one to a blog post or a forum - whatever. Again, you know you can ask for feedback and the players will be happy to reply.
Stay transparent. With the epic/dictatorship/determination formulas you have entered a gray area by not making the formulas public. We know, that's yet another metric of the game's activity and it would be sad to see the decline. But on the other hand, taking the eRepublik development seriously would only make a lot of people happier. We're still here, a lot of us. We are still hoping for refinements (yeah, we've been burnt too many times dreaming of bigger changes). But again, we need facts, not just CSS3 buttons and words. Come back wide open with all the formulas, make it easy for people to calculate their resources, to develop strategies based on those. It makes it easier to start a war, and quite difficult to predict what will happen considering "the other side" can use the same data to prepare themselves. Great strategies have been developed in the past based on the published game mechanic. Today, you just come in, take a look at the Wars page and mindlessly click where you think there are chances for an Epic, or where's a nice CO and so on. Provide the information and tools for the players to become strategists again.
I didn't even scratch the surface here. There are plenty of small fixes and new features that won't alter the balance of the game but rather improve the user experience and help the new users to be heard, seen and get hooked by eRepublik. There are plenty of great ideas in the press. And it's terribly hard to find them. What about a search component specifically for the media module, to find valuable information? It would probably take 2-3 days of development time for a good BETA release and a few more days to gather feedback and take it out of beta for good. We're flooded with BETA stuff on the web. Bugs and flaws exist in "final" products as well. Just quit using that label for too long. And please back your statements by facts regarding the future of the game. OK, it's not just the community. It's also the game. It's nice, but we're so tired of the long-standing bugs and so little effort on eRep's side, that it doesn't take too much to focus on something else and one day just ignore eRep. We might come back for a while, or not. But we all know the game is better with a lot of people. So making us believe you're interested is really easy. Just start picking up small stuff and keep going.
If you actually read all this, carefully, I'm impressed. So thank you for still caring.
The problem with eRepublik: https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/2589421
Comments
o7
o7
v
Esti optimist 🙂
Aș fi oare mai fericit dacă aș fi altfel? 😛
ce zice? 😮
E optimist justificat, nu ma asteptam ca alexis bonte sa deschida pagina asta 😒
Ma intreb daca si cat a citit 😃
Poate aflu... 😉)
Mi-a dat endorse. Who's the man?! 😁
o7
The only single most important thing to keep this game alive was to take care of the clones / multies problem in a correct manner, and for everyone. The game is still plugged with 75%+ multies, which makes it unfair for any honest player.
Also, still a lingering problem is the involvement of admin level players in the eRomanian politics (albeit they have been logging with various accounts and have voted a specific player in a political party) making it unfair and killing the whole experience for players that have been trying to build something positive.
[removed]
zmeuNY, For once get over yourself and move on. Stop be the needy crying baby in the community.
There's a huge difference between being "needy" and actually trying to be be fair.
Please get at least one BH medal per year from this account. 5 BH medals in 7 years is a little embarrassing to comment off of it. Use a better account in your next reply.
well said
Poate ca era mai bine sa scri articolul in limba romana.
Oricum ai un punct de vedere ... ok
Scopul articolului a fost să înțeleagă Alexis fără traducere, că nu m-aș baza pe traducerea nimănui din eRep. Nici așa nu mă pot baza că vom vedea jocul readus la viață dar... speranța moare ultima.
great article,I totally agree with you.. I am here for 5 years and I hope to be here for,at least,5 more.. it is the best online game I've played,but it does need some improvements.. even if those improvements are quite small,or seems to be insignificant.. I hope admins will take in consideration your article,and the points that you've stated here.. we all wish for a better New World!
transform and roll out!
o7
Va rog sa imi scrieti 28 comentarii la ziarul meu ca sa pot scrie urmatorul articol, multumesc
boşalmış saygı duydum.vote
Great article! The biggest problem is indeed that admin's absolutely don't care about the game at all and that shines through every single "feature". They just want to make the easy money over and over again.
Thanks. So far we've seen a lot of words. There's always hope but in the case of this game and by the way the management decided to ignore it for so long, I wouldn't bet on the future of eRepublik.
Yes, it's hard to believe that these people will change their mind.
v+s 548
"So was Tactical Heroes a waste of time and money? Honestly it would have been if we hadn’t had the luck of having a strong existing game with eRepublik.com that gave us the financial legs to take the learnings and try again." - heh, we funding their other developments while we don't get anything back for our money... it's great!
Well, it's not like buying packs "signs" a contract between the buyer and eRepublik to further develop the game, but indeed, it feels like the paying players invested in anything else than the game's future.
i don't know if it's only me but as soon as I load main erep page my CPU usage goes to at least 30-40%. even when doing absolutely nothing, even without any scripts. because of that it's also painfully slow to open desktop version on a mobile (mobile version is totally useless and not even worth a try).
i don't understand what exactly makes erepublik so heavy on CPU, what is being done, calculated, performed, executed "behind the curtains" that uses so much processing power. but that part about so many outdated code lines might be the answer, no?
long story short, erep development (shiny buttons and other graphical things excluded) seems to be stuck somewhere at 2011.
30-40% is a bit too much, so you CPU is either old or slightly low-powered. But there is too much going on in the background anyway. The energy recovery countdown and the eRep time are mandatory. Other than that, there are too many trackers and social media embedded stuff.
I don't see the real benefit of twitter, facebook and G+ code in here, but those require resources as well. The leftovers from the old eRep are simply taking more RAM and rendering/CPU time on load. There are plenty of things that can be done to improve eRep's performance, that's for sure.
6 years old laptop, not saying it's not quite outdated 😃
But it turns out eRep, as a browser game, requires faster and stronger hardware than some "bigger" games from 2007-2008 that I can run without any issues.
I've always wondered how is eRep so unoptimized
try browser reset or disable extensions or add ons in your browser. You can try incognito mode in chrome and private window in firefox.
eRep's top profit was definitely after they introduced IK. In last year he had a stagnation and probably a decrease in last few months. That made Bonte approach community.
He should gather a team of influenced, intelligent, older players from community who will point him out the biggest problems of eRep and suggest him what to do to fix them. I really think, no I KNOW community will help him because EVERYBODY is here only because they once had a great fun in this game and now they hope they will have it once again, that eRep will become what it once was. He can do this in FEW DAYS. Pick those people get them on IRC, Skype, whatever, they will give him input and then he can work on it. He can give his mail to community and say "hey write me suggestions I REALLY want to make this game better and I will read ALL mails you send me in next 2 weeks"...
I hope Bonte didn't approach us only to give us false hope but that he really will read our comments and articles and not just ignore them like he did in last years.
Whatever motivated Alexis, I hope he will actually step up and do something about the game. Something good, of course. They are not good at listening to the players. I would assume they are more attentive to the needs of the money spenders, although we've seen quite a lot of them being unsatisfied with the status of the game.
So I'm quite curious what they will come up with, considering how little they listen to the community. It won't be easy anyway. What they ignored in years cannot be fixed quickly and without more bugs. I have no problem if they take time to properly take care of various aspects of the game. But unless we see something else than recycled competitions, there's not much to hope for.
"I hope Bonte didn't approach us only to give us false hope..."
We won't be fooled again. None of us should be hopeful by his article, in fact we should all be worried.
o7
nice
Quality journalism what my eyes just read. Impressive!
Voted/Endorsed/Subscribed/Friended
Greetings from Bulgaria.
Here is another great idea, that could involve more citizens to read about the community and interact with it.
Maybe we should gather all of the suggestions into a wiki page, so that the admins can have a look from time to time.
Anyway I really hope you get more and more votes for this article so that it can get viral. I'll post it into the Wikipedia Admin chat.
Wish you the best,
Dimow
Thank you. The Wiki is yet another shamefully ignore resource. By simply seeing "don't believe everything you see here" - for years - they prove they are no longer interested in documenting the game, but rather do something else. And that's an old statement. I will be soon 4 years old in the game and that warning was there since I joined.
Sure, it would be great to gather as many ideas as possible in the wiki. But it would also be great to be able to add tags to articles. Imagine how easy it would be to add the tag "improvement" to such articles and by clicking the tag you would immediately get a long list of suggestions. All with so little effort.
Uhm, this message will be removed soon by me, I have taken a lot of action lately in order to get everything "up-to-date".
Removed the "don't believe everything you see here" notice. I'll check up all the main articles to see if there is something outdated.
Totally agreed.
However, Bonte in his riposte article admitted that he was planning for other new games. And "of course" Erepublik. Which means for me that he is going to cash in those few remaining thousand euros that still are in this game and then start up with something new.
Yes, learning how they used the money to develop new games and failures while we all know how severely eRepublik was ignored, it's really uncomfortable.
crazy bonte 🙂
he gives away a sure incomming (erepublik) for flying pigs (or green horses) 🙂
o7
Hope, so tempting and alure 🙂
I hate "CSRF attack".
joacul asta a avut o rentenite extrem de scazuta de cand se stie, e drept ca nu e joc pentru tantalai, insa forma actuala a diviziilor este mult prea descurajoatoare pentru noii intrati
Când vezi jucători care din două focuri dau peste cap un top 5 cu începători... îți vine s-o lași baltă. Nu m-ar mira ca noii jucători să creadă că „cei mari” trișează cumva.
sa fi sigur!
diviziile ar trebui refacute dupa damage/hit si rank si vechime, doar ca nu se va intampla nimic. cat timp sunt fraieri care baga mana la card si jocul aduce bani, de ce sa schimbe ceva?
Cu vechimea e cu dus și întors. Și eu am fost „mort” o lună și ceva și nu mi-ar fi picat bine să se simtă asta într-un fel în contul meu. Însă rangul militar și puterea jucătorilor sunt cele care determină daunele pe câmpul de luptă. Diviziile în forma asta sunt demult o aberație. Ar face bani și dacă le-ar schimba, doar că așa cum au ignorat multe alte probleme au ignorat și diviziile.
si vechimea e un must, pt ca asa unii ar prefera sa ramana mult timp la divizii mai mici, unde iau usor medalii. e chiar un avantaj inactivitatea temporara, pt ca s-au trezit la D1-3 cu strenght mare si acum au 1500 BH, iar eu care am fost activ am vreo 60. pai e ok? 🙂