NationStates Jolt Archive

I’m pretty certain that anybody paying attention has noticed that things have gotten a whole lot smaller in the NS World. The feeders haven’t been this small since the early days of 2003 and neither has the nation population of the NS World for that matter. As I was recently eliminating a pair of continents from the Wysterian Map as part of the downsizing of Wysteria (and really, we’re only down 50 nations from what we used to be for years), it became clear to me that something similar needs to be applied to the system itself. When the realities of the NS World change, the system needs to change to accommodate it. It changed to accommodate the huge growth in nation numbers and needs to change again.

I’m not suggesting some mad system lawnmower incident through the morass of dying player created regions. If many are dying, they should be allowed to go in their own time. But the system created regions are in need of contraction. There should be a culling of ‘War Zone’ regions. There were too many of them created in the first place and an excess of them now is even less useful for the system. Right now, more than one or two warzones is too many. The Rejected Realms and Lazarus continue to serve a valuable purpose as game constructs and should not be touched.

Feeder regions are another matter altogether. The ratio of feeder regions (the Pacifics) to new nations being created has gotten to an all time low. It’s not sustainable long term and will hasten the end of this game. When I got involved with this whole thing, back in 2002, there was only one Pacific: the Pacific. When additional feeder regions were added it made sense, because of the dramatic growth of the NationStates World nation population. Now, with that growth dramatically moving in the other direction, there is a need for the system to divest itself of most of the current feeder regions.

What I propose that the feed be cut off to the majority of the Feeder Regions. That would mean that at most, we maintain the original Pacific and, if absolutely necessary, one other Pacific as a spawning region for new nations. That should suffice to restore a proper ration of new nations to feeder regions. Allowing for the continuation of more than two feeder nations at this point is counter productive to the longevity of this system.

The former feeders would be allowed to grow or die, like any player created region. They already have a huge advantage in doing so by the accumulation of so many spawned nations, up to the point when the tap is turned off, so if they have any sense of community they should do just fine. But because they are still delegates sitting on a largely captive nation population of newly spawned nations, I still wouldn’t immediately grant founder status to the current sitting delegates. I would strongly suggest allowing at least six months to go by with the delegate of the former feeder, starting at the point when the nation spawning tap was turned off, before offering the region the opportunity to choose its founder. If they can maintain a stable delegateship for that long they deserve the opportunity for founder status.

While the end may still come to NationStates, we should at least do what we can to not hasten that end by failure to keep up with the times.

I don't know if downsizing NationStates is exactly the solution, I think we need to deal with the problem at hand much like a population demographic, we're all nostalgic of how it used to be when things we're booming, now the "birth rate" is declining and the population is getting older. How to solve the problem, revert what social problems aroused to slow the "birth rate", mainly stringent enforcement that bores the shit out of the game...anyone else notice the correlation between the population decline and the creation of regional influence?

My two cents worth,
1. Give Region's the choice to enforce regional influence, so under regional controls a founder can decide to activate it or not, (with the default being not), if it is activated everything runs like it does now, if it isn't, the regional influence tag on your nation's factbook is merely a guide to a nation's regional seniority but not effecting the actually game mechanics.
2. Go out and recruit for NSers....

Give Region's the choice to enforce regional influence, so under regional controls a founder can decide to activate it or not, (with the default being not), if it is activated everything runs like it does now, if it isn't, the regional influence tag on your nation's factbook is merely a guide to a nation's regional seniority but not effecting the actually game mechanics.

That being said, I think adding features like that to regions, to allow the regional politics to develop...and allow founder's to characterize their regions more, would really benefit NS1. Considering Player-created regions is something that is lacking in NS2, NS could really rise above by focusing some improvement on the mechanics of regions.

I'm confused, how exactly is shutting down feeders going to increase the number of people playing the game?:confused:

I'm confused, how exactly is shutting down feeders going to increase the number of people playing the game?

I don't think it would...I think it would just set up NS for a slow, quiet death.

I don't think that cutting off the feeders is the answer. In fact, it may create more problems than it solves.

Adjusting the number of outlets to the growth rate may have worked originally, but NS has changed since. As it's developed and grown, and especially as it has shrunk, it has become less and less impersonal. With the evolution of regional forums, governments, and an elaborate metagame, each and every feeder region has a community, an atmosphere that defines the first impressions of the new players that spawn there. This has escaped the notice of a lot of older players who avoid the feeders, but it has a huge impact on the rest of the game.

This first impression can be a very good or a very bad thing, but the variety of feeders lowers the risk of it being a very bad thing. Feeders have been mismanaged in the past, but at worst there's been a 20% chance of spawning in a grossly mismanaged region. Having only one or two feeders would eliminate that safeguard. If a lone feeder got taken over by a paranoid, hostile regime that ejected newbies on minutiae (and I know of many, many capable NSers who would work hard to set up such a regime as soon as possible), half or all of new players would be given the impression that NS is an unwelcome place that tolerates no new blood. Conversely, if that lone feeder was run by a benevolent, welcoming regime, it'd make recruiting harder for the rest of you. You don't want that either.

As NS has matured and shrunk, its main strength as a game has shifted from the sheer mass of players to the strength of its community. Numbers have finally gotten to the point where it's possible to interact with new members individually instead of being dumbfounded by a deluge of them. The number of major regions has decreased to the point where it's possible to consider the gameplay community as a whole instead of dealing with one niche and being blindsided by things that come in from outside of it. These are very exciting changes for me, and they should be for you, because they mean that NS is developing into a form that emphasizes its unique strengths. We should consider how best to use the new system before we go clamoring for the old one back.

It has also been tossed around UCR's should be removed from the game too, Bruce ^^

lol, but seriously. Downsizing the feeders would cause more problems, and could bring up serious conflicts within the feeder community at large. Which feeders would get downsized? Which wouldn't? What about UCR's taking the defunct feeder name and claiming to be the feeder? Alliances? I don't think that would be a viable solution. I might be a little biased being a feeder delegate, but Bruce, being the founder of Wysteria, would you propose removing the UCR's, seeing as they tend to have less activity and are far away from feeder politics?

Furthermore, I don't believe the game is dying. Losing activity maybe, but not dying. Why? People have said the game is dying back in 2004 when I joined this game. Just doesn't happen in my book. Might have more activity if there were less people saying the game is dying, I believe. But that's only me.

Agreed with Kandarin, mostly, and as usual... although I have to bring up the UCR perspective for contrast. ;)

NS as we in gameplay know it - as a collection of independent, politically interactive, forum-based regional communities - can only survive if each of us can gather enough new players to sustain our offsite structures. We've been keeping track in Equilism, and total numbers across NS are down about 30% from December 1. And I've been keeping track of new nation activity while recruiting - out of every 30 nations 4-5 days old and still in the feeders, only 8-10 of those are even logging in past the first issue, let alone representing genuinely new players. (Granted, perhaps most new players leave the feeders within 3 days of creation, but from what I've seen it's still not a lot to work with.)

Yes, it is possible to interact with new members individually... if you can find them to begin with and figure out how to express to them the importance of getting involved in the community side of the game. We have never been able to get many people to join the regional forums, because the game does not recognize them in any manner, even to the posting of clickable links on the regional WFE. [NS2 purports to fix this, while fatally taking away the uneven resource (= player) distribution and the necessity for organized communal action that gave those forums their raison d'etre in the first place. There are no World Assembly Resolutions for which you must build consensus... there are no group power structures to be manipulated. Period. Nation-to-nation warfare will not correct that.] And while the fewer people there are, the more you can get to know each of them - true - being less blindsided is not a good thing from the gameplay perspective. The fewer regions there are, the fewer the possible political interactions between them. The world is a smaller and therefore a more predictable place... it is less and less like a real political simulation and more like a small town with the usual characters up to the same old mischief.

Influence hasn't helped us, the players. Neither have founders. Nothing that has made the game 'safer' has made it any healthier in the long run than it would have been without them, and the fragmentation and idiosyncracy of the political world that were its strength and its fascination are now proving its undoing. It is very hard for shrinking communities either to rejuvenate themselves or to give up their history and move to a new forum to survive as part of a stronger or more lucky region.

Increasingly more of the older and most dedicated gameplayers - and gameplay regions - are abandoning the on-site game and searching for other venues from which to gain new players - because new players are the one essential to our survival as communities and it is becoming harder and harder to procure them through NS. No offense to the game created regions (not to mention Jolt), but this is a problem that has never struck them quite as urgently as it has user created regions. Feeders have a certain number of players dropped into their laps by the game, and more brought to them because they represent the NationStates equivalent of oil fields. We don't have the same luxury; we are fighting primarily for our existence at this point and always, not just our quality of play.

If we want to play to our strengths, the solution is not necessarily to change game mechanics (though I would dearly love to see Influence removed!) but to cater to the communities that have developed offsite by acknowledging in the FAQ their existence and that of the intricate political (or social/RP) world they embody, allowing a link to the offsite forums from the WFE (as NS2 does), and perhaps (though this would be more work and much more processing time) having a regional rankings page as we have a national one, by taking the average WA ranking of all the nations in a region and ranking the top regions accordingly. That would inspire communal activity, show people right from the start that what region you're in does make a difference, and encourage them to invite their friends to be a part of this group enterprise. Social networking of all kinds is the current great contribution of the internet, and the more connected you are with others, the more you will want to come back. It's as simple as that.

and in gameplay.]

If we're going to change the interface, though, I'll take the telegram inbox/outbox and BBCode features, plus the alliance description fanciness, from NS2... those are nice. The whole rest of NS2 is based around what individuals can do to their nations or to other individual nations, which is absolutely worthless for "encouraging long-term play." Goals must be communal in essence, not just communal in execution. Long-term play is about community, communal action, and communal identity, and I've heard that from every single person I've met in this game - on Jolt, in RP, and in gameplay

I agree with you, as silly as it is (because THEY could just copy and paste), allowing links in the Factbook, past thread pages..would totally help with the usage of regional forums, and other site networks like NSwiki. That being said, the mods have said no to the idea a dozen times, no doubt. Also something mildly similar to the Alliance set up from NS2 would be nice, the resolution system from the WA would be unnecessary...but I would like to see a way to put logos like that of the "WA member" on your nation's page to show your support to user created organizations, and maybe even link the logo to an alliance's factbook thread or whatever.

I'm seeing a bunch of thoughtful, insightful, and well presented ideas here. Some of them I really like. Some I don't. Some simply can't happen (like stealing code from NS2 to add to NS1 - they're totally different systems, it'd be like putting aircraft engines and ailerons on a bicycle chassis).

I encourage this train of thought, and strongly suggest that you folks continue to riff off each other in hopes of improving any or all these ideas. However, don't take this to mean that something will happen soon..

The NS1 developers are working on other projects right now (ones that actually earn valuta for time served), and the NS2 developers are entirely separate. I'm just not seeing anyone being able to devote sufficient resources to make any of the changes in the short term. Most any change that requires altering the game balance in any significant way must be signed off by Max, who also tracks player numbers and is aware of the situation. If there are any changes to be made, Max will have to kick them off.

I'll try to bring this thread to the attention of Max and the dev team, but don't hold your breath.

I'm seeing a bunch of thoughtful, insightful, and well presented ideas here. Some of them I really like. Some I don't. Some simply can't happen (like stealing code from NS2 to add to NS1 - they're totally different systems, it'd be like putting aircraft engines and ailerons on a bicycle chassis).

I encourage this train of thought, and strongly suggest that you folks continue to riff off each other in hopes of improving any or all these ideas. However, don't take this to mean that something will happen soon..

The NS1 developers are working on other projects right now (ones that actually earn valuta for time served), and the NS2 developers are entirely separate. I'm just not seeing anyone being able to devote sufficient resources to make any of the changes in the short term. Most any change that requires altering the game balance in any significant way must be signed off by Max, who also tracks player numbers and is aware of the situation. If there are any changes to be made, Max will have to kick them off.

I'll try to bring this thread to the attention of Max and the dev team, but don't hold your breath.

Why don't we 'induct' more coders and what not? I don't know everyone in the game, not even close, but I do know people who would be willing to assist with coding, creating our ideas, etc. free of charge. And if I know *some* people who do that, imagine what a team we could form if we recruited more developers!

I appreciate the attention this thread is getting, but yeah. A couple of easy things can possibly be implimented, ie, perhaps html allowed in WFE's, the re-structuring (or removal) of influence, and perhaps some ideas which have seemed to work in NS2 (ie, more categories). Heck, I'd even settle for a different way of WA ranking a nation so we don't see the same nations atop the rankings we do everyday. Quite honestly, that is a very moot topic nowadays.

I don't mean to sound pushy or a prude, but there are really small, little things we can do to make the game really cool, in my opinion. The idea wouldn't be to rid NS of feeders, or UCR's - that is almost an admit of defeat. The game has so much potential and charm - better in my opinion than CN or any other games (Ikariam, etc) in that it's a more intelligent and allows for nations to assimilate into the game easier and not be years behind the competition or easy invader targets, as in Travian, for example. BUT, that's one thing that can be set into the works. Allow me to explain.

Nations which are new are typically lost because of one of three reasons: 1. They're confused by terms like 'feeders' and fear that their nation has died if it goes into The Rejected Realms, in other words, they're not familiar with the game but are thrusted into an environment which *requires* them to be. 2.They don't have a lot of time, and therefore do not care. 3. They are choked by adspam, or, as common with many regions, are viewed as someone else's puppet or a spy, or viewed as a 'lost cause', and would take too long to explain the game to them.

Sad but true. 1 can be helped. I've created wikis in the past and would love to assist in creating a beginner's wiki for the game which perhaps could be linked to the players via a telegram. "but we have NSwiki already!! Spare me. Trying to sift through intense in-game stuff and everyday issues is a tough challenge for a vet like myself even. Plus, it's not organized well enough where a casual player can just browse through the terms and pick-and-choose. For show, I created TSP's wiki recently, and it's quite nice. (http://thesouthpacific.wikia.com/wiki/The_South_Pacific_Wiki)

2 can't be helped. They're content with logging in everyday and may or may not be convinced otherwise. It's their style of play. While they may be coaxed to join offsite forums, this is a hard task.

3 can be helped. For one, I feel there is a need to either limit or abolish recruiting ads. Heck, I created a new nation two months ago, left it in a feeder, and I *still* get adspam in that. How does that make a new player feel? Imagine your first stint as a player. It's very confusing. And when someone like me tells them what's going on in The East Pacific, it just looks like more adspam. Hence why a lot of people in the feeders have the "leave me alone!" mentality. Perhaps it's our problem too, us vets, delegates, etc in that we inherently don't trust newcomers, or don't put effort into them. I've attempted to change it, but it's difficult. So rigid we've become.

At least remove influence or at least decrease its... influence. Heck, I'll be honest, I was a casual player in the game, resting in the region Poland until the old raiding group Blades of Conquest took us over. I rallied the region together and we removed the crashers. Hate to say it, but the raiding / defending game is quite essential to the workings of regions. They 'wake up' players more than they turn away, and force them to get involved in the game. When I *did* raid, I too woke up some players. Some are now leaders in other feeders, but I ask you, would they be in those positions if I didn't make a mess of their region years ago? Prolly not, I think. So I believe it's important to also keep the raiding/defending game up, which has really died down in the past year plus.

These are all small decisions, but I think they can really help. IF no new coders or developers, then what the heck, why not make a few changes that can drastically improve the game like that?

Why don't we 'induct' more coders and what not? I don't know everyone in the game, not even close, but I do know people who would be willing to assist with coding, creating our ideas, etc. free of charge. And if I know *some* people who do that, imagine what a team we could form if we recruited more developers!

I appreciate the attention this thread is getting, but yeah. A couple of easy things can possibly be implimented, ie, perhaps html allowed in WFE's, the re-structuring (or removal) of influence, and perhaps some ideas which have seemed to work in NS2 (ie, more categories). Heck, I'd even settle for a different way of WA ranking a nation so we don't see the same nations atop the rankings we do everyday. Quite honestly, that is a very moot topic nowadays.


I brought up the idea of a semi-open source NationStates a while back, when NS2 was becoming a reality I thought maybe the concept might have chance. But everyone sort of laughed at me, so I figure the idea isn't popular. However I agree with you, the small population of NSers are a very intelligent bunch of people (regardless of what may think from reading some of the silly WA proposals) and I would bet there is a more-than-capable crowd of coders that would be willing to help with the work. I mean, look at all the work thats gone into third-party calculators, and such.

Personally the four things I'd like see changed in the game mechanics, and I'm sure I've said it before.

-Regional Influence, Activation Required (so region's COULD be influenced by it or, not! Depending on their founder's ideologies)
-Links in the factbook would be a lovely addition, but It's obviously something that not's going to happen. However it's addition would really benefit those third party sites, which quickly show the vastness of NationStates to our newly joined recruits, and gets them involved with our regions, hopefully.
-The ability to put logos (and links) in our Nation's page, to show our support for different organizations and alliances would always be beneficial.
-As someone else mentioned, a nod to the popular third party sites such a NSeconomy and NSwiki in the Official Help Page for NS, would be a great addition.

There was an open call for new admins (http://www.nationstates.net/page=news/2005/11/13/index.html#3rdbirthday) back in 2005. Three people applied. Two turned up for the 'interview' (it was on IRC), and one (Pythagosaurus) was hired. Pyth has been a real boon to getting minor stuff fixed and adding some decent features, but he can't do it alone (Salusa and [violet] have real-world stuff keeping them occupied).

Max isn't interested in open source - he wants to maintain control of all aspects of the code - which means that he needs to meet, know, and trust anyone new. Frankly, that's damn tough. He invested a fair amount of time in 2005 and was met by waves of apathy. I don't see much different this time, though I admit the possibility.

That 2005 news article is still right there on the News page. I don't see a deadline. Gather ye coders and apply. Who knows, it might grab Max's attention better than a forum topic.

Maybe a little refresher in the General forum could help speed up that recruitment process?

___________________________________________
And the link for the "Admin quiz" in dead. So I would say the open call has ended.

For one, I feel there is a need to either limit or abolish recruiting ads. I created a new nation two months ago, left it in a feeder, and I *still* get adspam in that. They are limited: No more than one per recruiting nation per target nation... I suppose that there could be a 'legal' cut-off point, say a population of 500 million+, with sending ads to nations who've passed that limit forbidden, but how else would you do it? After all, it's not as though an automated filter could be set up easily, and the Mods surely don't have the time available in which to review all TGs before letting the "acceptable" ones through...

At least remove influence or at least decrease its... influence. Heck, I'll be honest, I was a casual player in the game, resting in the region Poland until the old raiding group Blades of Conquest took us over. I rallied the region together and we removed the crashers. Hate to say it, but the raiding / defending game is quite essential to the workings of regions. They 'wake up' players more than they turn away, and force them to get involved in the game. When I *did* raid, I too woke up some players. Some are now leaders in other feeders, but I ask you, would they be in those positions if I didn't make a mess of their region years ago? Prolly not, I think. So I believe it's important to also keep the raiding/defending game up, which has really died down in the past year plus.So speaks an ex(?)-raider... but, speaking as a player who's MUCH more interested in building stable regional communities (with their own forums, maps, and so on) instead, the more you enhance the raiding/defending side of things the more you're going to alienate those players (and potential players) who want to be able to keep their nations in a single place...

(BTW, Todd, I'm also the nation of 'Bali Lo' in TSP...)

I'm confused, how exactly is shutting down feeders going to increase the number of people playing the game?:confused:

This isn't just a matter of shutting down feeders for the sheer joy of it. It's about reevaluating the current situation, compared to what the NS World was like when the decision was made to expand the number of feeders. I wouldn't suggest shutting down the regions at all. That would be unfair to the players who have chosen to remain in the spawning region. There should be a transition process by which those natives were able to take control of those feeders that had the taps turned off.

It has also been tossed around UCR's should be removed from the game too, Bruce ^^

lol, but seriously. Downsizing the feeders would cause more problems, and could bring up serious conflicts within the feeder community at large. Which feeders would get downsized? Which wouldn't? What about UCR's taking the defunct feeder name and claiming to be the feeder? Alliances? I don't think that would be a viable solution. I might be a little biased being a feeder delegate, but Bruce, being the founder of Wysteria, would you propose removing the UCR's, seeing as they tend to have less activity and are far away from feeder politics?

Aside from getting rid of three quarters of all the nations in the NS World there really wouldn’t be much I could do about it if it was decided that the best thing for the game was collapse it down to the feeders and other system created regions. As I see it, wiping out that much of the NS World isn't very productive. Activity is somewhat relative. For a region with as many nations in them as the feeders do, they should be much, much more active than there currently is (unless you count spam advertising as activity). Nation to nation, there seems to be much more activity in the UCR's. My idea wouldn't wipe out regions, it would just change the shell game for newly spawned nations.

The feeders are still having new nations created in them, but the nations just don’t stay around anymore. Pacific regions are like trees that have been dead for centuries but are still standing. Until you look closely, everything looks all right. Additional spawning regions were created to deal with the fact that the nation population was in rapid growth. Now that it’s in rapid decline it would seem reasonable to reduce the amount of feeders and take steps to ensure the best transition possible to those feeders who are made into regular regions.

How to choose? True, I didn’t address that in my initial post. I would think that the Pacific would be shoe in as the feeder to keep. It was the original one and all the others came after the fact. I would think that there would be a set of criteria set out by those running the show to determine which other Pacific(s) didn’t get the tap turned off. If nothing else it would definitely drum up activity in the feeder regions, while the decision was being made.

Furthermore, I don't believe the game is dying. Losing activity maybe, but not dying. Why? People have said the game is dying back in 2004 when I joined this game. Just doesn't happen in my book. Might have more activity if there were less people saying the game is dying, I believe. But that's only me.

I don't think that the game is dying either. While there has been a huge drop in the world nation population, there are still new players arriving all the time. It's a bit like a great movie. Just because a bunch of us have already seen it, doesn't mean that everyone, everywhere has already seen it. There will always be potential new players, just like there will always be new people to watch an old movie for the first time. Further, while many NS regional communities have faltered, many have continued to thrive over the years. It will take more than a drop in the world nation population to kill the stronger regional communities of NationStates. Still, for the sake of those potential players, who have yet to discover this system, it's up to those still kicking around to ensure that there's something here worth arriving to. It means more than just continuing to be active, but it means rethinking the NS 'realities' of the current system.

This first impression can be a very good or a very bad thing, but the variety of feeders lowers the risk of it being a very bad thing. Feeders have been mismanaged in the past, but at worst there's been a 20% chance of spawning in a grossly mismanaged region. Having only one or two feeders would eliminate that safeguard. If a lone feeder got taken over by a paranoid, hostile regime that ejected newbies on minutiae (and I know of many, many capable NSers who would work hard to set up such a regime as soon as possible), half or all of new players would be given the impression that NS is an unwelcome place that tolerates no new blood. Conversely, if that lone feeder was run by a benevolent, welcoming regime, it'd make recruiting harder for the rest of you. You don't want that either.


Personally, I would welcome a stronger community sense in the feeders. I don't have any problem with that at all because it would mean a better over all NS World, if when new nations are spawned they like what they see from the get go. If the communities of the Pacifics were managed so well that nobody wanted to go anywhere else, everything would be good. Still, the pioneering instinct will always be there. Players will always want to strike out on their own, both from the Pacifics and from successful regions such as my own. It's human nature. For other players it's not so much pioneering as hanging out with a bunch of their friends in their very own region.

Aside from delegates spending too much of their time worrying over keeping on top of the endorsement heap in the feeders, the biggest threat to developing regional culture in the feeders has always been opening up advertising on the region boards. It means that if you want to be a native of a system created region, the board is constantly being hijacked by people from regions other than your own and you can never actually use your board the way a player in a player created region can. Combining ineffective advertisement techniques with taking the natives board from them has had a detrimental effect on developing local culture in system created regions. I've always been against this misuse of the feeder boards and I've never recruited on region boards in the six or so years I've been recruiting for my region. I consider it bad for the game.

Personally, I would welcome a stronger community sense in the feeders. I don't have any problem with that at all because it would mean a better over all NS World, if when new nations are spawned they like what they see from the get go. If the communities of the Pacifics were managed so well that nobody wanted to go anywhere else, everything would be good. Still, the pioneering instinct will always be there. Players will always want to strike out on their own, both from the Pacifics and from successful regions such as my own. It's human nature. For other players it's not so much pioneering as hanging out with a bunch of their friends in their very own region.

Aside from delegates spending too much of their time worrying over keeping on top of the endorsement heap in the feeders, the biggest threat to developing regional culture in the feeders has always been opening up advertising on the region boards. It means that if you want to be a native of a system created region, the board is constantly being hijacked by people from regions other than your own and you can never actually use your board the way a player in a player created region can. Combining ineffective advertisement techniques with taking the natives board from them has had a detrimental effect on developing local culture in system created regions. I've always been against this misuse of the feeder boards and I've never recruited on region boards in the six or so years I've been recruiting for my region. I consider it bad for the game.

This is how my first days as a NSer went.
- I found NationStates, in curiosity I made a nation.
- I get landed in The Pacific, and get dumped on with adspam.
- I leave the Pacific for my own region "Unibot town"
- I was alone in that region, no one obviously came, so I left for some user-created regions (Connecticut!) before calling up a friend and telling him to join NS.
- I now run a region with a bunch of school friends.

The Pacific with its adspam didn't necessary deter me from NS, it probably did the opposite. I mean as we grow in NS seniority we come to hate adspam, but as a full fledged n00b I was impressed by what game could attract such a flurry of ads, and the people behind it, yeh know? The motivation behind it all is NationStates, some of the "adspam" was long, articulate stuff, that really interested me (not to join their region, but it interested me in what this game had to offer, seeing other people truly involved with it).

I also agree the raiding/defender aspect is more of a positive than a negative for NS, it can be annoying for regions, but it does awaken dead regions and therefore could help a possibly "dieing" game. I mean, thats why Regional Influence should be optional, to allow those regions that wish to be democratic in their appointed leaders, and also highly defensive and conservative to be just that, OR to allow regions to be governed more autocratically... benevolent dictatorships? And to let "crime" flourish as it would. The optionality of Influence adds a whole new dimension to the game, as little of a change as it is. The other "option" that could increase that dimension (this probably can't be done at all, but I'm just throwing ideas out) is to allow a spectrum of political freedoms for regions, founders could decide if a democratic vote is needed (democracy), or if the founder himself can choose who is delegate (Autocracy), or the oldest nation (Gerontocracy), or the best economy is given delegacy (Plutocracy), or its randomly selected from the WA members of a region everyday like a lottery (Demarchy) or a Consensus is needed for there to be a delegate (Chiefdom), or a Delegate isn't possible (Anarchy) which would be the ultimate defence against raiders or something...don't laugh please!

They are limited: No more than one per recruiting nation per target nation... I suppose that there could be a 'legal' cut-off point, say a population of 500 million+, with sending ads to nations who've passed that limit forbidden, but how else would you do it? After all, it's not as though an automated filter could be set up easily, and the Mods surely don't have the time available in which to review all TGs before letting the "acceptable" ones through...

I know... and that *will* be a tough thing to mod over (I'd imagine it still is just as it stands), but imagine when you were a young player and words like 'feeder' and 'raider' and 'RMB' were still foreign to you. Imagine how much more confused one would be if they received three to five adspams a day (yes... a day. Create a new nation and try it out). It can get confusing, or at least it did for me.

So speaks an ex(?)-raider... but, speaking as a player who's MUCH more interested in building stable regional communities (with their own forums, maps, and so on) instead, the more you enhance the raiding/defending side of things the more you're going to alienate those players (and potential players) who want to be able to keep their nations in a single place...

(BTW, Todd, I'm also the nation of 'Bali Lo' in TSP...)
Lol, so I should know a bit about you then, and you probably know a bit about me.

Agreed, raiders agitate the stable community. But what stable, active communities have been successfully raided and destroyed over the past year? I can't think of one. Speaking as an ex-raider (yeah, that's ex, lol), regions will get raided for one of three reasons: 1. They're small and are an easy target. 2. They'd bring a lot of prestige, but are still an easy-ish target (The easy part counts. This is why no one raids TPC, France, the RR, or Hell (anymore at least)). 3. The region did something bad and should be 'vanquished'. Don't shoot the messenger - this is what goes on in a lot of orgs. Poland woke up because we were raided by both raiders AND defenders (!!!). Some nations died off, some became stronger, and some just kept going as if nothing happened. But I'd say Poland is a more active region after the raid than prior.

This doesn't always work out, but I'd say it generally does.

Aside from getting rid of three quarters of all the nations in the NS World there really wouldn’t be much I could do about it if it was decided that the best thing for the game was collapse it down to the feeders and other system created regions. As I see it, wiping out that much of the NS World isn't very productive. Activity is somewhat relative. For a region with as many nations in them as the feeders do, they should be much, much more active than there currently is (unless you count spam advertising as activity). Nation to nation, there seems to be much more activity in the UCR's. My idea wouldn't wipe out regions, it would just change the shell game for newly spawned nations.

The feeders are still having new nations created in them, but the nations just don’t stay around anymore. Pacific regions are like trees that have been dead for centuries but are still standing. Until you look closely, everything looks all right. Additional spawning regions were created to deal with the fact that the nation population was in rapid growth. Now that it’s in rapid decline it would seem reasonable to reduce the amount of feeders and take steps to ensure the best transition possible to those feeders who are made into regular regions.

How to choose? True, I didn’t address that in my initial post. I would think that the Pacific would be shoe in as the feeder to keep. It was the original one and all the others came after the fact. I would think that there would be a set of criteria set out by those running the show to determine which other Pacific(s) didn’t get the tap turned off. If nothing else it would definitely drum up activity in the feeder regions, while the decision was being made.

Well, I wouldn't call the feeders dead, persay, just harder to control. For UCR's, even larger UCR's, it's much easier to drum up activity than in a feeder. For one, once a nation moves into a UCR, they're generally hooked, or at least committed to gameplay. Feeders are typically filled with people who tried the game for five minutes, then quit. Or puppets of raiders / defenders / someone else waiting in the wings. Or gameplayers who want nothing more than to log on five minutes a week, check the issues, then sign off. Second, it's easier to deal with a smaller population. One can spend an hour and telegram all two hundred nations in his or her UCR. Not the case in the feeders. It's really hard.

That is why there's a big population drop. Heck, TEP has about 2,300 nations in it, but 30 or so members who daily commit to the forums. And that's a good number, feederwise, these days at least. Could it be better? Heck yeah. But it's harder for us over here. Trust me, I and a lot of other good players have been working on getting people back to the forums, and it's been successful so far, but we still have much more to do.

While I do see the benefits of UCRs (I was picking on you initially, lol), they too are dying. Taijitu is down to about 100 nations. GV is down to about 250. Many other communities are being hit hard. That makes it even more difficult - there are a lot of dying communities out there waiting for death (not saying any of the listed are in that group, of course). Would a possible return to the feeders help soften that blow, gleaning the one or two still-active players in that region and getting them assimilated on the forums? I think so.

I don't think that the game is dying either. While there has been a huge drop in the world nation population, there are still new players arriving all the time. It's a bit like a great movie. Just because a bunch of us have already seen it, doesn't mean that everyone, everywhere has already seen it. There will always be potential new players, just like there will always be new people to watch an old movie for the first time. Further, while many NS regional communities have faltered, many have continued to thrive over the years. It will take more than a drop in the world nation population to kill the stronger regional communities of NationStates. Still, for the sake of those potential players, who have yet to discover this system, it's up to those still kicking around to ensure that there's something here worth arriving to. It means more than just continuing to be active, but it means rethinking the NS 'realities' of the current system.

True. I like that thought. Glad to see another person isn't apocalyptic.

Someone else mentioned it (might have been you), but I believe stronger ties among feeders and the stronger UCRs would really help things. We've been working apart for so long, perhaps if we worked together things would come easier and activity would rise.

Aside from getting rid of three quarters of all the nations in the NS World there really wouldn’t be much I could do about it if it was decided that the best thing for the game was collapse it down to the feeders and other system created regions. As I see it, wiping out that much of the NS World isn't very productive. Activity is somewhat relative. For a region with as many nations in them as the feeders do, they should be much, much more active than there currently is (unless you count spam advertising as activity). Nation to nation, there seems to be much more activity in the UCR's. My idea wouldn't wipe out regions, it would just change the shell game for newly spawned nations.

The feeders are still having new nations created in them, but the nations just don’t stay around anymore. Pacific regions are like trees that have been dead for centuries but are still standing. Until you look closely, everything looks all right. Additional spawning regions were created to deal with the fact that the nation population was in rapid growth. Now that it’s in rapid decline it would seem reasonable to reduce the amount of feeders and take steps to ensure the best transition possible to those feeders who are made into regular regions.

How to choose? True, I didn’t address that in my initial post. I would think that the Pacific would be shoe in as the feeder to keep. It was the original one and all the others came after the fact. I would think that there would be a set of criteria set out by those running the show to determine which other Pacific(s) didn’t get the tap turned off. If nothing else it would definitely drum up activity in the feeder regions, while the decision was being made.

Observing their participation trends for most of the game's history has shown me that the status of feeder leadership and communities makes a big difference in how much of the population is involved and active. However, the very best possible cases, in which the greatest possible proportion of the feeder population is engaged in the region, still produce ratios of active nations to total nations that you as the leader of a UCR would find totally unacceptable.

Todd pretty much covered the reasons why this is so. The feeders are the repository of players that joined and quit, players who are content to only answer their issues, and players that are too apathetic to get involved even with their neighbors. They are also the home of a substantial number of smart, involved and active players, but the sheer number of the former means that the latter have always been and will always be deeply in the minority. There are things that a well-run feeder community can do to increase the proportion of active people, but the great majority of any feeder - I would say over 80% of the population - are simply unreachable, whether by choice or sheer apathy. To reiterate: The feeders cannot be made as active as a UCR of equivalent size, because their function ensures that the portion of the playerbase that is least interested in becoming active will always make up the bulk of their population.

This isn't a new thing. It has, in fact, been the case since the beginning of NS, and augmenting the number of feeders will not do anything to change the basic demographic facts, nor to improve the ability of active players in the feeders to involve newcomers. The only thing that has changed is the total number of nations in each feeder.

Would a possible return to the feeders help soften that blow, gleaning the one or two still-active players in that region and getting them assimilated on the forums? I think so.
I don't think so. I may be an exception among the political gameplay folks, but if my region dies or leaves NS, I'll be leaving with it. It is hard to integrate with a new community if you're doing it not because you like the people enough to want to hang out with them, but because your own community is dying and you have no other choice.

In my opinion, most of the players who would join the feeder forums if they had to have already joined on their own. The rest of them you would lose.

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What I would really like to see (and yes, this is crazy-out-there and the potential for things to go horribly wrong is high) is a Mod position periodically elected by gameplay, if it's possible to limit or at least supervise the use of modly powers. (IP vision, access to nation TGs, regional passwords, WFE changes, and RMB clearing would more than do the trick.) First stage would be the qualification round - say, 50 endos needed, in whatever region you happened to be in, by a certain date. Second, you would submit an application to be considered on Jolt with an open Q&A. Third, there would be an interview process where Admin and current Mods could veto anyone they thought might do evil things to the game. And the final however-many candidates could be voted on in the WA, if it's possible to set it up as a multiple options thing... or the finalists could be limited to two, if it's not.

The possibility of having a Mod from your region, even temporarily, would kick the political game into high gear, especially as candidate choices narrowed. RMB-clearing powers alone would be enough for the feeders. Raiders and defenders would kill for any one option out of regional password vision, WFE manipulation, IP vision, or TG viewing. Inter-regional alliances and agreements over WA Delegate votes would proliferate over, for example, pro- or anti-RMB advertising candidates... raider vs. defender vs. neutral/pacifist/uninterested... people who were scared to death of the thought of, say, Pierconium as a Mod and people who thought it could make for a good show... And a new election once every, I don't know, 3-6 months at most, would be close enough to keep the losers hopeful of unseating them, and hopefully far enough apart not to produce too much work for the Powers That Be.

I know, I know, if ever anyone was asking for a big, red, Mod veto stamp two seconds after posting, it's me right now...

IP vision

Thats a bit of security risk I would say. But I think your thinking among the same lines as me, to add a new dimension of politics to game. Allow the founder to decide the region's political system of electing delegates, and the delegates power.

However what you we're saying (and I realize you we're being hypothetical, and just spitting out ideas, which is cool) sounds a bit like the regional moderator idea that came up as a april fool's joke, a while back, and it could potentionally be abused to the point of harm towards the game and it's players.

I'd love to see a Regional Mod thing. The obvious choice would be to add powers to the Delegate, and exclude those powers from Founder blocking. I'm thinking the power to delete RMB posts and apply warnings to the rulebreakers (probably with mod oversight on a review queue to prevent abusive delegates). Maybe an additional "voice of mod" telegram that stands out from normal nations just like our orange bold telegrams do now.

IP vision, access to nation TGs, regional passwords, WFE changes ... not so much. That's basically the same toolbox as a Game Mod, and we've got a mod/admin consensus that we're highly unlikely to have an elected mod position. If you have problems with any of those things, our current staff is more than capable of dealing with it. Ever since nation restoration was automated, our daily task load dropped from hundreds to perhaps 10-20. Two of us keep it cleared most of the time.

I'd love to see a Regional Mod thing. The obvious choice would be to add powers to the Delegate, and exclude those powers from Founder blocking. I'm thinking the power to delete RMB posts and apply warnings to the rulebreakers (probably with mod oversight on a review queue to prevent abusive delegates). Maybe an additional "voice of mod" telegram that stands out from normal nations just like our orange bold telegrams do now.


*Bambi eyes* Please do this? This is the second time this week we've had people posting NSFW messages on the RMB of The East Pacific - it would be a very good thing (and fun) to get rid of their offensive posts and warn that person.

I'd love to see a Regional Mod thing. The obvious choice would be to add powers to the Delegate, and exclude those powers from Founder blocking. I'm thinking the power to delete RMB posts and apply warnings to the rulebreakers (probably with mod oversight on a review queue to prevent abusive delegates). Maybe an additional "voice of mod" telegram that stands out from normal nations just like our orange bold telegrams do now.

IP vision, access to nation TGs, regional passwords, WFE changes ... not so much. That's basically the same toolbox as a Game Mod, and we've got a mod/admin consensus that we're highly unlikely to have an elected mod position. If you have problems with any of those things, our current staff is more than capable of dealing with it. Ever since nation restoration was automated, our daily task load dropped from hundreds to perhaps 10-20. Two of us keep it cleared most of the time.
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Mmm.. applying the concept of having a delegate with regional moderator powers to my idea about region characterization, could be interesting. So a founder could decide to active this ability to delegates, as this would give the delegate more power and control over its members and region.

The reason why I'm so focused on upgrading the mechanics of a region and its delegate is because regions is something that NS has over NS2, and something people typically identified as something they like about NS, upgrading the system with a couple new features to allow some more customization and creativity (which is also something NS has over NS2, world 1, world 2, world 3..ect.) would seem like a smart move.

I suspect the reason we haven't implemented this is because of the high probability of abuse. Is it fair for one player to control the messageboard all the time? How would you know if he's abusing his power unless you sat and watched as posts disappeared?

What about the delegate of a Nazi region who systematically deletes and warns on any dissenting opinion? What about the raider or defender delegate who removes anything posted by his 'enemies'? Where do you draw the line?

It's been my experience that 95% of players are kind, rational, and reasonable. It's the other 5% who try to ruin it for everyone else, and who make up the bulk of our workload. Is it reasonable to grant special powers to a few people, knowing in advance that around 5% will use those powers to make trouble? That's our dilemma.

But if it's the founder call to give a delegate such power, hypothetically regions may be avoided that have such power instated to an abusive "mod" or if these hyper-powerful delegates are elected without a democratic vote (in the case of my suggested optionality for appointing delegates). So it might just be a problem that self-governs itself, if the powers of the "regional moderator" are within reason, and can't do any REAL harm past turning people off that specific region (and making them go elsewhere with a better delegate, like in real politics!). We'd just need to make sure it's clear in the help page that regions ARE different from one anyone, so beginners don't get initially turned off NS with the actions of ONE bad delegate.

We'd just need to make sure it's clear in the help page that regions ARE different from one anyone, so beginners don't get initially turned off NS with the actions of ONE bad delegate.
What sort of proportion of beginners do you think read the 'help' page?

IP vision, access to nation TGs, regional passwords, WFE changes ... not so much. That's basically the same toolbox as a Game Mod, and we've got a mod/admin consensus that we're highly unlikely to have an elected mod position. If you have problems with any of those things, our current staff is more than capable of dealing with it. Ever since nation restoration was automated, our daily task load dropped from hundreds to perhaps 10-20. Two of us keep it cleared most of the time.
*nods* I figured. I'm not saying we need more Game Mods to deal with the workload - most everything I've had a problem with has been addressed, and usually promptly. The point would be to add a further element to the political/diplomatic gameplay (a competitive advantage for people to fight over, the way they currently can only fight for the advantage of controlling a feeder delegacy) and if that happened to involve some controversy along the lines of Myrth and the PRP, well, so much the better from this perspective. If there were controversy enough, I can promise that the off-site forums would align for or against, and regions would be able to form alliances, fighting to keep or get rid of the elected mod. Our world is small enough, now, that it could be done - most of the key players off-site know each other well enough to understand what would happen if one of them were elected... and we're also a group of people who don't have a chance of being picked as a Game Mod in any other way, no matter how long we've played or how committed we've been, because our game world and the survival of our regions requires us to spend our time off-site, not here.

From the political/diplomacy side of gameplay, this is what is missing - a clear competitive advantage in the game environment that people must band together and fight to control. Does it have to be something like a Game Modship? No, not necessarily - that's just an easy (and dramatic) way to graft it into the system we already have. A telegram-all feature given to one nation in the world that could be used once/week would work, too; you could tie it to the delegacy of an "Adzone" (like a warzone), route each TG into a queue for mod approval, and let people have at it.

I suspect the reason we haven't implemented this is because of the high probability of abuse. Is it fair for one player to control the messageboard all the time? How would you know if he's abusing his power unless you sat and watched as posts disappeared?
Could you replace posts with ----Message deleted---- tags? Or insert it into the Regional Happenings, or both? More coding, I know...

What about the delegate of a Nazi region who systematically deletes and warns on any dissenting opinion? What about the raider or defender delegate who removes anything posted by his 'enemies'? Where do you draw the line?

It's been my experience that 95% of players are kind, rational, and reasonable. It's the other 5% who try to ruin it for everyone else, and who make up the bulk of our workload. Is it reasonable to grant special powers to a few people, knowing in advance that around 5% will use those powers to make trouble? That's our dilemma.

In my opinion... yes. We can't edit the crackpot dictators out of the real world; why should we try in NS, if this is supposed to be a political simulation? Unlike RL (and NS2), nations in NS are almost infinitely mobile. The presence of a nasty dictator in one place can't permanently ruin anyone's game... unless they're a raider and they take over your region and kick all of you out. But with Influence, that's legal these days (look at what happened to Feudal Japan) - so what's the objection? Make it cost Influence to burn an RMB post, and any crackpot dictator will have to decide whether it's better to silence his opposition or to boot them.

Who knows... might even help clear up some of the distinctions between groups of raiders, and let defenders ally with the less objectionable, pro-free speech ones. ;)


But if it's the founder call to give a delegate such power, hypothetically regions may be avoided that have such power instated to an abusive "mod" or if these hyper-powerful delegates are elected without a democratic vote (in the case of my suggested optionality for appointing delegates).
Personally, I think it would be better if the Founder were kept out of it. It would allow even founded regions to be shaken up a little bit, for one. But it'd be welcome either way.

What sort of proportion of beginners do you think read the 'help' page? The ones I want in my region. :p

Personally, I think it would be better if the Founder were kept out of it. It would allow even founded regions to be shaken up a little bit, for one. But it'd be welcome either way.

Well what I was talking about in my earlier post was allowing the Founder to customize their regions more, if this we're to happen, those with a delegate with more power and less 'elected' power would be the most rare of regions, or the smallest of regions and most ignored (figuring most n00b's would start out creating small regions of their own, as autocracies, soon after they would learn that people like to have say in their leaders, however the denarchy randomization or the chiefdom sounds like a interesting way of government. Tough, but interesting...)

*shrugs* Personally I'd rather Founders be removed (though I'm not asking for it, as I'm sure it's not happening)... that would squelch the godlike position those nations hold over everyone else in their region. There can be no real democracy when it is granted or denied at the whim of an individual.

Instituting a demarchy would require more coding, and the random element works against political continuity or stability. It sounds neat, but it's incredibly unsafe in practice. As for chiefdoms, most NS1 regions end up being run as chiefdoms now... leaders are selected on the off-site forums or (for smaller regions) just through WA endorsements undirected by any off-site mechanism. I don't see how calling it a chiefdom would change anything.

And neither option does anything to address the wider issue of providing a motivator for interregional political/military gameplay. My suggestions do. If you want the game to do well as a whole, you have to have ways to get the whole game community involved, and either of those options could do it.

A new ability for regional customization of political freedoms seems like a "motivator for interregional political/military gameplay"? Founders typically aren't the abusive gods that you're painting them to be, if they we're, their regions wouldn't be very popular. That being said, abolishing the power of regional controls for Founders seems like a good idea, its another thing that could help the raiding concept flourish a bit more. As for a Demarchy, I don't think it's up to us to decide if "political continuity and stability" is a concern to everyone (I think those who got stuck with Bush for two consecutive terms would agree). A governing lottery may be something people appreciate, you'd never know till we simulated it, THIS is a political simulator...

Also, about the chiefdom, all things are good and fine on paper (and on the forums), but when a group of representatives all have to power to abolish the delegate's power, we shall see how these power-hungry players act. A Chiefdom would most likely be the hardest system to work with, a challenge that most senior players would be intrigued with.

I'm not suggesting that Founders typically abuse their power. But when all democracy exists, in game mechanics terms, only because a Founder allows it, it can have no real legitimacy. Equilism's Founder once couped the regional government (it was really a set up with a number of the best players in the region, but a fascinating story (http://www.equilism.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=7590)), and the worst thing about it was that he was well within his rights to do so. He owned the region, and there was absolutely nothing we could do and no argument we could make to get around that basic game mechanic. That is the hard truth behind all supposed 'democracies' in founded regions, and just because Founders don't usually exercise their power doesn't mean they can't or that they would be wrong in game terms to do so.

Raiding won't go back to the way it was in the early days, though (granted) keeping the Founder from Regional Controls would help. (It would also remove any reason to have a Founder, so you might as well just get rid of them altogether.) Influence drastically slows down the raiding and defending game, making it more boring while simultaneously removing the game sanctioned moral impetus for choosing sides in such a conflict, and National Happenings... well, who bothers to track nations by hand anymore, when their movements can be seen right there on your screen and traced through the RSS feed in your Dossier? That eliminated a large portion of the skill and hard work that went into the first level of the Intel game.

I've seen regions that simulated demarchy (albeit clumsily, given the length of time required to coordinate a delegacy change). They don't last long. Sooner or later you get someone who's absent, incompetent, oppressive, or a combination of the three, and who wants to deal with that when you can earn your way to power in another region and create something that will last? If you're suggesting that it be allowed as a possibility, sure; but out of all the political systems I can think of, demarchy has the least to offer players in every respect but that of novelty.

As for chiefdoms, a group of players already has the power to abolish the delegate's power - through their WA endorsements. Those endorsements are manipulated through the real NS politics - the backroom deals between influential players and regional leaders that result in shifts in forum governments and changes in regional delegacies at the highest level. If you think such things are simply words on paper with no in-game effect, try to become the delegate of a feeder without them, and see how far you get. Chiefdoms (or something very much like them) are already alive and well in NS.

So no, a new ability for regional customization of political freedoms does not seem like a motivator for interregional political/military gameplay. The wide variation in political structures already seen on the regional forums adds flavor and interest to regional interaction, but allowing that to be reflected in the game code would change nothing and contribute nothing to the way things are already run. It might make the forum government structure more visible in game terms, and to that extent I would support it, but I don't see NS1 developing the kind of customizable coding that would be needed to do any kind of justice to the political diversity, complexity, and evolution of forum governments.

More code is not the answer. Every time the code has gotten more complex, the game has gotten both less flexible in terms of the goals one can pursue and harder to manipulate in order to achieve those goals, and therefore less interesting and less worthwhile. Follow that process to its logical conclusion and you end up with NS2, and no one - no one - in political/military gameplay wants that.

One thing I've seen while going over this thread are a few suggestions that regional influence be made optional or abolished entirely because it's 'killed' the raiding game. A substantial part of why influence was created was to remove the moderation quagmire that was the old set of invasion rules to prevent griefing- that is, marching into an easy target region, ejecting everyone, passwording the region and leaving it to die. People bitched about how murky invasion rules were and how they were enforced back then, too; and I'm not sure going back to that is a good idea. A single region griefing complaint could take hours for a moderator to slog through; given our tool set, there's just no good way to have all the information accessible that we'd need to determine if such-and-such raiding group has passworded the region without TGing the password to all the natives, or if they'd ejected too many of the natives, and so on.

I'm curious about what alternative solutions could be cooked up though. From a moderator standpoint, the biggest problem with the pre-influence system was difficulty of regular, even enforcement. Often, moderator decisions in region crashing complaints were inconsistent because if several factors; who was native, who wasn't? What number or percentage of the native population could be ejected before it was considered griefing? What if it was a native delegate that had simply taken over? Does a raider who's been a sleeper in a region count as a native when s/he takes over and starts booting people? These are the sorts of headaches that made the old invasion rules such a massive enforcement headache.

One thing I've seen while going over this thread are a few suggestions that regional influence be made optional or abolished entirely because it's 'killed' the raiding game. A substantial part of why influence was created was to remove the moderation quagmire that was the old set of invasion rules to prevent griefing- that is, marching into an easy target region, ejecting everyone, passwording the region and leaving it to die. People bitched about how murky invasion rules were and how they were enforced back then, too; and I'm not sure going back to that is a good idea. A single region griefing complaint could take hours for a moderator to slog through; given our tool set, there's just no good way to have all the information accessible that we'd need to determine if such-and-such raiding group has passworded the region without TGing the password to all the natives, or if they'd ejected too many of the natives, and so on.

I'm curious about what alternative solutions could be cooked up though. From a moderator standpoint, the biggest problem with the pre-influence system was difficulty of regular, even enforcement. Often, moderator decisions in region crashing complaints were inconsistent because if several factors; who was native, who wasn't? What number or percentage of the native population could be ejected before it was considered griefing? What if it was a native delegate that had simply taken over? Does a raider who's been a sleeper in a region count as a native when s/he takes over and starts booting people? These are the sorts of headaches that made the old invasion rules such a massive enforcement headache.

Well, as I've stated before, a varied system of voting styles might bring some more interest to Raiders/Defenders and just people trying to play the game. But I have a feeling a lesser powered founder could help with the raider/defender game without pissing off too many people. As for the complications you've brought up, you've converted me, I'm a regional-influenceist now !

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This wouldn't solve any problems with the great decline, however I figured as this forum has sort of become the breeding ground for "possible" improvements (and therefore my virtual home) I thought I'd share it with you. While bobbing my head very embarrassingly to a good Sam Roberts tune I got an idea, what if the WA issue submission system included the option for the writer to add an effect line? Such as when one submits an issue for evaluation? Lately I've had a bit of problem with resolutions that appear to have no negatives, no side effects, and you can't argue the bad effects of them without being shot down by the apparently "almighty compliance commission", having the effects (past the resolution's words itself) of the newest resolutions appear on your nation's page in writing seems like a good idea to me.

I'm curious about what alternative solutions could be cooked up though. From a moderator standpoint, the biggest problem with the pre-influence system was difficulty of regular, even enforcement. Often, moderator decisions in region crashing complaints were inconsistent because if several factors; who was native, who wasn't? What number or percentage of the native population could be ejected before it was considered griefing? What if it was a native delegate that had simply taken over? Does a raider who's been a sleeper in a region count as a native when s/he takes over and starts booting people? These are the sorts of headaches that made the old invasion rules such a massive enforcement headache.
Irregular enforcement is preferable to a system in which natives have no recourse when their region is being gutted. Influence is broken and does not protect natives from abuse; all it does is enshrine the idea that might makes right, affirming a fundamental amorality to the system and removing all court of appeals. Feudal Japan was an active and thriving community by any standard of measurement; Catlandatopia took it, held it long enough to institute a password invisible to the natives, and then sat back and picked them off one at a time at their leisure. That is what Influence has accomplished: making unquestionable the legality of actions that the griefing rules would have condemned without question. Thank you for the even-handedness, but I think I would've preferred the occasional injustice to the removal of the very concept of abuse of power.

My solution again would not be more code, but more politics. Any decision about native status is going to involve accusations of bias, because we really think that being a native is a matter of intent, and there is no way to measure that in-game. You don't want a full-blown elected Game Mod; but why not an elected Griefing Investigation Authority or committee? Let them decide; let them put in all the work; let them deal with the accusations of bias and let them be voted out if people think they've done a bad job. Political accountability - there's a concept. ;) The wonder of NS has always been how much the players created out of so little; our solutions should play to our strengths.

---------------

Unibot - could you please explain what you mean by different voting styles in terms of game-mechanics, because all sorts of different voting styles already exist and are being executed as we speak, as I argued above at unfortunate length.

Also, apologies for the double-post, but at Erastide's suggestion I'm going to expand on the idea of an "Adzone" I mentioned earlier (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=14490861&postcount=33), in case it was overlooked - the best part being that it need not require any changes to game code.

The idea is very simple: allow one mod-approved game-wide telegram per week, from the delegate of the Adzone - a region set up like a warzone and created solely for this purpose. If you don't want to play with any coding tweaks, just pick one of the warzones, assign it this role, and have a mod check for the proposed game-wide TG from whoever is delegate of the warzone/Adzone at a designated time each week.

What would this accomplish?

User-created regions would scramble to control it for use in recruitment. Authors of WA resolutions might want it so they could advertise their legislation. NS news publications could fight for the right to a game-wide readership. Everyone else might want to control it just to keep weekly TG spam out of their inbox. :p

Anyone who has ever slogged through 5 hours of sending recruitment TGs will jump on this chance - it really is an enormous competitive advantage. It's comparable to being a Featured Region but better, in that you could control whether or not you got it, and in that your name would be harder for people to miss when it showed up in their inbox. And furthermore, it would promote both competition and alliances, interregionally.

This could be done right now and all any Mod would have to do is pick a warzone, day, and time, and be willing to say "yes" or "no" 52 times in a year.

Did I mention it requires no coding?

Did I mention it requires no coding?

I believe so,

Which sort of contradicts yourself, I think.
I don't know if the system allows for a mass telegram (Easterbunny?) and for it to be connected with the delegate of the adzone would require more coding (Which isn't something I'm against).

As the maker of Raid R Us, I know. These "organized competitions" don't typically inspire raiders... it's not something that appeals to their morals. But a mass telegram feature and an adspot next to the "Featured Region" might.

I like.
But don't fear more code, fear less creativity...thats what REALLY makes NS2 so undesirable. (World 84...World 85...86...)

Unibot - could you please explain what you mean by different voting styles in terms of game-mechanics, because all sorts of different voting styles already exist and are being executed as we speak, as I argued above at unfortunate length.

Okay, let me run through the routine.

-A founder begins to create a region.
-He/She gets to choose which type of voting system he/she would like for their region.
-A drop down menu includes, democracy, chiefdom, anarchy...plutocracy.....and such.
-A Delegate would then be calculated for a region differently, if democracy isn't selected. The opinion of the majority might not be the decider. If anarchy was selected, a region would be delegateless making it unraidable. If chiefdom was selected, every vote from a WA member in a region would have to be supporting a delegate or else the position would be blank. Another type (the name slips my memory) would allow for the oldest (and therefore "wisest") nation to become delegate automatically.
- A founder or a delegate could change the type of voting system, interchangeably.

Someone up here can send game-wide announcements, as when NS2 was announced, and that's what it would be - not a code to allow the delegate to send a game-wide TG himself, but simply an arrangement with the Powers That Be who control the ability to send mass announcements, to send one written by the Adzone delegate, whoever that happened to be at the designated time, once a week.

This is not an organized competition. It's creating a resource set and telling the player base they're free to do with it what they will. The warzones fail because there's no power involved in owning one. Giving one Adzone delegate power to send a TG to every nation in the game once a week would correct that in a big way.

It's also not an attempt to encourage raiding, which is an attack on a region outside of a mutually acknowledged declaration of war. Not all military exercises are raids, as I am sure defenders (and my region has a long defender history) would be quick to remind you. On the contrary, one of the many possible ways I could see this developing is regions joining together and allying in order to better effect control over the Adzone, then writing a joint message or arranging some other sharing of the power. Or they could backstab each other, or break into competing factions, or, or...

That is the point - to give people a resource and see what they would do with it. To simulate politics.

------

If chiefdom was selected, every vote from a WA member in a region would have to be supporting a delegate or else the position would be blank.
*raises eyebrow* We must be using the term differently; I'm thinking of it in the anthropological sense. Do you mean that every WA nation in region would have to endorse the delegate, or he wouldn't be the delegate? (If so, all it would take to 'raid' them would be to move in a single WA and refuse to endorse anyone, and there would be no possible defense.)

It seems to me that each of those options would do two things:
1) Make differences in regional government more obvious (which I support, but I don't see the requisite complex coding being implemented any time soon)
2) Make a more varied raiding environment

The only option out of the ones you gave that might have an impact on the game environment overall would be the creation of an anarchy, where there was no Delegate... iirc, all NS used to be run that way back in the early days. Raids would be through RMB spam; if the Founder CTE'd no one would ever be able to change the WFE; troublemakers could never be ejected... but if the natives were okay with that, their WA nations would also be absolutely free to roam, with no concern over their own regional security.

EDIT: I take that back. The oldest nation (in terms of population?) thing would also affect the game environment, though to a lesser degree... you'd need to attract older players and keep your puppets alive and growing to have a chance of defending against that sort of attack. If it were the oldest nation in terms of the one that had been in the region longest, there would be an even greater motivation to make sure your nation didn't CTE, but that approach would actually protect against raids more effectively than anything else I can think of... nice.</edit>

Now, running it by WA ranking of the day (or by a designated measure, like 'largest defense forces per capita') and not by WA status or votes at all would be chaotically interesting - so then, if the WA Delegate happened to be a WA nation, he could vote on resolutions, and if not, he'd just have access to Regional Controls. That would represent a union of the people who play to tweak their national stats and the military/political gameplay side, which currently never seem to meet...

(P.S. Does anyone know how to stay logged in to Jolt for longer than 10 minutes at a time? It always takes me longer than that to write a post, and being signed out each time is getting annoying.)

I'd love to see a Regional Mod thing. The obvious choice would be to add powers to the Delegate

It's an interesting idea: that the Delegate should be able to erase messages from the RMB (or, rather, replacing them with "Deleted by Delegate"). I kind of like it. It could of course be abused by a corrupt Delegate, but that's half the point. Perhaps with a small Influence cost.

*shrugs* Personally I'd rather Founders be removed (though I'm not asking for it, as I'm sure it's not happening)...

I am in favor of removing the ability of Founders to overrule the Delegate. I believe they've been obsoleted by Influence. All long-term, stable regions have a stack of Influence now, which makes them extremely difficult to conquer: they don't need Founders any more.

It's wrong that invaders can attack others, then run home to hide behind a Founder at home. It warps the natural Influence dynamic, which is to protect stable regions but not transient ones. Abolishing Founders would nudge the game back a little toward the invasion game, most particularly in transient regions, where there are those players most interested in playing it.

My solution again would not be more code, but more politics. Any decision about native status is going to involve accusations of bias, because we really think that being a native is a matter of intent, and there is no way to measure that in-game. You don't want a full-blown elected Game Mod; but why not an elected Griefing Investigation Authority or committee? Let them decide; let them put in all the work; let them deal with the accusations of bias and let them be voted out if people think they've done a bad job. Political accountability - there's a concept. ;) The wonder of NS has always been how much the players created out of so little; our solutions should play to our strengths.
This is a thoughtful suggestion, but I believe it would be a serious error to (re-)introduce politics to this particular part of the game -- which is law enforcement. There needs to be a hard line separating playing the game from administrating/moderating the game; otherwise, your gameplay success depends on how well you ingratiate yourself with the mods. (Or, in this case, the Griefing Investigation Committee.)

The old days were bad indeed; even when the mods were at their wisest and most objective, people complained mightily about bias and corruption. You are of course correct that politics is at the heart of this game, but it must be kept out of rules enforcement.

Also, apologies for the double-post, but at Erastide's suggestion I'm going to expand on the idea of an "Adzone" I mentioned earlier (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=14490861&postcount=33), in case it was overlooked - the best part being that it need not require any changes to game code.

I like that idea. It does require coding, of course. But it's good.

:eek: It's [violet]!

This is a thoughtful suggestion, but I believe it would be a serious error to (re-)introduce politics to this particular part of the game -- which is law enforcement. There needs to be a hard line separating playing the game from administrating/moderating the game; otherwise, your gameplay success depends on how well you ingratiate yourself with the mods. (
*nods* I understand the objection. My thought was that making such a committee an elected body would allow players to do something if it seemed that one group had gotten an unfair advantage by ingratiating themselves with the Griefing Investigation Committee (GIC). If CLT (for example) got one of their members or a sympathizer elected to the GIC, and the GIC started overlooking CLT griefing... well, it would be the responsibility of the defenders and the rest of the raiders who felt they were being treated unfairly to form a coalition to get the offending committee member(s) removed.

That struggle in itself would be a more interesting route to gameplay "success" for me than whether or not a given raid or defense succeeded. (Then again, I'm first and foremost a political player; I'm sure not everyone would agree.) It seems to me that the problem before was the lack of an outlet for popular discontent (no matter how unreasonable such discontent was), so everyone just tried to be the loudest squeaking wheel in hopes that it would make a difference. But if all complaints about committee bias could be deflected with, "Well, campaign to get them unelected if you don't like it" in the same way that complaints about WA resolutions can now be deflected with "Well, get it repealed if you don't like it," then the problem would be provided with a solution within the system. Griefing controversies, instead of leading to endless whining on the forum, would become an opportunity to engage in a deeper level of gameplay for the politicians among us - including myself, of course. :p

And so I'd do it in a heartbeat if it were up to me... but I understand NS isn't just my game to be played as I want it to be. Thank you for taking the time to address the idea - I deeply appreciate it.

I think we need to look at two things
- Regional Customization (to provide more of an outlet of creativity and individualism), because as Naivetry said, the amazing thing about NationStates is how much we can create from so little (no offence). This IS the web 2.0, we need to adjust to allow as much creativity as possible, the ability to put photos in the factbook, links, and announce your participation in an alliance with a logo on your nation's page (like the WA member pic) would help greatly.

- The first day of playing NationStates, it's a make or break virtual world out there. What can we do to ensure that a fresh player is going to keep with the game? The first visit is the most important. Things like raiding, alliances and warfare intrigue newbies for some reason, we need to make sure that there are elements of the game that they know about right away. Links.. and Alliances' logos, organizations (like Nseconomy and NSwiki) and maybe some more facts and knowledge in the standard telegram the newbies get for starting the game would help. I understand they should just look at the help file, but as one wise player said, who looks at the help page? Knowing about the ability to change regions would probably help new-fangled leaders too, because I don't know about you, but I almost dropped the game when I thought I was stuck in the Pacific, initially.


Hello [violet], thanks for dropping by.
Always a pleasure.

*nods* I understand the objection. My thought was that making such a committee an elected body would allow players to do something if it seemed that one group had gotten an unfair advantage by ingratiating themselves with the Griefing Investigation Committee (GIC). If CLT (for example) got one of their members or a sympathizer elected to the GIC, and the GIC started overlooking CLT griefing... well, it would be the responsibility of the defenders and the rest of the raiders who felt they were being treated unfairly to form a coalition to get the offending committee member(s) removed.

That struggle in itself would be a more interesting route to gameplay "success" for me than whether or not a given raid or defense succeeded. (Then again, I'm first and foremost a political player; I'm sure not everyone would agree.) It seems to me that the problem before was the lack of an outlet for popular discontent (no matter how unreasonable such discontent was), so everyone just tried to be the loudest squeaking wheel in hopes that it would make a difference. But if all complaints about committee bias could be deflected with, "Well, campaign to get them unelected if you don't like it" in the same way that complaints about WA resolutions can now be deflected with "Well, get it repealed if you don't like it," then the problem would be provided with a solution within the system. Griefing controversies, instead of leading to endless whining on the forum, would become an opportunity to engage in a deeper level of gameplay for the politicians among us - including myself, of course. :p

What I fear would inevitably happen is players would lose all faith in the objectivity of the Griefing Committee. And they would probably be right, because your best path to success as an invader would be to stack that Committee, so that's where you'd put your efforts. We'd have replaced the invasion game with a meta-invasion game, whereby conquering the Committee would mean you own NationStates.

And if the committee itself wasn't source of enough anguish, the election process of those committee members surely would be.

I'm with you on expanding the potential depth of our political gameplay; I just don't think this is the place to do it.

- Regional Customization (to provide more of an outlet of creativity and individualism), because as Naivetry said, the amazing thing about NationStates is how much we can create from so little (no offence). This IS the web 2.0, we need to adjust to allow as much creativity as possible, the ability to put photos in the factbook, links, and announce your participation in an alliance with a logo on your nation's page (like the WA member pic) would help greatly.
Agreed. Increased customization of nations and regions is definitely on the to-do list. It's relatively easy to do, doesn't break anything, and is a noticeable improvement.

- The first day of playing NationStates, it's a make or break virtual world out there. ... I almost dropped the game when I thought I was stuck in the Pacific, initially.
Heh, were you the one guy in a feeder to not get ad-spammed? When I create a nation, the first thing that happens is five people ask me to join their region.

Heh, were you the one guy in a feeder to not get ad-spammed? When I create a nation, the first thing that happens is five people ask me to join their region.

To be honest I thought that one guy would be you. Yeh know, just check off the "no spam" box on the admin settings... ;)

___________

I think newcomers are reluctant to actually READ the ads they get, they're typically very detailed pieces of diplomatic work (from people they don't know) which can be a bit scary to newbies who just want to get down and dirty and start blowing stuff up. I mean, most ads talk about joining these large expanding empires, but who honestly wants to join some impersonally gigantic network...granted, we as people like to know we're a part of something bigger than ourselves, but we also like to know we are IMPORTANT, and not just some grunt of a large empire. Therefore I think the first telegram from NS is something that we all DO read, a little nudge in it to join some alliances, regions, the WA, the forums... well, that would help a lot.

;14537772']I am in favor of removing the ability of Founders to overrule the Delegate. I believe they've been obsoleted by Influence. All long-term, stable regions have a stack of Influence now, which makes them extremely difficult to conquer: they don't need Founders any more.

It's wrong that invaders can attack others, then run home to hide behind a Founder at home. It warps the natural Influence dynamic, which is to protect stable regions but not transient ones. Abolishing Founders would nudge the game back a little toward the invasion game, most particularly in transient regions, where there are those players most interested in playing it.

I want to expand a little more on this, because I think a change in this regard would be really interesting. The obvious flaw to changing this is in the creation of huge power struggles in new regions between delegates and founders. In democratic regions, there won't be much of a problem, but some regions operate on the premise that the "Founder knows best."

Now, we might add a different twist- regions can elect whether or not to have a delegate? This might negatively impact WA play, though.

Now, we might add a different twist- regions can elect whether or not to have a delegate? This might negatively impact WA play, though.

Well, I did offer the opinion that founder's creating their regions could establish anarchies which would be a delegateless region.

But what I think you're talking about it is as "none of the above" checkbox on the voter's ballot. I think you're edging at an interesting idea I had,

What if we had issues like we have for nations, but for REGIONS!?
Now that's practically impossible to code, but it gave me a laugh. That would be madness....

Delegates being sent issues for their regions about regional tension for war, environment problems of one nation effecting its neighbours, just good ol' diplomatic problems that regions and their delegates would have to "solve".

What if we had issues like we have for nations, but for REGIONS!?
Now that's practically impossible to code, but it gave me a laugh. That would be madness....
Unless I'm severely mistaken we've had that idea somewhere before... I'm not entirely sure if it got shot down or not.

The delegate would get an issue in his issue box, possible regional ones would be a different colour or something.
The effect lines would appear in the regional happenings, and the stats would effect
the nations' in a region. Possibly there could even be a ranking system and a naming scheme (like... barricaded defence outpost...freethinker haven... psychotic union...) that would appear in a region's factbook.

Here's an example of a possible "regional" issue. Many concepts could be used, pollution, a looming virus, ...I've just used war for simplicity's sake.

____________________________________________

War, what is it good for?

Description

Nations in @@REGION@@ are fuming over the assassination of Archduke @@RANDOMNAME@@. It appears as if the region has become divided with alliances, and war is inevitable.

[option] Notable pacifist, and ambassador to one of the smallest nations in @@REGION@@, @@RANDOMNAME@@, wrote a lengthy letter to you. “The region has become divided; we need to forge a home for diplomacy to happen. It is imperative that we rid ourselves of these bloodthirsty alliances, and bring ourselves closer together with a regional assembly. It would make your job a lot easier too. [effect] diplomats regularly verbally abuse one another in the civil headquarters [stats] political freedoms increases, tourism increases

[option] General @@RANDOMNAME@@ of the most militaristic nation in @@REGION@@ smokes a cigar in your face while attempting to brief you on the situation. “This is WAR, peacock, the imperial alliance needs your support, with the region’s delegate and their nation behind our cause, we can make sure this insurgency is squashed.” [effect] nations of @@REGION@@ have been at war against each other for longer than most history textbooks bother to cover [stats] political freedoms decreases, military funding increases

[option]@@RANDOMNAME@@, a stamp collector and a prominent UFO conspirator has a different opinion. “Couldn’t we ban alliances? Nations could go to war with one another, but only two nations could be involved? We’d just let them duke it out, and that would be that…no divided regions or messy debates…” [effect] larger nations frequently invade smaller nations to make way for their empire’s new colonies [stats] civil rights decreases, political freedoms decreases

[opinion] Colorful smoke emanates from your esteemed interior designer, “whoa man…we need to sloooow down. What if we just got rid of war? Wouldn’t that solve everything… LIKE attack the tree not the root, I mean…attack the roots not the trunk of the problem…. war is bad…….” [effect] with war being prohibited, international disputes are now solved with a game of tic-tac-toe [stats] defense funding goes BOOM

Unless I'm severely mistaken we've had that idea somewhere before... I'm not entirely sure if it got shot down or not.

Oh well. I tried. :)
However I like the idea, no matter if has been proposed before or not.
I think it would add that special political dimension to our regions we've been looking for, add some more importance to our delegates, and would be another stride towards regional customization especially if some sort of naming system was added to the factbook (like the government category for nations) for regions as according to how our founders (in an initial quiz like the one that fashions our nations) and delegates answer these issues and fundamental questions of how the region functions.

______________

But at least Heath Ledger won tonight. :hail:

Can I have a small suggestion? Just a real small one - I'll be sure to read more and bounce off some ideas. I'm a *former* raider too, so I can be a voice in that community for the time being if one is needed.

What I think would be a good thing right now is maybe an increase in perhaps the amount of text one can write in the WFE. Maybe times 1.5. It's hard putting up all the information for The East Pacific AND getting a good topic up that grabs people's attention. I'd suggest html coding allowed, but I can see how people would abuse that privilege.

;14537772']I am in favor of removing the ability of Founders to overrule the Delegate. I believe they've been obsoleted by Influence. All long-term, stable regions have a stack of Influence now, which makes them extremely difficult to conquer: they don't need Founders any more.

It's wrong that invaders can attack others, then run home to hide behind a Founder at home. It warps the natural Influence dynamic, which is to protect stable regions but not transient ones. Abolishing Founders would nudge the game back a little toward the invasion game, most particularly in transient regions, where there are those players most interested in playing it.

It could sway the game back to a raider / defender war (which is an important aspect of the game), but one of the big things with raider regions is they expend ALL their forces to raid - that includes all WA nations. To abolish founders, while the idea intrigues me, it might make raiders sheepish. I mean, I'm sure some would be gung-ho and attack regions here and there, but to keep their region safe, they'd need at least, at the bare minimum, two WA's to stay behind. Doesn't seem like much, but some orgs out there are probably five-strong WA nations, and protecting their region could be a tough pill to swallow.

Still, it's an interesting idea. ^^

A region could have three factors (much like civil rights and economy factors for nations) to decide what government category your region would fall in. The factors are based on civil rights, (except now's its nation's rights), economy (except now its called trade), and political freedoms (okay, defence has little to do with it).

The factors would be

Trade, interregional trade relations ( a divided region, one under war, would have terrible trade relations between nations)

National Soverienty , regional conformity, diversity, (prohibting nations from doing something would lower their soverienty)

Defence, intraregional relations (concepts like isolation and iron curtains)

It could sway the game back to a raider / defender war (which is an important aspect of the game), but one of the big things with raider regions is they expend ALL their forces to raid - that includes all WA nations. To abolish founders, while the idea intrigues me, it might make raiders sheepish. I mean, I'm sure some would be gung-ho and attack regions here and there, but to keep their region safe, they'd need at least, at the bare minimum, two WA's to stay behind. Doesn't seem like much, but some orgs out there are probably five-strong WA nations, and protecting their region could be a tough pill to swallow.

Still, it's an interesting idea. ^^

Well, I did talk about establishing an anarchy, where a delegate would not be possible to achieve. Therefore your region would not be raidable, however you'd miss out on this awesome regional issue concept I've been blabbing about.

A region could have three factors (much like civil rights and economy factors for nations) to decide what government category your region would fall in. The factors are based on civil rights, (except now's its nation's rights), economy (except now its called trade), and political freedoms (okay, defence has little to do with it).
There's quite a bit of coding involved in this if you expect these decisions to lead to an actual change in the structure of the government of the region. Not too likely to happen quite frankly. There will be delegates, they will be in charge.

There's quite a bit of coding involved in this if you expect these decisions to lead to an actual change in the structure of the government of the region. Not too likely to happen quite frankly. There will be delegates, they will be in charge.

Well, regional issues and possibly some sort of categorization system seems like the rational conclusion for more regional politics and diversity. But I understand if it's impossible, doesn't hurt to dream though. The best solutions stem from wild dreams, rationalization can come later.

Yeah, I think such an idea might have been brought up for NS2 in fact. Regional issues might be a nice way to announce your regional politics to newcomers though.

The system could be mostly behind closed doors, there's no need to have a ranking system on our regions' factbooks for good, bad, or whatever, just a simple tag that says your region's political category. Also the effect tags of these regional issues would appear in your regional happenings.

Here's a rough Ideocube of some possible regional categories...

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa156/Bluebird64/Categories.png

Frankly, a regional WA thing would benefit feeders, I think. Just saying.

Frankly, a regional WA thing would benefit feeders, I think. Just saying.

We've talked about a lot of things across the course of this thread, what idea are you referring to? :)

If regions have an ideological bias, they should say so. Mine does.
Is it possible to sort regions by other than alphabetical order, eg population, number of nations, location, ideology, language, species, technology?

Not currently.

Factors of ideologies, languages, species and a ranking on the Kardashev scale aren't registered yet either to be used to sort for regions. That would require more in-game user defined knowledge of nations than we have....currently.

Heh, this is turning into an idea free-for-all. Which is not a bad thing, although it makes it hard to discuss any one idea in depth.

I expect NS to receive more features in the near future -- in the past, we've been on development hold because of NS2, but now we've gone indy, that's not a problem. Not monumental changes, but certainly something. So now is a good time to suggest possible improvements.

The way this works is small ideas are more likely to get implemented than big ones. There's a cost-benefit ratio here, and an idea like "Let me set my nation's Capital City" has high benefit at low time cost for devs. Big ideas are hard to code and difficult to get right. So for example I think Unibot's plans for regions are intriguing -- and those Regional Categories in particular look awesome! -- but that's a major undertaking, code-wise.

So nothing's off the table, but bite-sized improvements are more likely to see daylight first.

So nothing's off the table, but bite-sized improvements are more likely to see daylight first

Hah. Thanks for polietly saying.."it's not happening". ;)

___________________________________________________

The way this works is small ideas are more likely to get implemented than big ones. There's a cost-benefit ratio here, and an idea like "Let me set my nation's Capital City" has high benefit at low time cost for devs. Big ideas are hard to code and difficult to get right. So for example I think Unibot's plans for regions are intriguing -- and those Regional Categories in particular look awesome! -- but that's a major undertaking, code-wise.

Though I would like to some more "custom" submits like Capital City. One thing I would like to see is a submit box for the nation's common religion (left blank to declare atheism). Theres some national issues that go around that could use a @@RELIGION@@ field instead of declaring that our Nation favors catholics and has a catholic advisior.

Also what about a spot under your nation's currencies that is left blank for us to fill about are nations. I would really encourge it to be HTML activated so links and photos could be displayed for alliances and affilatations.


Bravo to anyone that bothered to read my categories chart. :)
Unibot

Though I would like to some more "custom" submits like Capital City. One thing I would like to see is a submit box for the nation's common religion (left blank to declare atheism). Theres some national issues that go around that could use a @@RELIGION@@ field instead of declaring that our Nation favors catholics and has a catholic advisior.Agreed. The chance to specify a 'national adjective' (i.e. the label that's commonly used to describe the nation's people, government, sports teams, and so on) would be nice, too.

Also what about a spot under your nation's currencies that is left blank for us to fill about are nations. I would really encourge it to be HTML activated so links and photos could be displayed for alliances and affilatations.This has been suggested before. If I remember correctly then the Mods ruled out allowing links and photos because of the added work-load that policing such features to check their "suitability" for this site would give them...

I agree with Unibot though I don't know what "Kardashev scale" is. After I switched off my computer to go to bed, I realised that a lot could be achieved if the search parameters for nations and regions were changed from full match to instring, if you understand what I mean. (I've found a hermit "sibling" of my region, so I've sent a recruitment telegram). The proliferation of 000... regions annoys me. There woud be a certain amount of "falseflagging", but that occurs in RL.

I agree with Unibot though I don't know what "Kardashev scale" is.
You wanted to rate nations by technology. So I presented you with a means to the ends (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale)...
though the scales are specifically about energy output, its basically a technology scale. ;)
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I needed something to do with my regional categories to "justify" all of that hard work (nudge. nudge.) I put into that graph. So here's a fun
NationStates-esque quiz (http://www.nerdtests.com/mq/uttake.php?id=51982) which determines your region's regional category.:D

(By the way, my region, the Eastern Islands of Dharma is classified as "Moralistic Alliance", just so yeh know!)

http://www.nerdtests.com/mq/badge/5bf8b7f1df8fc0d1.jpg

Just an idea but perhaps to keep new nations interested, there could be a special training region (optional of course) to allow them to RP etc without being scared off by more experienced players.

On creation of a new nation the players get an automatic message (ok, more code) offering them a place in the new region. They can then RP with other similar nations and get a grip on things before jumping in to n00k everyone else and get ridiculed. Perhaps a limit should be put on for 500million+ pop to stop the region getting raided (thus putting newbies off). There could be one or two 'host nations' which could be accessible to mods and approved helpers (such as NS trainers) to help them push RP threads along. The host nation thing will obviously take some coding but I think it will be valuable in keeping new players interested. As the slots will be open to a group, there will (hopefully) always be someone ready to post and the newbies will experience different play styles.

The players could then (although this is less important) be given some sort of Graduate badge, maybe temporarily once somebody becomes satisfied in their RP skills. With this system the new players will know people in the world before they are released into the wild as it were. This may also reduce the amount of people leaving because of being fed up of n00b threads.

Another idea, is based on my initial experience of NS. When I first joined I was daunted by the sheer number of regions and had no idea which to join, flitting between Lazarus etc before getting fed up. Its only when I started up again that I found AMW and can enjoy myself. So, my suggestion is this. Issue a warning to all nations with say 5ish countries or less to say that they need members or will be closed. This may reactivate dormant people wanting to keep their regions whilst the ones that do move may then end up participating in RP in their new regions. I think that regions with 10-15 plus countries can work well with good RP between them so would object to ones this size being closed, but 5 seems too small to perform any real function (looking over the regions list the number with 1 nation is staggering)!

I prefer my first idea, as its more positive. Both may keep you mods busy if implemented ;)

Just an idea but perhaps to keep new nations interested, there could be a special training region (optional of course) to allow them to RP etc without being scared off by more experienced players.

There currently is a reincarnation of the "NationStates Trainers (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=584292)" trying to get off the ground in the International I. Forum. I think it's edging at what you're suggesting, except outside-of-the-game. Possibility if their service is fairly successful, a notice in the Help Page of the game, along with some other services could help their cause, which IS important. At times we can underestimate the importance of our newbies, but they're the next generation, if we're going to stop this decline we're going to need people to keep it progressing in the direction we like to see it going. One of the opinions on this forum was that this was mearly "the peeling of the fat", but as I've said before, they were the fatty flesh that kept us from freezing to death in a cold virtual winter.

I'm going to attempt to bring back discussions on how solve the declining population of NationStates, because that was the intent of this forum. Though this creative moshpit we've established for ourselves is comforting never the less. Any idea could potentially be the steps we need to take, because this metaphorical staircase we're attempting to use isn't just a simple, steady climb.

It could sway the game back to a raider / defender war (which is an important aspect of the game), but one of the big things with raider regions is they expend ALL their forces to raid - that includes all WA nations. To abolish founders, while the idea intrigues me, it might make raiders sheepish. I mean, I'm sure some would be gung-ho and attack regions here and there, but to keep their region safe, they'd need at least, at the bare minimum, two WA's to stay behind. Doesn't seem like much, but some orgs out there are probably five-strong WA nations, and protecting their region could be a tough pill to swallow.Still, it's an interesting idea. ^^

If we go back to my idea about multiple endorsement systems, (a democratic voting system being one of several possible systems)...a smart raiding group could just get an older citzen and establish a gerontocracy for their region. They still would be at risk in this though, if the group made enemies with higher seniorities...well, they would be royally screwed. So it could go either way. But I have no doubt if the delegacy system was shaken up with no founder, there would a renewed interest in Raiding.

I needed something to do with my regional categories to "justify" all of that hard work (nudge. nudge.) I put into that graph. So here's a fun
NationStates-esque quiz (http://www.nerdtests.com/mq/uttake.php?id=51982) which determines your region's regional category.:D

(By the way, my region, the Eastern Islands of Dharma is classified as "Moralistic Alliance", just so yeh know!)

http://www.nerdtests.com/mq/badge/5bf8b7f1df8fc0d1.jpg

Heh, that's so cool.

There currently is a reincarnation of the "NationStates Trainers (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=584292)" trying to get off the ground in the International I. Forum. I think it's edging at what you're suggesting, except outside-of-the-game. Possibility if their service is fairly successful, a notice in the Help Page of the game, along with some other services could help their cause, which IS important. At times we can underestimate the importance of our newbies, but they're the next generation, if we're going to stop this decline we're going to need people to keep it progressing in the direction we like to see it going. One of the opinions on this forum was that this was mearly "the peeling of the fat", but as I've said before, they were the fatty flesh that kept us from freezing to death in a cold virtual winter.

I can see the importance of the NS trainers (I even signed up to be one) but it may not be enough as newbies may not go out to find such stuff immediately, even if it was stickied it may not be looked at.

By actively showing an interest in the project mods can reassure new people and will make the community more welcoming. The region itself and the forum threads do not need any extra code necessarily (you can have puppet nations for all the helpers so they can be in the region). The automated message will require some work, although not much. Another advantage of this system is that we can message the boards when there are nations "graduating" thus giving some extra competition for regions to recruit. I may set up a region (with puppet etc) soon to test this idea out, possibly with the NS trainers.

I like Unibot's idea of founders being able to choose region government.

I wouldn't opposed to an adzone if a link to it is placed next to "Tired of life in @@REGION@@?" I don't think posting their should be subject to influence or starting a new region would be daunting.

Pardon the boast, but there is an NS School. We send nations who want to learn first to One Stop Rules Shop, then to our own academy:
NSH School of NS Ideology (http://cityofulthar.wordpress.com/ns-school/)

Please do considering adding some characters to the Factbook. A region flag might be nice, too.
:hail:

So here's a fun
NationStates-esque quiz (http://www.nerdtests.com/mq/uttake.php?id=51982) which determines your region's regional category.:DHas this been taken down? It's not working for me.

Please do considering adding some characters to the Factbook. A region flag might be nice, too.

Recently I've been thinking an upload feature for regional flags would be unnecessary, as long as the factbook could support HTML you could use an third-party site to store the image like photobucket and display it on the factbook with some simple image tags.

Has this been taken down? It's not working for me.

Try now.;)

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Glad to see you approve, [violet].

Just an idea but perhaps to keep new nations interested, there could be a special training region (optional of course) to allow them to RP etc without being scared off by more experienced players.

Training is good, but RP is not everyone's cup of tea, and it is definitely not the only way to play NS. As a political player, I would hate to have the RP style of play officially endorsed, but my gameplay ignored (particularly since, unlike RP, my world cannot be separated from the NS game mechanics - we have to have threat of on-site force to back up political maneuvering off-site). I would like to see something added in the FAQ about the various ways of playing NS - as Kandarin counts them, for instance, there are six broad communities, more or less mutually exclusive in terms of their player base, that have formed around the game - and to be fair, each should be represented.

I wouldn't opposed to an adzone if a link to it is placed next to "Tired of life in @@REGION@@?" I don't think posting their should be subject to influence or starting a new region would be daunting.

Are you suggesting that, say, all the recruitment spam be redirected from the feeders to a single ads-allowed region? So, "Tired of life in @@REGION@@? Check out your options in the Adzone."? That could be empowering for new nations, and I'm sure the feeders would prefer it. I still would like the mass-TG once/week option attached to the Adzone delegacy, though - without something like that to manipulate, military/political gameplay is left in the lurch again.

there are six broad communities

?
Raiders
Defenders
Generalities
Ambassadors (WA Rps)
Roleplayers
In-Game Politicians

Correct?

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Are you suggesting that, say, all the recruitment spam be redirected from the feeders to a single ads-allowed region? So, "Tired of life in @@REGION@@? Check out your options in the Adzone."? That could be empowering for new nations, and I'm sure the feeders would prefer it. I still would like the mass-TG once/week option attached to the Adzone delegacy, though - without something like that to manipulate, military/political gameplay is left in the lurch again.

You would NEED the mass-telegram system, or else there is no incentive to gain control of the adzone or even POST in it, for that matter. I mean, who's going to visit a region for adspam if there's no incentive. People would just keep on flooring the feeders with spam, at least there's lots of people there to listen to them.

Instead of a mass-telegram, because that's a little "intrusive", aka annoying for some. How about an adspot on "The World" page, right beside the "Featured Region of the Day"? That would be a good incentive, people would kill to be able to guarantee there region to be featured (its a real population boost).

Recently I've been thinking an upload feature for regional flags would be unnecessary, as long as the factbook could support HTML you could use an third-party site to store the image like photobucket and display it on the factbook with some simple image tags.

Pardon the noobish question, but couldn't you just enable img tags and links in the BBCode, rather than allowing HTML commands? Or is that what people mean when they say "support HTML"?

?
Raiders
Defenders
Generalities
Ambassadors (WA Rps)
Roleplayers
In-Game Politicians

____________

Correct?

*looks for Kandarin's analysis on TWP's forums and quotes (http://twp.nosync.org/index.php?showtopic=7455&view=findpost&p=151326) shamelessly*
Sure. I'm simplifying a bit and making up my own terms here, but by my count the major ones roughly come down to this:

* NS Gameplay (Invasion/Defense) - In the past this could have been considered two communities, now it is becoming or has become one.

* NS Gameplay (Politics/Diplomacy) - There's some overlap with Gameplay (Invasion/Defense) but the majority of participants are still hostile to the two becoming one.

* NS Gameplay (Issues) - Not really an organized community per se except in the smaller regions, but it goes in here because it still makes up the lion's share of players.

* NS Jolt forum (RP - Nationstates) - Sports, political, character interaction, and economic RPs. Some of this takes place on offsite regional forums (Haven, Mars, others) but it's still tethered to the Jolt forum.

* NS Jolt forum (RP - International Incidents) - If you're not familiar with this, trust me when I say it's different from the above. War, crisis, and diplomatic RPs. There's some overlap with the above forum but for the most part they stay apart. Some of this also takes place on offsite regional forums (Gholgoth, Draftroom, others) but it is also tethered to the Jolt forum.

* NS Jolt forum (General) - A lot of the playerbase here has actually become entirely divorced from the onsite game, but you can find a lot of Issues players in here too.

Others (things I don't consider 'independent communities':

* I don't really count the NS Jolt WA discussion as an independent community (thus 'no less than six') since it has much fewer exclusive players than the rest and there's a lot of overlap with Gameplay (Politics)

* I don't count the NS Technical/Moderation discussion as an independent community. It used to be one when the game was new but now it's not.

* I don't count the Jolt Gameplay forum and regional RP groups (TEP, Taijitu, Europe, others) as independent communities as the former is insignificant and the latter groups do not cooperate with one another and are ultimately tethered to Gameplay (Politics) for their continued well-being even if some won't admit it.

* A distinction could be made between feederite and userite Gameplay (politics) but they still operate in the same sphere except when deliberately guided otherwise.

---

All of the groups I've listed as 'independent communities' contain large numbers (thousands or high hundreds) of active players, and are usually self-containing. They have some overlaps (I've listed most) with other communities but by and large their attitudes toward each other range from apathy to stereotyping to disdain even when they could gain a lot by going past that. DFD and I have been members of all of these communities at some point, and we never seem to run out of stories to trade about how clueless they are about each other. Brilliant, talented Jolt RPers have consistently shown me that their understanding of invasion and defense comes down to 'my region got invaded once, and they were assholes'. Jolt General members, when asked to list the most significant NSers in the history of the game, took ten pages of thread before anyone mentioned Francos Spain. Some of our largest and most politically involved regions continue to sequester themselves. And lest the invasion and defense players here get too smug at this list of follies, many of you just spent quite some time demonstrating that you're incapable of understanding what narrative RP is or does.

The reason I'm saying all this is to point out that the best lasting solution for NS1 isn't necessarily a solution that revolves around the needs and wants of one single community. NS1 has suffered in the past because it was geared toward the interests of one of the Jolt communities. It is suffering now because it is currently (via NS2) catering to the interests of the Issues crowd. Demanding, either from other players or from Max, that NS1 now be centered around the invasion/defense game is selfish and ultimately isn't going to benefit the whole game any more than those things did. If we want to (as New People advocates) build a community that can transcend the ultimate collapse of NS1, we've got to reach across the aisle to the other parts of it that we've shunned, be they Jolt- or Gameplay-oriented. We've got to recognize the many ways that the game we enjoy appeals to people instead of forcing others to play by our own little niche before they can associate with us.

<3 Kandarin as always. There's room to quibble about which of these are truly separate (I would put politics and military together, but that may be due to my perspective as a member of Equilism, where the two go hand-in-hand) but overall and especially in his call for reaching across the divides, he's right on target.

Pardon the noobish question, but couldn't you just enable img tags and links in the BBCode, rather than allowing HTML commands? Or is that what people mean when they say "support HTML"?


The functions of BBCode with [img] tags, would suffice. I did mean HTML however.

Kandarin as always. There's room to quibble about which of these are truly separate (I would put politics and military together, but that may be due to my perspective as a member of Equilism, where the two go hand-in-hand) but overall and especially in his call for reaching across the divides, he's right on target.


Hhmm, yes. I think an indepth categorization of the NS demographic would be a very important analysis for us to make. Once we understand the different motives for playing NS (there are several), we need to formulate ways to better each player no matter his "category". Though there are groups that are declining more than others for sure. Once we can document such a analysis, it could help new players find their "calling" a little easier, if it was available to them as soon as they join. As well, it would help us find the right moves to make in defending this decline.

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I've also been planning for a while to do a demographic study, where NationStates generations are examined in depth. Using some applications of the Generational Archetype Theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Strauss).

(I've found a hermit "sibling" of my region, so I've sent a recruitment telegram).

"Ahem!"
You'd better read the rules about recruiting, before you get into trouble...

Hhmm, yes. I think an indepth categorization of the NS demographic would be a very important analysis for us to make. Once we understand the different motives for playing NS (there are several), we need to formulate ways to better each player no matter his "category". Though there are groups that are declining more than others for sure. Once we can document such a analysis, it could help new players find their "calling" a little easier, if it was available to them as soon as they join. I'm in the "NS Gameplay (Politics/Diplomacy)" group, primarily through its "NS Jolt forum (WA discussion)" side, with some involvement -- now increasing -- in the "NS Jolt forum (RP - Nationstates)" group too.

The reason I'm saying all this is to point out that the best lasting solution for NS1 isn't necessarily a solution that revolves around the needs and wants of one single community. NS1 has suffered in the past because it was geared toward the interests of one of the Jolt communities. It is suffering now because it is currently (via NS2) catering to the interests of the Issues crowd. Demanding, either from other players or from Max, that NS1 now be centered around the invasion/defense game is selfish and ultimately isn't going to benefit the whole game any more than those things did. If we want to (as New People advocates) build a community that can transcend the ultimate collapse of NS1, we've got to reach across the aisle to the other parts of it that we've shunned, be they Jolt- or Gameplay-oriented. We've got to recognize the many ways that the game we enjoy appeals to people instead of forcing others to play by our own little niche before they can associate with us.
This balance is something that is absolutely key in this game and what makes it playable for so many people throughout the years. And it's pretty hard to cater to several demographics without being hard on others in some ways.

Are you suggesting that, say, all the recruitment spam be redirected from the feeders to a single ads-allowed region? So, "Tired of life in @@REGION@@? Check out your options in the Adzone."? That could be empowering for new nations, and I'm sure the feeders would prefer it. I still would like the mass-TG once/week option attached to the Adzone delegacy, though - without something like that to manipulate, military/political gameplay is left in the lurch again.

Yes I am. Feeder RMB adspam is virtually useless. If the "Tired of life in @@REGION@@?" button took you to an adzone (you wouldn't move there, but the "Move your nation to" form would be there), that would help the feeders and recruiters. I don't agree that we should have to vy for control of an adzone because that would disadvantage smaller and newer regions. The sames rules that currently apply to feeder adspam could apply to adzone.

Regarding region flags, the problem with HTML and image links is security. My forum is in HTML and it strips img link tags off of comments because there are images on the Interbots with malware embedded in them. The only images that can be displayed on my forum must be uploaded to the server, which can scan them. BBcode runs in Python and I'm no Python geek so I can't explain why BBcode in other forums allows linked images.

Regarding TG all, I think that should be on Regional Controls. I disagree that restricting founders from Regional Controls would make any of them behave better. We have plenty of current pressure to behave because nations vote for regions "with their feet." I agree with Unibot that Founders should be able to choose their own regional government. :D

Try now.;)It works now, yay! :)

(National sovereigntist, moderate on trade, and 0% defense. :tongue:)

It works now, yay!

(National sovereigntist, moderate on trade, and 0% defense. )

Great!, It's good to see my quiz is working for people...

A Protectionist Haven, eh? Imagine a region of bumper sticks that said "OUT OF WORK? Shouldn't of bought Foreign!"

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This balance is something that is absolutely key in this game and what makes it playable for so many people throughout the years. And it's pretty hard to cater to several demographics without being hard on others in some ways.

I'm not a demographer, but as an estimate I would say half of players do mostly in-game stuff, and the other half use the forums primarily. But thats just an observational estimate. Almost EVERYONE starts off as a in-game player specifically, it took me several months to show my face on these forums (which is a pity, but yet...). Therefore I would be focusing on in-game improvements to guarantee recruits and young NS generations will continue playing NS. To help the forums world, and third party organizations ...links, LINKS and more LINKS from the game would be fantastic. I always found it impressive as a new recruit, how much of a world that NSers have carved out of virtual space for themselves...being intrigued with it probably kept me interested...until I got addicted to it.Therefore newcomers need to be aware of these things right away, so AGAIN, I would suggest amending the standard telegram into a sort of brief background of the NS world, its functions and have some links available in it to some stellar examples of raiding groups, democratic legislatures, WA lovefests, anti-WA organizations, and such.

Great!, It's good to see my quiz is working for people...

A Protectionist Haven, eh?Looks more like United Individualists, which would make sense.

As for your estimate, what do you mean by "players"? There are about 49,000 nations; even discounting puppets, there's no way we have 20,000+ forum posters. Even if you're just talking about a smaller, hard-core group, I'd still think there are more in-game fans than forum people...but I guess it comes down to where you draw the line.

As for your estimate, what do you mean by "players"? There are about 49,000 nations; even discounting puppets, there's no way we have 20,000+ forum posters. Even if you're just talking about a smaller, hard-core group, I'd still think there are more in-game fans than forum people...but I guess it comes down to where you draw the line.

Yeah. I take that back, about there being a 50/50 split, but that doesn't prove my point wrong about focusing the improvements on the game (though these ads are getting mildly annoying, ha).

Looks more like United Individualists, which would make sense.
Ah yes, you said you had a small military. What that category means is that your region isn't in a state of anarchy, but the delegate is basically a figurehead to a very divided region of nations who all mutually respect each other's beliefs. Imagine Colonial America before the constitution was empowered, but after the Revolutionary War.

Yes I am. Feeder RMB adspam is virtually useless. If the "Tired of life in @@REGION@@?" button took you to an adzone (you wouldn't move there, but the "Move your nation to" form would be there), that would help the feeders and recruiters. I don't agree that we should have to vy for control of an adzone because that would disadvantage smaller and newer regions. The sames rules that currently apply to feeder adspam could apply to adzone.

...

Regarding TG all, I think that should be on Regional Controls.

I like that first idea.

I'm not sure if what I'm saying about the adzone delegacy is coming across. Posting on the RMB would work as usual - you would not have to fight to 'control' the adzone in order to post on the RMB. But the adzone delegacy would allow you to send a TG not just to nations in the region, but to every nation in the game, once a week (or even less frequently, I'm not picky), subject to mod approval.

I disagree that restricting founders from Regional Controls would make any of them behave better.
The point isn't to make them behave, the point is to keep them from being able to single-handedly control the region. Again, however, if Founders are blocked from Regional Controls, there is no reason to have them outside of the 'founded by' tag in the WFE.

All of my gameplay friends agree with Todd that removing Founders (without removing Influence, too) would be a bad idea for our style of play. I'm personally not sure. It would make the game more dangerous for everyone, and especially for anyone who participated in the military side of things... but at this point, I think it's 50-50 whether that would be a good development or a bad. On the one hand, it could easily lead to protective isolationism. On the other, it might prompt more interregional cooperation. But all it would take would be one group of raiders dedicated to a forum rather than to a region to mess up the game for everyone else... systematically gutting regions is allowed these days, after all.

Yeah. I take that back, about there being a 50/50 split, but that doesn't prove my point wrong about focusing the improvements on the game (though these ads are getting mildly annoying, ha).
Puppets are a bigger part of the population than I think most people here may realize. I have between 30 and 40 of my own, and many of the people in the military gameplay may have about that number as well. And then there's the raider habit of creating batches of new puppets and then letting them sit in the feeders to die - somewhere between 50 and 70% of the 4-6 day old nations in the feeders fit that category from what I've seen.

And in terms of counting the forum side... don't forget the 100+ off-site forums. I still disagree that it's 50/50, though - I think the casual issues players outnumber all the rest of us.

All of my gameplay friends agree with Todd that removing Founders (without removing Influence, too) would be a bad idea for our style of play.

No, a region with no empowered founder and no regional influence would be a defence nightmare. Removing powers from the founder is just the logical way to help out the struggling raiding community without giving them too much of an edge. I agree with whoever said it earlier, founders have become outdated in our postinfluence era.

I don't know how regional influence formulates itself. But I was thinking if your regional influence as delegate was calculated with the seniority (how long you've been a resident of a region) of your VOTERS. That could really help equal things out. Of course, if there WERE to be multiple systems of regional governments, regional influence would need to be re-evaluated. A fair regional influence system and no founders. SOUNDS like a good deal to me. Sort of an even playing field for both politicians and raiders (like creators and destroyers, ha) which would make up most of the in-game NS demographic.

(Then of course there would be my regional issues and categories to warm the hearts of issue-oriented players...in a good dream...ah)

Founders allow people the chance to be alone if they want to. That's previously been an acceptable mode of play in NS. It may change, but aside from the effect on raiding people, it would affect a lot of issue players, forum players, roleplayers and other people that don't monitor their nations *too* closely but do play via some aspect of the game.

Founders allow people the chance to be alone if they want to. That's previously been an acceptable mode of play in NS. It may change, but aside from the effect on raiding people, it would affect a lot of issue players, forum players, roleplayers and other people that don't monitor their nations *too* closely but do play via some aspect of the game.

Hhhm... they could always put a password on their region. My region does that currently, anyone who wants in just telegrams the delegate or founder, we'll let in anyone really as long as we don't suspect foul play.

Also, what about 5 or so, game created regions, called safezones or something. Basically the opposite to warzones. These regions would be offbounds for raiding groups, with mod intervention if needed.

Each safezone of course would use a different type of government system (Yeah, I needed to scrub THAT idea in, again! ;)).

So one could be called Safezone-Democracy or something more creative. And another Safezone-Chiefdom... so anyone could experiment and live out these different systems without the interruption of raiders, or the isolation of passwords.

Unibot, regional passwords are a hassle and far from secure way to prevent unwanted guests.

If TG all means recruitograms to all nations, I don't support that. I you say it's once a week to every nation, does every recruiter get to do it? That's a monstrous amount of spam. If you say regions have to go one at a time, it could take over a 100 years for your region to get it's turn. If it's random, some regions will get multiple shots and some will get none for years, like Featured Region. I only support TG all as an intra-regional tool. Adzone region where you have the "Move your nation to" form at the bottom of the page and an RMB wide open to recruiters above it is much more elegant and much less code. A mod headache, perhaps, but less of a headache for Todd and the other feeder leaders.

I think the success of NS in the future depends on not sacrificing the diverse ways people like to play. My region's nations prefer playing issues and our community. If our nations were interested in WA, we'd support that, but most of them aren't. My region was founded just 4 months ago to promote peaceful coexistence. We have created a diverse meta-community of regions (some defend but none raid AFAIK, nor do they exhibit any interest in it) and the total number of nations in my region and the regions our Ambassadors sit in today = 410. That exceeds the largest UCR. That's not a boast - it's to make a point. Raiding is a double edged sword. When a raid ends in banjecting, a vandalized Factbook, a password, and leaving the region for dead like a spray painted rail car, some of those players move on. Some don't get excited about NS, they quit. Others find regions that want nothing to do with that part of the game. Like mine.

NS has a warzone and if it's struggling that's not because they can't use all of NS for fresh meat. It's because they don't have attractive regions that nation founders want to be in. I caution against using the word "democracy" as if it's a universally good thing. Forcing every region to hold elections or face potential banjecting chaos if they don't might have perverse consequences that would turn players off to the game. Direct democracy IRL was considered a failure by many because of tyrrany of majority and myriad opportunities to corrupt elections. Of course it would make it more lively. But lively can also be stupid. Making NS more friendly to raiders should be a discussion about making the warzones better. As I have no expertise or interest in that, I defer to those who know more about raiding.

Same goes for WA. Don't punish nations who aren't into it, make it more cool so folks want to be there.

Our experience is that if you can get 30% of your nations interested in an offsite Forum, that's a lot, but many of the Forums we see are driven by about 10-20% of the nations in the region. Many nations prefer to log in every few days and just lurk in their region. If we disincentivize the casual players and lurkers by forcing them into a part of NS they don't enjoy and want no part of, that won't build interest in the game. Some of the regions we are friendly with have no offsite forum and most of them hold no elections. Some are sleepy and some are bustling. If any of those 410 nations wanted a region with elections, or a busy forum, or an active raider army, they would have moved to a region that has those things.

Build what the people want and they will come. Limit their options and you might lose as much or more than you gain.

Also, what about 5 or so, game created regions, called safezones or something. Basically the opposite to warzones. These regions would be offbounds for raiding groups, with mod intervention if needed.

Each safezone of course would use a different type of government system (Yeah, I needed to scrub THAT idea in, again! ;)).

So one could be called Safezone-Democracy or something more creative. And another Safezone-Chiefdom... so anyone could experiment and live out these different systems without the interruption of raiders, or the isolation of passwords.
No.
There are quite a few existing non-raider/non-defender regions that have been in existence for years, and I doubt VERY much whether many of the players who are involved in those would be happy about having to move to new regions instead as the only way of staying immune to raiding: I know that I wouldn't want to have to abandon my main nations' old homes, with their established histories and (in some cases) geographies...

No.
There are quite a few existing non-raider/non-defender regions that have been in existence for years, and I doubt VERY much whether many of the players who are involved in those would be happy about having to move to new regions instead as the only way of staying immune to raiding: I know that I wouldn't want to have to abandon my main nations' old homes, with their established histories and (in some cases) geographies...


But if you had no founder, and no password. You Region WOULDN't be immune, thats why a safezone would be good way to complement those people, but comprimise to the Raiding/Defending crowd.

I have heard that passwords aren't really working in many cases as they were meant to -- i.e. to keep outsiders out of your region.

Would it be useful to replace passwords with an invitation list? So the Founder/Delegate would have to place a nation on a whitelist before they could move in.

Excellent idea. I like region whitelist better than a password. That would benefit raider and peaceful regions. If it was an option that could be enabled or disabled in Regional Controls, not something you had to use. Much better tool and boilerplate server code if you're running Apache.

We already have a safezone. It's called founder turning off WA Delegate access to Regional Controls. If a region has no founder and no password, it's currently fair game for raiding. C'est la vie.

I think Raider/Defender is too heterogeneous a group to call a crowd. There are many large successful regions who choose to Defend but not Raid. Some of them have shared with me the same reservations I put in my previous post about the negative impact on NS of those raiders that act as region vandals.

I guess I'm confused. Why exactly do Raiders need a compromise that removes Founder access to Regional Controls or forces us to defend or be relegated to a safezone? When did my region's value of peaceful coexistence suddenly become a boat anchor to NS? I'm sorry if I'm being contentious - we're all just brainstorming here and this is just my 2 cents.

I think the come and go as you please to whatever region that will have you currently in NS is a powerful incentive that drives creativity and I wouldn't want the game to change in ways that might limit that. My nations don't want elections. If they did, we'd give them elections. They want to talk about issues and that new Google adbar inviting us to check out "Asian women for love and marriage."

TGIF!

This is Unibot's puppet posting.

__________________________

Has our factbook's design been altered?

I don't want to force everyone to play the invasion game. But I think the current situation, where raiders all shelter behind Founders, blocks the most obvious and desirable type of invasion game, which is invader-vs-invader. (Desirable, from my point of view, because it involves only those players who enjoy this type of thing.)

Since raiders cannot attack each other, they are essentially forced to invade unwitting third-party regions. And there aren't too many of those that are both Founderless and worth conquering.

A while ago I saw a small-ish region get taken over by invaders, and naturally enough the victims tried to formulate revenge. Their first thought was to steal the invaders' home region, which had been mostly emptied by the attack. But they couldn't, because it was Founder-protected. Everything is wrong with this situation.

Also, best of luck in finding an Asian woman for love and marriage.

I don't want to force everyone to play the invasion game. But I think the current situation, where raiders all shelter behind Founders, blocks the most obvious and desirable type of invasion game, which is invader-vs-invader. (Desirable, from my point of view, because it involves only those players who enjoy this type of thing.)


Yes, that's why a Founder's power need to be disintegrated to even the playing field. Also, this white-list concept sounds very interesting as well. I would still keep a password as an option, but...

_____________

And again, has our regional factbook design been altered or are my eyes deceiving me?

I just thought I'd mention, work on my anthropological Analysis of NationStates Generations (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?p=14557871#post14557871) has come about to Gameplay. I can't recall if I brought this up earlier, or if it had been about a demographical study. Anyway, understanding where people are coming from is a big part of understanding how to help them.

;14557797']I don't want to force everyone to play the invasion game. But I think the current situation, where raiders all shelter behind Founders, blocks the most obvious and desirable type of invasion game, which is invader-vs-invader. (Desirable, from my point of view, because it involves only those players who enjoy this type of thing.)

Since raiders cannot attack each other, they are essentially forced to invade unwitting third-party regions. And there aren't too many of those that are both Founderless and worth conquering.

A while ago I saw a small-ish region get taken over by invaders, and naturally enough the victims tried to formulate revenge. Their first thought was to steal the invaders' home region, which had been mostly emptied by the attack. But they couldn't, because it was Founder-protected. Everything is wrong with this situation.

Also, best of luck in finding an Asian woman for love and marriage.

That was one of my peeves, back when I was raiding. I wanted to fight Nazis, or other raiders, or defenders. But since those regions usually had Founders, I ended up in relatively defenseless "civilian" regions, which to me wasn't as much fun. Also, it bothered me that a two-bit 5-10 nation region could "diss" the biggest, strongest regions in the game, just because it had a Founder.

And again, has our regional factbook design been altered or are my eyes deceiving me?

Don't worry; it's not your eyes. It looks like Max/[Violet]? changed it.

Don't worry; it's not your eyes. It looks like Max/[Violet]? changed it.

Looks good to me. Reminds me of the style used for the Featured Region of the Day.

I'm sorry for the quadruple post coming up, but I didn't want things to get lost in the novella I've just finished...

All of my gameplay friends agree with Todd that removing Founders (without removing Influence, too) would be a bad idea for our style of play.No, a region with no empowered founder and no regional influence would be a defence nightmare.
No, actually, it would be what we call an even playing field. As long as the native/defender delegate was alert, he could continue to eject raiders - or any other threats - without worrying about the Influence cost. Right now, we have to spend days mopping up after an invasion, because in just a few updates in a small region, raiders can gain so much Influence that we can't banject them all. And while our WA's are tied up boosting our delegate's Influence to deal with raider puppets, the raiders can drop WA status (and reapply to be a continuing threat) while using new WA's to raid other regions where we can't follow for fear of losing the one we just defended. Defenders have a huge disadvantage in mobility under Influence.

Removing powers from the founder is just the logical way to help out the struggling raiding community without giving them too much of an edge. I agree with whoever said it earlier, founders have become outdated in our postinfluence era.
Todd is a former raider. He says it will have the opposite effect on the raider community. I don't know their mindset well enough to say - because the danger seems to me to be rather that any raider group that organized primarily off-site, or that regularly changed on-site bases, would be untouchable - but I would listen to what representatives of that community say before deciding what would be best for them.

I don't know how regional influence formulates itself. But I was thinking if your regional influence as delegate was calculated with the seniority (how long you've been a resident of a region) of your VOTERS. That could really help equal things out. Of course, if there WERE to be multiple systems of regional governments, regional influence would need to be re-evaluated. A fair regional influence system and no founders. SOUNDS like a good deal to me. Sort of an even playing field for both politicians and raiders (like creators and destroyers, ha) which would make up most of the in-game NS demographic.
It's mostly based on WA status (so too bad if you object to the WA on principle) and the endorsements that go along with that - my main nation has been in Equilism for 2.5 years without ever leaving, and is still at Duckspeaker, because my WA is used on defense missions elsewhere. That means, to put it simply, that any region that regularly defends other regions is going to be doubly at risk - first, because their oldest WA nations aren't in the region propping up their delegate, and second, because they will have a much smaller pool of high-Influence nations at home to defend themselves if raiders attack. And it also means that, if Founders are removed, joining the WA really isn't optional - it's the only way to preserve your region - because with Influence, anything that is possible is legal, no appeals. So much for the casual, non-WA player.

The idea of calculating Influence based on which nations have been in-region longest will just leave the youngest regions - the newer players we ought to be taking pains to protect - more defenseless.

Hhhm... they could always put a password on their region. My region does that currently, anyone who wants in just telegrams the delegate or founder, we'll let in anyone really as long as we don't suspect foul play.
Simple - because you give the password to one raider, and he sends it to all his friends, and so much for your security.

Also, what about 5 or so, game created regions, called safezones or something. Basically the opposite to warzones. These regions would be offbounds for raiding groups, with mod intervention if needed.
*sees ghosts of NS2* What's to stop raiders from just basing themselves out of there, where they'd be immune to retaliation?

If TG all means recruitograms to all nations, I don't support that. I you say it's once a week to every nation, does every recruiter get to do it? That's a monstrous amount of spam. If you say regions have to go one at a time, it could take over a 100 years for your region to get it's turn. If it's random, some regions will get multiple shots and some will get none for years, like Featured Region.
Let me try this again.

The ability to TG all nations would be tied to THE DELEGACY OF THE ADZONE. That means, that one nation in the entire game, the one that was the delegate of the adzone, would be able to do this once a week. The point is to create a unique and valuable resource relevant to the entire game that nations would have to work together to control.

This is how we think in political gameplay - in terms of balance (and lack thereof) of power. I know it's foreign to the RP world. But it's how practical NS politics work.

...and the total number of nations in my region and the regions our Ambassadors sit in today = 410. That exceeds the largest UCR. That's not a boast - it's to make a point.
That's less than half the size of Gatesville when I joined, and over 200 less than Gatesville's population last summer. That's less than Absolution was just a few months ago. That's only 100 more than where even Equilism was alone last July/August. (And if we counted all the regions Equilism has ambassadors in, by the way, even excluding the feeders, we'd be well over 1000 today. We political players know about meta-game community, if anyone does. Our failing has been sometimes to think that our meta-game community is the only one that exists... or matters.) And so I don't take your number as boasting; I take it, compared to the precipitous decline in my community, as a sign of how the political and military gameplay has suffered and is continuing to suffer from the stagnant political environment fostered by Influence - which could be summarized as "who cares if you're active or talented, good or bad, so long as you're old and prestigious" - and the conviction of the most senior figures on the military/political game that 99% of the people on this (Jolt) forum 1) don't understand the first thing about what we do or what matters to us, and 2) could care less whether or not we keep playing. Our community has been declining for years; it's only now that the shrinkage has quickened that everyone else seems to be noticing. I'm sorry if I sound especially truculent, but this is the way we in military/political gameplay feel; we approach Jolt from the perspective of, and therefore with the rhetoric of, the disenfranchised.

NS has a warzone and if it's struggling that's not because they can't use all of NS for fresh meat. It's because they don't have attractive regions that nation founders want to be in....Making NS more friendly to raiders should be a discussion about making the warzones better. As I have no expertise or interest in that, I defer to those who know more about raiding.
Warzones fail because conquering them is worthless, and it's worthless because it's permitted. That is, in fact, why most of the biggest names in raiding and defending left in disgust when Influence came around - raiding and defending is, and has been from the beginning, viewed primarily as a moral argument. Influence brought that moral discourse to a halt and declared that raiding was just a game. And as we all understood quite clearly, it's no use fighting over a game. By sanctioning raiding, it was destroyed, and to the communities who felt compelled to settle their moral disagreements by force of arms, and to recruit their friends to help them do so, it was said that their little pastimes were just that insignificant - that as long as no one cheated, no one should care what anyone else did. And surprise... two years later, no one cares.

I think Raider/Defender is too heterogeneous a group to call a crowd. There are many large successful regions who choose to Defend but not Raid.
There are, and I should know, as I am an admin for a historically defender region that has been around, successfully and prominently, for five years. The point is that players who choose to defend OR raid generally do not show up on the Jolt forums, as this and other discussions about the military/political game have made clear. To be blunt, Jolt has nothing of interest to offer us (except, potentially, power over the course of game mechanics), any more than you all here seem to care who controls a feeder delegacy or how they got there. I may not be a raider, but I know and sympathize with their perspective and their concerns much better than I will ever understand or care about the world of International Incidents, because raiders and defenders are playing different sides of the same game. That is what we mean by different communities, each of which understands next to nothing about each other.

I guess I'm confused. Why exactly do Raiders need a compromise that removes Founder access to Regional Controls or forces us to defend or be relegated to a safezone? When did my region's value of peaceful coexistence suddenly become a boat anchor to NS? I'm sorry if I'm being contentious - we're all just brainstorming here and this is just my 2 cents.
We (the raiders and defenders) don't so much want Founders removed as we want Influence removed. Badly. From our perspective, that's the most fair - regions that want protection can have it with no cost and no concern as long as they have a Founder. The removal of Influence is the real pipe dream of everyone I know in military gameplay who played before it was instituted.

I mentioned removal of Founders more out of a morbid desire to see if the world would go up in flames if it can't be saved, than out of any idea that it would help.

;14557509']Would it be useful to replace passwords with an invitation list? So the Founder/Delegate would have to place a nation on a whitelist before they could move in.
It would only delay the invasion process, so each raider would have to ask before coming in. Even more boring for the raiders and still no more protection.

It would also make liberating an invaded region impossible, by the way.

;14557797']I don't want to force everyone to play the invasion game. But I think the current situation, where raiders all shelter behind Founders, blocks the most obvious and desirable type of invasion game, which is invader-vs-invader. (Desirable, from my point of view, because it involves only those players who enjoy this type of thing.)
*shakes head* The NS2 developers didn't understand this, and if the basic truth is not understood, all attempts at helping the game will fail: people in NationStates do not fight for the sake of fighting, because this is a real political simulation, not a wargame where everyone goes into it just in order to pick a fight with everyone else. There are plenty of PvP games out there with far better features; that's not why we're here. People in NS, like in the real world, fight for power over others (raiders), resources to survive and prosper (hence the feeder wars over who will get the first chance to attract new players), or over injustice, real or perceived. Expecting raiders and defenders to fight each other directly is like thinking that England would have declared war on Germany just as quickly if Germany had never invaded another country in WWII.

Even now, there are deep ideological divisions between defenders who go after raider home regions when they get the chance (e.g., TITO) and defenders who assert strongly that any offensive action against raiders directly makes us "no better than them" (e.g., Equilism's historical position, though we have individuals who disagree, and the FRA, among others). The only people who invade for the sake of invading are the raiders; the defenders only fight to stop them, and without the incentive to protect others, the defender game is surely dead.

A while ago I saw a small-ish region get taken over by invaders, and naturally enough the victims tried to formulate revenge. Their first thought was to steal the invaders' home region, which had been mostly emptied by the attack. But they couldn't, because it was Founder-protected. Everything is wrong with this situation.
But of course, there are ways to get at an organization based out of a Founded region, too. For one, you can join the Intel game and play a role of subversion from within. This option was so highly developed back in the pre-Influence days that a defender organization once managed to place an agent on a raider forum who eventually gained secure access and IP vision; this in turn allowed the defender organization to track raider spies on the defender forums and feed them false information, while choosing their own battles. Unsurprisingly, the raider organization collapsed not long after.

Also, it bothered me that a two-bit 5-10 nation region could "diss" the biggest, strongest regions in the game, just because it had a Founder.
That's when you fight back with words - interregional pressure is surprisingly effective. Ask TNR. ;)

Looks good to me. Reminds me of the style used for the Featured Region of the Day.
Agreed - it's pretty. :)

raiding and defending is, and has been from the beginning, viewed primarily as a moral argument

Agreed, many people that I talk to on NS believe that defenders defend for their own amusement(while this may be true for some many people it isn't)

Anyways bravo Nai!:hail:

*doors blow off the hinges*

Woah, woah, woah, back up! Long time raider here, someone pointed me in the direction of this thread so I thought I would chip in my two cents.


I have heard that passwords aren't really working in many cases as they were meant to -- i.e. to keep outsiders out of your region.

Would it be useful to replace passwords with an invitation list? So the Founder/Delegate would have to place a nation on a whitelist before they could move in.

You're right, passwords sometimes don't keep raiders out, sometimes. More often, however, I have seen small little founderless regions kill themselves by use of a password. Sure, they keep out the raiders, but they also keep out the average Joe Schmoe nation who most of the time doesn't want to ask the delegate for the password, that takes too much effort. Even worse is when I see a fairly active, midsize region, maybe with a population of 15 or 20, put up a password and then *boom* their delegate goes inactive and dies. Password is still up there, delegate never told anyone what it was because he was afraid of invaders and the natives can't see it because he disabled that. No one in the region has WA status or wants to get it for some reason and the region dies a horrible, horrible death.

I never liked passwords and I never uses them, even when I was raiding pre-influence laws and you could password whenever you wanted as long as you provided it to all the natives (anyone else remember that?). They are annoying, they kill regions in my opinion, and I just don't like the idea that any good griefer with a large invasion force can storm into a region, throw up a password after getting the right amount of influence and sit there forever ejecting natives until they can refound the region as a prize.

I agree with my defender counter-part, an invitation list is a horrible idea and would be more hated by raiders and defenders alike than the Influence system was when it was first introduced.

NS has a warzone and if it's struggling that's not because they can't use all of NS for fresh meat

I think someone said something about Warzones? I'm fairly certain I heard something about Warzones. Yeah, Warzones flat out suck. Warzones are for defenders who don't want to step on peoples feelings but still want to raid so they invade these worthless piles of nothing that no one cares about and no one lives in. Worst idea anyone has come up with ever. Plus they were created by the mods as a "designated raiding zone" which makes me hate them even more. I'd seriously rather raid Grant's Tomb then raid a Warzone, they are that damn boring. Yes, I'd rather raid the grave of a dead man and curl up with his rotting corpse then set foot in a Warzone They are terrible.


I don't want to force everyone to play the invasion game. But I think the current situation, where raiders all shelter behind Founders, blocks the most obvious and desirable type of invasion game, which is invader-vs-invader. (Desirable, from my point of view, because it involves only those players who enjoy this type of thing.)

Since raiders cannot attack each other, they are essentially forced to invade unwitting third-party regions. And there aren't too many of those that are both Founderless and worth conquering.

Hey, as a raider I know that people don't always want to be "involved" in raiding and that the raider/defender game is one of many aspects of NS, its not the only one, but its been a part of the game since ye olde times and invading the helpless unsuspecting region is part of the charm of NS. Now, do I wish natives could retaliate against me? Hell yeah! That would be amazing, perhaps we could get actual *wars* going on between regions instead of this cat and mouse thing that exists between defenders and invaders. It would be like the great wars of early NS history!

But this "invader-vs-invader" thing has no appeal to me. In the raider community there is something called "Raider unity" where, except for the off beat incident, raiders just don't raid other raiders, ever. It's not that we *can't* raid other raiders when their founder dies or whatnot, we just choose not to, its more fun to raid a third party and even more fun to raid a defender protected region, amiright? The game needs more conflict in my eyes but restricting raiders to only fight other raiders sounds a lot like a Warzone and I always expressed how much I love those bastard children.

Personally I would love to have NS have no founders at all but I can already see the horrible abuses before I even write the suggestion down. The influence system, in my eyes, has scaled back raiding already, but Influence is a topic I could write a whole hate/love novel about so I'll save that for some later time.

;14557797']I don't want to force everyone to play the invasion game. But I think the current situation, where raiders all shelter behind Founders, blocks the most obvious and desirable type of invasion game, which is invader-vs-invader. (Desirable, from my point of view, because it involves only those players who enjoy this type of thing.

Since raiders cannot attack each other, they are essentially forced to invade unwitting third-party regions. And there aren't too many of those that are both Founderless and worth conquering.

A while ago I saw a small-ish region get taken over by invaders, and naturally enough the victims tried to formulate revenge. Their first thought was to steal the invaders' home region, which had been mostly emptied by the attack. But they couldn't, because it was Founder-protected. Everything is wrong with this situation.

I couldn't agree more. Makes perfect sense. If you want to raid, don't play behind a impenetrable fortress and pick off tiny vulnerable regions like Hello Kitty. Raid and be prepared to defend your borders.

I support the middle way. If you opt in to raid, you choose a region type where you can also be raided. Current Founder access to Regional Controls doesn't need to be restricted for everyone to allow the others to do as they please. To each his own. One doesn't have to create a sweeping code change to allow a three "region types" who choose peace, defend only, and raid/defend.

I would caution against dissing that little 410 nation count I quoted based on the old census of regions. I didn't mention the unofficial ties of our peaceful coexistence friends. If you count the leaders and former leaders of a the guests of our recent modest region shindig, we had regions containing 15% of NS nations represented. Again, not because we think we're superior - we just chose a value that resonated with some. I'm not interested in what was. I'm interested in what is and how we can make it better. I hear the voices of those who say some regions are in decline. That's certainly a concern. But not all of us are.

Todd has some excellent points, as does Unibot. I just wanted to add a voice whose ideas have found some modest support in the NS community. Let the raiders raid and defenders defend. That's all fine by me. But give peace a chance, too.

;14557797']Also, best of luck in finding an Asian woman for love and marriage.

Alas. Always a bride's maid, never a bride. :$

I'm glad we're getting some of the opinions of ACTUALLY raiders, and invaders. I can't say I've REALLY ever been there. I've been raided before, and I invaded once.

So here's some of the courses of actions we've discussed....

- Get rid of Regional Influence + Founders
- Get rid of Founders
- Make Regional Influence Optional
- Get rid of just Regional Influence
- Safezones for people who just want to play "politician".
- A Whitelist
- Regional Categories

Forgetting anything?

_____________________________________________

I support the middle way. If you opt in to raid, you choose a region type where you can also be raided. Current Founder access to Regional Controls doesn't need to be restricted for everyone to allow the others to do as they please. To each his own. One doesn't have to create a sweeping code change to allow a three "region types" who choose peace, defend only, and raid/defend.


I did have an idea back while I was blabbing about "regional issues" and "categories", that if your region had a high defence rating (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=14541675&postcount=61), that would lower your regional influence costs. But I believed one of the mods said that would be way too hard to code, which is understandable.:p

No, actually, it would be what we call an even playing field. As long as the native/defender delegate was alert, he could continue to eject raiders - or any other threats - without worrying about the Influence cost. Right now, we have to spend days mopping up after an invasion, because in just a few updates in a small region, raiders can gain so much Influence that we can't banject them all. And while our WA's are tied up boosting our delegate's Influence to deal with raider puppets, the raiders can drop WA status (and reapply to be a continuing threat) while using new WA's to raid other regions where we can't follow for fear of losing the one we just defended. Defenders have a huge disadvantage in mobility under Influence.

That's true. Regions would just have to have fairly active delegates.


Todd is a former raider. He says it will have the opposite effect on the raider community. I don't know their mindset well enough to say - because the danger seems to me to be rather that any raider group that organized primarily off-site, or that regularly changed on-site bases, would be untouchable - but I would listen to what representatives of that community say before deciding what would be best for them.

I've been reading up on how the Farkers operated, its appear as if they lacked a home base, which was their greatest strength. Fair Enough.

My monthly post in the forum.. I think they should adjust the rules for invading/defending,open it up a bit,that should spark things,I am not just saying this because I like invading and defending.

{ soft demomic cackle }

My monthly post in the forum.. I think they should adjust the rules for invading/defending,open it up a bit,that should spark things,I am not just saying this because I like invading and defending.

You mean...like getting rid of the multiying rule? Ha...that would be madness...muhhaha....

But if you had no founder, and no password. You Region WOULDN't be immune, thats why a safezone would be good way to complement those people, but comprimise to the Raiding/Defending crowd.But we do have founders, so we're safe so far: I'm arguing against your whole "Remove the founders" suggestion, not just the 'Safezones' part of it.

;14557509']I have heard that passwords aren't really working in many cases as they were meant to -- i.e. to keep outsiders out of your region.

Would it be useful to replace passwords with an invitation list? So the Founder/Delegate would have to place a nation on a whitelist before they could move in.Yes, that suggestion sounds good to me.

;14557797']I don't want to force everyone to play the invasion game. But I think the current situation, where raiders all shelter behind Founders, blocks the most obvious and desirable type of invasion game, which is invader-vs-invader. (Desirable, from my point of view, because it involves only those players who enjoy this type of thing.)

Since raiders cannot attack each other, they are essentially forced to invade unwitting third-party regions. And there aren't too many of those that are both Founderless and worth conquering.

A while ago I saw a small-ish region get taken over by invaders, and naturally enough the victims tried to formulate revenge. Their first thought was to steal the invaders' home region, which had been mostly emptied by the attack. But they couldn't, because it was Founder-protected. Everything is wrong with this situation.
Agreed, but what to do? I don't suppose there's any way to make Invaders (but only Invaders) have to do without Founders, is there?
Maybe go the NS2 route, with different worlds: One world without Founders and/or influence, where Delegateship still goes with the highest number of endorsements, and one world that retains both Founders and Influence where Delegateship might be assigned according to some method that's less susceptible to conquest?

I think someone said something about Warzones? I'm fairly certain I heard something about Warzones. Yeah, Warzones flat out suck. Warzones are for defenders who don't want to step on peoples feelings but still want to raid so they invade these worthless piles of nothing that no one cares about and no one lives in. Worst idea anyone has come up with ever. Plus they were created by the mods as a "designated raiding zone" which makes me hate them even more. I'd seriously rather raid Grant's Tomb then raid a Warzone, they are that damn boring. Yes, I'd rather raid the grave of a dead man and curl up with his rotting corpse then set foot in a Warzone They are terrible.
ROFL. Very nice Wolfie.

The ability to TG all nations would be tied to THE DELEGACY OF THE ADZONE. That means, that one nation in the entire game, the one that was the delegate of the adzone, would be able to do this once a week. The point is to create a unique and valuable resource relevant to the entire game that nations would have to work together to control.

Personally, I wouldn't be that fond of that, mainly just because it'd be slightly annoying to get the same message on multiple nations and have to delete them every week. Also, what if the people on top just sent out messages that said, "_____ group suck!!11!!" and so on? Should the mods pass that along to everyone too? Would you be okay with a region being able to turn off receiving those messages via a founder?

Personally, I wouldn't be that fond of that, mainly just because it'd be slightly annoying to get the same message on multiple nations and have to delete them every week. Also, what if the people on top just sent out messages that said, "_____ group suck!!11!!" and so on? Should the mods pass that along to everyone too? Would you be okay with a region being able to turn off receiving those messages via a founder?

I might have mentioned it before. But what if, instead of a mass telegram, it was an adspot on the World page, like the featured region of the day.

I have heard that passwords aren't really working in many cases as they were meant to -- i.e. to keep outsiders out of your region.

Would it be useful to replace passwords with an invitation list? So the Founder/Delegate would have to place a nation on a whitelist before they could move in.

That would be awful in my opinion. Even though it may not sound like it, it would be a huge advantage to invaders.

Example: Region without a founder and a password invites some new members in(who happen to be invaders)they join the WA and elect themselves as delegate. Now it is basically impossible to liberate the region.

Personally I don't see much difference in having a Whitelist as opposed to a password, can someone elaborate?

You mean...like getting rid of the multiying rule? Ha...that would be madness...muhhaha....

I've had this idea of separating the WA from the invading/defending game, and then allowing you to have multiple nations for war purposes. Though I think that the game would get super saturated with puppets if that happened. And I don't know what the "non-WA-delegate" would be for aside from war.

I've had this idea of separating the WA from the invading/defending game, and then allowing you to have multiple nations for war purposes. Though I think that the game would get super saturated with puppets if that happened. And I don't know what the "non-WA-delegate" would be for aside from war.

Well, I was joking about the multis thing. But a separate system for Regional Delegate, and WA delegate IS an idea worth mentioning.

Maybe both could access Regional Controls?

But a WA delegate would have to be elected democratically, while the R.D could be picked using a different system. Regional Delegates could get regional issues...!!!

Autocratic Regional Delegates would be founders who have to pay influence costs....

I will start by saying that almost nothing I have read here appeals to me:

Getting rid of founders = bad idea.

Sure, for a while it would provide chaos. But what you would see happen is all regions taking their military back home to build a wall around their WA Delegate. The result would be the entire war game coming to a standstill.

I think a better idea, would be to look at how we can limit the power of the founder. Right now, the founder can do whatever he or she wants. I don't think the regional influence system that works for the delegate would work for the Founder. The founder doesn't have to be in the WA etc etc

But I would be interested in exploring an idea where founders have amounts of "Prestige" within his region. Prestige is how much the nations will let him do, based on how active he is in them game (How often he logs on, posts on the RMB, maybe send telegrams) so people give him more leeaway, and he uses up prestige much like influence.

I can see holes and ways to abuse such an idea already, but it might be something to go off of.

-HEM

*sees ghosts of NS2* What's to stop raiders from just basing themselves out of there, where they'd be immune to retaliation?

Whats stopping Raiders from basing themselves in a un-delegated region? Where the delegate's powers are turned off?

You mean a founderless region where the delegate powers are turned off? Because any raider can tell you that, in a founderless region, when the new delegate comes along the delegate powers are automatically turned back on. It has to be like that otherwise we would have scores of dead regions in Nationstates that died simply because their delegate accidently clicked on the button that turned the delegate powers off one day.

You mean a founderless region where the delegate powers are turned off? Because any raider can tell you that, in a founderless region, when the new delegate comes along the delegate powers are automatically turned back on. It has to be like that otherwise we would have scores of dead regions in Nationstates that died simply because their delegate accidently clicked on the button that turned the delegate powers off one day.
__________________

No I meant, a raider with a delegateless home base is as invincible as a group that resides in a hypothesized "safezone" where raiding was banned.

But I wasn't thinking clearly, a delegate's power is banned by the founder, but in a world without founders...

Unless of course the region was my hypothesized "anarchy", in which the delegate wouldn't exist.

;14537772']I am in favor of removing the ability of Founders to overrule the Delegate. I believe they've been obsoleted by Influence. All long-term, stable regions have a stack of Influence now, which makes them extremely difficult to conquer: they don't need Founders any more.

It's wrong that invaders can attack others, then run home to hide behind a Founder at home. It warps the natural Influence dynamic, which is to protect stable regions but not transient ones. Abolishing Founders would nudge the game back a little toward the invasion game, most particularly in transient regions, where there are those players most interested in playing it.

*waves to Nai, and Kandy*

I saw this, and could not not respond to it..

Eliminating founders could only help the gameplay element of NS, as it would increase the drive for invading, and give defenders a more united front from which to fight (cause if you know them, right now they are all almost at war with each other.. silly rabbits..).

However, I cannot avoid the ethical view of this. While I have always argued in favour of improving activity in the gameplay sector of NS, removing founders altogether would leave all regions in a far too unstable state which would potentially ruin the creations of many dedicated players. Do I want to watch my own region (I'll just say Europeia as an example..), be overrun with invaders and watch the governmental systems which I helped to form there be smashed to pieces?

It is the argument against invading in general, but in founderless regions, there is generally less lost by these acts of war as would be the case in a region with an active founder. These creations show the brilliance of our own imaginations, and when we give up on them (and allow our regions to become vunerable), they become fair game for invaders. Regions with founders should not have to suffer.

Invading and defending was a player-made concept, and it was brilliant to see what people could create out of very little. It is the same case with a region. Some are brilliant creations, and it would be a shame to see them all at risk.

I am honoured to be able to argue a point made by both Nai and the illustrious [Violet] btw. :rolleyes:

[hr]

I would be in favour of the removal of influence though.. It would give invaders and defenders more room to manouver.. Less is more as they say.

I have only read the first 4 pages of this topic so far, so my post may seem a bit out of place. But as a founder of a democratic region and a long-time active player of NS, I don't like the idea of abolishing founders. We're not all controlling; regions need some sense of stability. If you want to keep a UCR region alive and growing you have to treat your residents with respect, otherwise they will leave for a better region. By abolishing us, the founders, you won't fix NS's problems. The problems of NationStates are caused from lack of gameplay. It doesn't take long for people to get tired of answering the same issues over and over again. By adding features that would allow nations to better customize their nation and regions to customize their regions more you greatly enhance the game's playability.

Nationstates2, in its current state, is not a game that most people are going to want to play long-term. It lacks the community aspect of Nationstates1 and because I knew there were limits on how large I could build my alliance due to such a small pool of nations to choose from, I quit Nationstates2. Why put our region/alliance in a position where we are confined, where we can't grow? So I decided to stay with Nationstates1. But the gameplay has gotten old, everything in it but the strong sense of community has gotten old. And that shouldn't be. If the developers are interested in keeping this game alive they need to do something about it. Fix it up, add new features. Make people want to stay and play. Sure, we can do a lot with off-site forums and communities, but we can only do so much. It is very difficult to get nations to join and be active in forums and an off-site website. We have both, and only a handfull of our nations are truly "active." One person can only do so much--two or three dedicated people can only do so much. With that said, smaller regions like ours find it difficult to survive since we have no one to help us. No one to wants to be an active part in the game.

But if the game had features that added more long-term playability and it was updated often enough to hold people's attention, then I think we would see a difference in people's enthusiasm.

I will give you an example. In my region, I and another enthusiastic player did most of the work ourselves. I recruit, handle forum contests, delegate elections, moderate the forums, etc. The other active nation helps as much as possible. But no matter how much time and effort we put into building our region and off-site community, getting interested players to follow the URL's to those sites is nearly impossible.

I have said this before, but Nationstates is no longer the only free nation sim out there. If this game wants to compete with the other simulation games out there for users who will be interested in gameplay, something needs to be done. And not some small change that will barely be noticed. Nationstates needs to truly be updated and continue to add features and improvements over time. People like to see progress, and that can't always come from the communities, although we are a big part of it.

In closing, add more features and keep updating the game over time with things that will grab people's attention and make them want to play and I promise you this game will grow and expand. There is a userbase of nations and coders, as people have already said, that would probably be more than willing to help in any way we could. I know I would and I already have a list forming in my hhead of capable nations that would lend what talents they had to helping the game grow. And not just coders, people that would help in the community aspect as well if developers showed some interest in really improving the game. We can not motivate our people if we're not first motivated ourselves.

Here, here to everything that Lexus and Angles World has said!

Abolishing founders would probably kill the entire military game, and ruin Nationstates.

Okay, so, running off of Ketchupland's idea (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=14559448&postcount=128), that I elaborated (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=14559456&postcount=129) on....


http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa156/Bluebird64/System.png

Abolishing founders would probably kill the entire military game, and ruin Nationstates.

Oh.. I don't know about that. But, Max pulling the plug...NOW that would kill us. ;)

I'm all for removing passwords on regions, I think. Why? Well, mainly because France is passworded by the... ugh... macedonian empire and about to be refounded with a "WELCOME TO MAKEDONIJA CAPITAL IS MAKEDONIJA" in orange bold text.

How the heck?

Lots to respond to, but just one quick point for the moment:
I would be in favour of the removal of influence though.. It would give invaders and defenders more room to manouver.. Less is more as they say.

I keep hearing this argument, but I don't understand it. If we abolished Influence, a group of invaders could pile into your region, seize the Delegacy, kick every single native out, and password-lock it, all in under five minutes. The only thing preventing that currently is Influence. A Founder could remove the password and boot the invaders, sure, but by then the region is already trashed.

Well, if I recall, in the old days if I was to seize the delegacy, kick every single native out, and password the region, my nation would be deleted in under five minutes flat by a very pissed off Mod for violating just about every single one of the old griefing rules. :P

*sigh* I miss the old game rules, they were so much more threatening and fun. Never knew when you were going to accidentally break a game rule and get modbombed to hell, it added mystery and danger to the game in my opinion.

Influence is a pain and almost flat out killed the raider/defender game but it did make raiding less annoying for the Mods because they didn't have to listen to players moan about how some raider was breaking the rules.

I have no problem with the concept of influence, I just have a problem with how ridiculously slow it accumulates, the mystery calculation it uses that no one can quite figure out, and the fact that a nation can sit in a feeder for 5 years with a WA applied to his/her nation and never get above minnow but a feeder delegate can get to at least duckspeaker in under 6 months. Those are the things that make me want to scream out with every fiber of my being for the death of influence. If that was fixed I would be in raider nirvana.

Ah, and *I* remember the howls of "mod bias" and the endless hours of sorting who was a native, who was a raider, and who was a defender. It was tedious, no one was happy with the result, and it kept the tasklist at weeks, rather than days, long to resolve.

No thanks.

Oh you're just bitter because you're a mod and you're bias :P

"You baitin' me? You baitin' me? You baitin' me? Then who the hell else are you baitin'? You baitin' me? Well I'm the only one here. Who the *** do you think you're baitin'?"

:p

I personally feel the influence system is working, it allows the mods more time to work on the important aspects of the game, makes us raiders work harder if we want to keep the region & allows the defenders a time window to liberate the region or the natives to up rise.

Abolishing Founders will only change the way raiders work. I personally would abolish our own home region & claim our captured region as our own. This way we do not have to waste resources protecting a region.

I would think that The Rejected Realms would just become a raider's Mecca again like in the old days. I'm sure Kandy would love that. I personally would just base myself out of a feeder like Lazarus. Can't eject me from there (*cough*although I wish Lazarus had Warzone powers *cough*).

(*cough*although I wish Lazarus had Warzone powers *cough*).

Seconded :P

My biggest issue with influence is how hard it is to build up in some regions. I beginning to doubt I'll ever be any but minnow in Lazarus haha.. Perhaps we should lower the impact regional influence has over individual influence or put in a mechanism to adjust it to the current group of people within the region.

In regards to passwording, why not just make passwording a founder option only? Raiders passwording a region is probably one of the most destructive actions they can take.

Removing founders is interesting, I'm thinking how it would affect my own policies. I think it would introduce a new/old dynamic to the game, I'm not sure if its for the best or for the worst though. Foreign affairs would mean a bit more, making new friends in other regions in hopes they help us defend from invasion.

For my own ideas, how about we put in a quick code allowing us to put our own links in the WFE's. We all gather on our own forums, it would be nice to be able to put a link to them there. Also, why don't we ditch the entire concept of "update raiding", would it be too much overhead on the server to just do a quick check to see who is the leading in endorsements at a given time and adjust when they take the seat? Victory/defeat in a one minute window each day doesn't seem too realistic to me.

Okay, so, running off of Ketchupland's idea (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=14559448&postcount=128), that I elaborated (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=14559456&postcount=129) on....


http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa156/Bluebird64/System.png
Speaking as (through one of my puppets) the Founder of a region whose government is a British-style constitutional monarchy, I would oppose this: For regions like ours, leaving the Founder with their full powers so that they can "safeguard the constitution" -- but banning them from serving as the [always] elected Regional Delegate (i.e. Prime Minister) -- would make a lot more sense... otherwise you're wrecking a perfectly good system of government...

Speaking as (through one of my puppets) the Founder of a region whose government is a British-style constitutional monarchy, I would oppose this: For regions like ours, leaving the Founder with their full powers so that they can "safeguard the constitution" -- but banning them from serving as the [always] elected Regional Delegate (i.e. Prime Minister) -- would make a lot more sense... otherwise you're wrecking a perfectly good system of government...

This is just saying that every delegate regardless of being founder would have to pay regional influence costs, furthermore your regional style of government can be what ever you want in this system. The reason the WA delegate is always democratically picked is because the WA is democratic in its voting, that makes every delegate in their parliament equal...to an extent (forgetting about regional power). Also with this system, a raiding group couldn't hide behind a anarchy region with no regional delegate, because there would still be a WA delegate. Also regions could fight back if the WA delegate position is taken over with a raider, their regional delegate could banish the WA delegate (that is..if he/she has accumulated more influence than the other). But, If I'm not mistaken, someone in the WA has more influence typically than someone not in the WA, and to be a regional delegate you wouldn't need to be. Therefore you could have less influence than the raider. But, there would be these regional issues, and regions that answered them with a higher defence rating (or national soverienty?) would have lower regional influence costs for their regional delegates, allowing them to overpower the WA delegate quicker.

I think one thing deserves mention here. One of the ways NS1 differs from NS2 is that you can answer issues according to your heart (or your RP'ed heart), and no matter how outrageous or impractical your answers, your ability to play the game is unimpaired. If there are regional issues, and if answering them with your (regional) heart damages your region's ability to play the game effectively, this is a really big change.

I believe I read somewhere that Max considers the ability to have no military and an imploded economy without any lasting damage to be a significant part of the NationStates ideal...

I think one thing deserves mention here. One of the ways NS1 differs from NS2 is that you can answer issues according to your heart (or your RP'ed heart), and no matter how outrageous or impractical your answers, your ability to play the game is unimpaired. If there are regional issues, and if answering them with your (regional) heart damages your region's ability to play the game effectively, this is a really big change.


AH, I feel my conscience growing on me.....ahhhhh....but I had it all worked out!!!! Defence could improve the regional power, national soverienty would raise regional influence costs, and Trade could improve nation's economies. ARg...you, and your logic! Argh.... dahm me, I'm sooo weak. :p

Thanks for the input.
The regional issues wouldn't NEED to manipulate how your regional functions for the system I've laid out to work. So....

Bravo creators! Check out the new nation history feature for nation creation...

The history selections are...

Plucky, Malnourished Pioneers

Brave, decreasingly well-financed explorers traveled across the globe in search of virgin lands; upon finding them, declined to notify homeland.

Recently Discovered Undiscovered Tribe

Lived contentedly in self-contained universe until discovering actual universe larger than ten by twelve miles.

Sackers and Salvagers

Simple-minded barbarians met advanced, scholarly empire; barbarians sacked empire for shiny things.

Like-Minded Isolationists

Disparate peoples drawn together by common urge to escape homeland oppression/debts/outstanding warrants.

Violent Segregationists

Clamored for right to secede from unrepresentative majority using petitions, speeches, letter campaign, automatic weapons.

Ethnic Cleansing Refugees

Fled bloodthirsty regime bent on extermination; now shaken and stirred.

Diplomatic Homeland Wranglers

Made persuasive case for world superpower to annex other nation on their behalf.

Civil Bloodbath Survivors

Slightly stunned remnants of nation-shattering internal conflict over issues which remain unclear.

Long-Suffering But Still Optimistic Pilgrims

Departed godless homeland to found new spiritual paradise-on-Earth; some decades lost after following wild-eyed man into desert.

Is this are April Fool's Joke? A Month in Advance?
Apparently the history feature doesn't change anything in our nation's bio....

Well, if I recall, in the old days if I was to seize the delegacy, kick every single native out, and password the region, my nation would be deleted in under five minutes flat by a very pissed off Mod for violating just about every single one of the old griefing rules. :P

*sigh* I miss the old game rules, they were so much more threatening and fun. Never knew when you were going to accidentally break a game rule and get modbombed to hell, it added mystery and danger to the game in my opinion.
It added mystery and danger to my email inbox, too. Players ran an invasion they thought should be legal, got whacked by a mod, and screamed blue murder.

Influence is a pain and almost flat out killed the raider/defender game but it did make raiding less annoying for the Mods because they didn't have to listen to players moan about how some raider was breaking the rules.
Well, more relevant is that players were moaning. And rightly so: we were expecting you to read a 1,000 word rules document before playing the game, and we punished you if you didn't absorb it all correctly.

The fact that Influence brought into line what you can do with what you can legally do in this game was a huge benefit.
I have no problem with the concept of influence, I just have a problem with how ridiculously slow it accumulates, the mystery calculation it uses that no one can quite figure out, and the fact that a nation can sit in a feeder for 5 years with a WA applied to his/her nation and never get above minnow but a feeder delegate can get to at least duckspeaker in under 6 months. Those are the things that make me want to scream out with every fiber of my being for the death of influence. If that was fixed I would be in raider nirvana.
Ahh, well that's interesting. All those things can be tweaked. I'm open to changing the numbers -- how fast you accumulate Influence, how fast you lose it, how much Influence various actions cost. If people saying Influence should be scrapped are really saying that the Influence numbers should be tweaked, then I understand, and would like to hear specifics.

Bravo creators! Check out the new nation history feature for nation creation...
Man, that took SO long for anyone to notice.
Apparently the history feature doesn't change anything in our nation's bio....
No, but it does alter your nation's initial makeup.

Increasing the speed at which one accumulates influence would assist the raiding / defending game. So if we're going to keep it, for the sake of that section of gameplay, I'd suggest influence speed increased.

Man, that took SO long for anyone to notice.

If it is a REAL feature, might I suggest....

1. Spelling "discovering" right (ie:discoverng), in the Recently Discovered Undiscovered Tribe bio.

2.

Technological Patent Office

Creative inventors who claim to have created the first automaton, yet lacking in the “wheel” department. Also known for their remarkable liking of Opium and abundance of infocommercials.

;14562910']Ahh, well that's interesting. All those things can be tweaked. I'm open to changing the numbers -- how fast you accumulate Influence, how fast you lose it, how much Influence various actions cost. If people saying Influence should be scrapped are really saying that the Influence numbers should be tweaked, then I understand, and would like to hear specifics.

Alright, now we are getting somewhere. :D

Ok, something that has generally annoyed me is that when I am raiding a region it takes forever for influence to gather. Sure, if I bring in a WA army the size of the North Korean military my influence will go up quickly but on the average raid I'm lucky if I have 2 endorsements more than the former native delegate. I can literally sit in a region for months and still never have enough influence to eject someone who entered just a few weeks before me.

Speaking of which, I've run into this problem a few times. I or someone in my group takes over a region and maybe we took it the day after some defenders were in there, protecting the region from some different failed invasion. So naturally we want to eject those nations...but we can't because we don't have enough influence.

So we wait a week or so and maybe, if we are lucky, we get to the point were we can eject and ban them, so we do, even though the influence calculator says it will take up nearly all our influence. Our thinking is "hey, we should still at least be able to eject the *new* nations who enter, right? Ha! Ha! Wrong! Now we don't any enough influence to eject *anyone*. Hell, we can't even eject ourselves out of the region, we don't have enough influence.

And, ya know, I can't be the only one with this problem, defenders must have to deal with it too except they are more willing to actually commit large numbers towards a liberation or a defense so maybe it's not quite as big of a deal, I don't know, I'm not a defender.

Oh! On that subject enough with this "about half" when using the influence calculator. I don't want to know that when I eject or ban Nation A it will take "about half" of my influence, I want to know *exactly* how much influence. I want a number or a level bar or something. I want to know exactly how much influence I have and how much it will take to eject or ban a nation.

I'm sure I can think of more but that's all for now :P



Edit: I remembered something. A bit before someone mentioned the region France, for those not in the know, let me give you a quick run down.

About a week ago France (http://www.nationstates.net/region=France) was a founderless region with about 60 nations, and 15 endorsements. It was a nice, active target, the type any invader would jump at to take in fact I was looking at doing just that myself.

About 3 days ago, this happened:

http://img127.imageshack.us/img127/1449/frenchregional.jpg
http://img127.imageshack.us/img127/6598/franceedit.jpg

I don't know how long the invaders had been sitting in the region, but it must have been forever to get that much influence to eject everyone in the whole region and then password it. Just the same, the killed the region, totally burned it to the friggin ground. Its horrible for the natives and its horrible for the raider community because now I can't raid the damn region >_>

It would be nice if this sort of thing could be prevented.

And, ya know, I can't be the only one with this problem, defenders must have to deal with it too except they are more willing to actually commit large numbers towards a liberation or a defense so maybe it's not quite as big of a deal, I don't know, I'm not a defender.

I don't know how long the invaders had been sitting in the region, but it must have been forever to get that much influence to eject everyone in the whole region and then password it. Just the same, the killed the region, totally burned it to the friggin ground. Its horrible for the natives and its horrible for the raider community because now I can't raid the damn region >_>
Excuse me while I laugh. Talking to you guys for the last few days I've heard pretty much the EXACT same 2 complaints from both sides. Now I know the defenders reasoning behind not destroying a region is *slightly* different, but still the same idea. Obviously a few :fluffle: are in order between opposing sides.

;14562910']The fact that Influence brought into line what you can do with what you can legally do in this game was a huge benefit.

But what you can legally do changed when Influence was instituted. There is a whole community of raiders and defenders who think some of things you're allowed to do under Influence should never happen - e.g., France and Feudal Japan. And now we have no way to fight it and no legal grounds on which to protest.

Oh, and BW... :fluffle: Made my day.

Edit: I remembered something. A bit before someone mentioned the region France, for those not in the know, let me give you a quick run down.

....

I don't know how long the invaders had been sitting in the region, but it must have been forever to get that much influence to eject everyone in the whole region and then password it. Just the same, the killed the region, totally burned it to the friggin ground. Its horrible for the natives and its horrible for the raider community because now I can't raid the damn region >_>

It would be nice if this sort of thing could be prevented.

Thanks for bringing this back up to attention.

The thing is, I didn't notice a Macedonian nation in there before... it was named "Le Coq Sportif". And the nation's has only 1.67 billion for a population, so it's not like it was there since the beginning of time.

They kind of did the same thing in Pakistan (http://www.nationstates.net/region=pakistan) about six months ago, and tried to raid Greece a year ago but were booted for multying.

But nevertheless, that essentially kills regions fast. Especially regions that have historically been founderless. And especially how said group leaves regions in the dust, like Chad (http://www.nationstates.net/region=Chad) and Brazil (http://www.nationstates.net/region=Brazil).

Just my two cents on that matter...

Possibly regional influence costs could be expodential, with the more banished + short amount time equaling high influence costs.

Personally, I wouldn't be that fond of that, mainly just because it'd be slightly annoying to get the same message on multiple nations and have to delete them every week. Also, what if the people on top just sent out messages that said, "_____ group suck!!11!!" and so on? Should the mods pass that along to everyone too? Would you be okay with a region being able to turn off receiving those messages via a founder?
It could be annoying, yes - but if you found it that annoying, you could team up with others to control the delegacy and therefore prevent any TGs from being sent. I get the same recruitment message on multiple nations now, but there's nothing I can even begin to do about that. And I am perfectly happy leaving quality control to the whim of the mods.

If you want to put in extra code to turn it off at the regional level, I would be happiest if it were made an option for regions with a certain level of "Regional Influence", which to my knowledge does nothing but look pretty now. That way, there would be an incentive for young regions to grow, and any whose regional influence later dipped below the bar could be recruited rather than having them drift away and leave the game. (In fact, if we just changed the rules generally so that you weren't allowed to recruit in regions that had Founders and/or a certain Regional Influence level, we might be able to retain some of these players whose regions die around them. It should be a fairly low bar, so that only regions that were truly dying could be contacted.) Feeders would need to be an exception.

If you want to put in extra code to turn it off at the nation level, I would tie it as an option to a population milestone - like the 500 million required for the custom name.

I personally feel the influence system is working, it allows the mods more time to work on the important aspects of the game, makes us raiders work harder if we want to keep the region & allows the defenders a time window to liberate the region or the natives to up rise.
I appreciate the argument that the mods now have more time to devote to the game, I would just like to be able to point to something showing how increased attention to and improvement of NS was what has actually happened since the griefing rules disappeared. I sympathize with working as a volunteer in a thankless job; you burn out serving others and you would like to have some time to yourself. I understand. And I understand the arguments against saving mods that time and effort by letting the players elect a council to rule on enforcement of the griefing rules, but when it's a choice between the atrocities that are blindly permitted under Influence and the injustice that might happen under a griefing committee, I'll take the griefing committee and step up my game to include that level. I seriously doubt the victims of cut and burn raids would be any worse off than with the total disregard they face now.

Raiders, from my perspective, do not have to work any harder - just stay in the region longer. That's not hard, that's boring. And we had a time window, too, under the griefing rules - by the fact that raiders weren't allowed to institute passwords that were invisible to the natives, and that they weren't allowed to eject every single native in an evening and raze the region to the ground. (Secret passwords should GO, by the way, there is no legitimate use for them, they only appeal to a lazy/inactive delegate who doesn't trust the other nations in his region but who won't boot them, and they can only be used to grief regions.)

It could be annoying, yes - but if you found it that annoying, you could team up with others to control the delegacy and therefore prevent any TGs from being sent. I get the same recruitment message on multiple nations now, but there's nothing I can even begin to do about that. And I am perfectly happy leaving quality control to the whim of the mods.

If you want to put in extra code to turn it off at the regional level, I would be happiest if it were made an option for regions with a certain level of "Regional Influence", which to my knowledge does nothing but look pretty now. That way, there would be an incentive for young regions to grow, and any whose regional influence later dipped below the bar could be recruited rather than having them drift away and leave the game. (In fact, if we just changed the rules generally so that you weren't allowed to recruit in regions that had Founders and/or a certain Regional Influence level, we might be able to retain some of these players whose regions die around them. It should be a fairly low bar, so that only regions that were truly dying could be contacted.) Feeders would need to be an exception.

If you want to put in extra code to turn it off at the nation level, I would tie it as an option to a population milestone - like the 500 million required for the custom name.



I'd still suggest the adspace on the World page. But I like the idea of the 500 million cap (because newbies are going to be the most likely to be recruited anyways), for the adzone telegram except it could potentionally piss off the people we're trying to please the most, newcomers.

Oh, and for the history feature I have a new idea.

Gold Rush Prospectors
A community of bizzare, greedy thieves and criminals, that are decendants from a once prosperous gold mining nation.

I'd love to see a Regional Mod thing. The obvious choice would be to add powers to the Delegate, and exclude those powers from Founder blocking. I'm thinking the power to delete RMB posts and apply warnings to the rulebreakers (probably with mod oversight on a review queue to prevent abusive delegates). Maybe an additional "voice of mod" telegram that stands out from normal nations just like our orange bold telegrams do now.

How about the Delegate gets to set the WFE, and the Founder doesn't (nor gets to block the access) ? My perspective is... give people more to fight over, so it's actually encouraged to butt heads a bit more. That way invaders could swiftly alter the WFE, and the region would at least have to wait until the next update to change it back. That's a display of power AND a slap in the face in one, without destroying the targetted region.

But getting rid of Founders... no no no. Right now with Influence the way it is, invaders already have an absolute advantage. They can lock and destroy a region completely. When done right, natives and defenders are powerless. The major response I've seen so far has been for folks to shore up behind Founders, and stop interacting altogether. ADN folded in the process, as defenders only matter when invaders get sloppy or just don't care enough to do their job well. That's a flaw in the Influence system, not a flaw in the concept of Foundership. And getting rid of Founders doesn't solve the major flaw with Influence: when invaders do it right they are utterly unstoppable. It makes that flaw so much worse.

As for invader home regions thus not having founders and that somehow being an issue... who cares? Why would a defender or raider organization even need a home region at all? What they need is their own (off-site) forum. That's it. The most important defender org I've been in for years only had its own 'home region' because the name was available and it could be claimed. As an in-game region it served no purpose at all. We certainly never showed up there with our WA (then: UN) nations.

Ballotonia

I think that warrants the question,

Should, how regional influence is accumulated and spent be re-evaluated?

;14561019']Lots to respond to, but just one quick point for the moment:
Originally Posted by Pope Lexus X
I would be in favour of the removal of influence though.. It would give invaders and defenders more room to manouver.. Less is more as they say.

I keep hearing this argument, but I don't understand it. If we abolished Influence, a group of invaders could pile into your region, seize the Delegacy, kick every single native out, and password-lock it, all in under five minutes. The only thing preventing that currently is Influence. A Founder could remove the password and boot the invaders, sure, but by then the region is already trashed.

The point isn't Influence in itself. It's that Influence was the cause of griefing to become legalized.

Naivetry phrased it most excellently a few pages ago: http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=14558448&postcount=114
Warzones fail because conquering them is worthless, and it's worthless because it's permitted. That is, in fact, why most of the biggest names in raiding and defending left in disgust when Influence came around - raiding and defending is, and has been from the beginning, viewed primarily as a moral argument. Influence brought that moral discourse to a halt and declared that raiding was just a game. And as we all understood quite clearly, it's no use fighting over a game. By sanctioning raiding, it was destroyed, and to the communities who felt compelled to settle their moral disagreements by force of arms, and to recruit their friends to help them do so, it was said that their little pastimes were just that insignificant - that as long as no one cheated, no one should care what anyone else did. And surprise... two years later, no one cares.

Ballotonia

The point isn't Influence in itself. It's that Influence was the cause of griefing to become legalized.

So as if stated before, would making influence costs exponential for banning and rejecting people over a short period of time, solve the issue of griefing?

So as if stated before, would making influence costs exponential for banning and rejecting people over a short period of time, solve the issue of griefing?
Wrong direction. You need to lower the cost of banning newcomers to a region, not increase it.

Wrong direction. You need to lower the cost of banning newcomers to a region, not increase it.

Banning a couple raiders would be fine, here and there. That's what I meant by exponential...

I meant it would defend from radical delegates who blast the place clean with a machine gun, they would no longer be able to do that over a short amount of time (they would be able to start), but that would give time for a region to react more, and fight back, or enlist help from a defender group.

I mean, does anyone actually think its cool to totally kill a region? Not only are you just being a dick and ruining the game for someone, you're also not getting the full experience of raiding...you need to go somewhere with a bit of retaliation, thats where it gets fun.

I meant it would defend from radical delegates who blast the place clean with a machine gun, they would no longer be able to do that over a short amount of time (they would be able to start), but that would give time for a region to react more, and fight back, or enlist help from a defender group.
These delegates aren't in there for a short amount of time. They're in there for months. There are some fairly easy fixes to prevent complete griefing and will hopefully be implemented.

The problem is two fold. A) Normal raiders who just want to play the game would have to stay in a region for a very long amount of time in order to be secure in the region. B) The griefers out there are willing to stay in the region for as long as it takes to destroy it, they don't care.

There has to be a solution to having to stay in the region forever to do anything fun as part of a normal raid and the threat of people burning the region to the ground by an act of griefing.

On the flip side, sometime native also eject out other natives in order to refound their region, it’s a normal part of the game, so that’s gonna be a problem.

The problem is two fold. A) Normal raiders who just want to play the game would have to stay in a region for a very long amount of time in order to be secure in the region. B) The griefers out there are willing to stay in the region for as long as it takes to destroy it, they don't care.

There has to be a solution to having to stay in the region forever to do anything fun as part of a normal raid and the threat of people burning the region to the ground by an act of griefing.

On the flip side, sometime native also eject out other natives in order to refound their region, it’s a normal part of the game, so that’s gonna be a problem.


Yes but if Regional Influence costs we're expodential you'd have to be in the region a very long time as delegate to secure a cleared region. A VERY long time. Because no matter how much influence you'd accumulate, you'd have to wait longer for the expodential growth of cost to decay. If region's don't react to it, I think they deserve to be wiped (okay, maybe they don't..but still).

But if you just wanted to raid it, and not wipe it clean. You would be fine.

Also the system could work by population, a smaller region would need more influence to eject than a larger region (so little regions, with newbies, don't get slaughtered).

We're also starting to see regions (big or small) where you have nations that are close to impossible to kick, even by others that have spent all their time in the region. And I'm ALL in favor of internal kicking/strife. That's gameplay.

There are some simple ways to avoid regional griefing by outsiders, but they revolve around password changes, not increasing the cost of influence. That'll slow things down even more.

(Population thats Ejectable)= (((Regional Population)/(*Regional Population*^0.5))/Regional Population)*(10)^*Number of Days in Region*

How about this? For my region of 20-something you would have to be delegate for 17 days to ban and reject everyone (so you would almost be banning one person a day).

We're also starting to see regions (big or small) where you have nations that are close to impossible to kick, even by others that have spent all their time in the region. And I'm ALL in favor of internal kicking/strife. That's gameplay.

There are some simple ways to avoid regional griefing by outsiders, but they revolve around password changes, not increasing the cost of influence. That'll slow things down even more

Fair enough. What if instating a password drains a delegate's influence?

(Population thats Ejectable)= (((Regional Population)/(*Regional Population*^0.5))/Regional Population)*(10)^*Number of Days in Region*

How about this? For my region of 20-something you would have to be delegate for 17 days to ban and reject everyone (so you would almost be banning one person a day).
I'm confused. Are you suggesting such a thing? Because that's really, really in favor of griefers. Honestly, I think longstanding regions *should* have more of a protection (via accumulated influence) than newer ones. For one thing, they're much more likely to not have a founder than newer regions.

And passwording already takes away from a delegate's influence. The big problem is when they set a password that noone else can see. At that point the region has died, all they need is time.

And passwording already takes away from a delegate's influence. The big problem is when they set a password that noone else can see. At that point the region has died, all they need is time.

Ah...but the system I was suggesting is that it is accumulative. So to have a password on a region for a day or two, wouldn't do much. But try and have a password for a week...no way. At some point in time, the influence would max out, and the password would drop.

Ah...but the system I was suggesting is that it is accumulative. So to have a password on a region for a day or two, wouldn't do much. But try and have a password for a week...no way. At some point in time, the influence would max out, and the password would drop.

You're talking about a decaying password? Interesting concept.

Maybe it costs 'X' influence to set the password, and '2*X' to make it invisible. As time passes, the password decays down to 'X' and becomes visible again. Leave it alone, and eventually it goes away entirely. Don't leave it alone, and it costs 4X to keep it invisible another day or two, then 8X, then 16X. Eventually the password would be impossible to maintain.

Regardless of how expensive the password gets, once it decays completely it can be set again at X and 2X. Thing is, you have to wait until the next update for the multiplier to reset, which gives combatants a day to reenter the region.

Would something like that work?

You're talking about a decaying password? Interesting concept.

Maybe it costs 'X' influence to set the password, and '2*X' to make it invisible. As time passes, the password decays down to 'X' and becomes visible again. Leave it alone, and eventually it goes away entirely. Don't leave it alone, and it costs 4X to keep it invisible another day or two, then 8X, then 16X. Eventually the password would be impossible to maintain.

Regardless of how expensive the password gets, once it decays completely it can be set again at X and 2X. Thing is, you have to wait until the next update for the multiplier to reset, which gives combatants a day to reenter the region.
Would something like that work?

I think you've got the concept. But the point is, a password would only last so long (much like real governmental secrets) before the influence would fall. Once a password became deactivated from low influence, a delegate would have to wait a while before his influence was high enough again to reinstate it.

I...actually sort of like the decaying password idea. :D

It would defeat those who password regions and then proceed to wait in the region for as long as it takes to eject everyone. Normal raiders, who don't use passwords anyway for the most part, wouldn't be effected. Some griefing would still get through but its better than what we got.

I also like the decaying password idea. Looks good.

Also, anything about speeding up influence? I mean, the rate at which a nation accumulates influence?

I created a new nation to try out the "history" part; but the talk of regional options and influence changes has gotten me thinking.

Rather than the delegate answering regional issues, consider this: the region has several options to chose from during creation, similar to the nation creation questions, that will set a hidden formula for the region. This can be, in effect, the "nation type" but on a regional level.

To apply this, certain issues will be magnified if they're answered in line with the region's type, and minimized in other regards. If the region's politics lean toward "Democratic Socialists," nations with a similar political/social alignment will accrue influence at a higher rate than, say, a Psychotic Dictatorship. Conversely, a region whose goals are thought control will have little benefit for New York Times Democracies.

So far, we have several pressing problems with Influence:

1. "Nuclear Griefing" -- raiders, no longer able to engage in the simple invading of the past, now resort to influence-protected atomic destruction where they password the region and eject everyone. This takes a lot of time, effort, and patience, but is contrary to the intended goal of Influence and obliterates strong, energetic regions.

2. Influence Attrition -- The formulae for Influence are inscrutable, but there seems to be little logic with how some nations accrue Influence.

3. Influence Use -- what does Influence do other than prevent raiding? There does not seem to be any positive gameplay impact for Influence except for eliminating Mod workload and eliminating griefing; while these things are good the consequences are quite clear.

The changes to the game should, at the very least, tie Influence more closely to nation decisions. This can be achieved, I believe, by adding such options to regions and by tying nations more closely in a political sense. As it is, nations are independent- Max intended it this way, which I completely agree with; I am in no way suggesting an NS2-style relationship between nations. However, a new dimension can be added to the code to make the game flow better and have some degree of interplay.

Also, maybe do something useful with "Regional Power" rankings? Maybe a W.A. vote multiplier based on region power?

Thoughts? Additions? Problems?

2. Influence Attrition -- The formulae for Influence are inscrutable, but there seems to be little logic with how some nations accrue Influence.
The accrual is quite logical, the exact formula is highly unlikely to be revealed, but perhaps the idea of making costs more exact could be looked into.
3. Influence Use -- what does Influence do other than prevent raiding? There does not seem to be any positive gameplay impact for Influence except for eliminating Mod workload and eliminating griefing; while these things are good the consequences are quite clear.
It's a pretty large accomplishment to remove the fights and accusations of bias from the mods' shoulders. Influence has positively affected regions that want to maintain themselves and are reasonably vigilant. The longstanding nations have gained enough influence to remain in place even if a raider comes in a for a few days. If however, they do not get the raider out for a lonnng period of time through inattention/uncaring, they do run the risk of getting kicked.

The changes to the game should, at the very least, tie Influence more closely to nation decisions. This can be achieved, I believe, by adding such options to regions and by tying nations more closely in a political sense. As it is, nations are independent- Max intended it this way, which I completely agree with; I am in no way suggesting an NS2-style relationship between nations. However, a new dimension can be added to the code to make the game flow better and have some degree of interplay.
I'm not entirely sure what you intend here. I'm seeing issues where there *IS* a correct way to answer to get more influence, contrary to normal issues.

Also, maybe do something useful with "Regional Power" rankings? Maybe a W.A. vote multiplier based on region power? Delegates already get their votes increased by their endorsers, perhaps a delegate could spend their regional power on buying adspace in an adbox off to the side.

To apply this, certain issues will be magnified if they're answered in line with the region's type, and minimized in other regards. If the region's politics lean toward "Democratic Socialists," nations with a similar political/social alignment will accrue influence at a higher rate than, say, a Psychotic Dictatorship. Conversely, a region whose goals are thought control will have little benefit for New York Times Democracies.

I don't know, I prefer the Regional Issues ..I think.

Basically because that system uses a different ranking system with different nodes (like trade and national soverienty) than the national ones, so it isn't compatible. Though the idea that nations' that conform to a region's ideologies better should build up influence faster is an interesting one.

Delegates already get their votes increased by their endorsers, perhaps a delegate could spend their regional power on buying adspace in an adbox off to the side.

Nice idea...really, an adspace in the World Section or something would be an interesting concept.

If my old regional issues system was in place, a region that lowered its defence rating (and therefore brought down isolation factors) while answering issues would have a higher regional power, as well as higher influence costs (double bladed sword).

But I'm starting to agree with someone who posted earlier, it seems a little unfair to do so. I like Regional Issues and Customization, but lets not punish someone for having certain ideologies.

The accrual is quite logical, the exact formula is highly unlikely to be revealed, but perhaps the idea of making costs more exact could be looked into.

You're right; I'm making reference to the ways in which certain nations in, say, the feeders can never accrue enough influence if one was founded, say, a day earlier. Exacting costs would go a long ways; but turning the game into a cost/benefit analysis excercise might be bad.

It's a pretty large accomplishment to remove the fights and accusations of bias from the mods' shoulders. Influence has positively affected regions that want to maintain themselves and are reasonably vigilant. The longstanding nations have gained enough influence to remain in place even if a raider comes in a for a few days. If however, they do not get the raider out for a lonnng period of time through inattention/uncaring, they do run the risk of getting kicked.

Oh, I completely agree it's done wonders to help the mods. The situation with France is what I'm referring to- the mole is the dangerous one, and there's no way to get around the "nuclear option."

I'm not entirely sure what you intend here. I'm seeing issues where there *IS* a correct way to answer to get more influence, contrary to normal issues.

Say the region has a certain political alignment. This alignment will affect not just influence, but your nation description by multiplying or dividing effects.

In much the same way it's possible to manipulate, if in a rudimentary fashion, your tax rate by answering issues, there might be a way to manipulate influence attrition. This can be made enigmatic, however, to prevent nations from playing the system to accrue influence- remember the population bug?

am I making sense? I fear I might not be... I've been reading ancient Chinese poetry all morning and am a little odd right now. :D

Delegates already get their votes increased by their endorsers, perhaps a delegate could spend their regional power on buying adspace in an adbox off to the side.

This is another good suggestion; but some thought should be given to other uses for regional power other than advertisement.

oooh, another thought: Regional Mass Telegrams for the delegate/founder! Rather than ALL of NS, just the people in your region!

Regional Mass Telegrams

Couldn't you just post something on the message board? :p

Nope. I supported an intra-regional TG all option in Regional Controls previously in this thread. It would help raiders, defenders, and those of us who opted out of that part of the game manage their regions better. It would also encourage region formation because the tool would have value. i think any TG-all for all of NS would be an adspam nightmare.

An RMB post is a post to all of NS, not to your nations. Anyone who spammed up their nations' TG in-box would obviously become unpopular and their nations would leave that region or if delegate controls were on, unseat that delegate. It would particularly benefit large regions and active regions whose RMB turns over 3+ times a day.

I don't agree with previous comments that might be interpreted to suggest requiring regions to have elections or decide issues as a group. I support maintaining the freedom of founders to do as they please and face the consequences if their nations don't like it. I do support changes that incentivize participation of all kinds.

I don't agree with previous comments that might be interpreted to suggest requiring regions to have elections or decide issues as a group. I support maintaining the freedom of founders to do as they please and face the consequences if their nations don't like it. I do support changes that incentivize participation of all kinds.

I wasn't suggest region's would be required to answer issues together, or at all.

Nope. I supported an intra-regional TG all option in Regional Controls previously in this thread. It would help raiders, defenders, and those of us who opted out of that part of the game manage their regions better. It would also encourage region formation because the tool would have value. i think any TG-all for all of NS would be an adspam nightmare.

An RMB post is a post to all of NS, not to your nations. Anyone who spammed up their nations' TG in-box would obviously become unpopular and their nations would leave that region or if delegate controls were on, unseat that delegate. It would particularly benefit large regions and active regions whose RMB turns over 3+ times a day.



I was joking, an interregional telegram feature using regional influence/power is a good idea.

[QUOTE=Bears Armed;14553881]"Ahem!"
You'd better read the rules about recruiting, before you get into trouble...

/QUOTE]

Thanks for the warning, Bears. I won't do it again. The Pacific is OK for recruiting, is'nt it?
One thing Im thinking of trying is an Ionternational. The post about this is languishing in my region's external forum, but I don't want to release it to II or whatever until I have more spare time. Does anyone here have any experience of NS Internationals. What I don't want to do is to put up the International (M6I) on an external site. in case someone mistakes it for a RL organisation.

Thanks for the warning, Bears. I won't do it again. The Pacific is OK for recruiting, is'nt it?
One thing Im thinking of trying is an Ionternational. The post about this is languishing in my region's external forum, but I don't want to release it to II or whatever until I have more spare time. Does anyone here have any experience of NS Internationals. What I don't want to do is to put up the International (M6I) on an external site. in case someone mistakes it for a RL organisation.

Huh? Do you have the wrong forum or something..?

Back ON TOPIC as the title says improving the feeders. My region has an ambassador nation in TEP now and she reports getting recruitograms while she was on the RH and only one since, so I don't have anything but that anecdotal experience to speak of, but TGing is by it's very nature time consuming and I seriously doubt too many people bother TGing an entire feeder, so setting some arbitrary limit on population size for recruitograms might be trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. UCRs have a distinct disadvantage because no nation is "born" there. And reborn nations in Laz OUGHT to be fair game in my rarely humble opinion.

Sorry for not getting the LOL, Unibot. The original stuff on this thread veered off of feeders and into eliminating influence, which affects everyone and that's when I saw it and felt the need to toss in my two cents about how much I value it. A recent poster on Yggdrasil RMB suggests having Regional Controls blocked to WA Delegate is a dictatorship. I thought it was called a region because it was where sovereign nations gathered, not because a region is a "nation of nations." I'm not opposed to allowing regions to opt-in to that concept, I'm only opposed to changing code to force every region to become a nation of nations. The once a week log in and play your issues folks should still have a home on NS1. I promise you many of them don't join off site forums and they don't vote in elections - the prefer to lurk. Disincentives for lurkers is a bad idea. Lure them instead.

I created a puppet in a feeder recently and it had 6 recruitograms in 3 hours. That's some fierce competition and it has to be overwhelming to the n00b players (and we love 'em - so send 'em to us! LOL). I would argue that level of clutter makes it harder for UCRs to stand out and since RMB adspam is essentially useless, an adzone region with an adspam RMB open to all recruiters with existing rules in place that anyone who wants to move to another region has to scroll past to get to the "move to" form - in return for eliminating RMB spam (not recruit-o-grams) in the feeders - would be a way of making NS1 more pleasant and recruiting possibly more effective. I wouldn't object to allowing feeders to adspam the adzone RMB, either.

Sorry for not getting the LOL, Unibot. The original stuff on this thread veered off of feeders and into eliminating influence, which affects everyone and that's when I saw it and felt the need to toss in my two cents about how much I value it. A recent poster on Yggdrasil RMB suggests having Regional Controls blocked to WA Delegate is a dictatorship. I thought it was called a region because it was where sovereign nations gathered, not because a region is a "nation of nations." I'm not opposed to allowing regions to opt-in to that concept, I'm only opposed to changing code to force every region to become a nation of nations. The once a week log in and play your issues folks should still have a home on NS1. I promise you many of them don't join off site forums and they don't vote in elections - the prefer to lurk. Disincentives for lurkers is a bad idea. Lure them instead.

I created a puppet in a feeder recently and it had 6 recruitograms in 3 hours. That's some fierce competition and it has to be overwhelming to the n00b players (and we love 'em - so send 'em to us! LOL). I would argue that level of clutter makes it harder for UCRs to stand out and since RMB adspam is essentially useless, an adzone region with an adspam RMB open to all recruiters with existing rules in place that anyone who wants to move to another region has to scroll past to get to the "move to" form - in return for eliminating RMB spam (not recruit-o-grams) in the feeders - would be a way of making NS1 more pleasant and recruiting possibly more effective. I wouldn't object to allowing feeders to adspam the adzone RMB, either.

Radical idea...what if the Pacifics wern't neccessarily the feeders? Nations just appeared randomly in any region...like a lottery..., of course the region couldn't be password protected.

Perhaps control of the Feeders gives the delegate ability to send mass TGs? Rather than one single adzone, which would give a single player immense power over the rest of the game, each feeder has the ability to expend Influence to send out a mass TG- which makes it lucrative to control, but prevents spamming by prudent Influence management.

Back ON TOPIC as the title says improving the feeders

On that note, should this forum's title be shortened to just "NS World Adjustments"

Radical idea...what if the Pacifics wern't neccessarily the feeders? Nations just appeared randomly in any region...like a lottery..., of course the region couldn't be password protected.
That's an idea!

In the long run, that would abolish the feeders. But... why? What problem are you trying to solve by doing such a thing? If people telegramming newcomers is a problem (and I'm not so sure that even is a problem at all), then wouldn't it be simpler to make that illegal?

Ballotonia

Maybe separate the two types of TG, 'Region Ads' & 'Any Other Business', with each player having two separate in-boxes accordingly?
Then _
a/ Nations whose players want to keep them in feeders/sinks wouldn't get their other mail displaced by regional ads;
b/ The ban on sending ads to nations that aren't in the feeders/sinks could possibly be automated (although, of course, the Mods might still have to deal with complaints about Ads being sent as 'Any Other Business' instead...);
c/ People wouldn't have to wade through the ads while checking their mail.

In the long run, that would abolish the feeders. But... why? What problem are you trying to solve by doing such a thing? If people telegramming newcomers is a problem (and I'm not so sure that even is a problem at all), then wouldn't it be simpler to make that illegal?

I don't see it as problem. I was just thinking about distribution of the new blood.
And I don't think it would abolish the Pacifics, how many players are actually active in the Pacifics?

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By separating spam and mail in two boxes, you've basically defeated the purpose of Ads, I don't think anyone would read their spambox.

Maybe regions could spend regional power for an advert on a Pacific's extended factbook?

I don't see it as problem. I was just thinking about distribution of the new blood.
And I don't think it would abolish the Pacifics, how many players are actually active in the Pacifics?In the South Pacific, last time that I looked, maybe 20-30.

By separating spam and mail in two boxes, you've basically defeated the purpose of Ads, I don't think anyone would read their spambox.Presumably those people who were actually interested in the possibility of moving -- who'd be most of the people whom Ads were likely to affect, anyway, no? -- would do so.

In the South Pacific, last time that I looked, maybe 20-30.

Exactly, so why should someone care if the fluff of inactive players, and transients aren't there any longer? Game-created regions will still attract people.

Exactly, so why should someone care if the fluff of inactive players, and transients aren't there any longer? Game-created regions will still attract people.
The "fluff" of inactive players can be a mix of many things. There are many longstanding players in TNP that have either never ventured or only long ago ventured onto the offsite forums. They would not be considered "active" to a gameplayer as such, but I still consider them a part of that region and I'm happy knowing they continue to play, even if their focus is on issues.

Also, giving new people a few concentrated places to spawn makes it a *bit* more likely they're going to have people that will answer questions they have, rather then spawning into an inactive region with non-responsive people. There is very little mistreatment of the new players by feeder residents, and changing the dynamics of having regions without a founder's protection doesn't seem completely necessary. But then again, I am a feederite.

The "fluff" of inactive players can be a mix of many things. There are many longstanding players in TNP that have either never ventured or only long ago ventured onto the offsite forums. They would not be considered "active" to a gameplayer as such, but I still consider them a part of that region and I'm happy knowing they continue to play, even if their focus is on issues.

Also, giving new people a few concentrated places to spawn makes it a *bit* more likely they're going to have people that will answer questions they have, rather then spawning into an inactive region with non-responsive people. There is very little mistreatment of the new players by feeder residents, and changing the dynamics of having regions without a founder's protection doesn't seem completely necessary. But then again, I am a feederite.

Fair enough. But what if region's could register to be a Feeder.

Qualification would require a Moderate regional power or something.

And would those regions be willing to give up their founders? It might be an interesting idea if a founder could gather enough nations and then renounce their founder status in favor of a feeder model.

And would those regions be willing to give up their founders? It might be an interesting idea if a founder could gather enough nations and then renounce their founder status in favor of a feeder model.

I suppose it would have to work like that, wouldn't it...

I don't see it as problem. I was just thinking about distribution of the new blood.
And I don't think it would abolish the Pacifics, how many players are actually active in the Pacifics?

You rang? We're aware of this thread ;)

TSP Foreign Affairs Minister

Fair enough. But what if region's could register to be a Feeder.

I remember that was discussed in 04...perhaps this time? I did think it was interesting. If it was added, could they lose it if they drop below the threshold?

We could turn it into an interesting competition between large regions...hey we've been a feeder for x time.

If it was added, could they lose it if they drop below the threshold?


Again, it would have to work like that. Or else, if the region declined severely, it would be a terrible place to be birthed into.

Thanks for stopping by,

This might be a trivial question, but is the NS database still stored in a flatfile? If so, would it speed up the game if it were transformed into a sql database? It would probably make all these possible features easier to implement.

A recent poster on Yggdrasil RMB suggests having Regional Controls blocked to WA Delegate is a dictatorship. I thought it was called a region because it was where sovereign nations gathered, not because a region is a "nation of nations." I'm not opposed to allowing regions to opt-in to that concept, I'm only opposed to changing code to force every region to become a nation of nations. The once a week log in and play your issues folks should still have a home on NS1. I promise you many of them don't join off site forums and they don't vote in elections - the prefer to lurk. Disincentives for lurkers is a bad idea. Lure them instead.
I don't think the addition of coded support for regions that wanted to have an identity as a 'nation of nations' would be a disincentive for lurkers. What would they be losing that they're not already quite happy to miss out on? Regional characteristics that affected how fast certain nation types gained Influence (I really like that idea, btw, as long as it allowed you to pick exactly which nation types you wanted to favor, and also allowed for an egalitarian spread if that's what you preferred) wouldn't force a nation to change their policy, but would allow regions with political themes to be able to reward those nations who met their specifications.

I agree with Todd (?) that the one of the best features of NS is that you don't have any greater consequences beyond your nation's stats for answering issues any way you choose. From the nation's perspective, Influence would simply be just another stat subject to the way they answered issues, but would give them an incentive to seek out like-minded nations. Any regional issues should be flavor-based as well, and not actually affect gameplay, IMO. I'd like regional issues to work the same way as normal issues, but post to the region feed and to a new regional description field below the WFE, and be tied to the WA Delegacy - so Founders wouldn't get to play. Even if it were just flavor-based, it would increase interest in the region as a community, make it clear what form of power the Delegate was exercising within the region, and give raiders something to play with besides the WFE..

Perhaps control of the Feeders gives the delegate ability to send mass TGs? Rather than one single adzone, which would give a single player immense power over the rest of the game, each feeder has the ability to expend Influence to send out a mass TG- which makes it lucrative to control, but prevents spamming by prudent Influence management.
The feeders are already the site of the biggest power struggles in NS, because they're the source of new players. They're also nearly impossible to seize and control, because of the inscrutable workings of Influence and some highly invested off-site communities. If you haven't been there for 3+ years at a HIGH endo count (see Eli in TWP) or if you don't have a couple of armies the size Gatesville's used to be ready to move at a moment's notice, taking one - not to mention holding on to it - is the achievement of a game career. Neenee managed it last summer with The Empire in TEP for a little while, but not without running one of the most skillful back-door political campaigns the game has seen... one which, from all the signs, took months of set up and literally years of building relationships with other political gameplay power players. Tying the TG ability to the feeder delegacies would increase the potential spam, disrupt the offsite forum governments based out of feeders, and provide more power to an already highly privileged class. It's not like the feeder-based governments have any need to TG the world, they already have all the population they could need - so you'd just be inviting user-created regions to try to topple feeder governments, increasing the destabilization and turning feeders from thriving communities into wastelands. That's why I think a separate adzone, one unconnected to nation birth and set apart for transitions so no one could truly be 'native', is preferable.

It's not "a single player" who would be given immense power. It would a single position of immense power, liable to shift hands more often, because it would be more valuable, than any other position in the game.

===================================================

RE: Feeder status for UCRs

This came up at the Neutral Territory conference last year and was shot down. Couple problems.

1) Dispersing players to random regions when they're born makes their first experience of the game highly unpredictable. What if someone's 80 year old grandmother got dropped in, I don't know, Zombietopia, where people just posted varieties of "Aarrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh" "*gurgle*" "Mrr?" on the RMB all day?

2) If a region's population dropped below a certain number and it therefore lost feeder status, what good was it doing them to have feeder status in the first place? The only reason to have it to begin with would have been to boost your population.

3) Any region could have its population artificially inflated by puppet creation to ensure that it retained feeder status... it could be one or two friends with 60 puppets each or access to a library. That would be doing nothing to ensure a lively or welcoming environment.

4) How would userite regions who couldn't afford feeder status survive? It's already hard enough to recruit across the 7 game-created regions. Would you allow userite regions to recruit in the user-created-feeders? And even if so, how would you make it clear which regions were feeders and legal for recruitment?

RE: Decaying passwords

It is better than what we have and it would help prevent the total hopelessness of Feudal Japan... but wouldn't do a thing for France. And I still don't see what the legitimate use of invisible passwords is supposed to be, period. You're just asking for regions to be griefed.

If however, they do not get the raider out for a lonnng period of time through inattention/uncaring, they do run the risk of getting kicked.
It's not like we didn't try to lib Feudal Japan. It's not like we didn't care, those of us who are left in military game. But you try to find 30-40 WAs and convince them that they must all move into a region within a 15 second window at 2-3 am EST. To return the quote favor, Ballotonia's right. http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=14565686&postcount=166
Right now with Influence the way it is, invaders already have an absolute advantage. They can lock and destroy a region completely. When done right, natives and defenders are powerless. The major response I've seen so far has been for folks to shore up behind Founders, and stop interacting altogether. ADN folded in the process, as defenders only matter when invaders get sloppy or just don't care enough to do their job well. That's a flaw in the Influence system, not a flaw in the concept of Foundership. And getting rid of Founders doesn't solve the major flaw with Influence: when invaders do it right they are utterly unstoppable. It makes that flaw so much worse.
Influence does NOT prevent griefing. All it does is take away our recourse to the mods against griefing, while taking all the heart out of the legitimate military game.

The feeders are already the site of the biggest power struggles in NS, because they're the source of new players. They're also nearly impossible to seize and control, because of the inscrutable workings of Influence and some highly invested off-site communities. If you haven't been there for 3+ years at a HIGH endo count (see Eli in TWP) or if you don't have a couple of armies the size Gatesville's used to be ready to move at a moment's notice, taking one - not to mention holding on to it - is the achievement of a game career. Neenee managed it last summer with The Empire in TEP for a little while, but not without running one of the most skillful back-door political campaigns the game has seen... one which, from all the signs, took months of set up and literally years of building relationships with other political gameplay power players.
I wonder how many people I could get to join me in TNP. :)

It's not "a single player" who would be given immense power. It would a single position of immense power, liable to shift hands more often, because it would be more valuable, than any other position in the game.
Idea:
I don't quite like the once a week TG idea because delegacy can change more often, nor do I like once a day because TGs that would be a barrage. What about that delegate getting control of an adbox for a day? I think Unibot suggested that their WFE became the adbox, just like the Featured Region is shown on the World page.

If someone can't hold on to it for the crucial period, too bad. Having a set day on which having the adzone delegacy really matters is not a negative, but a huge, huge plus. A regular, once-weekly critical battle for the adzone would leave the rest of the week open for other missions. Daily is too much, I agree, not only because of the spam, but because of the continuous military force it would claim from anyone who wanted to control it. The frequency of its use is not as important as the sheer power. I would be perfectly happy with the TG power working once every two weeks - which might actually be a better time scale - because it's predictable, not so frequent that it would become annoying for a casual player, and frequent enough to be an effective and desirable tool (once a month is both too long a time to expect a region's military to stay holed up in an adzone, and too long in between uses of the power to encourage a spirit of continuous preparation, competition, and political variety and innovation).

Scheduling it once every two weeks would also provide a pattern and a rhythm for raiding and defending, something to change the dynamic a bit... raiders might strike more frequently while the adzone battle was going on, hoping to make defenders choose between defending a region and gaining the adzone - it would provide a great opportunity for showing regional character, or for raiders to spread PR about defenders who care more for their own selfish interests than for the interests of those they claim to want to protect, etc. On the other hand, you might see interregional coalitions form to split the costs of defending while still controlling the adzone and sharing the TG message between member regions... none of which has the slightest chance of happening just for the sake of a WFE.

An 'ad box' is nowhere near as powerful or versatile as a telegram. You can't make anybody look at it, which is the whole point of recruiting via TGs - even if all they do is log on their nation and never click on their region link, they can't avoid noticing they have a telegram. With an adbox, you're still competing with a slew of identical messages right below yours, and what's worse, it would be in a region dedicated to such announcements. That's no better than RMB spam... and in fact, you'd have a tiny character limit in which to talk, so it's arguably worse. If that's what got instituted, I know Equilism and probably the majority of user regions would stick to TGs and ignore the adzone entirely. 250 characters or whatever it is on a WFE is not worth sending troops to fight for, let alone worth forging an alliance with others to control.

Turning this from a TG-all feature into an "let me advertise my region box" means you can't use it to promote your WA proposal... you can't use it to broadcast your victory over the Oppressive Regime of the Evil Bigtopians... you can't start up an interregional news service and make sure your paper finds the widest possible audience... These are all potential and exciting uses for a TG-all feature, and an adbox would simply kill that potential. The point is not to give us yet another useless means of regional advertisement, but to give players a tool that can go any number of ways and seeing what happens. This is about letting more player-created content - whatever that may be - get into the general consciousness of even your log-in-once-a-week player.

I don't think you quite get my idea for an adbox. I mean something like the banner ads, but just the WFE of that region. Codewise, displaying the WFE has got to be in place for a featured region, if everyone saw the ad when they looked at NS it'd be slightly harder to ignore. Assuming it was made so it couldn't be adblocked and such.

Perhaps, if the founder is exempt from it. I don't want any nations in my region at all.

An 'ad box' is nowhere near as powerful or versatile as a telegram

The Featured Region has become a staple of fascination and pride for regions. An ad on the World page right under the Featured Region would be something to kill for. Sure no one can be "forced" to look at it, but honestly who likes ads that are shoved at them unwillingly. A weekly spam telegram could end up just becoming a farce among players, something despised by elder players, and ignored by others. Remember, the elder players sort of set the mood for younger players, so if spam telegrams piss off them, the despise of these telegrams is going to trail down in the NS atmosphere to the younglings which ads are really tailored for. Especially as regions become more involved and communication is more common, the opinion of critical seniors is going to play an intricate part in the minds of n00bs. But an ad on the World Page seems elegant, and unintrusive. Hey we might even get lucky and see the creation of the "Featured Ad Followers".

I have a few ideas for the game:

Government stability is how stable and legitimate the national government is in the eyes of the population and international community.

Government Stability

01 Completely Stable
02 Very Stable
03 Stable
04 Very Solid
05 Moderately Solid
06 Solid
07 Good
08 Fair
09 Fragile
10 Weak
11 Moderately Weak
12 Very Weak
13 Unstable
14 Very Unstable
15 Completely Unstable

Military Strength is a general analysis of a nation's capability to protect its own borders and to wage war.

Military Strength

01 Completely Unstopable
02 Almost Unstopable
03 Ready for Action
04 Very Effective
05 Somewhat Effective
06 Effective
07 Strong
08 Fair
09 Weak
10 Ineffective
11 Mostly Ineffective
12 Completely Ineffective
13 Disorganized Rabble
14 Almost Non-existent
15 Non-existent

Dossier Nation Settings are a way of keeping track of your allies and enemies, these have no effect on actual gameplay, but can help maintained an organized listing of allies and enemies.

Dossier Nation Settings

01 Military Ally (Alliance)
02 Favorable
03 Satisfactory
04 Indifferent
05 Suspicious
06 Deplorable
07 Military Enemy (At War)
--------------------------
01 Economic Ally (Trading Partner)
02 Open for Trade
03 Satisfactory
04 Indifferent
05 Suspicious
06 Limited Trade
07 Economic Enemy (Embargo)

Yep, could be a nice feature. A little more information for our dossiers, though I'd like to see how my own stats are, so to have it avaliable somewhere would be nice.

__________________________

If, when you joined you could submit a national capital.
The dossier could be not only for other nations but for your own capital, to see how things are running...smoothly or not.

Capitals can be war torn, invaded, revolting, protesting, witch burning, well defended, aristocratic, monorail ridden, plague rat infested, poor, an atomic crator,filled with soup kitchen lines..... whatever you answered in your issues.

I would add my three regions to the list if possible:
Kilnorthamerica (note the Celtic coille meaning "wood", modern Kil- in Scottish placenames - this is a parody of North American continent!)
Kilsouthamerica - as above!
Holmeuropa - Island Europe (Old Norse holmr "island, sea" in front of continent's name, using Celtic word order!)

I've used Celtic word order to make this seem like it's used in a historical context: anyone like the new regions?

Think you've got the wrong thread there mate.

Think you've got the wrong thread there mate.
I can't figure out where he wanted it in the first place. Unless it's in reference to Unibot's ideas about starting groups...?

Maybe he wants to apply his regions up for feeder status. Which is something we discussed.

Or maybe he's referring to the White-list idea.

I don't think you quite get my idea for an adbox. I mean something like the banner ads, but just the WFE of that region. Codewise, displaying the WFE has got to be in place for a featured region, if everyone saw the ad when they looked at NS it'd be slightly harder to ignore. Assuming it was made so it couldn't be adblocked and such.

Ah, if it was like the banner ads (i.e., on every page...) then yes, that'd be worthwhile. Not as flexible as TGs, but still valuable.

Two questions: how would you get that spot, and would the WFE update in real time?

Featured Region is worthless for political gameplay unless it can be controlled by a group. Having your region win the Featured Region lottery says nothing about who you are as a community or what you're capable of.

Heh, speaking of, I just had a crazy idea requiring code... it'd be nice if we had a special page for "regional endorsements". The WA Delegate could give endorsements to other regions... and then we could have a list of regions and which other regions had endorsed them. It need have no other coded effect beyond the list of endorsements, which would be labeled by the region the WA Delegate was from. Everyone in political gameplay has a general sense of which regions are the most important and well-known or well-respected, but it would be pretty cool to actually be able to reflect that in code, and it would open up another motivator and avenue for region-wide and interregional diplomacy.

We politicians need something to point to in order to show the newbies that there's more to this than their individual nation, if our style of play is going to survive.

Featured Region is worthless for political gameplay unless it can be controlled by a group. Having your region win the Featured Region lottery says nothing about who you are as a community or what you're capable of.


I was talking about a separate ad spot beside the Featured Region, which would be available for use, by the delegate of the Adzone. Not a lottery.

And yes, it is imperative that newbies know about the culture and inner mechanics of Regions, and alliances.

Naivetry suggested "Regional Endorsements" ... frankly, I'm not entirely sure what the effect would be (consider that a good thing ;) ). Either way, it's probably something worth fighting over, especially if named something like "List of most Influential and Powerful regions". Honor, Gloating, Ridicule... could be good :)

So, how to calculate such a thing... The regional Influence's of endorsing nations would add up? Perhaps reduced for having a password? Perhaps the more endorsements given would reduce the additional 'score' on the receiving end as well (or ones own score) ? And make sure only the Delegate can change the endorsements, not the Founder.

As added bonus, list it on the regional page as well? That way all can see their score, feel bad about how low it is, and be urged to do something about it. *evil grin*

Ballotonia

What about the regional power ranking? That could be used as a prize for gloating if it were used to organize the regions on the pages instead of it being alphabetical (which would rid us of those terrible 0000 regions :p).

I, for one, would be very upset if NS started telling people what military strength their nation was. It would kill RP.

noob1: i attack you!
old person1: I have been here a long time and spent a lot of time designing my military. Are you sure you want to do this?
noob1:I have an unstoppable military according to NS!!!!!111one1! You can't win!!!

We get that enough already with people declaring war on the world and such.
Adding that would make it even worse.

The Dossier Settings Idea sounds like a good idea, but add something in there for puppets. And if when you opened the dossier it would order them by grouping that would be nice too.

About ads: I don't see any, I use firefox3 with adblock. I hate the fact that ads have become so prevalent these days, but it normally does not bother me.

The addition of capital cities has always seemed nice to me, as well as easy to implement.

And I still don't see what the legitimate use of invisible passwords is supposed to be, period. You're just asking for regions to be griefed.
Invisible passwords keep regions like mine the way we want them. If there was no password, we would be filled with all kinds of riff-raff. "Haven" is a generally appealing place for a nation to go, even if they have no clue who we are. The current residents, however, all moved there because they are established RPers on the International Incidents forum. We would also have an influx of II nations joining that we have previously voted to not let join. The invisible password keeps our way of life alive.

I, for one, would be very upset if NS started telling people what military strength their nation was. It would kill RP.

And many established players would downright ignore it anyway.

Games where too many details are added into their mechanics become always simplistic and dumbed down exercises of "I haz moar numberz I WIN!" because it's impractical to develop a realistic model for defining military might in an Indie web-based game. Keep the gameplay mechanics simple and the rest dependent upon the creativity and collaboration of different NSers through freeform play-by-post roleplaying, where time constraints of developers and limitations of Java/PHP/Whatever was used for coding NS won't limit the experience and possibilities regarding it.

Besides, a system like this would only cater to Modern Tech and demotivate creativity and development of writing skills, while it wouldn't keep people just looking for a quick fun interested for too much time*. If people just want war embedded in gameplay mechanics so they don't need any effort to post "I WIN!!!" and strike their E-egos besides exploiting the always present balance flaws such approach brings and making 1-liners, they should move to another community of another browser based nation-building game I don't even need to mention.

*I played casually that "other nation-building game" which was virtually devoid of RP, and I lost interest after two months as I saw it was nothing but a severely handicapped number-crunching game, nearly at the same time I began to try RPing in NS.

I know it's probably a silly request, but an in-built spellchecker in the forums would be useful.

Invisible passwords keep regions like mine the way we want them. If there was no password, we would be filled with all kinds of riff-raff. "Haven" is a generally appealing place for a nation to go, even if they have no clue who we are. The current residents, however, all moved there because they are established RPers on the International Incidents forum. We would also have an influx of II nations joining that we have previously voted to not let join. The invisible password keeps our way of life alive.
Assuming everyone in your region agrees with you, you don't need an invisible password, you just need a password. Until a region member shares that password with other nations, there's no ability for an outsider to enter. And even if the password is shared, the delegate/founder would be able to kick the newcomers easily. Invisible passwords make it possible to decimate thriving regions, which longtime players pretty universally agree is a bad thing. Perhaps a founder could retain the ability to have an invisible password as it's "their" region, but allowing delegates to set invisible passwords sets up the possibility of a hostile takeover with no way for the natives to win once that password is set.

Assuming everyone in your region agrees with you, you don't need an invisible password, you just need a password. Until a region member shares that password with other nations, there's no ability for an outsider to enter.Visible passwords mean that those regions can't recruit safely, because if anybody whom they let in is a 'trojan horse' that player can share it with raiders: Keeping the password invisible even to the region's members means that recruiting is a bit safer (although, I admit, probably slower), because the Founder or Delegate can TG the current password to an applicant and then change it after a little while...
And even if the password is shared, the delegate/founder would be able to kick the newcomers easily.Enough raiders, in a small and/or new region whose Delegate simply hasn't had enough time to accumulate sufficient Influence, will swamp that defense... and some of the raider-types posting in this thread (or the other one about such matters) want to see Founders having to spend Influence to do anything, too.
Invisible passwords make it possible to decimate thriving regions, which longtime players pretty universally agree is a bad thing.Agreed.
Perhaps a founder could retain the ability to have an invisible password as it's "their" region, but allowing delegates to set invisible passwords sets up the possibility of a hostile takeover with no way for the natives to win once that password is set.So it would be a Founder-only power? I could live with that... (Presumably the Founder ceasing to exist would render any such password that they'd set visible again?)

Visible passwords mean that those regions can't recruit safely, because if anybody whom they let in is a 'trojan horse' that player can share it with raiders: Keeping the password invisible even to the region's members means that recruiting is a bit safer (although, I admit, probably slower), because the Founder or Delegate can TG the current password to an applicant and then change it after a little while...
I understand your concern, but I don't think invisible passwords offer any real protection. Raiders can and will move nations in within a 5 minute window once one of their members has the password, so the moment of recruitment would be their target time. And if you have enough Influence to establish an invisible password, that should be more than enough to banject any raiders... and if not, that's why we in the defender community exist. Let us help. :p

A real Trojan horse would sit happily in your region for 9 months gaining Influence before getting you to recruit one of his friends, who would then share the password, swarm the region, elect the Trojan to the delegacy, and either change the invisible password or just banject everyone right away. At that point, there's nothing anyone can do, and Influence says you're not allowed to complain.

Invisible passwords as a Founder-only thing that became visible when the Founder died would be fine with me, as that would keep the mechanism from being abused by griefers.

For the record, no one I know in the military game wants Founders to have to spend Influence - from the military perspective, that eliminates their function entirely, so they might as well not exist. (Which I'm not suggesting as a good solution, either.)

As added bonus, list it on the regional page as well? That way all can see their score, feel bad about how low it is, and be urged to do something about it. *evil grin*
Absolutely. ;) I was thinking we could just count it by how many WA Delegates endorsed a region... possibly weighted by how many endorsements each WA Delegate had himself, just like WA voting. Regional Influence would add an additional level of complication that I think is reflected better by straight endo-counts. Although it would disadvantage military regions to a certain extent, it doesn't seem to me that Regional Influence is precise enough a statistic to be a good substitute - IIRC, there are only 6 levels or so, right? (Backwater, Low, Moderate, High, Very High, Extremely High.)

As a founder of a region that enjoys keeping to ourselves I find it disturbing that everyone is thinking of abolishing founders. I completely understand your reasoning--sounds fine. But what about the community that wants nothing to do with all of that?

I don't "lord" over my region. We have a democracy and my nations and I work together. If a player doesn't like the region they're in they can leave.

I love Unibot's ideas about a regional issue system and the different types of regions! That's awesome and would really add something wonderful to the game. It would also give each region more individuality inside of game-play in the sense that there will be a lot more variety in each region's government, etc.

Also, a waiting list would be awesome!

And nice to meet you, Violet. :)

Everyone here knows deep down that all the idiot mods and site-runners will do is change the way regions look and not any mechanics. It says in the FAQ they won't and aren't taking this into any account what so ever. As I said before:


This "decline" is nonsense. The migration of people to NS2, and who they are, shows who we do not want polluting the game. You play NS2, you move there. Having a thinned out community of dedicated players is better for the game and community.

I would like to add this; that NS2 is utterly horrendous, should never've been made and is an utter waste of time.

Everyone here knows deep down that all the idiot mods and site-runners will do is change the way regions look and not any mechanics. It says in the FAQ they won't and aren't taking this into any account what so ever. As I said before:


This "decline" is nonsense. The migration of people to NS2, and who they are, shows who we do not want polluting the game. You play NS2, you move there. Having a thinned out community of dedicated players is better for the game and community.

I would like to add this; that NS2 is utterly horrendous, should never've been made and is an utter waste of time.

The migration of people to NS2 consists almost entirely of Issues players, to whom NS2 has its main (and in its present state, only) appeal. Neither RPers nor regional-politicos (military or otherwise) nor Generalites have moved to NS2 in any considerable numbers as it has little to offer them. It has nothing to do with who those communities do or don't want playing the game, as the people who left were by and large not in communication with those communities.

The migration of people to NS2 consists almost entirely of Issues players, to whom NS2 has its main (and in its present state, only) appeal. Neither RPers nor regional-politicos (military or otherwise) nor Generalites have moved to NS2 in any considerable numbers as it has little to offer them. It has nothing to do with who those communities do or don't want playing the game, as the people who left were by and large not in communication with those communities.

Don't forget about us WAers, you'd be hard pressed to find any of us who are really playing NS2.

NS2 is a bit off-topic, but I let my nation die since I am a region founder and didn't like the constraints placed on our growth opportunities. Hopefully developers will improve NS1 which has a lot more promise.

As for all of this discussion being for nothing: NS is declining, pure and simple. If someting isn't done to improve it--and not just on the cosmetic side--it will probably continue on its downward stiral. New players are what keep us going; they provide new life for regions and add to the numbers as old-timers cease to exist or move on for whatever reason. In short, they are essential. And as I said above, to make them want to play NS needs some upgrading to add to the community atmosphere.

95 percent of my region is not active on our forums--they are probably only active in-game. That's probably true for a lot of regions, big and small.

Clearly if we wish to improve the game, we must think outside the box. Politics has failed us; we must turn to Religion. As years of NS General posts have shown, it is a far less loaded topic, and a game based on Religion will make for a friendlier and more quiescent subject of the game.

In my vision, players will lead Sects, which will be located within wider Religions. Players may act alone, developing their Sect through answering daily Crises of Faith, or they may participate in the wider world through such actions as voting on World Council of Churches Decrees and electing a Pontiff for their Religion (WCC members only). Pontiffs may edit their religion's Statement of Faith, set a Secret Handshake, or eject unruly Sects to Nihilism.

By responding to Crises of Faith, Sects will develop along the three main axes into a desired category. Here's a chart of what I have in mind. I don't see how anyone can make a credible argument against this.*

http://i383.photobucket.com/albums/oo276/Kandarin/Categories2.png

*Aside from the time zone I'm posting from

<SNIP genius idea>

Ooooh, this is like the first time my youngest son and I saw the entire Lego Knights and Castle set ... gotta have it! Gotta have it!

Mean ol' tease -- I'm guessing it's still April Fool's Day there? But it would be such fun to have this alongside all the rest (speaking not as Ardchoille but as my religious nutjob nation Fundamentally Flawed, of course.)

Not anymore, but it was when I posted. I'm sure you had it spotted at:

Religion <snip> NS General <snip> less loaded topic

Of course, if anyone wants to take my wacky idea seriously they're welcome to.

Fundamentally Flawed was you? How did I miss that?

Yeah, that did sort of give the game away ... on the other hand, you could have been driven to extremes of desperation after learning, thanks to the new Nintendo.NationStatesrules, that you were going to be banned for passing that controller around .... :D

Fundamentally Flawed was you? How did I miss that?


I thought I'd been outed long since -- damn!

What about the regional power ranking? That could be used as a prize for gloating if it were used to organize the regions on the pages instead of it being alphabetical (which would rid us of those terrible 0000 regions :p).
I like that, actually... rearranging the "list all regions" thing by power would make it easier to keep track of the new and growing regions, while also helping to shuffle new players into active ones. You could still alphabetize within the broad power ratings, so those 000000 regions which are active would still have a benefit in their name. :p

I like that, actually... rearranging the "list all regions" thing by power would make it easier to keep track of the new and growing regions, while also helping to shuffle new players into active ones. You could still alphabetize within the broad power ratings, so those 000000 regions which are active would still have a benefit in their name. :p

I second that. A lovely idea.

Yeah, that does sound really good.

I may as well jump on the bandwagon; although I oppose almost all the changes being mooted, if the admins really are going to make some changes I may as well make suggestions:

- Change the Environmental WA proposal category to allow a 'Mild' option;
- Delete the 'Gambling' and 'Gun Control' proposal categories (one from the former reached quorum and was deleted, one from the latter failed massively at vote; both happened 4-5 years ago, and since then nothing has reached quorum from either category: they are superfluous).

And I will voice a 'vote against' any greater complexity of regional arrangements, and any additional forms of nation customisation.

Change the Environmental WA proposal category to allow a 'Mild' option;
- Delete the 'Gambling' and 'Gun Control' proposal categories (one from the former reached quorum and was deleted, one from the latter failed massively at vote; both happened 4-5 years ago, and since then nothing has reached quorum from either category: they are superfluous).

And I will voice a 'vote against' any greater complexity of regional arrangements, and any additional forms of nation customisation.
________________

So what if someone wanted to write a really good gambling or gun control proposal?
Why get rid of it, when someone already went through the work to add them?
If anything we should be adding not subtracting to the game....
Like a Promotion of Technology category or something.

______________________________

Any particular reason why you're against further regional and/or nation customization?
I feel that it is one of the few domains where one could improve the game without having too many people disapprove - so I'm a little shocked to find someone who would be totally against some sort of customization. I mean, the majority of the ideas brought up are not focusing on something you would be forced to use - so why take away someone else's fun?

For claryification on the ideas brought up, check out the Big Collaborative List of Suggested NS improvements (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=589919)!

So what if someone wanted to write a really good gambling or gun control proposal?This is your problem. Maybe it's one of presentation, or maybe it's a more fundamental attitude. You seem to assume that you are the Messiah come to show us what we've all been doing wrong. Are you honestly so arrogant as to assume that in the six and half years of this game no one has had any good ideas, and that now you've set us right on how the rape myth is a feminist conspiracy, you can begin your course of instruction on how to play the game?

It's been six years. No one has written a good proposal in those categories. Jey, who wrote the first successful RDU proposal, tried and failed. The two proposals that did make quorum - one was deleted for being illegal, one failed and was then passed in another category. Are we really going to wait around another six years for someone to write two more? And at the end of that will it be worth it, while we've passed scores of Human Rights, Environmental, Free Trade proposals?

If you want arms control, write a Global Disarmament proposal. Arms proliferation? International Security. Gun control issues can be sorted out through Human Rights/Moral Decency (or FoD/PS, if you think it's a political right). Gambling can be promoted through Free Trade or banned through Social Justice. Those categories are too specific, when we don't have such specificity about many other areas of social policy. And they promote irresponsible writing: go through Silly Proposals. I will bet my teeth a good third of the crappy ones are in those two categories, plus RDU. That's completely disproportionate.

The categories simply encourage proposal spam, they overlap with existing categories, and whatever a priori merits they may have, after years in the game they have produced nothing of substance. If there were a good proposal to be written in those categories, it'd have been done. The Education category has existed for maybe 2 years - it's already produced 7 or keep resolutions. It's time to let the dead wood go.Why get rid of it, when someone already went through the work to add them?I don't know anything NS game code, but I tend to assume removing a category is a lot less work than adding it.If anything we should be adding not subtracting to the game....
Like a Promotion of Technology category or something.I dislike being lectured on what 'we should' do: or at least, I'm unclear what authority either of us would have to decide this. Anyway, this was the most extended discussion on new categories in recent memory (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=497723).Any particular reason why you're against further regional and/or nation customization?I think freeform RP has benefitted from the simplicity of the game. I think greater customisation will reduce forum activity.For claryification on the ideas brought up, check out the Big Collaborative List of Suggested NS improvements (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=589919)!Thanks. But unlike you, I do my research before I post. I'd read the thread - that's what I was responding to.

.I don't know anything NS game code, but I tend to assume removing a category is a lot less work than adding it.

Hell, you can fit my knowledge of coding on the head of a pin and yet I can prove that adding a category is more work than removing one. To add a category you have to figure out what effect it will have on a nation's stats, you don't have to do that to remove one.

This is your problem. Maybe it's one of presentation, or maybe it's a more fundamental attitude. You seem to assume that you are the Messiah come to show us what we've all been doing wrong. Are you honestly so arrogant as to assume that in the six and half years of this game no one has had any good ideas, and that now you've set us right on how the rape myth is a feminist conspiracy, you can begin your course of instruction on how to play the game?


It's been six years. No one has written a good proposal in those categories. Jey, who wrote the first successful RDU proposal, tried and failed. The two proposals that did make quorum - one was deleted for being illegal, one failed and was then passed in another category. Are we really going to wait around another six years for someone to write two more? And at the end of that will it be worth it, while we've passed scores of Human Rights, Environmental, Free Trade proposals?

If you want arms control, write a Global Disarmament proposal. Arms proliferation? International Security. Gun control issues can be sorted out through Human Rights/Moral Decency (or FoD/PS, if you think it's a political right). Gambling can be promoted through Free Trade or banned through Social Justice. Those categories are too specific, when we don't have such specificity about many other areas of social policy. And they promote irresponsible writing: go through Silly Proposals. I will bet my teeth a good third of the crappy ones are in those two categories, plus RDU. That's completely disproportionate.

The categories simply encourage proposal spam, they overlap with existing categories, and whatever a priori merits they may have, after years in the game they have produced nothing of substance. If there were a good proposal to be written in those categories, it'd have been done. The Education category has existed for maybe 2 years - it's already produced 7 or keep resolutions. It's time to let the dead wood go.

Messiah? I'm just open to possibilities - thats probably because I haven't been beaten down into apathy with six years of your attitude.

I'm going to make the uneducated assumption that the reason why the gambling / gun controls laws categories exist is to ensure that the game code is accurate in what it changes for every WA nation. So if a anti-gambling law is passed by the WA, the gambling industries of the WA will take a hit not your civil rights or economy rating directly. The superfluous categories are to ensure accuracy, and I still don't see the point in getting rid of features.

I think freeform RP has benefitted from the simplicity of the game. I think greater customisation will reduce forum activity

Well thanks for your imput instead of blindly dismissing almost everything on this thread. In fact I considered those thoughts too, but reckoned the greater customization will not spawn into micromanagement or a lack of creativity (like the sequel no ones wishes to mention). One of the greatest pushes in this thread is for a greater promotion of regional and forum communities.

I don't believe that giving more meat to the bones of the game with hurt the forums that entails it - merely rejuvenate them.

I'm just open to possibilitiesExcept, you're not. You're open to possibilities you agree with. If you were genuinely open to possibilities, then regardless of the regard you hold for me, you'd include my ideas in what is after all called a 'Collaborative' list. Right?I'm going to make the uneducated assumption that the reason why the gambling / gun controls laws categories exist is to ensure that the game code is accurate in what it changes for every WA nation. So if a anti-gambling law is passed by the WA, the gambling industries of the WA will take a hit not your civil rights or economy rating directly. The superfluous categories are to ensure accuracy, and I still don't see the point in getting rid of features.Well, first, you probably don't see the point because you haven't taken on board any of the criticisms I've made.

Second, your argument is specious. I already said:whatever a priori merits they may have, after years in the game they have produced nothing of substanceI'm sure they do fit nicely with the game code. (Which doesn't address the question of why the Gambling industry, and not the Tourism, IT, Insurance, Cheese and other industries, gets special treatment, but that's a separate issue.) What they don't seem to fit nicely with is the decidedly non-coded players. In cost-benefit terms:

Cost: reduces number of categories, but those issues can still be addressed through other categories
Benefit: reduces incentive for crappy proposals

On top of that, once again: six years down the line, the absence of a single passed resolution in either category is telling.Well thanks for your imput [sic] instead of blindly dismissing almost everything on this thread. In fact I considered those thoughts too, but reckoned the greater customization will not spawn into micromanagement or a lack of creativity (like the sequel no ones wishes to mention).Ah, I see. Everything's ok - because we have what you 'reckon' to go on. Who needs evidence? Who needs arguments? Who needs facts? Who needs example? Unibot reckons, and there endeth the lesson.

We have already seen what greater customisation has wrought in NS2. How would you compare the vibrancy of their player community to that of ours?One of the greatest pushes in this thread is for a greater promotion of regional and forum communities.Which is unsurprising, given it's dominated by gameplayers and largely devoid of contribution from roleplayers. Guess what: if you started this thread at the DEN forum, the correlation would be even higher!I don't believe that giving more meat to the bones of the game with [sic] hurt the forums that entails it - merely rejuvenate them.And I do. CONUNDRUM!

Look, I was merely registering a vote against such measures. Katganistan has asked for input on NS changes, and I don't believe she meant '...so long as you favour changes'. I've suggested some, I'm sceptical about others, and in the past changes have been to the game without soliciting player opinion, so now I have a chance to weigh in, I'm doing so. That you so heartily object to any form of dissent suggests what your real motivation is here.