[Idea] Remove WA Membership Changes

[Sovreignry]

Influence exists only to prevent Invaders from emptying regions. Is that "biased" too?

Yes.

[Kshrlmnt]

If you want to hurt the ability of Defenders to spot invasions (and get anyone to support the proposal), it'd be better to change [Dossiers, Reports, National/Regional Happenings, Endorsements, anything] rather than something as essential as the WA happenings.

Like Codger said, these are things that raiders can use, too, as well as and especially including non-gameplay nations. The WA Membership Changes page is very limited in its use, and very biased in that one use, which is why I've singled it out.

[AS22]

If you want to hurt the ability of Defenders to spot invasions (and get anyone to support the proposal), it'd be better to change [Dossiers, Reports, National/Regional Happenings, Endorsements, anything] rather than something as essential as the WA happenings.

Like Codger said, these are things that raiders can use, too, as well as and especially including non-gameplay nations. The WA Membership Changes page is very limited in its use, and very biased in that one use, which is why I've singled it out.

How does the feed hurt stealth raiding? It hurts tag-raiding.

You're making tag-raiding easier not harder.

And if you think the "feed" is biased towards defenders then I think founderless regions are biased towards raiders, and they should all be gotten rid of.

Your proposal is ludicrous.

[Kshrlmnt]

Like Codger said, these are things that raiders can use, too, as well as and especially including non-gameplay nations. The WA Membership Changes page is very limited in its use, and very biased in that one use, which is why I've singled it out.

How does the feed hurt stealth raiding? It hurts tag-raiding.

You're making tag-raiding easier not harder.

And if you think the "feed" is biased towards defenders then I think founderless regions are biased towards raiders, and they should all be gotten rid of.

Your proposal is ludicrous.

The point of most tag raiding anymore is to be fast enough that it doesn't matter if the defenders see you. Why? Because using the Membership Changes, especially now that it's 25 instead of 10, they're going to see you. Raiders are tag raiding because game mechanics like this are making stealth raiding nearly impossible.

A change like this would admittedly make tagging easier, not just stealth raiding, which is why it would most likely have to be combined with changes to make tagging harder or less desirable. It may even have to be that this idea itself is compromised--that the list is reduced to, say, five. But the point remains that almost nobody beyond defenders uses this function, and it is inhibiting a type of raid that people want to see more of.

As for founderless regions, if you have an idea to get 'rid' of them, you're always free to propose it.

[AS22]

How does the feed hurt stealth raiding? It hurts tag-raiding.

You're making tag-raiding easier not harder.

And if you think the "feed" is biased towards defenders then I think founderless regions are biased towards raiders, and they should all be gotten rid of.

Your proposal is ludicrous.

The point of most tag raiding anymore is to be fast enough that it doesn't matter if the defenders see you. Why? Because using the Membership Changes, especially now that it's 25 instead of 10, they're going to see you. Raiders are tag raiding because game mechanics like this are making stealth raiding nearly impossible.

A change like this would admittedly make tagging easier, not just stealth raiding, which is why it would most likely have to be combined with changes to make tagging harder or less desirable. It may even have to be that this idea itself is compromised--that the list is reduced to, say, five. But the point remains that almost nobody beyond defenders uses this function, and it is inhibiting a type of raid that people want to see more of.

As for founderless regions, if you have an idea to get 'rid' of them, you're always free to propose it.

How does the feed inhibit stealth raiding? By nerfing the game across the board?

Seriously, weren't you the TPC point? How is a raid like that even remotely affected by the feed?

[Kshrlmnt]

I was indeed the TPC point. I also spent about nine months in the region, at least four in the WA, to build up endorsements without being caught. If raiders are willing to put in that sort of time, they can certainly pull off a stealth raid even now.

But it's not just a question of how clean a point or sleeper is--if you're update raiding, it matters whether or not the updaters have been spotted, too. It used to be that if you did some issues on your puppet and didn't WA it in an obvious manner or during update, you had a decent chance of being fine. Defenders had ten slots on the WA to watch, and fewer functions in their dossiers. Anymore, though, if you'd be hesitant trusting a puppet that'd been in the WA for a week--and doing that would limit you to one raid a week, depending on region size and how many soldiers you have--then what option do you have besides tagging, if you want to be active?

[Tikal Wolf]

I'd still want to hear the game staff on this.
I understand the thrill of creating new features for the game, but what us their purpose, why where they made?
Ever since the WA happenings started including more events, the information available to defenders made raiding harder.
And now the separation of the WA membership into a single page just makes it much more easy for defenders to collect relevant information.

I wouldn't advocate a drastic measure like removing the WA membership feed entirely, but the way it was previously, mixing the WA proposal events with the membership felt much more balanced, because at least defenders had to select what information was valuable to them, whereas now that information is directly handed to them.

[Mallorea and Riva]

I like how all the detractors in this thread are conveniently glancing over all the scripts that likely already do this for them. Those scripts just need to keep track of new nations in general, instead.

This is a fair point; I wouldn't even know how to do this if the WA page was hidden (hell, I wouldn't know how to do this anyway ). I don't think that putting defending solely into the hands of the most elite scripters is a good way for this game to go. But I still agree that stealth raiding could be made more easy (but, yet again, I do not believe that raiders try hard enough to fully test this theory).

I agree with Eist, and propose the solution of at least shrinking the WA Membership Changes back down to fewer slots of info. Previously it was possible to apply and "clear" the happenings, but it would require a concerted effort to do so now.

[[violet]]

I'd still want to hear the game staff on this.
I understand the thrill of creating new features for the game, but what us their purpose, why where they made?

Because that information was available anyway, only less accessible.

Generally speaking, information that provides a gameplay advantage should either be easily accessible or not available at all. When it's in between, some motivated players collect it with a script, and the playing field between scripters and non-scripters is not level. People should not require scripts to play R/D properly.

[Cerian Quilor]

But then what could be done to allow stealth raiding to actually go somewhere?

[Colonel Dravkoskhy]

But then what could be done to allow stealth raiding to actually go somewhere?

You could raid better?

[Mallorea and Riva]

I'd still want to hear the game staff on this.
I understand the thrill of creating new features for the game, but what us their purpose, why where they made?

Because that information was available anyway, only less accessible.

Generally speaking, information that provides a gameplay advantage should either be easily accessible or not available at all. When it's in between, some motivated players collect it with a script, and the playing field between scripters and non-scripters is not level. People should not require scripts to play R/D properly.

The alternative of course being to ban scripting, which doesn't seem to be on the table. I think your concept of there being a "proper" way to play R/D is a bit dangerous as well.

[Daynor]

Because that information was available anyway, only less accessible.

Generally speaking, information that provides a gameplay advantage should either be easily accessible or not available at all. When it's in between, some motivated players collect it with a script, and the playing field between scripters and non-scripters is not level. People should not require scripts to play R/D properly.

The alternative of course being to ban scripting, which doesn't seem to be on the table. I think your concept of there being a "proper" way to play R/D is a bit dangerous as well.

It doesn't take scripting, you can find all of the new WAs that have joined since the last update by saving the list of WA members the API provides before and then the new one, put both in a column in excel and have it filter the values in the second that aren't in the first into a third column. Doesn't take a script at all. It only takes about 20 seconds too, though admittedly you have to save a list several hours out from the update.

[Sichuan Pepper]

I imagine a "proper" way would be if either side had no more advantage than the other. Something this is currently lacking

With the ability to switch WA instantly the happenings are even more important now than they were. I would hope that would be kept in mind if changes were to be made.
All it takes to mask entry is one motivated player to switch WA between two puppets a dozen times and the happenings have been wiped clean.

[Ballotonia]

All it takes to mask entry is one motivated player to switch WA between two puppets a dozen times and the happenings have been wiped clean.

Someone doing that would be spamming the WA happenings. Please report the offender(s) when and if this happens. EDIT: see below.

Ballotonia

[Mallorea and Riva]

All it takes to mask entry is one motivated player to switch WA between two puppets a dozen times and the happenings have been wiped clean.

Someone doing that would be spamming the WA happenings. Please report the offender(s) when and if this happens.

Ballotonia

Are you serious? Clearing the WA happenings is against the rules? Where is that in the rules?
This is especially baffling considering your post here:

So, this reduces your concern from script usage to whether or not doing such a thing qualifies as spam in and of itself. And that's a Moderation issue, which you should ask a Mod in the Moderation forum about. I merely clarified that the script as suggested does not violate the script rules.

Ballotonia

In which you made it clear that there seemed to be no ruling against WA happenings "spam" or clearing as things currently stand.

And on top of that we have a counter-ruling from a Senior Game Mod

So to sum up: seems like those telling you that people get warned for this may be... mistaken.

That's not to say that if it ever becomes a huge problem there won't be a policy enacted... but for now I think you're all good.

[Sedgistan]

It's not something we'd be likely to warn for. The WA happenings aren't like regional happenings, where spamming of them would annoy the natives - plus the WA happenings are only really something used by invaders/defenders. As Kat said in Mall's quoted post, if it became a huge problem (for example someone spending three hours spamming them up), we'd consider warning, but the behaviour that Sichuan Pepper described is not something we'd consider actionable.

[Mallorea and Riva]

It's not something we'd be likely to warn for. The WA happenings aren't like regional happenings, where spamming of them would annoy the natives - plus the WA happenings are only really something used by invaders/defenders. As Kat said in Mall's quoted post, if it became a huge problem (for example someone spending three hours spamming them up), we'd consider warning, but the behaviour that Sichuan Pepper described is not something we'd consider actionable.

Thank you for the clarification Sedge.

[Ballotonia]

Well, I stand corrected. Sorry for the confusion created.

Ballotonia

[The Most Glorious Hack]

Silly admin. Leave the rulings to us mods. Back to your cubicle, code-monkey!