Five Possibilities for ‘Mod March’...FEATURE | TRR NEWS
Max Barry teased that a new feature would be implemented this month, noting “there are some great projects in the works, including a big one that will almost certainly drop during March. It's not Feature February, but we don't let calendars tell us what to do. Stay tuned.”
Well, we have
stayed tuned, but that hasn’t stopped us from speculating on five possibilities for a new feature…
5. A New Forum?Who says a feature has to be a ‘feature’ per se? Max did, after all, use the word, ‘project’ not feature. Recently there has been some discussion on whether the admins might consider updating the game’s forum software to its newest release, phpBB 3.1.x. Frisbeeteria admitted, “there's been quite a bit of discussion about the coming forum upgrade,” which sparked a frenzy of comments from tech geeks and forum enthusiasts, but it doesn’t seem as though this change could occur anytime soon, with [violet] noting that the upgrade would be difficult…
“You have to build a new board from scratch, including recreating all your modifications in a completely new format. And we have quite a lot of those. So it's a big job.” – [violet], Mar 17, 2015.
4. Regional Polls UpgradeCurrently, let’s admit it, regional polls are kind of limited. They’re decent for polling a region what kind of cheese they prefer, but as a mechanism for regional voting, they’re far less powerful than they could be. Reforms to the regional poll system to prevent multying would facilitate in-game legislatures easily and seamlessly into the game’s regional pages.
Don’t put away your forums just yet though, [violet] wasn’t so keen on the idea when it was suggested last month:
“Basically, you currently have the Fort Knox option, or the open-to-all option, and I'm not keen on adding a middle kind-of-verified-but-not-reliably option.” – [violet], Feb 26, 2015.
3. April Fools BannersAlleniana suggested a neat idea where Rift banners could be unlocked for participating in various April Fools events; [violet] seemed to relish the idea, saying “Oh boy. That does sound cool,” although adding she was unsure whether it was a practical idea, and whether it might be a needless point of contention among players who forgot to log-in during April Fools Day and missed out on a collectible banner.
It certainly seems fairly plausible, however, that the admins might implement
something with regards to the upcoming April Fools, or the new Rift banners or both.
2. A New Sinker or FeederThere’s been a recent influx of new players from Reddit; NationStates is as large as it’s ever been in terms of sheer number of nations – there’s always the possibility then that the site admins might decide a new Game-Created Region is needed.
Escade suggested this time last year that a new sinker should be named after a woman (popular suggestions included “Persephone” and “Isis” – the latter of which has taken on a whole new meaning as of late) – [violet]’s surprise response, “those Sinkers are looking kinda full...” rocked the Gameplay world. Recent commentators have suggested, however, that the real
need is for a new feeder, not a new sinker – but it remains to be seen whether a new feeder would follow the old naming pattern for feeders, or establish a new trend.
A new sinker or feeder would certainly ‘shake things up’ in Gameplay – no side would hold back in trying to prevent the power vacuum from enabling a new Independent, Defender or Imperialist feeder – which would certainly complicate the current political dynamics.
1. Regional OfficersAs far as bets go, this is arguably the 'safe' one. Safe doesn't mean it wouldn't be
significant, however. This change would allow administrative positions in regions to be recognised in-game as well as allowing multiple custodians to serve a region. It was first proposed as an April Fools joke, so it only seems appropriate that it would be implemented for real on April Fools. This feature was one of the
selected proposals at the 2013 Gameplay Summit.
[violet] has been optimistic about implementing this feature for some time now:
“I would like regions to be able to take control of their own destiny, deciding who has what powers, and living or dying by their own decisions, and hopefully the Regional Officers feature will facilitate this. It's been in the works for a while and some early parts of it will show up soon.” – [violet], Dec 27, 2013.
What do you think, dear readers? Which features would you most want to see implemented this Mod March!?
Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2015 8:05 pm
