Capitalist Paradise Mass Recruitment - Aftermath Report

[Afforess]

Now that over a month has passed since August 9th, I have concluded my aftermath report. I had to wait over a month so that any nations that moved into Capitalist Paradise and stopped playing immediately afterwards would cease to exist and not be tallied in the report totals.

The report, part of my Fall "State of the State" report for Fall 2013 is report is reproduced below:

Section 1:
On August 6th, 2013, telegram stamps became available to purchase. Long awaited, their arrival was unannounced and went unnoticed until I saw their availability on Friday, August 9th. With some time and spare money, I purchased ~55000 stamps and sent recruitment telegrams to each nation in the top 100 regions in terms of population. (For reference, this is approximately 50% of the total nations in the entire NationStates community). These telegrams acquired much notice and scrutiny, and attracted 160 nations to join the region, buoying the Capitalist Paradise from 720 to 880 nations in under a week.

Also important to notice is that while ~55000 telegrams were sent, only 23000 telegrams were even received by the intended recipients. The bulk of them reached full inboxes, and were declined (~15000). Only a small number (~5000) were blocked due to disabling recruitment telegrams. A larger number (~7000) were declined due to too recent previous recruitment, implying that roughly ~12% of nations in nationstates at any given time are brand new (Less than 1 month old). Also interestingly, 12 nations blocked recruitment specifically by sender (meaning they blocked all telegrams from the nation of Afforess). I have no documented prior communication with any of these 12 nations, so their pre-emptive block of telegrams is a small mystery.

Because my recruitment telegram included instructions on how to disable future recruitment telegrams, it is likely that the number of blocked telegrams due to category reject will rise significantly. Also, the increase in overall recruitment volume will likely ensure that more and more nations will have a full inbox and be unable to receive further recruitment telegrams. I suspect any future mass recruitment effort will have a much lower recipient rate and even lower success rate.

The full reports on these recruitment efforts is available in 3 parts (due to the telegrams being sent in 3 waves):
Report 1
Report 2
Report 3
(Scroll to the bottom of each report for a summary and breakdown).

The total number of nations who were sent a recruitment telegram, moved, and stayed alive in the region for > 1 month is 229 nations. The discrepancy between 880 nations and 229 new arrivals is due in part to nations who ceased to exist in the interim period.

The recent decline from 931 nations to 870 nations is due to a very significant drop in nationstates recruitment success rates and unrelated to the mass recruitment efforts of August. See the 3rd section for more details.

Section 2:
Omitted for brevity.

Section 3:

Recent events aside, it is worthwhile to analyze my forecasts from the previous Summer State of the State report.

Previously, recruitment success rates were falling, from 2.5% to 1.4%. They have fallen further, to 0.75%. This means on average, Capitalist Paradise only recruits 4 new nations to the region each day. In addition to the falling success rates, the delivery rate has declined from from 90% to 70%. Many new nation inboxes are all full by the time delivery is attempted. Also, there has been a 500% rise in blocked recruitment telegrams, signaling that new nations are blocking recruitment telegrams more quickly than before. Previously only 1 in 50 telegrams was blocked, now 1 in 12 is blocked upon arrival. These rates are roughly equal between new and refounded nations.

The number of nations ceasing to exist in the Capitalist Paradise has remained relatively constant, averaging at 5.5 nations per day. Because the recruitment rate is below the the ceased to exist rate, the Capitalist Paradise will decline in population, roughly 1-2 nations per day. This has already begun, as the region has steadily declined from its peak of 936 nations to 870 at present.

So where is equilibrium? Previously I speculated it would be between 450-550 nations. This was clearly off - I now expect it to be closer to 700-800 nations. The Capitalist Paradise will slowly shrink to those levels over the next 2 months and then remain constant in size.

The bad news is that the recruitment and delivery rates will only continue to get worse. With easy to use tools expanding, many regions are flooding newcomers with telegrams. Stamps and other tools ensure the rate of overall recruitment volume will rise, hurting the Capitalist Paradise's ability to spread its message due to the increasing noise.

The good news is that recruitment is only one half of the equation. The other half is the retention rate, how few or many nations cease to exist each day. If the Capitalist Paradise can encourage wider regional participation, it may be able to increase the retention rate, allowing growth to resume, despite the harsh recruitment situation. I plan to make this the focus of my activities in the Spring activity of 2014.

September 16th, 2013

Interested parties may read the full entry, without the omitted sections, here: http://www.nationstates.net/nation=affo ... /id=162145

[Charles Cerebella]

Interesting report. The decline in success rates is quite startling, and from my recruitment it shows no sign of slowing. Using the same telegram from the same nation the rate has been consistently plummeting since stamps were introduced.

[Durkadurkiranistan II]

Eventually, stamps and auto-scripts will kill the game, as it becomes nearly impossible to build a region of respectable size. Not sure how anyone can draw a conclusion to the contrary.

[Charles Cerebella]

Indeed. Even the quality of the telegram makes no difference any more with rates so low. Having a good quality telegram used to make a significant different in attracting nations, now it might mean one or two extra nations for a couple of thousand telegrams sent out. Soon the only real variable will be the inherent appeal of any given regional name and nothing to do with the quality or vitality of regional communities or opportunities.

[Wintermoot]

I don't agree with the methods, but I do agree with the conclusions. Since the introduction of stamps, Spiritus' recruitment rate has fallen from 3.6% to 1.5%, and still seems to be declining. While originally stamps were a great boon to the region, now that inactivity deletions have caught up with us we seem to be on the same decline that most large UCRs are. We're currently discussing switching from stamps to an auto-recruiter, because I'm told they use the same queue and we're just not seeing the value in spending money on stamps for an increasingly low success rate. In the meantime, we have also concluded that with the decline of recruitment, improving the activity and retention rate of the nations we do get will be increasingly important.

[Afforess]

I should warn regions that the "reported" conversion rate on recruitment deliveries is very deceiving. You SHOULD NOT use that for determining recruitment success. I wrote a custom tool to generate and calculate the actual numbers. Your recruitment conversions are frequently very off.

To calculate it properly you must check the location of all nations who you have delivered to successfully. Many nations hop around initially, INFLATING your success rate. Your actual success rate is likely much much worse.

[Afforess]

Eventually, stamps and auto-scripts will kill the game, as it becomes nearly impossible to build a region of respectable size. Not sure how anyone can draw a conclusion to the contrary.

I drew a similar but less negative conclusion. To build a successful region it is no longer enough to be rich or technologically savvy, you must also be able to retain and grow activity. Bread and circuses.

[The Bruce]

Eventually, stamps and auto-scripts will kill the game, as it becomes nearly impossible to build a region of respectable size. Not sure how anyone can draw a conclusion to the contrary.

It's not so much that stamps and auto-scripts have killed the game, but that it's fragmented the system into a two tiered system that degrades the experience of most players. That and dramatically increased the amount of unsolicited telegrams.

I've noted much the same diminished results with test nations created for recruiters to mass-telegram. It was bad enough with just the scripts, but now with both the scripts and the stamps having their way with the telegram boxes of new nations, it's enough to drive any but the most patient players from the game. This short scene from the movie Airplane best sums up the experience of new nation states, when they are first spawned in the feeders:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qse_wf57tZM

[Communist Eraser]

Didn't violet make it only a few recruitment TGs actually make it through to the receipt at a certain time, and the others are delayed?

So from the nation's POV they don't appear to be completely bombarded.

[Tlik]

Didn't violet make it only a few recruitment TGs actually make it through to the receipt at a certain time, and the others are delayed?

So from the nation's POV they don't appear to be completely bombarded.

No, they do. Speaking from recent experience playing with a new puppet, the inbox was completely full within an hour. The majority of those TGs seemed to be paid or scripted but there were three or four manual TGs.

[All Good People]

Yes, I restored a CTE'd puppet yesterday and had eight new telegrams in five seconds.

[Solorni]

Eventually, stamps and auto-scripts will kill the game, as it becomes nearly impossible to build a region of respectable size. Not sure how anyone can draw a conclusion to the contrary.

It's not so much that stamps and auto-scripts have killed the game, but that it's fragmented the system into a two tiered system that degrades the experience of most players. That and dramatically increased the amount of unsolicited telegrams.

I've noted much the same diminished results with test nations created for recruiters to mass-telegram. It was bad enough with just the scripts, but now with both the scripts and the stamps having their way with the telegram boxes of new nations, it's enough to drive any but the most patient players from the game. This short scene from the movie Airplane best sums up the experience of new nation states, when they are first spawned in the feeders:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qse_wf57tZM

Omg yes.

[Glen-Rhodes]

Eventually, stamps and auto-scripts will kill the game, as it becomes nearly impossible to build a region of respectable size. Not sure how anyone can draw a conclusion to the contrary.

I think you're missing an alternative. NationStates isn't reliant on having thousands of regions. The game could exist and flourish with a relative handful, and indeed most of the high octane activity comes from a relative handful of regions. If it ever becomes impossible to build a new region of respectable size, people will play in regions that already exist.