Feasibility of WA Blocker Operations

[Old Hope]

Just a note, given Galiantus's long history of wanting to destroy the WA/grind it to a complete halt/etc:
If this caught on enough that a small group of players was successfully bringing the GA to a complete standstill via GA-motivated raiding, the most likely result would be admin lowering the approvals required for a proposal to reach quorum until such a point that the tactic was no longer easy to pull off on a constant basis. Would not be the first time the approvals requirement has been wiggled around a bit.

From a game balance perspective, raiding to nudge WA proposal approvals or even voting is certainly a valid political maneuver albeit a dick move (again, politics. Tends to have a lot of dick moves by nature); however it should not be so easy to accomplish that it can be done to all, or even to most proposals. If that starts happening, then the aforementioned adjustment to the required approvals would likely be forthcoming.

Or not, since you can push it down only so far until a lot more totally shitty proposals start to go to vote. Right now the Secretariat has usually at least two updates to check proposals, for the most proposals even four. Or more if the queue is clogged. The low quorum needed to address this would allow many illegal proposals to go to vote.
What's this also not fixing is that this raiding can easily remove proposals in waiting since they automatically die next update without possibility of countermeasures.
What IS fixing the ease of that is enacting a time limit to leave the WA after joining it. Ideally 1 hour, but even 20 minutes would drastically reduce the viability of that tactic without eliminating it. But it would also greatly reduce the viability of tag raiding(although that doesn't have a majorly positive impact on the game as a whole anyways).
All of these solutions have one problem in common: They will alienate players and disrupt the site. Including the "doing nothing" option. This is why I try to talk Galiantus III out of this so that this does NOT happen.

[Fahran]

Hint: These regions had never a stable backbone. And you DO spare players and these players ARE better equipped to resist it.

It's not really surprising that people who have no interest in R/D or who are unaware of it wouldn't take necessary precautions against it and would be frustrated by it to the point of giving up on a region. It's not as though this type of raiding is fool-proof either. A resolution with vast popular appeal will still pass, even if The Black Hawks, Lily, and other large/influential raider groups team up to bring it down and manage to make every jump perfectly.

They often just don't use the equipment. No executive delegate no tag raiding or control raiding(unless they are stupid). These regions do have these extremely powerful tools in their capacity: a founder with non- executive delegates you cannot beat without infiltration AND stupidity of your opponents, which has precisely been time and time again the reasoning by mods why raiding is allowed.

Massing delegates and defending effectively would prevent this strategy from working given that you aren't going to have a concerted effort from the raiding community to shut down the WA/SC unless the resolution irritates all of them. As long as the game dynamics function somewhat, I don't see any reason to give WA/SC players special treatment that GP and RP players don't get. There are defensive measures in place such that these raids will only knock off weaker resolutions.

Yes. It would be fair. You can take 2 3-endorsement regions with 10 people - or one 8- endo region with 10. I fully understand that this will damage raiding regions, but it's based on an exploit so whatever. If the exploit gives one side massive advantage it needs to go.

That'd pretty much nerf raiding simply to protect WA players, something we haven't done for other raid targets/victims. It's one thing if the dynamic becomes such that no resolutions ever pass or that more than five percent get shot down in this way.

[Eluvatar]

There are many, many ways to tinker with the way the WA proposal queue works. Should the WA proposal process become "broken," appropriate tinkering will be considered.

Capturing delegacies to affect which proposals enter the queue is not an exploit of game code but of game mechanics. It exploits game mechanics much in the way a procedural maneuver can exploit parliamentary rules. It is not illegal and need not be made completely impossible. Should it become apparent that this tactic is too effective for WA proposal authoring to be fun, measures will be taken.

[Frisbeeteria]

The goal of site admin isn't just to make money, and I don't believe WA campaign stamps make up an enormous part of the revenue.

The assumption that Max is financially motivated always irritates me. If he were in it for the bucks, he wouldn't have run it as an entirely free site for the first decade of its existence. The embedded ads were, at best, break-even on keeping the server running. Since the addition of stamps, we've expanded the number of servers, access speed, and system reliability. Revenue from this game isn't putting food on the Barry household's table.

I have no more access to the financials on the site than anyone else, but it's obvious from backstage that this site is a labor of love, not a cash cow. The driving factor is and always has been player enjoyment and game balance. We haven't always achieved those goals, but that's the intent. Please stop trying to justify ANY ideas that make revenue a factor.

[Deutschess Kaiserreich]

The goal of site admin isn't just to make money, and I don't believe WA campaign stamps make up an enormous part of the revenue.

The assumption that Max is financially motivated always irritates me. If he were in it for the bucks, he wouldn't have run it as an entirely free site for the first decade of its existence. The embedded ads were, at best, break-even on keeping the server running. Since the addition of stamps, we've expanded the number of servers, access speed, and system reliability. Revenue from this game isn't putting food on the Barry household's table.

I have no more access to the financials on the site than anyone else, but it's obvious from backstage that this site is a labor of love, not a cash cow. The driving factor is and always has been player enjoyment and game balance. We haven't always achieved those goals, but that's the intent. Please stop trying to justify ANY ideas that make revenue a factor.

UP WITH MAX! DOWN WITH MONETISATION!

[Galiantus III]

Please stop trying to justify ANY ideas that make revenue a factor.

I am in full agreement, but I might have worded my post poorly (was on mobile at the time). I was responding to this statement:

I'm not sure about exact numbers, but I know for a fact proposal campaigning is one source of revenue for the game. If this drives people away from writing proposals and campaigning for them it loses the site revenue, and I highly doubt admin are going to sit by and let something that loses the site revenue continue.

[Cosmopolitan borovan]

Except that this is not how the quorum system is supposed to work. It is supposed to be a filter for bad proposals, not a filter for all proposals that cannot be agreed upon by the most powerful WA regions. Add in that these regions have often opposite stances about proposals and will therefore NOT work together often.... The admins have tried to make the WA process more inclusive, and they will probably NOT look favourable at attempts to achieve the exact opposite.

This is the most logical thing I've seen you say yet Old Hope, and is quite correct. I know how hard it is to get things in queue, hell I've done it 8 or 9 times. This kind of "raiding" (I don't really consider it raiding) will end up ultimately hurting NS. I'm not sure about exact numbers, but I know for a fact proposal campaigning is one source of revenue for the game. If this drives people away from writing proposals and campaigning for them it loses the site revenue, and I highly doubt admin are going to sit by and let something that loses the site revenue continue.

GA regulars don't even make 1% of the population nor is proposal campaigning a moneymaker but a proposal standstill for the WA may affect the game play for players.

[Aclion]

Just a note, given Galiantus's long history of wanting to destroy the WA/grind it to a complete halt/etc:
If this caught on enough that a small group of players was successfully bringing the GA to a complete standstill via GA-motivated raiding, the most likely result would be admin lowering the approvals required for a proposal to reach quorum until such a point that the tactic was no longer easy to pull off on a constant basis. Would not be the first time the approvals requirement has been wiggled around a bit.

From a game balance perspective, raiding to nudge WA proposal approvals or even voting is certainly a valid political maneuver albeit a dick move (again, politics. Tends to have a lot of dick moves by nature); however it should not be so easy to accomplish that it can be done to all, or even to most proposals. If that starts happening, then the aforementioned adjustment to the required approvals would likely be forthcoming.

Or not, since you can push it down only so far until a lot more totally shitty proposals start to go to vote. Right now the Secretariat has usually at least two updates to check proposals, for the most proposals even four. Or more if the queue is clogged. The low quorum needed to address this would allow many illegal proposals to go to vote.

I've been thinking it might be a good idea to do something about that regardless. Since it's already not too hard to get a proposal to vote within 12 hours and getting a proposal pulled at the 11th hour because of illegalities is not fun.

[Bears Armed]

They are equal. Counter raiders cna simply repeat what the raiders are doing. The only change is that they can endorse their own people and restore the approval.

Four your information, proposals have only a few days in which to reach quorum before they are automatically deleted from the list: If approvals are removed (in this way or any other) without there being enough time for such counter-actions to work -- maybe even with this removal happening after the deadline, if they had acquired enough approvals before this to be placed in the queue for voting rather than deleted when the deadline came -- then the proposal will be deleted when the deadline comes (or, if that had already passed, at the very next update) and all current approvals will be lost.

Just a note, given Galiantus's long history of wanting to destroy the WA/grind it to a complete halt/etc:
If this caught on enough that a small group of players was successfully bringing the GA to a complete standstill via GA-motivated raiding, the most likely result would be admin lowering the approvals required for a proposal to reach quorum until such a point that the tactic was no longer easy to pull off on a constant basis. Would not be the first time the approvals requirement has been wiggled around a bit.

From a game balance perspective, raiding to nudge WA proposal approvals or even voting is certainly a valid political maneuver albeit a dick move (again, politics. Tends to have a lot of dick moves by nature); however it should not be so easy to accomplish that it can be done to all, or even to most proposals. If that starts happening, then the aforementioned adjustment to the required approvals would likely be forthcoming.

Thank you for clarifying this.
It's just a pity that solving the problem in that way -- rather than by placing some further limit directly on raiding -- would increase the chance of poor-quality, and maybe even 'illegal', proposals reaching the floor...

Nobody here has issue with more people showing interest in the GA. We have issue with GP players coming in and kicking sand in everyone's face because that's their idea of "fun". We aren't saying that you can't sit and eat cake with us, we are saying you can't sit in the cake.

Well said!

GA regulars don't even make 1% of the population

If by "population" you mean nations, rather than players, my 190-ish puppets alone would go over 1/10 of the way to making 1% of that population.

Or not, since you can push it down only so far until a lot more totally shitty proposals start to go to vote. Right now the Secretariat has usually at least two updates to check proposals, for the most proposals even four. Or more if the queue is clogged. The low quorum needed to address this would allow many illegal proposals to go to vote.

I've been thinking it might be a good idea to do something about that regardless. Since it's already not too hard to get a proposal to vote within 12 hours and getting a proposal pulled at the 11th hour because of illegalities is not fun.

Maybe a minimum one-day delay between quorum and going to vote, during which -- if there's nothing else either at vote or queued ahead of it, so that without this change it would already have been at vote itself -- if can only be removed for illegality rather than by loss of approvals?

[Guy]

Hey guys, newsflash: Raiding is destructive. It is literally about allowing people to mess with your sandcastle and laugh. Its description as “legalised trolling” is not totally inappropriate.

To the GA people suddenly realising that raiding could affect their community: I’m sorry? But it’s pretty funny watching you lose your shit over this. You’re acting like some special snowflakes whose way of playing the game deserves protection from raiding, while not really caring about anyone else’s.

The game utilises the Delegacy mechanic as a proxy for power, both in the WA and regional management. Raiding is about usurping that power for one’s own purposes. That’s exactly what this is about.

In my opinion a much more natural way to limit the extent to which people is able to obtain that power for themselves is to limit users to one WA per update - literally, one vote in the determination of delegacies. I’ve advocated for this in the past, and it doesn’t really seem to have much support.

[Indo-Malaysia]

Hey guys, newsflash: Raiding is destructive.

What is this sorcery..!?

[Bears Armed]

You’re acting like some special snowflakes whose way of playing the game deserves protection from raiding, while not really caring about anyone else’s.

Some of us have already been arguing for restrictions on raiding as a practice -- not just in this situation - -for a lonng time.
And only caring about one way of playing the game, "while not really caring about anyone else’s", looks like a pretty accurate description of the 'raider' mentality to me...

[Cormactopia Prime]

We've reached the portion of this thread where people from other parts of the game come here to bash gameplay and then demand we leave them alone.

Fun times.

[Galiantus III]

If this caught on enough that a small group of players was successfully bringing the GA to a complete standstill via GA-motivated raiding, the most likely result would be admin lowering the approvals required for a proposal to reach quorum until such a point that the tactic was no longer easy to pull off on a constant basis. Would not be the first time the approvals requirement has been wiggled around a bit.

Having admin go and change that number manually is arbitrary, though. And honestly, if this was done I could just stop trying to block everything and mess with the WA by trying to get everything to quorum. I could potentially fill up quorum so much that I could select any proposals I particularly dislike and knock them from quorum, given the long wait times. What would make the most sense is if there was a SC category that could change the approvals requirement, rather than relying on Admin to determine when a change is necessary.

I think another factor people aren't taking into consideration is this: suppose I (or anyone else) did manage to block all proposals submitted for a week or two. What would be the public reaction to that? Lots of people would have a problem with that, I think to the point that lots of currently uninvolved delegates would start looking at proposals to approve them, in an attempt to get something past quorum. Even the best army would be powerless to block legitimately good proposals if just 1/4 of all delegates regularly checked quorum for proposals they could support.

In other words, there is no reason to assume one extreme when another extreme is also possible. And given that there are options available to counter this right now, and defenders can prevent much of this at the outset, I don't think it is likely we will reach either extreme.

[Augustus Rex]

Fun idea. Might do it sometime. The GA's always been my least favorite part of the game.

[Old Hope]

In my opinion a much more natural way to limit the extent to which people is able to obtain that power for themselves is to limit users to one WA per update - literally, one vote in the determination of delegacies. I’ve advocated for this in the past, and it doesn’t really seem to have much support.

Guess what - that's what I proposed.And - Regions can escape control raiding with a founder. They can escape tag raiding with a non-executive WA. But the only way to escape your own region being WA raided is a password(usually the death of growth in nearly every region)... and proposal authors have exactly zero ways to make their proposal raid-proof.

[Sciongrad]

To what extent do you think GA players participating in GP politics makes GP significantly less playable?

If your part of the game is less playable with more people participating, maybe you need to reevaluate what's wrong with your part of the game that makes it so exclusionary. The World Assembly, including the General Assembly, is supposed to be for all players, not just the tiny few who happen to hang out in the General Assembly forum -- a smaller subset than gameplay even. So no, I don't accept that other players should just butt out of your sandbox.

For what it's worth, the complaints being made here about WA-related invasions are only making me more interested in them.

Sorry, this is comically idiotic. By "more people participating," do you mean more people actively working to prevent the game from functioning as it was designed? I'm sure you also think that fans of a football game descending on to the pitch and preventing the players from moving the ball around is a good way to increase participation? Or do you just not know at all what you're talking about and like to insert yourself into literally any and all conversations? I have advocated for making the game more accessible for years. To my knowledge, you have never posted anything memorable or valuable in the GA forum. I have no idea, then, why someone who has no connection to the game at all would want to offer an opinion that, I think all parties involved (including the OP) agree, would fundamentally inhibit the game from functioning except perhaps because that person enjoys the attention.

[Indibagion Mer]

Hint: These regions had never a stable backbone. And you DO spare players and these players ARE better equipped to resist it.

It's not really surprising that people who have no interest in R/D or who are unaware of it wouldn't take necessary precautions against it and would be frustrated by it to the point of giving up on a region. It's not as though this type of raiding is fool-proof either. A resolution with vast popular appeal will still pass, even if The Black Hawks, Lily, and other large/influential raider groups team up to bring it down and manage to make every jump perfectly.

They often just don't use the equipment. No executive delegate no tag raiding or control raiding(unless they are stupid). These regions do have these extremely powerful tools in their capacity: a founder with non- executive delegates you cannot beat without infiltration AND stupidity of your opponents, which has precisely been time and time again the reasoning by mods why raiding is allowed.

Massing delegates and defending effectively would prevent this strategy from working given that you aren't going to have a concerted effort from the raiding community to shut down the WA/SC unless the resolution irritates all of them. As long as the game dynamics function somewhat, I don't see any reason to give WA/SC players special treatment that GP and RP players don't get. There are defensive measures in place such that these raids will only knock off weaker resolutions.

Yes. It would be fair. You can take 2 3-endorsement regions with 10 people - or one 8- endo region with 10. I fully understand that this will damage raiding regions, but it's based on an exploit so whatever. If the exploit gives one side massive advantage it needs to go.

That'd pretty much nerf raiding simply to protect WA players, something we haven't done for other raid targets/victims. It's one thing if the dynamic becomes such that no resolutions ever pass or that more than five percent get shot down in this way.

Why would TBH help you YOU STOPPED REPEAL PREVENT THE EXECUTION OF INICENTS AND ALOT OF TBH WANTED IT TO BE REPEALED

[Fahran]

And only caring about one way of playing the game, "while not really caring about anyone else’s", looks like a pretty accurate description of the 'raider' mentality to me...

That's not quite accurate, BA. I enjoy raiding (and defending), but I also utilize RP, General, and WA/SC depending on my mood and whether anything interesting is available. In this case, WA/SC players, albeit NatSovs, teamed up with raiders and impacted two sides of the game in a material way.

Why would TBH help you YOU STOPPED REPEAL PREVENT THE EXECUTION OF INICENTS AND ALOT OF TBH WANTED IT TO BE REPEALED

They wouldn't because I'm with Lily. Maybe if I baked them a cake or donuts...

And I actually wasn't involved in this operation at all. I wanted the repeal to pass and, last time I checked, another repeal was likely to succeed if it hasn't already.