"Standing up for the Userite" Dispatch

[Sandaoguo]

I'm curious, not so much because I want to argue with you about it (surprise!) but because I genuinely think your opinion could be helpful, what do you think UCRs should be doing more or less of in order to bring change to GP politics and culture? I agree it will take a lot of work, but I think it could be worthwhile to talk about what UCRs ought to be working toward, obviously beyond the basics of region-building because everyone knows that work has to be put in for a UCR to succeed.

I haven't been in a UCR in what's approaching like a decade, so I don't have advice at all on growing a UCR community internally, though I can't imagine it being that much more different than GCRs. The programs built by TSP and TNP, for example, are basically turn-key and can be applied to any region.

For growing UCR influence in GP, though, I think the most important thing is that UCRs should be the ones originating things. Oftentimes, UCRs are followers in GP. They want to join GCR alliances, GCR-led initiatives, seek the approval and partnership of GCRs. Even though there are UCRs that outnumber GCR populations and military sizes, it's GCRs that have the upper hand by being coveted. Most of inter-regional politics in GP is driven by players in GCRs. Things like the NS World Fair were run by GCRs. The big media outfits are run by people in GCRs, even if you have a case like NS Today where they aren't owned by a GCR. There isn't a lot of innovation coming from the UCR sphere, if any at all. Unless you look at UCRs like Europeia that have been intertwined with GCRs and part of the establishment for so long, they're in own not-quite-UCR/not-quiet-GCR class.

[Bears Armed]

I'm curious, not so much because I want to argue with you about it (surprise!) but because I genuinely think your opinion could be helpful, what do you think UCRs should be doing more or less of in order to bring change to GP politics and culture?

There is nothing at all that UCRs "should should be doing more or less of in order to bring change to GP politics and culture", because there is not -- and should not be -- any requirement whatsoever for UCRs to get involved in such matters in the first place.

[August]

I haven't been in a UCR in what's approaching like a decade

Clearly.

There isn't a lot of innovation coming from the UCR sphere, if any at all.

The thread adjacent to this one announces an entire global economic system developed in and operated by a UCR. That is just what I have been up to this week, and I am certainly not the only UCR-based player trying to build new things. People come into NS Leaders with novel UCR concepts all the time. Entropy was an idea I had never seen before in ten years. You mentioned the NS World Fair, but not the massively successful UCR Con run by Caer Sidi. The URA is leveraging the collective voting power of small UCRs to overcome large ones. The list goes on.

Bottom line, I am not really sure what more you want from us. Perhaps people should just pay more attention to what others are working on, rather than assuming nothing important is happening because it is outside their sphere.

[Wabbitslayah]

I'm curious, not so much because I want to argue with you about it (surprise!) but because I genuinely think your opinion could be helpful, what do you think UCRs should be doing more or less of in order to bring change to GP politics and culture?

There is nothing at all that UCRs "should should be doing more or less of in order to bring change to GP politics and culture", because there is not -- and should not be -- any requirement whatsoever for UCRs to get involved in such matters in the first place.

Oh? So you speak for the gameplay oriented UCRs that don't want to tie themeselves strongly to the GCRs? News to me. None of this conversation in this thread applies to RP UCRs because what does that have to do with Gameplay stuff?

Edit: Nor isolationistic UCRs. And as far as WA stuff goes, well you'd have to deal with voting blocs and all that stuff inevitably at some point with possibly any group.

[Cormactopia Prime]

:eyebrow:
There is nothing at all that UCRs "should should be doing more or less of in order to bring change to GP politics and culture", because there is not -- and should not be -- any requirement whatsoever for UCRs to get involved in such matters in the first place.

I clearly meant UCRs interested in such matters. If yours isn't, then that's fine? This thread is pretty clearly about UCRs that are interested in gameplay.

[Bears Armed]

There is nothing at all that UCRs "should should be doing more or less of in order to bring change to GP politics and culture", because there is not -- and should not be -- any requirement whatsoever for UCRs to get involved in such matters in the first place.

Oh? So you speak for the gameplay oriented UCRs that don't want to tie themeselves strongly to the GCRs? News to me.

If some UCRs choose to get involved with improving the GCRs , then I certainly am not saying that they could not do so: What I was objecting to was the apparent assumption -- implicit, as I read it, in the wording of the question on which I commented, and its use of "should" rather than just "could" -- is that the potential for such assistance is the reason why UCRs should exist at all...

[Francois Isidore]

I take it that you never tried International Democratic Union? (I don't recognise the name of the nation you're using in this thread as that of a former resident, but thought it best to ask just in case...) Our Founder isn't a single player's personal nation, it's a puppet jointly controlled by [a gradually shifting cast of ] several reliable players, and we have maintained stability ever since its creation in 2005 without the sort of unpleasant events to which you refer (and, for that matter, without any Invader groups ever managing to cause significant trouble here, neither)....

No, I haven’t tried International Democratic Union, but I am familiar with other UCRs that have a similar setup and have consciously made the decision to have their Founder nation not be someone’s personal nation (instead opting to have it be a more generic “[region’s name] Founder” nation).

Even so, I don’t find this to be any more desirable. Regardless of the perceived reliability of some of these players — and I’m not speaking about the ones you refer to when talking about the IDU, just for the record — there can always be difficulties. Perhaps someone logs in, weaponizes their access to the nation, changes its password, and prevents other players who were deemed reliable from sharing access with them.

At that point, you’re really getting into the dangers of nation sharing in general and that’s not a risk I’ve ever been willing to take. I don’t much like nation sharing and it’s certainly not advisable. I think it’s great that the IDU has had such great success with few to no interruptions under this model, but I don’t necessarily think that what you’re describing is indicative of all UCRs that have a more communal founder nation instead of it being someone’s personal account.

[Quebecshire]

No, I haven’t tried International Democratic Union, but I am familiar with other UCRs that have a similar setup and have consciously made the decision to have their Founder nation not be someone’s personal nation (instead opting to have it be a more generic “[region’s name] Founder” nation).

Even so, I don’t find this to be any more desirable. Regardless of the perceived reliability of some of these players — and I’m not speaking about the ones you refer to when talking about the IDU, just for the record — there can always be difficulties. Perhaps someone logs in, weaponizes their access to the nation, changes its password, and prevents other players who were deemed reliable from sharing access with them.

At that point, you’re really getting into the dangers of nation sharing in general and that’s not a risk I’ve ever been willing to take. I don’t much like nation sharing and it’s certainly not advisable. I think it’s great that the IDU has had such great success with few to no interruptions under this model, but I don’t necessarily think that what you’re describing is indicative of all UCRs that have a more communal founder nation instead of it being someone’s personal account.

We had a lot of uncertainty and worry over the Adawn nation back in 2018. I wouldn't advise any sort of option that involves Founder nation sharing nonsense, to be honest. Though, I think the Founder nation being a neutral point is good. The League Founder nation is owned by me, and I don't really use it aside from admin changes. If your Founder has no IC relevance by virtue of being the Founder, a neutral nation controlled by one or a couple unchanging people (ideally OOC admins too) is a good solution, in my opinion.

[Unibot III]

Things like the NS World Fair were run by GCRs.

This is funny because I really wouldn't describe NSWF I-III as being run by GCRs.

Obviously, the participation of regions in the venues made the event. But if you're asking who "ran" NSWF, those NSWFs were founded and organized by me, with assistance from people close to me that I could rely on to help with big tasks (Solm, Zwangzug). Todd McCloud helped with administrative work during the fair and co-hosted the fair to help provide them with legitimacy and a sense of political balance, but it was my idea and mostly my execution with some heavy lifting from Solm and Zwangzug in particular areas (Solm coded the World Message Board which was my idea but way above my coding expertise; Zwangzug organized two sporting tournaments; JAL coded something - I think a message alert system.)

Solm and Zwangzug weren't even really NSGPers, they were roleplayers (II, Sports) in UCRs. I was a WA Author and a founder of the leading WA-focused International Federalist UCR of the time.

I would argue that the organizational involvement by GCRs in the NSWF was almost exclusively non-constructive.

They were interested in playing politics with the event - trying to force speakers, events to be blacklisted etc., but they weren't contributing ideas or labour, they wanted to use their size to demonstrate their influence over the event.

The NSWF is perfect example of how NSGP is - in general - fairly conservative, catty, inward, not particularly dynamic or innovative. When you put actual NSGPers in charge of NSWF, they copyed the old format and drove it into the ground. Real change in NSGP comes from external sources and outsiders. In 2009, the creation of the WA Security Council brought a crop of WA Authors and roleplayers into the NSGP for the first time. We were creators and creatives, people who weren't familiar with the rules or the structure of NSGP - and we did our own thing. I still feel that way. I look at people who come up the ranks in NSGP, and I just don't see a lot of interest in them to initiate change - even change they want to see. There's a million things you could do with gameplay if you wanted, but it requires someone to go ahead and do it.

I don't necessarily think the problem facing NSGP is based on inequities between GCRs and UCRs, but the fact that it's looking inward and just replicating existing institutions like fingernails growing on a corpse. The status of GCRs probably does not help though. There's been no event that's forced outsiders to be thrust into the system.

You have people maturing from newbie to senior in a system convinced there's nothing more to R/D than tag raid counts, nothing more to regional governance than tinkering with the lawbooks, nothing more to regional culture than spam games, nothing more to foreign policy than non-aggression. It's unsentimental and reflexive. The game needs outsiders, people not born in the system, who look at it differently and see a reason to want to believe in it. My suggestion to any player who wants to accomplish anything is to break from tradition, send a lot of telegrams to a lot of players with a lot of asks - you can do anything you put your heart into. The big "innovation" of the Great Revival, was believing in things again. Believing in ideas and movements. Believing in a regional ethos. Believing in the power of the international community. There's a lot to be romantic about in a game like NS, but you need people who can see the game like that, and persuade others to see it that way too.

To that end, I give Sailiopia a lot of credit - they're a new-ish player, running a cool UCR 'Celtia' of 40 nations, effectively driving the conversation in NSGP today about an issue that for once people seem passionate about...

Are GCRs too powerful? Are they stifling innovation and change? Does someone need to challenge them? How do you do that?

Players who feel this way should reach out to like-minded players and talk about coordination. Suvmia and the United Regions Alliance and Kavagrad seem on-board to some degree. August, Zukchiva, and The American Anarchist Empire have expressed some interest. To synthesize grievances into actions, a movement needs someone striking up connections. Pull people into a Discord channel. Brainstorm together. What can be done? Perhaps host a ongoing conference. Create a region to host the conference! Hold it on the RMB, and accept embassies with participating regions!

“Get action. Do things; be sane; don’t fritter away your time; create, act, take a place wherever you are and be somebody; get action.”

[Sandaoguo]

This is funny because I really wouldn't describe NSWF I-III as being run by GCRs.

It started as you and Todd McCloud running things. But NSWF III and onward was GCR players rewarding a UCR with the privilege of branding the forums and ostensibly "hosting" the fair. It was fundamentally a GCR-run event from 2014 on. Most of the lecturers were GCR players, too.

Not to get bogged down in a now-dead annual event, though. There are very few examples within the last 5 years of UCRs originating an idea that was broadly bought into by GCRs. And it's not been the case that GCRs turn their noses at anything UCRs bring up-- it's that the ideas just haven't been there. I can't tell you how many times while I was in TSP government that we had UCRs vying for what was essentially our patronage, and I'm sure most other GCRs can say the same. I think the newer UCRs who want to be involved in GP feel that they have to align with and ride of the coattails of a GCR in order to be successful. And GCRs are happy to oblige, because it earns them allies and an R/D updater pool.

[Unibot III]

It started as you and Todd McCloud running things.

This is not true, I posted a forum post announcing the creation of NSWF (it was my idea) and Todd lobbied me to become "co-founder" / "admin" to present the NSWF as a defender-raider collaboration. I wanted to get NSWF up and going so, I agreed to it. We needed a root admin who wasn't involved with the UDL to be blunt because people were worried about IPs being shared. Euroslavia and Todd did some administrative work in NSWF I - but the development of the fair was done mostly by me, with some help from Solm and Zwangzug.

The argument that Todd was in fact an actual co-founder who owned NSWF and could carry on with it, via the NSWF Committee, was like the drummer of Bachman-Turner Overdrive holding the intellectual property rights to the band name. I was very frustrated that I wasn't able to pass NSWF on to some new co-owners who had a track record of actually delivering big cultural events, rather than the fair being used and abused by politicians that had come to be vaguely associated with the NSWF.

But NSWF III and onward was GCR players rewarding a UCR with the privilege of branding the forums and ostensibly "hosting" the fair. It was fundamentally a GCR-run event from 2014 on. Most of the lecturers were GCR players, too.

Yeah it became a GCR event - but none of this supports your argument, GCR politicians were not innovators - they politicked, gained control of NSWF, and drove it into the ground. They didn't add anything to it. They didn't even change anything! They wore the NSWF like a dead skin suit. And they underused GCR outsiders, excluded them, didn't give them a voice...

None of this supports your argument, G-R. You're trying to paint me and the NSWF as a 'GCR original' but I was an outsider to the regions I was in, I was a WA Author who had held down a few ministerial roles in the GCRs - NSWF was about bringing different parts of the game (roleplay, gameplay, WA, General etc.) together for a weekend as equals. That vision for the event was lost on GCR politicians who made it about themselves and their regions and their little cliques. I can't see how the NSWF works exactly against the point you're trying to make. The GCRs aren't innovative and they do trample over UCRs.

[Wabbitslayah]

Oh? So you speak for the gameplay oriented UCRs that don't want to tie themeselves strongly to the GCRs? News to me.

If some UCRs choose to get involved with improving the GCRs , then I certainly am not saying that they could not do so: What I was objecting to was the apparent assumption -- implicit, as I read it, in the wording of the question on which I commented, and its use of "should" rather than just "could" -- is that the potential for such assistance is the reason why UCRs should exist at all...

The issue is that's mostly outside the scope of this thread. The dispatch from it's perspective may have not made any distinction which you are attempting to create here. Which I understand, but in that case you haven't created one and instead made a counter blanket statement in attempt for distinction that is hardly relevant if at all.

In order words, you chose poorly on how to make the distinction. It can be done, just not the way you posted earlier.

[Sandaoguo]

Yeah it became a GCR event - but none of this supports your argument, GCR politicians were not innovators - they politicked, gained control of NSWF, and drove it into the ground. They didn't add anything to it. They didn't even change anything! They wore the NSWF like a dead skin suit. And they underused GCR outsiders, excluded them, didn't give them a voice...

Well that's not my argument. I'm not arguing "GCRs are the innovators" (though I think there's definitely plenty of cases to be made), I'm arguing that UCRs aren't. Whether GCRs took over NSWF or originated it doesn't matter, because at the end of the day it was most well known as a venue run by and for GCRs, with UCRs invited.

NSWF is not the only example of UCRs lacking in entrepreneurship. There are very few example over the last 5 years or more where some major organization, movement, or idea was spearheaded by a new/up and coming UCR. There are large UCRs doing things, but nothing particularly innovative and rarely as a leader. GCRs, more specifically GCR players, have defined the political and diplomatic landscape of GP for many years now. They've created today's multilateral alliances, have been behind pretty much every major scandal or diplomatic incident, are still the driving force in R/D conflict, among many other things. Even with the UCRs that have been influential, it's been GCR cosmos within them doing all the things. The older and more entrenched UCRs are the exception, like XKI or Euro or TBH, etc, but how many major things in GP can you honestly say originated from UCRs/Userites? And how does that compare to GCRs?

My point here isn't that GCRs are superior. It's that UCRs are letting opportunities go. And they're doing it because they think the ticket to success is to follow GCRs, sign treaties with GCRs, and seek their approval. GCRs benefit a lot from that, too, and are happy to keep that dynamic going. If UCRs want to have more influence and power, they have to push forward new ideas by themselves.

[Kylia Quilor]

They think the ticket to success is involvement with the GCRs because the GCRs are so damn powerful they starve everything else out.

[Guy]

I guess I remember back when UCRs were way more powerful and influential than any of the GCRs.

Was coming here to say the same thing. In my "coming of age" years in Nationstates, the game-created regions were all empty husks.

I think there are a few things that have fed into the decline of user-created regions, and not all of them can really be fixed.

The rise of stamps and API scripts, while I approve and would not want to turn back the clock, makes the whole recruitment game a lot less straightforward. There were times in the Old Days when just sitting in front of your computer on a weekend you could recruit enough nations via brute force to start a relatively active user-created region. Now it requires some combination of relatively strong copywriting abilities, API access/literacy, brute force, and cold hard cash. As someone who has dabbled into region-building in modern times, it's a lot more complicated and loses a little bit of the romanticism of it (in my opinion!).

The rise of Discord, increased prominence of social interactions over gameplay, and general "low-calorification" of the game has also decreased the incentives around putting a lot of work into a new region — and keeping it going over a long period of time. The same forces that now have people laughing over long posts in NS Gameplay (vs. reading them) are the same that would probably say "why bother" when it comes to the long, grueling work required to build a region from scratch and keep it going in a meaningful way. It's hard work! It was probably...two years before Europeia was off the "one screw up from death" setting, and I don't think most people who casually play the game and chat with their buddies on Discord really see that as appealing. And I kinda get it!

And finally, I think there's a problem with momentum. People reasonably gravitate to places with the most activity (and having larger size doesn't hurt either). Something needs to shake up the status quo for that equilibrium to be scrambled. One thing I am curious about, and don't fully have an answer for, is that explosions of people used to join green regions when activity was high from setting up a government + being the shiny new thing. Sometimes these region would hit critical mass and then have a base of activity to build on, and sometimes things would fizzle out, but there'd often be a dozen of these a year — some of which would find medium/long term success. Does this still happen? If so, are the regions just not hitting critical mass and breaking into relevancy? And if not, is it because newer regions founded by prominent players (1) aren't being founded; (2) aren't being advertised or marketed; (3) not offering anything compelling?

Definitely a thought-provoking question and I think others have also brought up intriguing points.

This post deserves a lot more attention than it got.

I do wonder whether part of the solution isn't, in fact, to roll back the changes to recruitment that make it so hard for UCRs to hit a critical mass.

[Galiantus III]

@Guy: I've always thought that founding and/or building a new region ought to be far less accessible than it is. The fact is, the region a new player goes to significantly shapes their game experience. And it is better to have a few really active regions than a sea of dead regions for new players to have their first experiences with. Additionally, fewer regions means less competition for recruitment, which would also be a significant improvement in the new player experience.

[Sandaoguo]

They think the ticket to success is involvement with the GCRs because the GCRs are so damn powerful they starve everything else out.

But it's not like there's some limited amount of "things" to go around that GCRs gobble up. The NSGP forum is a public space. GCRs can't stop UCRs from organizing an event, forming their own R/D groups, forging big alliances, etc.

[Guy]

@Guy: I've always thought that founding and/or building a new region ought to be far less accessible than it is. The fact is, the region a new player goes to significantly shapes their game experience. And it is better to have a few really active regions than a sea of dead regions for new players to have their first experiences with. Additionally, fewer regions means less competition for recruitment, which would also be a significant improvement in the new player experience.

Yes, indeed — in a sense, the higher the barriers to entry, the less competition there is, the more likely more regions will hit critical mass. The problem with what we have right now is that there are a whole lot of regions doing some recruiting, but it’s quite difficult to rise above the pack.

[Merconitonitopia]

@Guy: I've always thought that founding and/or building a new region ought to be far less accessible than it is. The fact is, the region a new player goes to significantly shapes their game experience. And it is better to have a few really active regions than a sea of dead regions for new players to have their first experiences with. Additionally, fewer regions means less competition for recruitment, which would also be a significant improvement in the new player experience.

Yes, indeed — in a sense, the higher the barriers to entry, the less competition there is, the more likely more regions will hit critical mass. The problem with what we have right now is that there are a whole lot of regions doing some recruiting, but it’s quite difficult to rise above the pack.

The basic problem is that markets for social networks are inherently oligopolistic because of demand-side economies of scale. The more users a region has, the more attractive it is to users. Hence once the market is established it's difficult for new competitors, who start out with few users, to break in because they're start off fighting an uphill battle against the established regions.
Barriers to entry could theoretically alleviate this by consolidating users into a smaller number of new regions, but I'd be interested to hear exactly what barriers you have in mind.

[Lazarene Ryccia]

I know the language is not as jarring nor the ideas discussed as extreme (it's very close though!), but this just screams Reverse Francoism to me (a.k.a, Userite Supremacy) with defender salt sprinkled in. As a member of a GCR, I'm not fond of the demonizing language used. The call to unendorse GCR delegates is especially concerning, especially for me personally since I'm a member of a GCR security apparatus whose primary duty is...keeping our region safe by warding off any dangers to the established, legitimate government of our community (being concerned over the preservation of regional self-rule? Now that sounds familiar...). The concerns raised may have some truth behind them, but, like most things in life, it isn't so black-and-white.

Ultimately, GCRs are also communities whom look out for their own interests, and each one of them is its own entity with its own particularities, clashing both with themselves and with UCRs. If basing your foreign policy on the needs, interests and desires of your community and its individual members is a malignant poison in this game, then both GCRs and UCRs are evil entities that should be viewed with disdain and scorn. UCRs are not some innocent little lambs that are constantly being tyrannized under the GCRist boot. Hell, some major UCRs have intervened in our communities during periods of general instability (coups, subversions and so on), which is far less likely to occur in UCRs due to their far more stable mechanics (that is, if they have a Founder, of course, and most major UCRs have them anyway). It's not a one-way street where big bad strong GCR oppresses small lil' innocent UCRs that can do no evil.

I find it particularly insulting that GCRs and their members are characterized as these "power-hungry and greedy" leviathans. You can't paint our regions with that wide of a brush, and, as others have mentioned in this thread, not every single person in a GCR is a Machiavellian monster in a power-lust frenzy. As I mentioned before, GCRs are communities. They don't survive off of constant and inherently destabilizing power struggles (heck, the more intense a destabilizing event is in a GCR, the more it destroys itself despite the surge in "activity" which doesn't tend to last). They are groups of people whom share a sense of norms, values, identity and, in some of them, even ideology (looking at you, 'fenda TSP). They are constantly and organically changing. GCRs are not made up of hordes of unthinking, "oblivious" drones. They are made up of people. They are as every bit as much of a community than UCRs are.

Some GCRs may be arrogant. Some UCRs may be reprehensible or otherwise power-hungry (if they're going by a defender point of view, one of the premiere raiding orgs is literally an UCR). But you can't paint them all with a wide brush. If you do that, you'll go blind.

[Unibot III]

Was coming here to say the same thing. In my "coming of age" years in Nationstates, the game-created regions were all empty husks.

I think there are a few things that have fed into the decline of user-created regions, and not all of them can really be fixed.

The rise of stamps and API scripts, while I approve and would not want to turn back the clock, makes the whole recruitment game a lot less straightforward. There were times in the Old Days when just sitting in front of your computer on a weekend you could recruit enough nations via brute force to start a relatively active user-created region. Now it requires some combination of relatively strong copywriting abilities, API access/literacy, brute force, and cold hard cash. As someone who has dabbled into region-building in modern times, it's a lot more complicated and loses a little bit of the romanticism of it (in my opinion!).

The rise of Discord, increased prominence of social interactions over gameplay, and general "low-calorification" of the game has also decreased the incentives around putting a lot of work into a new region — and keeping it going over a long period of time. The same forces that now have people laughing over long posts in NS Gameplay (vs. reading them) are the same that would probably say "why bother" when it comes to the long, grueling work required to build a region from scratch and keep it going in a meaningful way. It's hard work! It was probably...two years before Europeia was off the "one screw up from death" setting, and I don't think most people who casually play the game and chat with their buddies on Discord really see that as appealing. And I kinda get it!

And finally, I think there's a problem with momentum. People reasonably gravitate to places with the most activity (and having larger size doesn't hurt either). Something needs to shake up the status quo for that equilibrium to be scrambled. One thing I am curious about, and don't fully have an answer for, is that explosions of people used to join green regions when activity was high from setting up a government + being the shiny new thing. Sometimes these region would hit critical mass and then have a base of activity to build on, and sometimes things would fizzle out, but there'd often be a dozen of these a year — some of which would find medium/long term success. Does this still happen? If so, are the regions just not hitting critical mass and breaking into relevancy? And if not, is it because newer regions founded by prominent players (1) aren't being founded; (2) aren't being advertised or marketed; (3) not offering anything compelling?

Definitely a thought-provoking question and I think others have also brought up intriguing points.

This post deserves a lot more attention than it got.

I do wonder whether part of the solution isn't, in fact, to roll back the changes to recruitment that make it so hard for UCRs to hit a critical mass.

Problem is the changes to recruitment supported the monetization of NS. And therefore are unlikely to be rolled back.

But this is why I’ve been such a critic of schemes to ‘feederize’ UCRs — it’ll inevitably have a similar effect as ‘paying-to-grow’ by reinforcing the status quo and decoupling productivity and relevance from regional growth.

Growth of UCRs used to be labour-intensive and required a lot of volunteers (similar to R/D in that respect), so regions rose and declined in tandem with their engagement of members. To get more members, you needed your existing members to be engaged & participatory.

I think there’s a little too much focus on recruiting brand new NSers, and not enough focus on what the game could be doing to connect existing players with regions they might enjoy more in residing in over the full life cycle of their time in NS. A brand new newbie is hounded by twelve different regions (and doesn’t even know what a ‘region’ is), but a player who has been floating around deadweight UCRs for a few months is left to their own devices after they’ve toggled off recruitment — and no one makes an effort to reach them. Post-first-day recruitment shouldn’t be taboo or treated as a public nuisance — it’s pretty essential to connect players in a game environment that is spacially quite large, remote, and aging.

[Cormactopia Prime]

A brand new newbie is hounded by twelve different regions (and doesn’t even know what a ‘region’ is), but a player who has been floating around deadweight UCRs for a few months is left to their own devices after they’ve toggled off recruitment — and no one makes an effort to reach them. Post-first-day recruitment shouldn’t be taboo or treated as a public nuisance — it’s pretty essential to connect players in a game environment that is spacially quite large, remote, and aging.

There are a couple different things to unpack here.

The first is your statement that no one makes an effort to reach players who have been floating around deadweight UCRs after toggling off recruitment. Yes, that's true, because it would quite literally be against game rules to try to recruit them. In order to do so, you'd basically have to send them telegrams that aren't marked as recruitment, and hope you're being subtle enough that they won't report you for illegal recruitment spam. No one's going to do that. No one should do that -- the ability to turn off recruitment telegrams exists for a reason and people shouldn't try to go around it.

That's a different matter from normal post-first day recruitment, because of course there are some who leave their recruitment telegrams turned on. I'd agree with you that regions should do more to reach players beyond the first day, but it's not true that no one is doing this. Both TBH and the Wardens have API telegrams going to new WA admissions, and TBH has them going to nations that move regions -- unsure if the Wardens are doing that. There may be other regions doing that. Entropy includes new WA admissions and region moves in our manual recruitment efforts (with nations in our embassy regions exempted), which will be ramping up more soon. So there are some regions reaching out beyond the first day, but you're right it should be more widespread. The problem is the more widespread it becomes, the less effective it will become as well, so personally for selfish reasons I hope other regions continue not to do it. But they would be wise to do it.

[Kylia Quilor]

They think the ticket to success is involvement with the GCRs because the GCRs are so damn powerful they starve everything else out.

But it's not like there's some limited amount of "things" to go around that GCRs gobble up. The NSGP forum is a public space. GCRs can't stop UCRs from organizing an event, forming their own R/D groups, forging big alliances, etc.

Momentum attracts momentum, which very much can starve attention away from others. But the point of what I said is that lots of newer UCRs like to cozy up to and ally with GCRs because they believe the path to interregional credibility is through alliances with and friendship with GCRs, which comes about because of the sheer size and power of GCRs and the fact that when they look around, they see everyone else focusing on GCRs. It's a perpetuating system.

[Unibot III]

A brand new newbie is hounded by twelve different regions (and doesn’t even know what a ‘region’ is), but a player who has been floating around deadweight UCRs for a few months is left to their own devices after they’ve toggled off recruitment — and no one makes an effort to reach them. Post-first-day recruitment shouldn’t be taboo or treated as a public nuisance — it’s pretty essential to connect players in a game environment that is spacially quite large, remote, and aging.

There are a couple different things to unpack here.

The first is your statement that no one makes an effort to reach players who have been floating around deadweight UCRs after toggling off recruitment. Yes, that's true, because it would quite literally be against game rules to try to recruit them. In order to do so, you'd basically have to send them telegrams that aren't marked as recruitment, and hope you're being subtle enough that they won't report you for illegal recruitment spam. No one's going to do that. No one should do that -- the ability to turn off recruitment telegrams exists for a reason and people shouldn't try to go around it

That's a different matter from normal post-first day recruitment, because of course there are some who leave their recruitment telegrams turned on. I'd agree with you that regions should do more to reach players beyond the first day, but it's not true that no one is doing this. Both TBH and the Wardens have API telegrams going to new WA admissions, and TBH has them going to nations that move regions -- unsure if the Wardens are doing that. There may be other regions doing that. Entropy includes new WA admissions and region moves in our manual recruitment efforts (with nations in our embassy regions exempted), which will be ramping up more soon. So there are some regions reaching out beyond the first day, but you're right it should be more widespread. The problem is the more widespread it becomes, the less effective it will become as well, so personally for selfish reasons I hope other regions continue not to do it. But they would be wise to do it.

I think I should clarify that I know it’s illegal but I think that’s a big problem that’s been facing NS — it takes no effort to toggle recruitment off, so vast swathes of the game do it instinctively even if it’s not actually in their interest (because they might benefit from being reached out to).

One of the problems with recruitment in NS is it is treated purely as an activity based around volume … because we’ve made it about volume by restricting recruitment mostly to first-day newbies clicking on buttons they don’t even understand. Changing what it means to recruit would yield better results for smaller regions looking to grow, and give a better reputation to recruitment — it doesn’t have to be big copy and paste blurbs.

Maybe there needs to be a system distinct from telegrams called invitations that flags the player like other notices (red notice at top). You could manually invite other players to join a region / organization, attend an event, or like a dispatch — no stamps. And if the player clicked on the notice, you could read a small message sent to accompany the invite.

I would also strongly suggest a delay between sending notices just like telegrams.

The way in which the game protects people’s TG boxes currently mostly works against NS. It prevents people from getting the word out about activities and groups. We’ve tilted the balance too much towards ‘consent’ and away from organization that is critical for a growing game.

[New Rogernomics]

But it's not like there's some limited amount of "things" to go around that GCRs gobble up. The NSGP forum is a public space. GCRs can't stop UCRs from organizing an event, forming their own R/D groups, forging big alliances, etc.

Momentum attracts momentum, which very much can starve attention away from others. But the point of what I said is that lots of newer UCRs like to cozy up to and ally with GCRs because they believe the path to interregional credibility is through alliances with and friendship with GCRs, which comes about because of the sheer size and power of GCRs and the fact that when they look around, they see everyone else focusing on GCRs. It's a perpetuating system.

Well, the issue is that naturally regardless of who is at the top of the supposed gameplay pyramid, it is going to be a group that welcomes as many types of nations, groups, and ideas as possible, though to be that way it has to be largely centralist and open to everyone.

That can be boring to folks that want strongly innovative regions or dedicated RP focused ones, though if you look at the game today, major UCRs built on an largely centralist political philosophy are still here and prospering.

Some don't seem to get that whether it is a large UCR, or a GCR, the situation will still be same, in terms of a larger regions having a lot of influence, and smaller regions congregating around them.

What it takes for an innovative or creative game is players putting in effort to build a region, starting as a small group built around a RP or ideology, and building something interesting and fun.

Those regions will be stymied somewhat by the difficulty of not being a generic region everyone can easily join, as there is some unique aspect to them not everyone will like.

This is something you can't legislate or fix with any technical change, as even if all the GCRs in the game shut up shop, and somehow a way to distribute their nations 'fairly' was achieved, you'd still need to recruit nations to a region and build one.

So it won't get any easier, in fact it will be harder to start a new region, as regions would have to recruit in other UCRs vs open GCRs that are largely permissive of recruitment.

The best solutions seem to be player-driven ones, rather than technical or stop-gap measures, which gloss over the real issue of motivation and effort.