[Change #7] Estimated Update Times Displayed

[Eas Sment]

That feel when this thread has seen more admin attention than the summit changes.

[Harenhime]

That feel when this thread has seen more admin attention than the summit changes.

1. This is a summit change - see title, change #7

2. I wouldn't exactly say it's seeing much attention.

[Wordy]

Are we there yet?

[Sedgistan]

It's in Ballo's hands at present. I don't have an update for you.

[Wordy]

Thanks Sedge, no problem.

[Vanishing Island]

After part 1 implementation stuff happened and this got put on the back burner.

It's now back on the front burner, FYI.

Ballotonia

With the summit now archived are these changes still on the table? Is it worth bringing fresh ideas to technical? Would they even be considered, let alone coded?

How can something be "imminent" for 8 months? Are admin interested in continuing to (read: start) provide support for R/D at all?

[Vanishing Island]

bump

[Vanishing Island]

bomp

[Luna Amore]

Completely unnecessary. Stop bumping.

1. It hasn't fallen off the front page since you posted the first time.
2. This is admin territory. As with the rest of the staff, they are volunteers. They'll get to it when they have the time.

[Vanishing Island]

Admin have had four years to get to it. I'll keep bumping thanks Luna.

bimp.

[Luna Amore]

Admin have had four years to get to it. I'll keep bumping thanks Luna.

bimp.

It wasn't a suggestion.
*** Warned for spamming ***

[Vanishing Island]

Nor was I simply requesting a response to my questions.

It was about five years ago now when some players began to seriously come to technical and bring forth imbalance issues that they saw in R/D. Over the months following more players began to take that position, until a little over four years ago there was a broad consensus amongst gameplayers from all backgrounds that R/D was no longer balanced and that something needed to be changed. It was about this time that we were given a bandaid and a promise of change to come.

But the summit was a washout and never fully finished. Of the fifteen invitees almost all have since retired, either from the game or from gameplay. Hope came in the form of Sedge who just over three years ago posted a list of seven changes to be discussed and implemented “as soon as possible”. This was expanded upon to be meaning all changes implemented by the end of 2014, a goal that has since been revised, and revised, and revised. ‘Updates’ across the years have said that delegate elect is next, or that estimated update times is nearly done, but what do we have? A tweak to influence that has had no impact on day to day R/D , and Regional Officers that didn’t address any of the underlying balance issues and caused a greater imbalance upon release. And whenever other ideas to change gameplay were brought up people were told that the summit changes would come first, until eventually people stopped seriously suggesting other changes. The summit became a symbol of stagnation rather than the change it should have been.

It’s been over four years now since admin acknowledged that there was change needed in the R/D dynamic to bring some balance. What do we have to show for it? It’s been eight months since Ballotonia and several mods said estimated update times was weeks away, just around the corner. What do we have to show for it? And now the summit forum has been archived. Are these summit changes still on the table? Is it worth bringing fresh ideas to technical? Would they even be considered, let alone coded? Are admin interested in providing support for R/D at all? If the answer to that last question is no, like it has been for the last four years, then at least be honest with gameplayers so we can be honest with our recruits. There’s no reason for such failures in communication as we’ve seen in the past to continue for the next four years.

So no, Luna. I will continue to bump this thread until admin can provide some kind of actual response as to why we are still right here, five years on.

[Altmoras]

Nor was I simply requesting a response to my questions.

It was about five years ago now when some players began to seriously come to technical and bring forth imbalance issues that they saw in R/D. Over the months following more players began to take that position, until a little over four years ago there was a broad consensus amongst gameplayers from all backgrounds that R/D was no longer balanced and that something needed to be changed. It was about this time that we were given a bandaid and a promise of change to come.

But the summit was a washout and never fully finished. Of the fifteen invitees almost all have since retired, either from the game or from gameplay. Hope came in the form of Sedge who just over three years ago posted a list of seven changes to be discussed and implemented “as soon as possible”. This was expanded upon to be meaning all changes implemented by the end of 2014, a goal that has since been revised, and revised, and revised. ‘Updates’ across the years have said that delegate elect is next, or that estimated update times is nearly done, but what do we have? A tweak to influence that has had no impact on day to day R/D , and Regional Officers that didn’t address any of the underlying balance issues and caused a greater imbalance upon release. And whenever other ideas to change gameplay were brought up people were told that the summit changes would come first, until eventually people stopped seriously suggesting other changes. The summit became a symbol of stagnation rather than the change it should have been.

It’s been over four years now since admin acknowledged that there was change needed in the R/D dynamic to bring some balance. What do we have to show for it? It’s been eight months since Ballotonia and several mods said estimated update times was weeks away, just around the corner. What do we have to show for it? And now the summit forum has been archived. Are these summit changes still on the table? Is it worth bringing fresh ideas to technical? Would they even be considered, let alone coded? Are admin interested in providing support for R/D at all? If the answer to that last question is no, like it has been for the last four years, then at least be honest with gameplayers so we can be honest with our recruits. There’s no reason for such failures in communication as we’ve seen in the past to continue for the next four years.

So no, Luna. I will continue to bump this thread until admin can provide some kind of actual response as to why we are still right here, five years on.

Do I know you?

Amen to what Vanishing Island said.

[Sedgistan]

None of the proposed summit changes should be considered definite any more. It's disappointing, but they were too many big projects, and admin time too few for them all to be implemented. This remains the one most likely to be implemented, but I cannot give any indication of when that might be - it's in Ballo's hands, and he hasn't been particularly active of late.

[Tinhampton]

Whilst many of us would like to see this feature, I personally doubt it's coming through any time soon. At the current rate, it'll probably be implemented by the end of the decade at the earliest.

Further to Sedge's point:

• Influence in GCRs: IMPLEMENTED! (Sep-2013)
• Delegate-Elect: No updates since [v] stated that D-E could be triggered by regions sua sponte (Jan-2014)
• Regional Officers: IMPLEMENTED! (Oct-2015)
• Annex: Appears to be on hold, although Evil Wolf says that "this idea is D.O.A and will never be implemented," pointing to [v]'s suggestion of the matter in 2009 (Apr-2016)
• Reformation: Sedge says that this proposal is "bottom of the list," due to lowered incentives for raiders (Jan-2014). Sedge was later to state that Reformation had been scrapped.
• Custodian: Last we heard of this, Sedge started to believe that Custodians would be better suited to guarding founderless regions, with the introduction of ROs (Oct-2015)
• Estimated Update Times: Has been "coming soon" for a while now. In the hands of Ballo. (Right now)

[Caelapes]

Is there a way people in Gameplay who have found enjoyment in programming to get involved in making any of these changes happen?

[Frisbeeteria]

Is there a way people in Gameplay who have found enjoyment in programming to get involved in making any of these changes happen?

We occasionally put out feelers for new admins, but ... once you have access to relevant game code, you pretty much have to abandon gameplay forever. There's not much you can do without access to code, so that's been a real sticky point in the past.

[Cormactopia II]

None of the proposed summit changes should be considered definite any more. It's disappointing, but they were too many big projects, and admin time too few for them all to be implemented. This remains the one most likely to be implemented, but I cannot give any indication of when that might be - it's in Ballo's hands, and he hasn't been particularly active of late.

I would just like to make the general observation that implementing Estimated Update Times if that means eliminating triggering, having already implemented Regional Officers, would mean implementing two new features that make it harder for defenders to liberate a region that has been raided. If those are the only new features implemented and proposed new features like Delegate-Elect or any of the other proposed features that might have favored defenders are implemented, the net result would be an imbalance in R/D that is tilted more in favor of raiders than when the summit began. Which, if I recall correctly, was actually the opposite goal, with the goal being to make R/D more competitive and fun for all participants.

All of this is to lead up to saying: Perhaps it would just be best to scrap this proposed feature as well. The proposed new features were a package that were supposed to complement each other, and without the whole package, imbalances that could be detrimental to R/D may be created.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

It's been well discussed that this can benifit either side, based almost entirely on how wide the window/margin is. If it's wider than the average trigger we can set now, it benefita a holding a region, but also stopping active raids. If it's a narrow/precise one, it makes raids harder to stop, but also makes liberations/atrittion runs harder to stop.

That's also been my main objection to this - it adds another arbitrary admin-imposed limit (like rate limits on ejects and surpressions slower than someone could do them naturally) and removed what's currently one of the main aspects of individual skill in gameplay. How well you can set and call a trigger can make or break any op in GP. Tools aren't even used to call triggers anymore, Becuase other modifications to update has made them unreliable for anything more than helping set manual triggers. Yes, the up side is that you lower the barrier of entry into GP...but I'm not sure that's worth that cost of removing an aspect of skill and replacing it with a glorified round of slots.

[Cormactopia II]

It's been well discussed that this can benifit either side, based almost entirely on how wide the window/margin is. If it's wider than the average trigger we can set now, it benefita a holding a region, but also stopping active raids. If it's a narrow/precise one, it makes raids harder to stop, but also makes liberations/atrittion runs harder to stop.

That's true, but the heavier burden is still on defenders, who have to have defenders online at every update to defend against potential raids as they happen, whereas raiders can schedule a particular update for a major raid and give advance notice to be available. This would affect tag raiding the same way it affects update defending, sure, but tag raiding isn't as important to raiders these days as update defenses and liberations are to defenders.

The overall effect would still be more detrimental to defenders than to raiders, whose occupations -- their most important operations -- would become harder to liberate. That, in turn, means that liberations, which are defenders' most important operations, would become even more difficult than they are now. And they're already very difficult. If the Estimated Update Times feature were offset by something like Delegate-Elect, it might be acceptable, but without an offset it's too imbalanced when you look at the effect on each side's most important operations.

That's also been my main objection to this - it adds another arbitrary admin-imposed limit (like rate limits on ejects and surpressions slower than someone could do them naturally) and removed what's currently one of the main aspects of individual skill in gameplay. How well you can set and call a trigger can make or break any op in GP. Tools aren't even used to call triggers anymore, Becuase other modifications to update has made them unreliable for anything more than helping set manual triggers. Yes, the up side is that you lower the barrier of entry into GP...but I'm not sure that's worth that cost of removing an aspect of skill and replacing it with a glorified round of slots.

That's a valid point, and one I also agree with. I think your point, along with the increased difficulty for defenders, is something that site administration should take into account when considering whether or not to implement this feature. I don't think it really adds anything to either side of R/D, substantially detracts from skill, and significantly impacts defending in a negative way. It's a lose-lose-lose as a stand-alone new feature, without any of the complementary features that were proposed alongside it.

[Tim-Opolis]

If the Estimated Update Times feature were offset by something like Delegate-Elect, it might be acceptable, but without an offset it's too imbalanced when you look at the effect on each side's most important operations.

I fully agree with Cormac's points here, but I'd like to address this one in specific. When offset is referred, I would hope that Admin would understand that means rolling both updates out at the same time, not giving us Estimated Update Times and then taking another three years to give the only decent proposal from an already-outdated summit that actually helped balance R/D rather than skew the balance even more. There is absolutely no value in receiving estimated update times without a counter-balance rolling out within a very, very, very close timeframe to it, unless more accurate triggering continues to remain a possibility.

In a perfect world, we'd scrap this change, unless we keep the ability to trigger (something that Ballotonia has expressed intent to remove repeatedly). This is clearly unpopular by both sides of R/D.

[Klaus Devestatorie]

That's absolute tripe, you three. The entire idea behind "triggering" is incredibly technical and obscure, and makes it virtually impossible for regions to enter R/D style gameplay without working with an existing organization, all of whom are extremely picky about who they actually trust with that knowledge. Removing all forms of calculating update times other than estimated times displayed on regional pages for all to see is absolutely going to "skew balance"- away from a group of maybe 25-30 mainstream R/D participant regions who subconsciously see themselves as the most powerful NationStates community because their access to the right excel sheets, and returning it to whoever can bring the most numbers to the table.

[Wordy]

I am going to agree with Klaus here. R/D survived well enough prior to triggering and should not be dependant upon it.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

That's be more accurate if I'd ever had a sheet that ran any times, Ava

[Vanishing Island]

None of the proposed summit changes should be considered definite any more. It's disappointing, but they were too many big projects, and admin time too few for them all to be implemented. This remains the one most likely to be implemented, but I cannot give any indication of when that might be - it's in Ballo's hands, and he hasn't been particularly active of late.

Thank you for the response Sedge. That would have been disappointing to know two or three years ago. At this stage I’m not even sure what to call it. In light of this news I am now even more keen to hear what admin has to say regarding the last five years and their views on the future for gameplay.

I have to agree with Ava and Wordy here.

@Cormac, EWS, & Tim
I think you have united the (as I see it) two different issues facing liberations: clock-raiding and piling. Yes a larger update estimation window would make liberations harder, but is accurate timing the major issue currently facing liberations? Against the smaller, noobier raiders that you comfortably have numbers for is it necessary to have a one second jump time? Are they online to ban you? They rarely, if ever, used to be. And against the larger more mainstream raiders do you yet have the numbers to consistently launch liberations against any hold, any update you wish? This change seeks to address clock-raiding, delegate elect seeks to address piling.

@Cormac
Despite your assertion otherwise, an estimation window would allow defenders greater success rates in the most important part of their role. The thing that they get their name from. Defending regions. Every defence is a liberation unneeded. If you make defending properly viable again, there will be fewer regions in need of a liberation.

@EWS
I believe it has already been sufficiently established elsewhere that you ‘trigger’ in an unorthodox and needlessly complex manner that artificially adds ‘skill’ where none is needed. I think if you were to simplify the process you would find it really is just a numbers game, and there is no “feeling” needed at all.