[Change #7] Estimated Update Times Displayed

[Klaus Devestatorie]

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

Then your script, or browser extension, or your scientific calculator and memorized formulas, or whatever the hell it is that's deemed most accurate now. Doesn't matter to me what it is- the point is that without it, you may as well not show up.

[Cormactopia II]

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.

I'm sure it would be possible to implement both Estimated Update Times and retain the ability for those who know how to trigger to do so. I wouldn't have any problem with that. But my biggest problem with implementing Estimated Update Times, without retaining the ability to trigger, is that it will significantly tilt the already existing R/D imbalance further in favor of raiders and against defenders, an issue you did not at all address in your post. "Whoever can bring the most numbers to the table" isn't going to matter if they're all ejected and banned by the raider point in a liberation or attrition attempt because they moved into the region 30 seconds before it updated, instead of the 10 seconds they could have accomplished with a trigger. What you're arguing is that this new feature would bring more people into raiding, not R/D. Defending would be significantly damaged by this.

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

Does it not bother you that other defenders who more frequently engage in liberations and attrition runs than you do disagree with you? Defenders aren't going to intercept every raid before it happens. This is about to be 2017, not 2005. Do you want to ever be able to liberate a region after it's raided, or not?

[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.

I'm sure it would be possible to implement both Estimated Update Times and retain the ability for those who know how to trigger to do so. I wouldn't have any problem with that. But my biggest problem with implementing Estimated Update Times, without retaining the ability to trigger, is that it will significantly tilt the already existing R/D imbalance further in favor of raiders and against defenders, an issue you did not at all address in your post. "Whoever can bring the most numbers to the table" isn't going to matter if they're all ejected and banned by the raider point in a liberation or attrition attempt because they moved into the region 30 seconds before it updated, instead of the 10 seconds they could have accomplished with a trigger. What you're arguing is that this new feature would bring more people into raiding, not R/D. Defending would be significantly damaged by this.

If you assume defenders can be 30 seconds out on an update and get cleaned up by a raider delegate, then equally raiders, who would only have access to the same times the defenders do, could wind up being 30 seconds out on a hit and be very easily caught by defenders. The real issue in your hypothetical scenario is that estimated update times would be vague to the point of uselessness, when nobody would tolerate a window larger than about 12-15 seconds anyway.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

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

Then your script, or browser extension, or your scientific calculator and memorized formulas, or whatever the hell it is that's deemed most accurate now. Doesn't matter to me what it is- the point is that without it, you may as well not show up.

Nothing at all but observeration of past times and overall update lengths (both easily accessible public info), a nation or two, and a bit of gut feeling

I did acknowledge that you'd be lowering the barrier to entry, but I'm a bit disappointed at the associated loss of an element of skill that comes with. I was never a huge fan of tools for the same reason - mechanizing actual skill in triggering.

And cormac, yes, that's on half of what I'm saying, but you should really read that whole post I wrote about the pros and cons to each side depending on how accurate the window is, assuming folks are always jumping on the front end of the window to ensure they're not late. I'll tl;dr is again though: if it's wide, say +/- 10 seconds, it favors stopping any form of offensive action, both defenders stopping an active raid and raiders stopping a liberation or atrittion run. If it's tight, say, +/- 2 seconds, it favors anyone making offensive actions - whether that's an active raid, or a liberation.

I'd say offhand that our manual triggers at present are generally accurate to the range of +/- 3, maybe two if you're a good trigger, at least for operations where far more care goes into setting them than a tag - meaning that, for an operation, the region generally update less than 4-6 seconds from when we've jumped, assuming your trigger again aims for the front end of that window for safety. The difference to tags, for the record, is that tags will likely have far less observation over time, warning/gauging triggers, and accurate correction, and are more likely to to be set approx. x regions before (also easily obtainable in the public dumps with no modification) and just gut corrected. Correction is also pretty simple - update running fast overall? Correct earlier. Update running slow overal? Correct slightly later.

[Flanderlion]

The point of this change is not for people who trigger, they are a miniscule minority in this game. This is so Johnny and his mates from South Side School can participate in R/D. Like ROs, by all means balance it for R/D, but the primary purpose reducing the barriers of entry to GP.

Re: Other summit changes - thought that would happen when the summit forum was merged in without fanfare. I really liked annex.

Ideally people could trigger, but it wouldn't tell them the update time any closer than what would be displayed on the region page.

Focus on arguements rather than what majority says, because given the amount of players still active from the R/D summit, it won't likely be this group who will be the ones that get the changes.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

I'm hopefully understandably apprehensive about trusting admin to make the decision of how much variance to give us in a way that actually results in balance. I'm also not sure I trust elements of the community not to lowball their efforts and bitch about things in order to shift it wider/tighter.

I'm also a bit apprehensive about opening things up to that level. That'll be a massive unbalancer in favor of raiding as a whole, Becuase there's a lot more newbs out there that have the motivation to smash stuff and just enough knowledge to grasp the basic than I've seen the other way around. Based on the telegrams I get, you'd see quite a large spike of people raiding foundered regions back and forth to piss off their enemies, and overall a lot of rulebreaking behavior. By and large, I think the current structure of raiding serves to moderate many aspects of it, shifting a lot of newbs that come to us from a direct desire to annoy/harass with no real operational goals or rules of engagement into a far more structured environment. I'm not sure admin wants every Johhny and his friends bugging billy every night Becuase billy said johnny smells. I'm also not sure you'd see anywhere near an equal rise in defending, and I'd also say the mechanics behind defending in general are a bit harder to get than the basic tactics of raiding, meaning a higher barrier there naturally.

[Klaus Devestatorie]

I'm hopefully understandably apprehensive about trusting admin to make the decision of how much variance to give us in a way that actually results in balance. I'm also not sure I trust elements of the community not to lowball their efforts and bitch about things in order to shift it wider/tighter.

I'm also a bit apprehensive about opening things up to that level. That'll be a massive unbalancer in favor of raiding as a whole, Becuase there's a lot more newbs out there that have the motivation to smash stuff and just enough knowledge to grasp the basic than I've seen the other way around. Based on the telegrams I get, you'd see quite a large spike of people raiding foundered regions back and forth to piss off their enemies, and overall a lot of rulebreaking behavior. By and large, I think the current structure of raiding serves to moderate many aspects of it, shifting a lot of newbs that come to us from a direct desire to annoy/harass with no real operational goals or rules of engagement into a far more structured environment. I'm not sure admin wants every Johhny and his friends bugging billy every night Becuase billy said johnny smells. I'm also not sure you'd see anywhere near an equal rise in defending, and I'd also say the mechanics behind defending in general are a bit harder to get than the basic tactics of raiding, meaning a higher barrier there naturally.

I don't buy that, because I was here the game was like before triggering and tagging were things and we were just working with rough estimates, and have been watching since then. Everything was completely flipped, with defenders owning the battlefield (sup Wordy in particular) and raiders flat out lucky to pull hits, even with good clean pups and good jump time guesses. There's been a lot of changes to this. Plenty of it was mechanics based- Halcones and the UIAF intentionally used technical superiority as a blunt hammer at the coal face (and reversing the ability to use that stuff will help), but there's just as much in character stuff that defenders left behind too.

The idea, for example, that defender citizens in GCRs might be viewed with suspicion by their governments is a propaganda coup of unimaginable proportions. Regions like Texas and Wysteria don't let raiders become members under any circumstances, which today is considered an exceptional outlier- that used to be the norm. The presence of multi-region organizations like the FRA and ADN meant that entire regions were actively being brought in to contribute to the cause, not just individuals recruited by existing defender groups. No mechanical advantage should be awarded to defender groups as a consolation prize for screwing up so many incredibly basic diplomatic, organizational and propaganda based issues- that really shouldn't be causing them problems if there was even just a handful of people on the defender side that had been paying attention to these things over the long haul (other than probably Unibot and the UDL in 2012/2013, who made a giant hash of it anyway).

[Vanishing Island]

triggering is hard snip

@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.

woe to the liberation snip

@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.

[Tinhampton]

R/D survived well enough prior to triggering

There was a time before triggering?

[Klaus Devestatorie]

R/D survived well enough prior to triggering

There was a time before triggering?

Once upon a time we'd just look up update times in various places (i.e. checking nations RSS feeds for issue update times to the second) and they'd be pretty good. There was no need to get split second update times, because what we had was good enough. Then someone figured out the maths and essentially used them to achieve perfect, split second hits whenever they wanted them- making it absolutely impossible for defenders to stop them. Instead of preventing people from being able to calculate updates like this, admins instead introduced deliberate variance and irregularity to just generally make it harder. It didn't stop raiders and defenders from being able to get perfect times; it instead prevented anyone who didn't know how to calculate those perfect times from participating in R/D, and after years of this crap everyone involved in gameplay simply accepted triggering was normal. In the meantime, most of the people involved in figuring out how to get perfect times (on the raider side anyway) are now DOS, and the proportion of R/D participants in NationStates just gets smaller and smaller (which doesn't get noticed purely because NationStates itself is 3 or 4 times bigger than it was when triggering was figured out). The entire goal, I hope, of displaying estimated update times for all and removing any other way of calculating them would be to return to the old status quo.

[Jakker]

The point of this change is not for people who trigger, they are a miniscule minority in this game. This is so Johnny and his mates from South Side School can participate in R/D. Like ROs, by all means balance it for R/D, but the primary purpose reducing the barriers of entry to GP.

Re: Other summit changes - thought that would happen when the summit forum was merged in without fanfare. I really liked annex.

Ideally people could trigger, but it wouldn't tell them the update time any closer than what would be displayed on the region page.

Focus on arguements rather than what majority says, because given the amount of players still active from the R/D summit, it won't likely be this group who will be the ones that get the changes.

Triggering used to be a skill that was kept contained for the players who showed loyalty and dedication to an established organization. Something that was not taught to any newcomer. This is not really the case anymore. "Johnny and his mates from South Side School" could easily find publicly accessible guides to learn how to trigger. They could also ask and would probably get all the information they need to at least try it. How to trigger is basically public knowledge already.

What is being advocated for is trying to make raiding/defending even easier for any newcomer, so they can just do it immediately and have some success. What strikes me is that this isn't really an argument for any other aspect of NS. Roleplaying, GA, SC, issues, region building, etc. All of these things can be done by someone blindly, but to have some actual success requires learning about NS' culture and tips from older players. R/D is no different. I understand that triggering is only one aspect of R/D, but the point stands.

There really isn't a barrier of entry to gameplay in regards to information. But there are barriers in regards to understanding the culture. The reality is someone needs to take the time to understand how to fit themselves within the game. This change will just increase the already robust amount of information out there, but fail to reduce any barrier.

If we really want to work towards a system that allows anyone to accomplish stuff in this game without much effort, we are taking away more of the skill that is needed to be successful in this game.

[[violet]]

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.

I implemented Regional Officers a year ago, which was a pretty large feature, and got a bucket of crap tipped on my head because apparently when everyone agreed they wanted this feature, they were each imagining different versions of it, all of which conflicted with each other. I revised and improved it over the next few months, and since then, I haven't heard a single word about it--which I know means it's working well, because people post angry rants when something's not perfect and fall silent if it is. Case in point, this post, which is set in an alternate reality where Regional Officers never happened.

There's no agreement on anything in this community; even where it looks like agreement on the surface, the moment you get into the details, everyone falls apart again. I don't speak for Ballotonia, but personally that makes it a lot less practical to allocate dev time. I have to be convinced personally that a change is a good thing, then go ahead and do it, and ignore the inevitable screaming. Which I'm happy to do, in the right circumstances, but won't do just because someone is complaining that I'm taking too long to give them what they want, which other people don't.

The summit was a worthwhile exercise in seeking consensus, and an improvement on wading through R/D threads where people argued with each other. It generated a lot of good material that was discussed internally and remains on the agenda. But for me it also demonstrated that design-by-committee is a pretty flawed process, and admin shouldn't be shackled to it.

[Wordy]

I would say that update times displayed will compliment the regional officers feature. While R&D tend to dominate update if update times were to be displayed Native communities could appoint regional officers that know the approximate window of update and can hopefully have a chance to secure their own region. The current situation is that yes, natives can appoint a regional officer but invasions are too quick for them to spot and take action even if they are present. Estimated update times changes the odds.
Yes there will be tears by some if the change is implemented and there will be tears if they are not. That is the nature of the beast. However an even playing field should mean that everyone has the same options and opportunities and should not need to build a triggering skill set or use a spreadsheet.

The committee was flawed to begin with but ideas were cherry picked to be launched / refined by admin. Honestly I believe players would be happier to have closure on the whole thing rather than waiting on something they might never happen. If resources cannot be committed it would be better to just say "We are not doing it and this is why. Suffer in your undies."

[Flanderlion]

The point of this change is not for people who trigger, they are a miniscule minority in this game. This is so Johnny and his mates from South Side School can participate in R/D. Like ROs, by all means balance it for R/D, but the primary purpose reducing the barriers of entry to GP.

Re: Other summit changes - thought that would happen when the summit forum was merged in without fanfare. I really liked annex.

Ideally people could trigger, but it wouldn't tell them the update time any closer than what would be displayed on the region page.

Focus on arguements rather than what majority says, because given the amount of players still active from the R/D summit, it won't likely be this group who will be the ones that get the changes.

Triggering used to be a skill that was kept contained for the players who showed loyalty and dedication to an established organization. Something that was not taught to any newcomer. This is not really the case anymore. "Johnny and his mates from South Side School" could easily find publicly accessible guides to learn how to trigger. They could also ask and would probably get all the information they need to at least try it. How to trigger is basically public knowledge already.

What is being advocated for is trying to make raiding/defending even easier for any newcomer, so they can just do it immediately and have some success. What strikes me is that this isn't really an argument for any other aspect of NS. Roleplaying, GA, SC, issues, region building, etc. All of these things can be done by someone blindly, but to have some actual success requires learning about NS' culture and tips from older players. R/D is no different. I understand that triggering is only one aspect of R/D, but the point stands.

There really isn't a barrier of entry to gameplay in regards to information. But there are barriers in regards to understanding the culture. The reality is someone needs to take the time to understand how to fit themselves within the game. This change will just increase the already robust amount of information out there, but fail to reduce any barrier.

If we really want to work towards a system that allows anyone to accomplish stuff in this game without much effort, we are taking away more of the skill that is needed to be successful in this game.

Depends what admin wants R/D wise. I personally want it as a game where anyone can pick it up easily, and is less skill based (if the choice is between being high skill and players) and more inclusive. I like seeing some random region actually jumping into R/D who isn't one of the big main 20 regions, like when Esamir jumped in randomly and caused hell in the warzones. I don't particularly think triggering is a great skill that must be kept at all costs, but I'd be perfectly fine with triggering as an alternative that is just as accurate as Ballos promised update times.

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.

I implemented Regional Officers a year ago, which was a pretty large feature, and got a bucket of crap tipped on my head because apparently when everyone agreed they wanted this feature, they were each imagining different versions of it, all of which conflicted with each other. I revised and improved it over the next few months, and since then, I haven't heard a single word about it--which I know means it's working well, because people post angry rants when something's not perfect and fall silent if it is. Case in point, this post, which is set in an alternate reality where Regional Officers never happened.

There's no agreement on anything in this community; even where it looks like agreement on the surface, the moment you get into the details, everyone falls apart again. I don't speak for Ballotonia, but personally that makes it a lot less practical to allocate dev time. I have to be convinced personally that a change is a good thing, then go ahead and do it, and ignore the inevitable screaming. Which I'm happy to do, in the right circumstances, but won't do just because someone is complaining that I'm taking too long to give them what they want, which other people don't.

The summit was a worthwhile exercise in seeking consensus, and an improvement on wading through R/D threads where people argued with each other. It generated a lot of good material that was discussed internally and remains on the agenda. But for me it also demonstrated that design-by-committee is a pretty flawed process, and admin shouldn't be shackled to it.

I'm pretty sure various peeps have complimented ROs since forumwise. Nothing negative comes to mind since (although the arbitrary limit of 12 is annoying, unlimited would be better) the fixes came through. Silence rather than rants is good, people aren't totally silent when they have issues. They don't always bring complaints to the tech forum, and they generally don't bring compliments here, but there were a lot, even on these boards.

Don't wait for consensus on things like the window of unknown, implement one, tell us to suck it and the feature is happening then listen to the feedback, like what happened with ROs. Everyone likes being able to give people powers and receive powers over the region.
Tech won't ever be fully representative of the game, so whatever consensus reached here doesn't mean much. Feature wise, do what you think best (for both admins and game, if you admins hate the game you aren't going to work on it then).

Committee I don't think worked. I wasn't around when the summit happened, but having a few people somehow representative of different groups and subgroups seemed like it was deliberately shutting out other views, and a large amount of the ideas I think I disagreed with (most of which didn't make the cut).

I would say that update times displayed will compliment the regional officers feature. While R&D tend to dominate update if update times were to be displayed Native communities could appoint regional officers that know the approximate window of update and can hopefully have a chance to secure their own region. The current situation is that yes, natives can appoint a regional officer but invasions are too quick for them to spot and take action even if they are present. Estimated update times changes the odds.
Yes there will be tears by some if the change is implemented and there will be tears if they are not. That is the nature of the beast. However an even playing field should mean that everyone has the same options and opportunities and should not need to build a triggering skill set or use a spreadsheet.

The committee was flawed to begin with but ideas were cherry picked to be launched / refined by admin. Honestly I believe players would be happier to have closure on the whole thing rather than waiting on something they might never happen. If resources cannot be committed it would be better to just say "We are not doing it and this is why. Suffer in your undies."

I can't actually forsee that a native would remain on every update to protect their region, even if they knew the time their region updates. In cases like Illuminati where the delegate knew about threats prior sure, but the average region doesn't know about the threats they face, not do many know about R/D before it hits their door.

I don't hope that the window is that long that a completely green nation can spot an invader, kick them, spot another, stop the invasion etc. When working on Femdom we've had newer NSers take 20+ seconds to move and endorse. It sounds like by having a window that large a native may be able to stop an invasion if online, but also any region will be unlibbable.

I do think R/D should be accessible to everyone, and that admin should make a decision rather than worrying about people's feelings (yes, I know that's not the best given the Feeder redistribution threat). But I don't think there should be a window that large that everything changes. Big enough and game accurate enough that the displayed times are all you need to participate, but not a large enough window that taking a region becomes significantly harder than current.

[Sedgistan]

Honestly I believe players would be happier to have closure on the whole thing rather than waiting on something they might never happen. If resources cannot be committed it would be better to just say "We are not doing it and this is why. Suffer in your undies."

Closure was provided:

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.

None of the Summit changes should be considered on the agenda any more; treat them as any other Technical thread.

As I said, this remains the most likely to be implemented, but it would need Ballo to clarify its status.

[Unibot III]

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.

I implemented Regional Officers a year ago, which was a pretty large feature, and got a bucket of crap tipped on my head because apparently when everyone agreed they wanted this feature, they were each imagining different versions of it, all of which conflicted with each other. I revised and improved it over the next few months, and since then, I haven't heard a single word about it--which I know means it's working well, because people post angry rants when something's not perfect and fall silent if it is. Case in point, this post, which is set in an alternate reality where Regional Officers never happened.

There's no agreement on anything in this community; even where it looks like agreement on the surface, the moment you get into the details, everyone falls apart again. I don't speak for Ballotonia, but personally that makes it a lot less practical to allocate dev time. I have to be convinced personally that a change is a good thing, then go ahead and do it, and ignore the inevitable screaming. Which I'm happy to do, in the right circumstances, but won't do just because someone is complaining that I'm taking too long to give them what they want, which other people don't.

The summit was a worthwhile exercise in seeking consensus, and an improvement on wading through R/D threads where people argued with each other. It generated a lot of good material that was discussed internally and remains on the agenda. But for me it also demonstrated that design-by-committee is a pretty flawed process, and admin shouldn't be shackled to it.

To be honest with you, I don't like being shitted on like this by the administration. The "Regional Officer" idea was only vaguely related to what players were actually converging on (opening up regional controls to those beyond the executive - officers are just agents of the executive.) If you had suggested "Regional Officers" then, I can assure you that the defender bench would have been livid and would have told you exactly what they told you when you announced you were implementing it.

You also shouldn't be surprised this "Estimated Update Times" proposal has gone over like a lead balloon: removing triggering from military gameplay was never seriously considered by most parties in the convention except from those that wanted to get rid of tag raiding at the expense of liberations. Removing triggering and greater accuracy may make military gameplay "more accessible" but it also makes it harder to liberate, centrally contradicting one of the major conclusions of the convention (that is to say, that it's really damn hard to liberate something once it's been occupied.) There are two paths to balance R/D: make parties (1) cripplingly inept, (2) more competitive with equal opportunities to reverse either's advances. "Estimated Update Times" leans more towards the 'cripplingly inept' rather than the second path.

The divide in defenderdom at the time was not a petty divide, it was a reasonable one: between those who would have invasions be fewer but more permanent (high risk for natives but generally less intrusive), and more invasions but less permanent (low risk for natives but generally more intrusive.) Expand the number of victims to save more regions from their ultimate destruction or reduce the scale of invaderdom's activity at the expense of a handful of regions each year. Both sides believed we were making the tough but right choice.

There were top players at the time working overtime trying to find compromises and largely speaking you were dismissing everything we were talking about as "circular bantering" and partisanship rather than just giving us the benefit of the doubt as players trying to figure out what's good for gameplay. I remember having a lot of genuine conversations with Halcones and Mallorea trying to hash out a plan forward that satisfied both sides of gameplay. Players can be objective, they can be focused on activity independent of their own interests and they can be creative and compromising. The structure of the convention only held the process backward - it force-fed you and the other admins a diet of straight disinformation and malarkey in those little blurbs, it kept debate to a minimum, and explictly encouraged politicking over fact-finding and good ideas.

The sum of the convention was that:

- Stealth raiding rather than tag raiding should be encouraged.
- Piling makes occupations a forgone conclusion. Deeply unbalancing gameplay.
- Given by definition, a raid party outnumbers natives, native communities are entirely (and wrongly) dependent on defenders for their liberations.

But you'd never know it from the official proposals that were released by the administration.

By the point the convention was over, a lot of gameplayers, on both sides of gameplay, had settled on some sort of a hybrid of the 'dissension' model, a disendorsement, that would reverse piling and act as a source of liberation for natives independent of foreign assistance. (This in part to address the second two points.) We were basically ignored.

Hijacking the convention were GCR politicians who argued that political change was too slow in GCRs - bamboozling the administration into thinking this was actually a pressing game change and even vaguely related to R/D. In fact, the proposed changes to GCR influence were entirely neutral - it's not destabilizing the GCRs, like the politicians were arguing, it's stabilizing the GCRs around their vanguards - it didn't make it easier to advance change, it just made it harder to resist change - it shifted power away from their competition, rather than decentralizing it. It wasn't a good idea or bad one, it just... was.

I'm surprised to hear you say the convention was a good model for you over regular forums. I'm worried you were actually fooled by its content. It cut down how much you had to read and it cut down on debate, sure, but it was not the hub of open creativity that it pretended to be, it was a political vehicle of converging interests and narratives. The ideas that have been adopted from regular debate have been good ideas and have largely gone over well, you should be proud as an administrator for overseeing those developments; but the absence of regular debate in the case of the R/D convention gave way to one of the biggest political farces I witnessed in NS. It was basically a bunch of people lying and trading influence in the open and that made it maddeningly infuriating to anyone who was honest about improving gameplay for everyone and knew enough about political and military gameplay to see through others' malarkey.

[Vanishing Island]

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.

I implemented Regional Officers a year ago, which was a pretty large feature, and got a bucket of crap tipped on my head because apparently when everyone agreed they wanted this feature, they were each imagining different versions of it, all of which conflicted with each other. I revised and improved it over the next few months, and since then, I haven't heard a single word about it--which I know means it's working well, because people post angry rants when something's not perfect and fall silent if it is. Case in point, this post, which is set in an alternate reality where Regional Officers never happened.

There's no agreement on anything in this community; even where it looks like agreement on the surface, the moment you get into the details, everyone falls apart again. I don't speak for Ballotonia, but personally that makes it a lot less practical to allocate dev time. I have to be convinced personally that a change is a good thing, then go ahead and do it, and ignore the inevitable screaming. Which I'm happy to do, in the right circumstances, but won't do just because someone is complaining that I'm taking too long to give them what they want, which other people don't.

The summit was a worthwhile exercise in seeking consensus, and an improvement on wading through R/D threads where people argued with each other. It generated a lot of good material that was discussed internally and remains on the agenda. But for me it also demonstrated that design-by-committee is a pretty flawed process, and admin shouldn't be shackled to it.

Thank you for the response, violet, and I appreciate the frankness. It sounds as though the status quo will largely prevail, which is disappointing, but it is what it is.

R/Ders are very competitive and it’s easy for admin changes to impact us even when it seems like they shouldn’t – like the daily data dumps, or the activity page. Adding to that most of the active regional leaders now have never known R/D to be any different to how it has been for the past several years, unlike during the transition period when the summit was called, you can understand why consensus is hard to reach. I can only hope that you see how R/D has simply gone further to the same extremes that at one point united a community and admin who said together that something needs to be changed.

Two brief asides. 1) ROs are a great feature for the game to have, and I’m very pleased that you put the time into making them. However in terms of balancing R/D they did the opposite, especially upon release. 2) For a large part of the way through the summit, and then these proposed changes, the little we did hear from mods/admin was that these changes were a high priority and we should expect them to come out progressively over a year or so. When we're told to expect things over the short term, and then nothing comes for years, we become understandably frustrated at the situation.

After what has now been pretty much the entire time I’ve been in R/D it must be time to shrug and move on.

[Flanderlion]

My head believes Sedges post but my heart believes [V]'s earlier post here about that the summit stuff 'remains on the agenda' which would mean very distant future. I came along and discovered the tucked away forum many years after the event, and while disliking custodian/reformation (SC I wins taking regions out of circulation), and ambivalent about delegate elect, I really got set on what annex could be, as my text walls prove.

That said, there are a ton of cool could have beens feature wise in NS, and I'm expecting to see SG/GCR recruit decimation or some other major feature for Feature Feb (NS admins seem to get more time around Xmas holidays, which points toward Max not being [V] because author time is different from 9-5 ish schedules.)

Estimated Update Times I hope Ballo goes ahead with, but most of this thread has turned into the entire summit rather than this specific change. There isn't much more to talk about, features past the point of 'go/no-go' and is implemention time, Predator was the promise that'd happen, and everyone kind of accepted it and were glad they wouldn't have to make tools.

Now tools/sheets/triggering have all been rediscovered, and either a region getting into GP sucks up to an established region/player (a lot do), they get lucky because no one notices/cares, or most commonly, they try and fail and don't touch R/D. Generally after nothing else R/D happens with their region until a tag raid, delegacy trouble or the founder does, and at that point they're not voluntary participants.