Regional Officers

[New Metropolitan France]

But to add a minimum period of time after election before a Delegate can appoint a Regional Officer, for example, that's only a few lines of code.

Please forgive me if I've misunderstood you, but then why not implement it immediately? You've heard from many game-players that this is doomed to ruin GP for one side, so why then why not just add a few lines of code? See how it develops with a minimum time limit now rather than wait until it's even more clear that it is needed. If the time limit proves to not be required, then it can be disposed of.

[Luxdonia]

Thank you very much for implementing this change. This is probably the largest update since regional influence was created.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

But to add a minimum period of time after election before a Delegate can appoint a Regional Officer, for example, that's only a few lines of code.

Please forgive me if I've misunderstood you, but then why not implement it immediately? You've heard from many game-players that this is doomed to ruin GP for one side, so why then why not just add a few lines of code? See how it develops with a minimum time limit now rather than wait until it's even more clear that it is needed. If the time limit proves to not be required, then it can be disposed of.

On a personal level - yeah, it seems pretty clear what will happen, and what could easily fix it. But I can respect wanting to wait a month and make sure, considering this'll likely be in place for years, especially when you have the code ready to implement, so it's not like you have to spend time developing once you make a descision.

On a testing level - it's a lot easier to prove that a change *is needed* than that a feature *is not needed*. You can see if something isn't working pretty obviously. Seeing that one specific factor is/isn't making something that's in place work is far more difficult.

[Saxe-Wittenburg]

In my opinion it seems as if raiding has really taken over the whole game, and that has hurt the whole RP side of it. The whole discussion on this thread demonstrates this quite clearly. Oh well I suppose we shall just have to continue with the status quo, even though it's quite obviously not in the interest of a large segment of the NS community.

There are doubtlessly thousands of players on here with no idea what raiding even is. Founderless regions are only about 2000 of about 18000 regions, a minority. Nations that merely answer issues don't give a shit about raiding. Gameplayers are merely vocal in the forums in many cases. Many of the large invasions recently haven't even been in regions heavily populated by roleplayers. BS.

I was not referring to the number of regions raided, which is a whole different thing entirely. I was in fact referring to the attitude of many of the regional governments on NS, and the fact that so many people seem so focused on raiding, and not the other aspects of NS.

[Cormac Stark]

I didn't say players were making the game worse; no, that's obviously on administration. I was suggesting, however, that this strike only amplifies the problem instead of solving it.

That's the point, to amplify the problem. Defenders and other gameplayers who want to see competitive gameplay have been asking administration to solve the problem for three years (longer, really) and finally this is the answer we get, to make liberations impossible and gameplay even less competitive. Enough is enough. The way to solve this problem is to be as loud as possible about it until they do something about it. Period.

Because that describes all the fun I have infiltrating, gaining trust, building relations with other aggressive regions, and trying to find pilers. Yep. A little math and some buttons.

Be my Gest.

You infiltrate because you enjoy doing that, it's fun for you. It's not required for raiding. All that's required for raiding is some math to trigger, a handful of people, and a few button clicks. And then yes, some telegrams and PMs to get pilers. Don't get me wrong, I respect that you put in more effort. My point, though, is that while extra effort is optional for raiders, a tremendous amount of effort is expected of defenders. Every time the game gets harder defenders are just told to try harder. Why should they have to? Keeping this game competitive means making sure one side isn't playing on the Easy setting while the other is playing on Expert.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

There are doubtlessly thousands of players on here with no idea what raiding even is. Founderless regions are only about 2000 of about 18000 regions, a minority. Nations that merely answer issues don't give a shit about raiding. Gameplayers are merely vocal in the forums in many cases. Many of the large invasions recently haven't even been in regions heavily populated by roleplayers. BS.

I was not referring to the number of regions raided, which is a whole different thing entirely. I was in fact referring to the attitude of many of the regional governments on NS, and the fact that so many people seem so focused on raiding, and not the other aspects of NS.

Neither was I? I was referring to the maximum number of potential targets, of which as many as about 800 have been hit max at any one time (counting from the TBR embassy list, after the purge that occured when they were closer to 1000 that removed regions that had since been detagged). You went right from saying most people weren't interested, to saying so many people seemed focused on it - I'll repeat - the large majority of NS probably knows nothing about raiding, will never experience it, and lives happily in a region with a founder. Finally, what makes R/D lesser than the "other aspects of NS?"

[Saxe-Wittenburg]

I was not referring to the number of regions raided, which is a whole different thing entirely. I was in fact referring to the attitude of many of the regional governments on NS, and the fact that so many people seem so focused on raiding, and not the other aspects of NS.

Neither was I? I was referring to the maximum number of potential targets, of which as many as about 800 have been hit max at any one time (counting from the TBR embassy list, after the purge that occured when they were closer to 1000 that removed regions that had since been detagged). You went right from saying most people weren't interested, to saying so many people seemed focused on it - I'll repeat - the large majority of NS probably knows nothing about raiding, will never experience it, and lives happily in a region with a founder. Finally, what makes R/D lesser than the "other aspects of NS?"

Well it mostly depends on the person and their views on raiding. Some like yourself view it as a fun activity which is quite harmless, while others like myself see it in quite a different light.

[Trotterdam]

Nations that merely answer issues don't give a shit about raiding.

They do if they want to chat about those issues with their friends on the RMB without someone coming, suppressing all of the posts there for no other reason than to annoy them (and in the process losing any distinction for posts that were actually suppressed for a good reason), defiling the factbook, closing any embassies with other regions they like to chat with, and kicking out anyone who tries to resist.

Oh wait, an active founder can defend against that. Yay! Let's all hide behind an active founder! Surely it's nothing to worry about that if one particular person ever happens to lose interest in the game, the region is permanently open to the vultures and you have no recourse other than to refound, in which case you also lose all your RMB posts, and you can't even unsuppress them. Yay.

[Alustrian]

I know I've expressed annoyance in this thread but can we at least keep it to on-topic annoyance? I do not like raiding either, but this thread is likely not the best place to express that sentiment. It detracts from the legitimate criticisms of the current technical change.

[Todd McCloud]

Can these RO's be appointed and dismissed immediately, or does it take effect until the next update?

[Cormac Stark]

Can these RO's be appointed and dismissed immediately, or does it take effect until the next update?

Immediately, [violet] has said.

[[violet]]

Let us know when enough time has passed on this stage of the experiment and we can get back to something-approaching-fair.

I do think it would be very counter-productive to sit out and then accept whatever change to Regional Officers gets support from other people. This is actually an opportunity for you to test and figure out how the feature could work best for defending, then support the change that suits that best.

For example -- please excuse me pulling this out of my butt -- maybe you wind up finding it useful to move into a region and being immediately appointed Security Officer in order to defend it. So then if we're considering fixes like:

• "Delegates must be in office for at least ___ hours before they can appoint officers"; or:
• "Nations must be in a region for at least ____ hours before they can be appointed officer"

The first one lets you keep doing something useful for defending but the second one doesn't. So you can argue for that one.

But if you just sat out, you'd never know that, and neither would I.

[Todd McCloud]

Then, someone could theoretically be appointed and dismissed several dozen times in an update period. I don't know much about how hard this could be on a system, but if someone were to abuse it and spam it like crazy, could that be tough on the game?

[Elke and Elba]

A question not really related to raiding:

Given the addition of Regional Officers, would it be possible that an option could be added to open up cross-region RMB posting rights to Delegates, Founders as well as RO alongside the other options already available?

[Cormac Stark]

I do think it would be very counter-productive to sit out and then accept whatever change to Regional Officers gets support from other people. This is actually an opportunity for you to test and figure out how the feature could work best for defending, then support the change that suits that best.

For example -- please excuse me pulling this out of my butt -- maybe you wind up finding it useful to move into a region and being immediately appointed Security Officer in order to defend it. So then if we're considering fixes like:

• "Delegates must be in office for at least ___ hours before they can appoint officers"; or:
• "Nations must be in a region for at least ____ hours before they can be appointed officer"

The first one lets you keep doing something useful for defending but the second one doesn't. So you can argue for that one.

But if you just sat out, you'd never know that, and neither would I.

I really want you to pop into #jump for an update and organize a liberation. Do all the recruiting, set the trigger, give the instructions, see to it that untrained newbies know what's going on, give the go and hope people are actually paying attention, and then watch as twelve raiders banject everyone with no effort before the region even updates.

Then maybe you'll understand why defenders don't want to be guinea pigs for certain failure, not just once but multiple times. Counterproductive to sit it out? Maybe, but not nearly as counterproductive as setting dozens of people up for failure and them never showing up for another liberation again. Just fix the problem.

[Benevolent Aurors]

For example -- please excuse me pulling this out of my butt -- maybe you wind up finding it useful to move into a region and being immediately appointed Security Officer in order to defend it. So then if we're considering fixes like:

• "Delegates must be in office for at least ___ hours before they can appoint officers"; or:
• "Nations must be in a region for at least ____ hours before they can be appointed officer"

The first one lets you keep doing something useful for defending but the second one doesn't. So you can argue for that one.

But if you just sat out, you'd never know that, and neither would I.

So you want us to invade a region so that we may appoint ourselves RO so that we can one day happen to be logged in during the 3 second window of an invasion in order to ban would-be invaders just in time to save the region? That's such a small ask. Thanks.

[Frisbeeteria]

someone could theoretically be appointed and dismissed several dozen times in an update period.

I assume you're talking about typical raider behavior where a pack of raiders move through multiple regions in an update. There wouldn't be much benefit in implementing any ROs that needed influence to operate, as those sorts of hit-and-run nations rarely have any influence in that region. Dozens of appointments, maybe, for non-influence jobs. Dismissals would most likely happen in a later update when defenders or natives took over.

I don't know much about how hard this could be on a system

Probably significantly less load then those people who go through 20 flag changes in an hour. It's a checkbox. The game is full of checkboxes that change constantly.

[Sovreignry]

This is amazing. Raiders complain about a glitch and it's immediately fixed. Defenders complain about being forced out of the game and it's "Tough titties". Really, this is rich.

[Alustrian]

Let us know when enough time has passed on this stage of the experiment and we can get back to something-approaching-fair.

I do think it would be very counter-productive to sit out and then accept whatever change to Regional Officers gets support from other people. This is actually an opportunity for you to test and figure out how the feature could work best for defending, then support the change that suits that best.

For example -- please excuse me pulling this out of my butt -- maybe you wind up finding it useful to move into a region and being immediately appointed Security Officer in order to defend it. So then if we're considering fixes like:

• "Delegates must be in office for at least ___ hours before they can appoint officers"; or:
• "Nations must be in a region for at least ____ hours before they can be appointed officer"

The first one lets you keep doing something useful for defending but the second one doesn't. So you can argue for that one.

But if you just sat out, you'd never know that, and neither would I.

You said you do not expect us to run ops sure to fail. The only way we win any lib against an established raider/imp group with these rules is if they let us win for the express purpose of proving to you that no changes are needed. No legitimate chance of winning a lib. Which means you do not expect us to run those libs.

I do not need to run doomed ops to suggest changes. My clearest suggestion is to removed Border Controls from ROs (and decouple RMB from Border Control - allow ROs RMB control). Any other suggestion would need to be paired with some (unknown) massive changes to rebalance the R/D game. Defenders already had an incredibly difficult role. This change /is in completely the wrong direction/.

Yes, we have discussed the (minuscule) uses of ROs with BC for defenders. Influence means it only has one vaguely-effective use - being appointed RO/BC for all major founderless regions (somehow) and then kicking raiders /on in-coming/. That would require dedication far beyond anything ever demanded of a playerbase of this game. Additionally, it could only be done by a handful of players - cutting out most defenders and only leaving the already-overworked commanders.

[Cormac Stark]

The change that needs to happen is for Regional Officers not to have access to border control, full stop. There's no reason we should be having to negotiate how to make these changes suck a little bit less, when these changes were, in the first place, supposed to restore some balance to R/D and make it more fun and competitive for everyone.

If that is still the goal, the only solution is no border control for ROs. Anything else is just deciding how much harder to make R/D for defenders -- a little, or a lot? Meanwhile, R/D should be getting easier and more fun for defenders like it is for raiders.

[[violet]]

But to add a minimum period of time after election before a Delegate can appoint a Regional Officer, for example, that's only a few lines of code.

Please forgive me if I've misunderstood you, but then why not implement it immediately? You've heard from many game-players that this is doomed to ruin GP for one side, so why then why not just add a few lines of code?

Good question. The answer is that many doomsday scenarios have been proposed during the years ROs have been discussed (as happens with any new feature), and even more proposed fixes, and it's unclear which is best.

Proposed RO fixes include various time limits, based either on the appointer or appointee or both, limiting the number of ROs (by authority or region size or influence or nation age), adding Influence costs for appointing and/or dismissing ROs, adding RO-specific influence costs to some functions, and blocking off ROs from certain parts of Region Control (passwords to prevent lockdowns, Border Control to prevent ejections, Appearance to prevent tag raids, ...).

Obviously if we do all these, there's very little feature left: We'd have been so careful to make sure people can't abuse anything, there's not much left to use. So what we did for a while was try to figure out which fix is best, based on our best guess of how people will end up using ROs, and deciding who to believe. But this requires good foresight, which admin has never demonstrated before, and personally I really believe an important part of NationStates is how it's just a pretty basic foundation that people build on. I don't want to kill something that might be new and interesting, if I can help it, without giving it a chance. Which may turn out to be a terrible mistake, of course, but the idea is to see which doomsday scenarios come true and then deal with them in a targeted way.

[Improving Wordiness]

A quick question regarding tag raids...I know this is not a way to stop / fix or change those. I am wondering though about the power retention?
Say a tag run claims 10 regions in one update...those nations all switch WA then move to the next....they have delegate power for 12 hours....if they appoint a Regional officer no WA is needed and they hold power until ousted? Am I understanding this correctly?
If so I can see a problem with I am afraid. There will be snowball effect with raiders laying waste to a huge amount of small regions and retaining executive power.

[PFQ Founder]

So, where do I get started?

[Imperium Anglorum]

I have to agree with the considerations put forth by the defenders here. By creating a system where defenders are entirely stuck in a reactive state and also now have to pile against a massive bulwark of persons who can eject other players (at no influence cost because those players are new), liberations are effectively impossible. However, that wasn't entirely why I came to this thread.

I came to the thread looking for information about moderation of the RMB. That the RMB's moderation abilities are inextricably tied to border controls allows for great problems in the abuse of power. The boards should simply not be part of border controls, since border controls are significantly more important than the moderation of the RMB and that immense difference in importance should be reflected in the settings for officers.

Now, ignoring that section, we also have to consider that regional officers are appointed forever (or, until they are removed by someone). I honestly believe that this is a terrible decision. They should be appointed for the term of the person who appointed them. This would lead to greater trust and stability between the Delegate or Founder and the officers they appoint, since the tenure of their offices are dependant on the tenure of their appointer. Furthermore, this also helps deal with the issue of accountability — if a regional officer misbehaves, people can show their displeasure by unendorsing the Delegate so that regional officer can be removed. Governments would then be more accountable to the people. Whilst this may not be entirely relevant for players in non-democratic regions, this should be an option given to founders.

[Edit] The issue with regional officers being granted border controls is simply solved by not allowing border controls for regional officers. I agree with Cormac on that subject. Regional officers are appointed without sanction from the populace and without oversight thereof. Thus, they should not be given the powers of capital punishment in that populace.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

I didn't say players were making the game worse; no, that's obviously on administration. I was suggesting, however, that this strike only amplifies the problem instead of solving it.

That's the point, to amplify the problem. Defenders and other gameplayers who want to see competitive gameplay have been asking administration to solve the problem for three years (longer, really) and finally this is the answer we get, to make liberations impossible and gameplay even less competitive. Enough is enough. The way to solve this problem is to be as loud as possible about it until they do something about it. Period.

Because that describes all the fun I have infiltrating, gaining trust, building relations with other aggressive regions, and trying to find pilers. Yep. A little math and some buttons.

Be my Gest.

You infiltrate because you enjoy doing that, it's fun for you. It's not required for raiding. All that's required for raiding is some math to trigger, a handful of people, and a few button clicks. And then yes, some telegrams and PMs to get pilers. Don't get me wrong, I respect that you put in more effort. My point, though, is that while extra effort is optional for raiders, a tremendous amount of effort is expected of defenders. Every time the game gets harder defenders are just told to try harder. Why should they have to? Keeping this game competitive means making sure one side isn't playing on the Easy setting while the other is playing on Expert.

I would argue that talking on the forums and changing nothing except growing less active has, for the past three years, been the opposite of effective, whereas trying and potentially failing at alternate tactics hasn't been nearly as well tested.

We will always have the advantage of surprise, yes. And you'll always have the advantage of public sympathy, but we don't whine about that on nearly the same level when a raider operation gets libbed by the SC. I respect that responding is harder than initiating, but I believe that tactics on the same level of effort could prove effective for y'all as well. For example, we tell most all young raiders to see some puppets around in potential targets, soak up some influence out there. If defenders did the same, maybe set up a script to login every week, they'd have a network of hard-to-eject sleepers ready to active in, say, the dozen most raidable regions - think japan, etc. That's something that'd take less effort than we put into sleepers - why would you need government positions, endorsements, the appearance of activity? - and could be very effective. If spotting and responding at update are an ineffectice waste of time, stop doing it.