[Discussion] Rotating Update

[Funkadelia]

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”. ~John Lydgate, Abraham Lincoln

This quote is irrelevant when it comes to actual raiding and defending. Again, to use my example, if you're on a raid that originally takes place in the midnight hour, and then the next day, update takes place at like 3 AM and you can't be there where you could have been there at midnight, you're liable to have your region taken over because you can't appoint a regional officer who could be there yet. For all we know, there might be one update in a whole week that you can make it to, which makes it impossible for you to raid because you can't defend the region for the next 26 hours.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

That a fair point, which is why I said informal ;P I'd expect it to be a bit *less* skewed towards "hell no" in a better survey, but you can't change the fact that the US is the largest chunk of NS' userbase, and that many potential hours will fall in the work or school hours of those users given any form of rotation.

Trainees being *able* to be on for major is not nearly as much of an issue as getting them to understand that the game updates twice daily, slowly, over an hour each time, in general I'd say about 1 in 15 or less of our trainees are only able to make minors, and I don't recall the last time we had a trainee be unable to make updates entirely. When we occasionally have active members enter such a situation due to a shift in work or school needs, we actively work to help them find places where they can get involved nonetheless, such as sleeper work.

I think I've explained pretty thoroughly why I think both this and the current iteration of delegate-elect make it much more difficult for regions to defend themselves, by vastly increasing both the amount of time they need to be watching their regional security and the methods in which they could be attacked (in in elect, also by decreasing their ability to respond to threats).

[Eluvatar]

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”. ~John Lydgate, Abraham Lincoln

This quote is irrelevant when it comes to actual raiding and defending. Again, to use my example, if you're on a raid that originally takes place in the midnight hour, and then the next day, update takes place at like 3 AM and you can't be there where you could have been there at midnight, you're liable to have your region taken over because you can't appoint a regional officer who could be there yet. For all we know, there might be one update in a whole week that you can make it to, which makes it impossible for you to raid because you can't defend the region for the next 26 hours.

Why should we favor users for whom 12/12 works over users for whom, say, 6/6 would work?

That a fair point, which is why I said informal ;P I'd expect it to be a bit *less* skewed towards "hell no" in a better survey, but you can't change the fact that the US is the largest chunk of NS' userbase, and that many potential hours will fall in the work or school hours of those users given any form of rotation.

Trainees being *able* to be on for major is not nearly as much of an issue as getting them to understand that the game updates twice daily, slowly, over an hour each time, in general I'd say about 1 in 15 or less of our trainees are only able to make minors, and I don't recall the last time we had a trainee be unable to make updates entirely. When we occasionally have active members enter such a situation due to a shift in work or school needs, we actively work to help them find places where they can get involved nonetheless, such as sleeper work.

Would "Next WA Update" help with that understanding or not? Would the presence of a posted schedule of updates help with that or not?

[Moneyness]

It is my hope that by rotating update one could have a more even playing field between players in different timezones and by adding Delegate-Elect or something else that allows for immediately effective activity one could allow all players to play at any time.

I would be interested in reasons suggesting that my hopes would be dashed.

If anyone believes otherwise, their reasoning as to why would be of interest to me.

A rotating update wouldn't make it a more even playing field. As I said it takes nations to actively choose to want to get involved with this which isn't as big of a majority. Having it during a different time would not change it. Europe and Africa has about the same opportunity as North and South America do with the current time of update. With the reasoning being that whereas major could be easier to be on for in North and South America that minor has the same possibility for those in Europe to be able to on for. Yet even with these advantages there is still a consistency of less activity on minors with Europe and Africa experiencing the same opportunity of being able to be on yet aren't and don't have as much happen. Australia and Asia currently do have a harder time for updates but they currently are able to participate by waking up a little early before they would go to work or school or right after they would get back from work or school. It all comes down to carving out time during the day to be on. Right now how it is set up it leaves room and an option for people to be on for at least one of the updates that happen each day especially on the weekends. Just by moving update a few hours this way or that way each update it will not cause for it then to become a priority for nations that aren't currently involved.

As for Delegate-Elect a lot of people involved in gameplay don't like that idea. It effectively is removing all skill away from R/D by making it a pure numbers game where people would just end up getting friends to move in at any point with no warning to take over leaving regions vulnerable. The thing that causes enjoyment from gameplay is the current set up of how it is. The level of skill involved right now makes it so that it is enjoyable to participate in it. Users can already participate by piling currently once a region has been occupied or liberated or as a precaution for regions. There currently are ways to participate and they are effective by then making it more difficult at update for the region to be raided or liberated. There also the effect that this would have on GCRs making them a lot less unstable. It could also easily render regions helpless as raiders are the first to act. They could easily plan to have a large sum of people move into a region with only a few hours before update and endorse someone pushing them way over the previous delegate which would cause them to not be able to have any chance.

[Guy]

This will be very much abbreviated, apologies in advance.

Current updates:

Major: Works very well for North America. Doesn’t work for Europe at all. Works for Asia and Australia only on weekends.

Minor: Doesn’t work well for North America. Works okay for Europe, but not great outside of weekends. Works well for Asia. Too late for Australia.

The consequence is that the biggest update-attending group are North Americans at major. This then makes R/D be dominated by major and Americans. This is why arguments that “most current players will be worse off” should not be taken at face value. The reason why most current R/Ders are Americans is likely directly linked to having more comfortable update times.

To me, this is a problem. I think the game should have the object of expanding its reach. I see two solutions:

1) The one proposed in this thread;

2) Changing update time to split and maximise attendance across both updates. A preliminary idea I had was ~6.30pm and 2am Eastern, but I’m sure many will attack it for being worse for themselves than the current arrangement.

[Roavin]

I will try to acquire easily digestible statistics about the geographical distribution of our player base and post them here.

That was going to be my one point in this thread. I think alot of the discussion we have now needs to be informed by that data, so thank you for that.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

Neither particularly would, Elu, because in the current world, they have an infinite schedule of upcoming updates, and we tell them the next update time ;P The only change is that the concept of update becomes increasingly difficult to explain.

Re: favoring one over another, which you replied to funk with - it's certainly an argument. Some may argue that 5 people only being able to make 2 updates a week instead of 5 is worth one person who previously could not make any updates now also being able to make 2. It's a fair line of thought. My counter is that you've now changed the total number of man-updates from 25 (5x5+1x0) to 12 (5x2+1x2). Arbitrary numbers, but I hope point. It's not like there are *no* ways for the one person in that scenario to participate - plenty of R/D work, notably sleeping, or for defenders things like reaching out to regions to help them increase their security (anti-sleeping?) is done off-update. You certainly are extending the ability of that person to participate...it just may well be at the cost of allowing more others to participate, or participate as often.

Anecdotally, on any given day except saturday (free all day) and wednesday (often not free at all this semester), I'm only likely able to have an hour in front of the computer between 7pm and 1am (central ). With current updates, I can make 50% of all updates (all majors except wednesday, plus sat minor) on a "normal" week. With rotating updates, suddenly many more of those updates fall within my unavailable hours (which are likely similar to those of many students or employed workers in the US, with shifting for time zones). I probably could go down as low as 1-4 updates a week rather than 7, depending on the draw. Someone in another county now may be able to make the same few updates a week...but they do suffer from the same problem I have, overall. Busy people are busy. Most of us are sleeping, working, or learning for the majority of the day. Updates at any hour will also largely fall within *their* workday too.

Overall, I think the logic points towards towards less people on at less updates overall, due to more updates falling within work hours. Maybe Bob, who had updates at 4am and 4pm, can now suddenly make 2-3 a week (yay!), but Steve, Larry, and Stu in his region ... can't be on when he is anyways, because they have school, and can't do their own run later either because there's no update in that time when they're available for the next week and a half.

Player base distribution will help balance that distinction. If I'm wrong, and it's 20% of people losing a couple updates while 80% can now make a few where it was zero before, then things may tip the other way. I think overall though, you ultimately suffer from what I said above - busy people are busy, and most of the day we are not free.

[Benjabobaria]

I mean this in the most sincere way possible - are you insane? This would annihilate current R/D gameplay. Planning for updates is critical.

I've read your other ridiculous R/D concept threads lately. No to all 3.

[Reploid Productions]

I mean this in the most sincere way possible - are you insane? This would annihilate current R/D gameplay. Planning for updates is critical.

I've read your other ridiculous R/D concept threads lately. No to all 3.

I direct your attention to the thread OP, particularly:

Ground Rules
This topic is intended to be a way for site administration and the community to discuss the feature and improve understanding. This topic will not be permitted to become a flaming free-for-all of an argument, useless to everyone and infuriating to many.

1. A player may post using one (and only one) nation in this topic. Do not use puppet nations.
2. Please address other players only in a completely respectful and cordial manner.
3. Please keep in mind site rules in general and the bad faith policy specifically (which applies to this topic).

Your post is not respectful, not cordial, almost entirely unhelpful, and adds very little of anything to the discussion. If you would like to elaborate on how and why you believe the proposed idea is a poor one, please do so without the blatantly bad faith jabs.


~Evil Forum Empress Rep Prod the Ninja Mod
~She who wields the Banhammer; master of the mighty moderation no-dachi Kiritateru Teikoku

[Aurum Raider]

I think that, combined with "Next WA Update" this will only prove to make people even more demoralized to play this game.

As it is, it's rare to find someone that says yes to 'Hey, do you want to stay up until 24est/12est?' Now the question becomes 'Are you committed to give an hour of your time at some random point of they day?'

Even if you use a 'Next WA Update' API call on the first updating region, you might know when it will start, but planning would cease to be a 'I agree to update at Major or Minor' deal, and become a 'I have to give you my schedule for the next two weeks' deal. I can see this really wearing away at raiders and defenders alike.

[Kylia Quilor]

If update times were clearly laid out publicly ahead of time, this might be viable, but even then, by taking all predictability out of it, you're going to make scheduling holds very difficult, and make it harder to allow delegates and BC officers of vulnerable regions to always be able to be on to cover their region.

I do understand the merits of allowing the UD to shift a little to ensure more people can make it, but by allowing it to shift significantly from day to day, operational planning would start to go down the chute.

If we really need to change when the Update happens, let's change the actual times of them, not have them constantly shift (though I'm not sure I'm thrilled at the idea of changing the actual times either)

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

2) Changing update time to split and maximise attendance across both updates. A preliminary idea I had was ~6.30pm and 2am Eastern, but I’m sure many will attack it for being worse for themselves than the current arrangement.

As requested: 6:30 is too early even on the east cost for many who work, have later classes, or who participate in extracurriculars even in high school. More so for anywhere westwards. 2am is definitely out of the range for most in eastern or central, seeing as midnight is already hard, and edging on too late for the west/mountain (again, already late for anyone who has work or school the next day).



As noted, for all its drawback, the current time has the upside of being doable if not perfect for basically all of the Americas. More than an hour or two earlier and you lose people to the day to the west, any later and you lose (more) people to sleep to the east.

[Minoa]

This will be very much abbreviated, apologies in advance.

Current updates:

Major: Works very well for North America. Doesn’t work for Europe at all. Works for Asia and Australia only on weekends.

Minor: Doesn’t work well for North America. Works okay for Europe, but not great outside of weekends. Works well for Asia. Too late for Australia.

The consequence is that the biggest update-attending group are North Americans at major. This then makes R/D be dominated by major and Americans. This is why arguments that “most current players will be worse off” should not be taken at face value. The reason why most current R/Ders are Americans is likely directly linked to having more comfortable update times.

To me, this is a problem. I think the game should have the object of expanding its reach. I see two solutions:

1) The one proposed in this thread;

2) Changing update time to split and maximise attendance across both updates. A preliminary idea I had was ~6.30pm and 2am Eastern, but I’m sure many will attack it for being worse for themselves than the current arrangement.

One of the reasons I do not support bunching the majority of the region updates towards a particular hour is because I have to also consider that there are gameplayers from the EU/EEA (particularly the Netherlands), Asia (e.g. Japan and Taiwan) and Australia/New Zealand. I remember when I missed an entire night’s sleep to see through a (retroactively poor by today’s standards) WA repeal that I authored.

[Trotterdam]

This would just complicate things for those of us who don't participate in the griefing "gameplay". And even within that subculture, I think the fact that victory depends so much on your ability to act a split second before update time rather than on long-term planning is itself a flaw that should be corrected, not encouraged. Among other things, it's better if we can encourage people from different time zones to work together, rather than on some days people from one time zone dominating and on other days people from other time zones dominating, but them rarely being able to directly help each other.

At the very least, you should have some mechanism to ensure that the total number of updates over a large timespan remains constant (rather than just constant-on-average), regardless of exactly when in the day the updates happened.

Unpredictable population increase times could also affect minigames that depend on population, like the zombie apocalypses. Though really, irregular update times could be an asset if handled properly, since we could simply suspend updates during the event entirely and then compensate by having them happen slightly faster after.

If the start of WA votes gets randomized then that's going to give proposals submitted at the identical time on on different dates differing lengths of time in which to gather the necessary number of approvals, increasing unpredictability for authors: I don't see that as a 'good' change.

If WA voting is decoupled from update time, you could just have proposals be put to vote/discarded a fixed amount of time after they were submitted, regardless of when that was (unless another approved proposal is holding up the queue). In this case, the exact time that the endorsement window for a proposal will end will always be known, but need not be any particular time of day.

It is my hope that by rotating update one could have a more even playing field between players in different timezones

It is my hope that with these changes, natives of invaded regions will be, and therefore feel, less powerless. I would hope this would help.

The thing is, while this would increase the number of players who can participate at least once in a blue moon, it would decrease the number of players who can participate consistently.

Having a particular day where update time falls on a convenient time for people from Hawaii is useless if no-one in your region is from Hawaii, and it just makes it easier for the one Hawaii-based raiding group to smash you when you're helpless, even if you have lots of defenders in other time zones.

[Chingis]

To be honest I'm in complete agreement with Souls on this one. Firstly, the large ops are a definite point, but Souls covered that already. What I'm more concerned about is that at the moment majors are maximally accessible for the majority of the player base (except maybe if they were earlier but that's obviously going to alienate the Europeans who are asleep at that time). However there is a huge potential for these floating times to push major into the "dead-zones" for Americans who make up the majority of the player base, which is probably 12-7am and 10am-4pm on weekdays. in other words, about half of the time, Americans won't be able to make major whatsoever.

There is always the swing side of the coin of them being able to make minor, but that's significantly shorter atm, and to be honest if they're still just making the one evening update a day it really wont change much in the long run. As it is, updating is a time commitment so most people either have to plan heavily for it, or just not update at all until it lands in their free time for like 2 days a week (didn't really do the maths so just an assumption).

Honestly it makes more sense to make minor and major the same length. Regardless of your timezone there should be an update at a decently available time for you. If you guys think that earlier updates would be better then maybe just make the updates earlier? I really see no reason to rotate the times around.

Thanks just my 2 cents though.

[Reploid Productions]

All I'm asking for is that for once the programmers say "let's not go the route of making it easier to be an asshole on this site, let's actually make player bases more secure from what can be considered a form of cyber bullying and harassment".

Didn't see this one when I first Loomed Ominously. You can make your points without basically calling those who participate in R/D a bunch of 'assholes' or 'bullies.' Once again, refer to the thread OP, particularly the bit about addressing other players in "a respectful and cordial manner."


~Evil Forum Empress Rep Prod the Ninja Mod
~She who wields the Banhammer; master of the mighty moderation no-dachi Kiritateru Teikoku

[Kylia Quilor]

The central thesis between this proposal and the proposed new version of Delegate Elect seems to be that the central problem of R/D is one of inaccessibility. First and foremost, R/D is actually pretty accessible, as the constant mushrooming of new R/D groups would suggest. Most don't last, but that's due to admin and personnel issues, not technical ones.

Moreover, if R/D is inaccessible, the timing of the Update isn't really the problem, at the core. Yes, moving the update might make things easier for (some) European players, yes, but for others it might not be any better, or screw over players in Asia, et cetera. And since moving the UD time kills planning, it removes still more complexity from an increasingly simplified game.

I'm not seeing any evidence that there is some clamoring base of players that would love to get into R/D but can't at all ever because of the time of the Update.

The core problem with R/D that could be argued as to make it inaccessible, apart from the fact explaining R/D to the uninitiated can render you sounding like a jabbering idiot because the whole thing is so counter-intuitive, is that R/D is still too much of a numbers game - there is skill, but that skill, in ejection trigger fingers and speed/stealthy movement can only provide limited fudging and playing around at the edge with numbers. If the other side has enough people, no matter how skilled you are, you ain't winning.

If we wanted to expand accessibility to R/D, find a way to get rid of the numbers problem - because as it stands, if a group of say, five friends decide to get together and form an R/D group, as it stands, those five people would have almost no chance of doing anything beyond a few tags on their own. If R/D was less reliant on pure numbers, new groups would have an easier time of it.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

....and most of these idea add to the numbers game problem. Aye.


Side note: Anything that Chingis, Me, Tim, and Aurum, Cormac, etc all agree on is, well..

[Tim-Opolis]

I will try to acquire easily digestible statistics about the geographical distribution of our player base and post them here.

That was going to be my one point in this thread. I think alot of the discussion we have now needs to be informed by that data, so thank you for that.

While I'll have a more substantive post later, I'll throw a bit of data into this which is indeed publicly accessible.

According to Nationstates' Alexa ranking information, 57.6% of the site's visitors come from the United States.

Based on the detail of the 2014 US Census, the timezone breakdown within the US itself is as follows:
- 47.1% Eastern
- 29.0% Central
- 6.70% Mountain
- 16.6% Pacific
- 0.70% Hawaii, Alaska, etc

While I wager the NS details don't add up to exactly similar numbers, I imagine the percentage breakdown is pretty damn similar. So, based on that, you could assume that about 1/4 of NS players are from the Eastern US Timezone, which I would imagine is certainly the largest single congregation of players within a timezone. With that much of a congregation, you're going to have less people active in R/D if you make update less accessible for the the US players, and particularly the US East.

I also concur with Souls. Any time that he, Cormac, Aurum, myself, etc agree.... yeah.

[Clean Land]

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”. ~John Lydgate, Abraham Lincoln

If I understand Gameplay correctly( I have never partipiciated in it, but I have looked at it), then the current situation pleases a good amount of people. The problem is, your solution is not a solution, but a problem in itself. If you try to please everyone, you will annoy everyone instead, here. 1)Short term occupations: The motive behind short term occupations is amusement and such... constantly. If people cannot do that anymore for some weeks because of bad luck... they will get bored and quit.
2)Long-term occupations: You rely on stealth and removal? Sorry, stealth operations are no longer viable. You need one bad update you cannot plan for and your occupation could be toast. The defenders would have to be vigilant constantly(and to be precise: Defenders, for this purpose, means those holding the region), the attackers only need one day when they have exceptional numbers at an unusal time, which can be done temporarily, but not constantly. You will find many attackers who would stay up just for one specific night or such, but no defenders willing to do it every day!

[House of Judah]

It is my hope that with these changes, natives of invaded regions will be, and therefore feel, less powerless. I would hope this would help.

If anyone believes otherwise, their reasoning as to why would be of interest to me.

Let me start off by saying I'm rather suspicious of that claim. The admin team for NS has long been aware there is a simple fix that would instantly make the 'natives' not feel powerless in a region where the founder account has disappeared, which is allowing us to tag our regions as opting out and never having to deal with R/D again. It's a suggestion that periodically rears it's head, raiders pitch a fit, and the admin team says they won't do it because it would kill R/D, as if the warzones would suddenly cease to exist instead of serving the purpose that they were always meant to anyways. That's not the topic of discussion, however, so I won't take this further in this thread.

Maybe, maybe this will make it a little harder on raiders and give those of us who would like to keep R/D as far away from us as possible and if there is a chance of that, I'm all for it. I expect that so small a hurdle will eventually be surmounted by raiders, since they do at times to be so very cleaver at figuring out how to make the system work for them, but even a brief respite from them would no doubt be appreciated by anyone in an RP region without a founder account active.

[Aurum Raider]

snip

Obligatory
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=369326&p=27964920#p27964920
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=369326&p=27887891&hilit=coup#p27887891
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=152919&p=26882309&hilit=coup#p26882309
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=355702&p=26224349&hilit=coup#p26224349

that suggestion is also not going to fix the fact that the updates being randomly at 2pm or 7pm is inconvenient for everyone involved.

[House of Judah]

snip

Obligatory
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=369326&p=27964920#p27964920
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=369326&p=27887891&hilit=coup#p27887891
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=152919&p=26882309&hilit=coup#p26882309
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=355702&p=26224349&hilit=coup#p26224349

that suggestion is also not going to fix the fact that the updates being randomly at 2pm or 7pm is inconvenient for everyone involved.

If you want to have that discussion, we can go to a new thread where I can point out just how much of a cop out that excuse is.

I really couldn't care less if that random time makes things less convenient for raiders, especially since R/D isn't the game, as is pointed out in one of your links. It's an exploit of a mechanic, a bug that R/D claims is a feature and the end all be all of NS. It's not.

[Warwick Z Codger]

I feel the argument that "the majority of players are in the US" and therefore this change disadvantages them is not a powerful as its proponents think it is.

On fairness principle, the game should not try to favour one player over another because of location, I vaguely recall somewhere that the current update times are set so it's mildly inconveniencing to as many people as people.

My proposed change is to rotate update so it benefits people roughly to the proportion of the player base. So 20% of time update is at time that benefits best to those in the Asia Pacific, 30% to Europe, 40% to the US etc or whatever the case might be.

[Kylia Quilor]

The game should benefit the largest pool of players it has as much as is practical. And even a narrowly rotating update still renders long term occupations far less tenable.