Suggestion: Ban GCR delegates from SC voting.

[Vespertania]

This suggestion comes after reading a post made on the Rejected Realms RMB by Cormactopia Prime in which he writes about six of the nine GCR regions (feeders/sinkers specifically) forming a pact for voting against security council resolutions.

Unlike the WALL voting bloc, which from my understanding is more GA-focused, such a pact made by the six largest regions in the game is potentially game-breaking for R/D gameplay..

Maybe I should mention the six regions in question are raider-friendly? That probably doesn't matter though.

Anyway, from how I see it, if a pact for voting against Defender-friendly SC resolutions between six of the largest feeder & sinker regions exists, it's a problem. Game-breaking.

The issue falls to the staff to fix this; It's doubtful the disadvantaged side of R/D has the ability to strike a new balance any time soon. An easy solution is to ban the delegates of feeders and sinkers from voting in the SC.

Do it.

[La Navasse]

I honestly doubt such a ban could occur, mainly as NationStates stands to display the dysfunction, or triumph, of politics, which can be evidently seen, or completely nonexistent to, different players, depending on your perspective.

[Raionitu]

An outright ban is a bit drastic, don't you think? Besides, NS has always been about not being pay to win, and when someone buys campaign stamps, like in liberate westphalia, the only chance of beating them without buying stamps yourself is to know how to talk with the people who decide how GCR delegates vote (several of them have committees and votes on how the regions vote should go, not involved in that so not entirely sure how it works) , but without that ability to campaign to a select group for high votes, the only way to counter someone paying for a tag:wa, is to pay for a tag:wa. At that point, WA votes become a matter of whose willing to spend the most money on campaigning. If there's a way to fix the superdelegate problem without creating a pay to win situation, I'm all ears.

[Lenlyvit]

An outright ban is a bit drastic, don't you think? Besides, NS has always been about not being pay to win, and when someone buys campaign stamps, like in liberate westphalia, the only chance of beating them without buying stamps yourself is to know how to talk with the people who decide how GCR delegates vote (several of them have committees and votes on how the regions vote should go, not involved in that so not entirely sure how it works) , but without that ability to campaign to a select group for high votes, the only way to counter someone paying for a tag:wa, is to pay for a tag:wa. At that point, WA votes become a matter of whose willing to spend the most money on campaigning. If there's a way to fix the superdelegate problem without creating a pay to win situation, I'm all ears.

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=434009&hilit=SC+ideas

In this thread we discussed the possibility of cutting down the amount of votes a delegate would be able to levy from their endos.

[The United Providences of Perland]

I’m not too into WA politics but this is a good debate. I stand on more neutral ground here. Because on one hand, yeah sinker delegates are basically gods. If three or so of them agree on a proposal it seems likely to go in their favor. But on the other hand, that is a logical benefit for WA Delagtes, as it gives the office a purpose beyond just hitting the approve proposal button. I think a complete ban on this benefit with sinkers is a bit of an escalation. At worst maybe make their endorsements worth 1/2 an extra vote, but eh.

[Topid]

I still feel like the WA imbalance is a symptom of the recruiting problem, not one that needs a fix in and of itself. Increasingly nations are not leaving feeders. This is likely because recruitment messages are horrible and hit new nations like a spam nuke on joining. The percentage of WAs in the GCRs is huge compared to pre-legalization of scripts / stamps. Not sure there's a good answer - but obviously if you smother the ability of the UCRs to grow then the GCRs are going to be very powerful - even if they are for all intents and purposes pretty similar to how they were years ago.

[Lenlyvit]

I still feel like the WA imbalance is a symptom of the recruiting problem, not one that needs a fix in and of itself. Increasingly nations are not leaving feeders. This is likely because recruitment messages are horrible and hit new nations like a spam nuke on joining. The percentage of WAs in the GCRs is huge compared to pre-legalization of scripts / stamps. Not sure there's a good answer - but obviously if you smother the ability of the UCRs to grow then the GCRs are going to be very powerful - even if they are for all intents and purposes pretty similar to how they were years ago.

Its not so much recruitment messages being horribly written, I think. There are tons really well written in my opinion, and draw a lot of people as can be seen by having three to four UCR's break 1,000-1,300 nations. The main problem is that GCR's have a big advantage over UCR in recruitment. Feeder welcome messages arrive in the inbox almost instantaneously whereas UCR recruitment messages arrive a few minutes later. This gives them a head start in keeping nations in their region instead of leaving, as you can see by TEP because of Yuno's amazing welcome telegram.

[The Stalker]

Something definitely needs to be done. Honestly I'd like to see more feeders added to dilute their power. Or maybe allow founderless regions to spawn nations or some other kind of shift to rebalance the game.

[Topid]

I still feel like the WA imbalance is a symptom of the recruiting problem, not one that needs a fix in and of itself. Increasingly nations are not leaving feeders. This is likely because recruitment messages are horrible and hit new nations like a spam nuke on joining. The percentage of WAs in the GCRs is huge compared to pre-legalization of scripts / stamps. Not sure there's a good answer - but obviously if you smother the ability of the UCRs to grow then the GCRs are going to be very powerful - even if they are for all intents and purposes pretty similar to how they were years ago.

Its not so much recruitment messages being horribly written, I think. There are tons really well written in my opinion, and draw a lot of people as can be seen by having three to four UCR's break 1,000-1,300 nations. The main problem is that GCR's have a big advantage over UCR in recruitment. Feeder welcome messages arrive in the inbox almost instantaneously whereas UCR recruitment messages arrive a few minutes later. This gives them a head start in keeping nations in their region instead of leaving, as you can see by TEP because of Yuno's amazing welcome telegram.

I didn't mean the text of the telegrams themselves stink, but the mere fact that the nation is going to get dozens of them. At which point it seems perfectly reasonable to be annoyed you're being flooded with telegrams and annoyed at those who are sending them.

I think they're benefiting more from being the do nothing choice than from getting first crack at convincing people not to move.

[Imperium Anglorum]

a pact made by the six largest regions in the game is potentially game-breaking for R/D gameplay..

This argument is like playing an RPG and complaining about the existence of players at a higher level than you.

[Phydios]

a pact made by the six largest regions in the game is potentially game-breaking for R/D gameplay..

This argument is like playing an RPG and complaining about the existence of players at a higher level than you.

No. No, that argument is like playing an RPG and complaining that your gameplay is being stifled- because the six most powerful players in the game have you under perpetual siege and will only let you go anywhere if they approve of your actions. And if you don't like this, you can just stop playing, because the game rules make such a stranglehold totally legal. (...I think I sorta breached the fourth wall there.)

[Galiantus III]

It's more like being upset that the top 8 players are getting 10 times the XP as you for doing the same thing, and there's nothing you can do about it because the developers just made it that way and were too lazy to balance things. I'm definitely in favor of either adding more GCRs and diluting the average GCR power that way, or doing something along the lines of having the 30 founderless regions with the most WA nations act as feeders, and the next 20 act as sinkers. This would make feeder/sinker status the kind of thing that players would influence through their decision which region to support, rather than the current state, which is pretty much just arbitrary.

[Lenlyvit]

It's more like being upset that the top 8 players are getting 10 times the XP as you for doing the same thing, and there's nothing you can do about it because the developers just made it that way and were too lazy to balance things. I'm definitely in favor of either adding more GCRs and diluting the average GCR power that way, or doing something along the lines of having the 30 founderless regions with the most WA nations act as feeders, and the next 20 act as sinkers. This would make feeder/sinker status the kind of thing that players would influence through their decision which region to support, rather than the current state, which is pretty much just arbitrary.

Or what we discussed in the SC idea thread could be implemented, by which I mean the idea to reduce the voting power of a GCR delegate by 1/3 votes of their endo counts.

Edit: either 1/3 or 2/3, can't remember. Even doing it by half would be better than the current state of affairs.

[Glen-Rhodes]

The analogies to RPGs are really good Games often need to nerf overpowered classes/characters, to make sure the game is still playable and enjoyable.

We could take a note from how influence was re-configured, and put a cap on the number of extra votes any Delegate can receive in the WA. I also support having endorsements only provide an additional half vote. Both of these things would preserve the trophy-like element of being a Delegate (which is the most common reason why getting rid of Delegate extra votes has been dismissed every time), while still balancing out the game.

If you look at the current SC vote tally, Delegate votes outnumber individual player votes by thousands. Total aye: 16941. Of that, 9723 are from Delegates, the other 7191 are from individual players.

[Eluvatar]

I still feel like the WA imbalance is a symptom of the recruiting problem, not one that needs a fix in and of itself. Increasingly nations are not leaving feeders. This is likely because recruitment messages are horrible and hit new nations like a spam nuke on joining. The percentage of WAs in the GCRs is huge compared to pre-legalization of scripts / stamps. Not sure there's a good answer - but obviously if you smother the ability of the UCRs to grow then the GCRs are going to be very powerful - even if they are for all intents and purposes pretty similar to how they were years ago.

I unfortunately have to agree with this. Another thing to work on in my copious spare time.

[Glen-Rhodes]

I still feel like the WA imbalance is a symptom of the recruiting problem, not one that needs a fix in and of itself. Increasingly nations are not leaving feeders. This is likely because recruitment messages are horrible and hit new nations like a spam nuke on joining. The percentage of WAs in the GCRs is huge compared to pre-legalization of scripts / stamps. Not sure there's a good answer - but obviously if you smother the ability of the UCRs to grow then the GCRs are going to be very powerful - even if they are for all intents and purposes pretty similar to how they were years ago.

I unfortunately have to agree with this. Another thing to work on in my copious spare time.

This is very Silicon Valley of you

One the one hand, there's a solution that is direct and could be implemented relatively easily.

On the other hand, there's a solution that requires manipulating human behavior, understanding advertising psychology, and taking a leap of a faith that it will address the immediate issue at some point down the road.

[Sierra Lyricalia]

...Or maybe allow founderless regions to spawn nations...

This would make things suuuuuuper interesting.

[Aclion]

...Or maybe allow founderless regions to spawn nations...

This would make things suuuuuuper interesting.

I feel like that would bring a LOT of heat onto those regions, since the GCRs would now have a mechanical reason to see them refounded.
Unless we're considering regions with CTE'd founder to be founderless, in which case you might as well extend it to all regions, because there'd be no way to stop a region keeping the founder account CTE'd until there's an invasion.

[Galiantus III]

This would make things suuuuuuper interesting.

I feel like that would bring a LOT of heat onto those regions, since the GCRs would now have a mechanical reason to see them refounded.
Unless we're considering regions with CTE'd founder to be founderless, in which case you might as well extend it to all regions, because there'd be no way to stop a region keeping the founder account CTE'd until there's an invasion.

That's why we ought to limit it to the 50 most populous (by WA membership) founderless regions - or something to that effect. We must not forget that it is probably unwise to introduce new players to the game via a bunch of dead regions, many of which want to remain private. Large regions are usually bastions of activity, and it is fair to argue that a region which has successfully drawn in lots of players probably has a good system down for introducing new players to the game.