[Proposal] More Feeders

[Galiantus III]

Few GCR delegates care what goes on in the General Assembly. And on the Security Council side, there's slightly more interest, but the Security Council hasn't been a truly pivotal institution in Gameplay in a looooong time.

That's an interesting statement. I would have expected that GCR delegates would care, well, about the same as your average player. But I it makes perfect sense that the delegate of a GCR would be far more concerned about their region than the WA.

If people are concerned about how much voting power the 8 GCRs have in the WA, the debate we should be having is how to alter delegate voting power in the WA.

The general sense I get from your whole post is that you feel that the most powerful delegates in the WA aren't actually invested in it, and that it would be better worth the time of those looking at balancing GCR power to start there. I don't personally support the line of thought looking to limit GCR power in the WA by directly targeting them with yet another GCR-only limiting feature, because that doesn't do anything to improve gameplay outside the WA.

A change I think would greatly improve the game, which kind of follows what you are saying about GCR delegates being disinterested in at least the GA, would be if WA functionality were separated from regional government functionality. Something like having the WA split into two separate GA and SC world organizations with separate memberships and delegates for each could work.

[Solorni]

You’re complaining about how feeders have so many WAs, but a year ago TEP had like 300 endos on their 8 month delegate. And excluding TNP at 1k because of their superior technology, other feeders had heir endos on the 200-400 range and the sinkers had their endos in the 100s. These were consistent statistics for years. They’re not that great, the recent boom in endorsements is recent due to a deal by all GCR delegates to make “gaining endorsements” something like a competition.

Meanwhile there have been UCRs like 10000 Islands with 1000 endorsements in the past, and in modern times there are many UCRs with above 300-350 endorsements on their delegate

I’m saying endorsements just don’t pop out of the blue. You need players to work for them. I even wrote a guide for UCRs.
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=450459

You can't really use 10ki as an example Yuno. Back when we had that many endos on our delegate there was no automatic telegramming, no api, and 10ki had an operating recruitment system that we still use on our forums today. That system gave 10ki a competitive advantage over every other UCR and even the GCRs, allowing us to recruit nations that made us as big as mini-sinkers. Since the implementation of the telegram changes we have lost that edge, and you can see that because we went from 3-4,000 nations to struggling to keep just over 1,000 nations. The endo count dropped like a rock as well, which is clearly visible because we struggle to get 400 delegate endorsements now. Using 10ki as an example is not applicable in the sense you seem to think it is.

I think this demonstrates that changing the recruitment system and potentially doing more for R/D would help improve the UCR side of the game more.

[The Tri State Area and Maine]

I don't see the problem. 5 still leaves enough for GCRs to be reasonable competitive on the world stage, and they don't need to be any stronger than that.

None of this increases competition anyways. The World Assembly -- that is, the General Assembly and the Security Council -- is little more than a curio to GCRs. None of the 8 of our regions has a large presence in the General Assembly, outside of casting a vote. Few GCR delegates care what goes on in the General Assembly. And on the Security Council side, there's slightly more interest, but the Security Council hasn't been a truly pivotal institution in Gameplay in a looooong time. Gameplayers got so bored, they've started using Liberations on foundered regions for the symbolism. And that's not because of delegate voting power, but because of the culture and norms of the SC that make pivotal Liberations hard, if not downright impossible, to pass.

Adding 2 or 3 o 5 new GCRs isn't going to change anything. What's so game-changing about TNP going from 1,100 votes in the WA to 700, and some new GCR getting the other 400 votes? Nothing at all. Why? Because every single one of these new GCRs is going to be controlled by the existing Gameplay elite. They're going to have the same culture, the same norms, and the same dynamics as the existing 8 GCRs. There's not going to be anything new in any real sense. Osiris and Balder prove that. Both regions were dominated by pre-existing elitists and fostered communities that didn't radically change how the game had worked before their existence. So these new GCRs are going to have the same disinterest in the General Assembly, and they're not going to impact the Security Council's entrenched culture and norms.

If people are concerned about how much voting power the 8 GCRs have in the WA, the debate we should be having is how to alter delegate voting power in the WA.

I don't care about the WA. I'm more concerned about the fact that politics boils down to the same 8 regions regardless of what anybody does, with nobody else being able to compete or make things interesting because the GCRs prefer sitting around and being stable over making Gameplay actually interesting.

[Jar Wattinree]

I don't care about the WA. I'm more concerned about the fact that politics boils down to the same 8 regions regardless of what anybody does, with nobody else being able to compete or make things interesting because the GCRs prefer sitting around and being stable over making Gameplay actually interesting.

That is for the players to decide, not admin. Politics is player-driven, not admin-driven. Add more GCRs, the status quo remains unchanged with the difference being there smaller and less coherent communities with little in the way of unique identities.

[The Tri State Area and Maine]

I don't care about the WA. I'm more concerned about the fact that politics boils down to the same 8 regions regardless of what anybody does, with nobody else being able to compete or make things interesting because the GCRs prefer sitting around and being stable over making Gameplay actually interesting.

That is for the players to decide, not admin. Politics is player-driven, not admin-driven. Add more GCRs, the status quo remains unchanged with the difference being there smaller and less coherent communities with little in the way of unique identities.

When did regional communities mean anything? i thought regional communities were irrelevant. Does it depend on the community's size?

Either way, if I'm pretty sure it's thr job of game creators to make their games interesting (in this case, admin.) If the game gets boring, then something would need to be done, especially if nobody else if capable of changing it.

[Flanderlion]

WA votes for larger regions I think has general consensus that they overwhelm the smaller delegates/individuals. As I detailed earlier, it's an issue with large regions, not GCRs specifically and I think larger votes should be scaled down, and the global voting total should be hidden at least until the nation has voted. So just going to avoid the subsequent posts that I mostly agree with re that.

@Topid ideally no large region would completely dominate the WA, not just GCRs. Hence above.

The changes made it easier for any region to work on their WAs, just Feeders were the only ones who had the active onsite activity to capitalise on it. The recent addition of being able to send TGs to all non-WAs in a region makes is even easier for any region. I've seen a few UCRs start to use them, but by far and away GCRs have been the ones who use them, because we've got the necessity to. I don't actually have the data re that but I'd hope GCRs would, given we're the ones who've been putting in the yards for it.

'Make UCRs great again' not convinced on. On one hand, they're already great - they're secure, can sustain to a reasonable number of population with API script or stamps alone, and if you don't like your current one you can just make a new one. Plus no influence caps, you can add passwords and a host of advantages over GCRs. GCRs sacrifice literally everything for better recruitment, although the quality of a nation who chose to move is likely to be more likely to be active.

Just out of curiosity what could be done to make UCRs great again? I always wanted to be able to request recruitment TGs on a nation of mine, as you have to end up ejected or let your nation die after the initial flood of TGs. I suppose you could also move to a Nazi region.

@Tri state area
You do realise what regions are relevant are completely based on perception. KGB was relevant, then people just decided it wasn't, then it wasn't. It's not a metric of WAs or mil strength or cultural power. It's simply who people regard as relevant. TEP wouldn't have been thought of as top 5 most relevant gameplay regions a few years back, even with enormous nation/WA counts (actually less than Yuno has got it up to now). Yet as soon as Yuno took power it instantly became relevant because people thought of it.

Pretty much what I'm trying to say is that it's not reality, it's perceptions that make a region relevant or not. If you think of GCRs as irrelevant then just treat them that way and they'll become it.

I'm actually not sure how you expect to 'solve GP' by adding a Feeder or whatever your actual view is. It'll still have the same 8 regions etc. that'll matter. It might change faces after but in 2 years, what, are you going to ask admin to add some more then. You seem to be blaming us for your NS worldview, and asking admin to change the game so you can update it.

I started going through your posts in the thread, got to the point where you started arguing that UCRs should have the benefits of recruitment/security and gave up. Like, that's the whole assymetrical balance, where GCRs have better recruitment while UCRs have security. I think we're going to remain fundamentally opposed, so I'll note your viewpoint.

My views on fixing GP are accounts/non GA WA to make it easier for nations to join, and annexation (did a massive series of posts re that a few years back) coupled with slightly higher election costs and a region needing to remain empty for 24 hrs to CTE, and in that time it'd remove the password. Lower barriers to entry and less destructive/more region building is the dream.

People find managing multiple nations annoying (hence NS++) and nobody wants to have their stats messed up by the WA, especially as the stat changes hurt newer nations and nations who answer issues less the most. I also supported update times but that got a frosty reception from other GPers. Lower barriers to entry = more players = more stuff.

Making it ideal to annex and region build is a far better option than incentivising destroying communities in a refound and leaving it inactive as a trophy. Higher influence costs to kick nations and making refounds harder increases the number of founderless communities and gives more stuff for GP.

Finally @Rach what specifically would you suggest?

[The Tri State Area and Maine]

WA votes for larger regions I think has general consensus that they overwhelm the smaller delegates/individuals. As I detailed earlier, it's an issue with large regions, not GCRs specifically and I think larger votes should be scaled down, and the global voting total should be hidden at least until the nation has voted. So just going to avoid the subsequent posts that I mostly agree with re that.

@Topid ideally no large region would completely dominate the WA, not just GCRs. Hence above.

The changes made it easier for any region to work on their WAs, just Feeders were the only ones who had the active onsite activity to capitalise on it. The recent addition of being able to send TGs to all non-WAs in a region makes is even easier for any region. I've seen a few UCRs start to use them, but by far and away GCRs have been the ones who use them, because we've got the necessity to. I don't actually have the data re that but I'd hope GCRs would, given we're the ones who've been putting in the yards for it.

'Make UCRs great again' not convinced on. On one hand, they're already great - they're secure, can sustain to a reasonable number of population with API script or stamps alone, and if you don't like your current one you can just make a new one. Plus no influence caps, you can add passwords and a host of advantages over GCRs. GCRs sacrifice literally everything for better recruitment, although the quality of a nation who chose to move is likely to be more likely to be active.

Just out of curiosity what could be done to make UCRs great again? I always wanted to be able to request recruitment TGs on a nation of mine, as you have to end up ejected or let your nation die after the initial flood of TGs. I suppose you could also move to a Nazi region.

@Tri state area
You do realise what regions are relevant are completely based on perception. KGB was relevant, then people just decided it wasn't, then it wasn't. It's not a metric of WAs or mil strength or cultural power. It's simply who people regard as relevant. TEP wouldn't have been thought of as top 5 most relevant gameplay regions a few years back, even with enormous nation/WA counts (actually less than Yuno has got it up to now). Yet as soon as Yuno took power it instantly became relevant because people thought of it.

Pretty much what I'm trying to say is that it's not reality, it's perceptions that make a region relevant or not. If you think of GCRs as irrelevant then just treat them that way and they'll become it.

I'm actually not sure how you expect to 'solve GP' by adding a Feeder or whatever your actual view is. It'll still have the same 8 regions etc. that'll matter. It might change faces after but in 2 years, what, are you going to ask admin to add some more then. You seem to be blaming us for your NS worldview, and asking admin to change the game so you can update it.

I started going through your posts in the thread, got to the point where you started arguing that UCRs should have the benefits of recruitment/security and gave up. Like, that's the whole assymetrical balance, where GCRs have better recruitment while UCRs have security. I think we're going to remain fundamentally opposed, so I'll note your viewpoint.

My views on fixing GP are accounts/non GA WA to make it easier for nations to join, and annexation (did a massive series of posts re that a few years back) coupled with slightly higher election costs and a region needing to remain empty for 24 hrs to CTE, and in that time it'd remove the password. Lower barriers to entry and less destructive/more region building is the dream.

People find managing multiple nations annoying (hence NS++) and nobody wants to have their stats messed up by the WA, especially as the stat changes hurt newer nations and nations who answer issues less the most. I also supported update times but that got a frosty reception from other GPers. Lower barriers to entry = more players = more stuff.

Making it ideal to annex and region build is a far better option than incentivising destroying communities in a refound and leaving it inactive as a trophy. Higher influence costs to kick nations and making refounds harder increases the number of founderless communities and gives more stuff for GP.

Finally @Rach what specifically would you suggest?

I'm understand that GCRs and UCRs have a tradeoff, I just think that the tradeoff is too far into the GCRs favor, as in terms of Gameplay, the region being secured can't compete with GCRs anyway. Regardless, I also don't see why UCRs can't just be stronger than GCRs.

and I'm not exactly sure I'm on board with this idea of 5 new Feeders anymore, but it's better than nothing, so I'll still support it.

[Galiantus III]

My views on fixing GP are accounts/non GA WA to make it easier for nations to join, and annexation (did a massive series of posts re that a few years back) coupled with slightly higher election costs and a region needing to remain empty for 24 hrs to CTE, and in that time it'd remove the password. Lower barriers to entry and less destructive/more region building is the dream.

These are the kinds of ideas I want to see discussion about. If gameplay were interesting and relevant there would be no hunger to shake things up in the GCRs. I mean, that's why this discussion is happening at all - feeders are the main hubs of activity at the moment, so gameplayers want it to at least be interesting if things continue that way. Your assessment is correct that if the landscape of gameplay outside the GCRs were more inviting, this wouldn't be an issue.

People find managing multiple nations annoying (hence NS++) and nobody wants to have their stats messed up by the WA, especially as the stat changes hurt newer nations and nations who answer issues less the most. I also supported update times but that got a frosty reception from other GPers. Lower barriers to entry = more players = more stuff.

I'd say in addition to lowering barriers of entry to most of gameplay, there are places where barriers of entry ought to be increased: As a new player, I made the mistake of trying to found several of my own regions right off the bat instead of exploring existing regions and meeting people. Having had that experience, I think there should be a barrier to overcome when founding a new region. Make it dependent upon population or involve multiple nations or something. Barriers can be a good thing, especially where new players are concerned.

[Klaus Devestatorie]

Adding 2 or 3 o 5 new GCRs isn't going to change anything. What's so game-changing about TNP going from 1,100 votes in the WA to 700, and some new GCR getting the other 400 votes? Nothing at all. Why? Because every single one of these new GCRs is going to be controlled by the existing Gameplay elite. They're going to have the same culture, the same norms, and the same dynamics as the existing 8 GCRs. There's not going to be anything new in any real sense. Osiris and Balder prove that. Both regions were dominated by pre-existing elitists and fostered communities that didn't radically change how the game had worked before their existence. So these new GCRs are going to have the same disinterest in the General Assembly, and they're not going to impact the Security Council's entrenched culture and norms.

That's why I want the batshit option of 20-25 new GCRs, all introduced at the same time. NS Gameplay as we know it wouldn't have a hope in hell of controlling that many, maybe not even half of them. We'd see actual new communities appear, new faces in the room. They might all get involved down the line, but the process would be natural- by their nature, they are automatically the focus of attention and desire.

[Bears Armed]

The changes made it easier for any region to work on their WAs, just Feeders were the only ones who had the active onsite activity to capitalise on it.

Except that feeders' 'Welcome' TGs, whose contents commonly include advise for new nations' players to block recruiting TGs, automatically arrive before the recruiting TGs instead of being held for a short while and then placed in the queue for delivery...

[Glen-Rhodes]

That is for the players to decide, not admin. Politics is player-driven, not admin-driven. Add more GCRs, the status quo remains unchanged with the difference being there smaller and less coherent communities with little in the way of unique identities.

When did regional communities mean anything? i thought regional communities were irrelevant. Does it depend on the community's size?

Either way, if I'm pretty sure it's thr job of game creators to make their games interesting (in this case, admin.) If the game gets boring, then something would need to be done, especially if nobody else if capable of changing it.

GCRs were irrelevant during the first 3-4 years I played this game. Power was concentrated in big UCRs and raider/defender regions. For example, when I was lobbying Delegates to vote for my WA resolutions, i wasn't begging in GCR forums. I was going to Europe and XKI and Texas.

GCRs became the central powerhouses that drove the "Gameplay" part of NS in large part because people from those big UCRs joined GCRs in hopes of controlling them. When Osiris and Balder were created in 2011, for example, it was a fight between UCR militaries for control. People stayed in those regions, and shorty thereafter GCRs became the central focus.

[Harmakhis Lyricalia]

None of this increases competition anyways. The World Assembly -- that is, the General Assembly and the Security Council -- is little more than a curio to GCRs. None of the 8 of our regions has a large presence in the General Assembly, outside of casting a vote. Few GCR delegates care what goes on in the General Assembly.

And yet they are perfectly willing to stomp proposals right out of the gate based on some combination of treaty obligations, personal whim, bureaucratic machinery, and regional vote, often before their constituents have even read the proposal(s). Even if you deny the good effect of splitting up some of the most powerful voting regions (I do not - let's do this Ma Bell job!), at the very least this would make the continual "OMG delegates get so many extra votes? COmmunism now!" complaints happen a few times a year instead of once or twice a month.

From the General Assembly perspective, I'm all in favor. Sure, some UCRs will still have stomping power, but anything, even a merely partial solution, to reduce that dynamic is more than welcome. Hence my new Martian puppets (q.v.)!

All in!

-SL

[Galiantus III]

And yet they are perfectly willing to stomp proposals right out of the gate based on some combination of treaty obligations, personal whim, bureaucratic machinery, and regional vote, often before their constituents have even read the proposal(s).

This is a political game, so most of that is supposed to happen.

[Sierra Lyricalia]

And yet they are perfectly willing to stomp proposals right out of the gate based on some combination of treaty obligations, personal whim, bureaucratic machinery, and regional vote, often before their constituents have even read the proposal(s).

This is a political game, so most of that is supposed to happen.

Great, so now they can have five more large regions to do it in. Everybody wins!

[Valrifell]

I call dibs on leading the new Feeders when/if they arrive.

Seriously though this seems like a sound and good idea.

[Cormactopia Prime]

Gameplay has been stale and boring for years, and will continue to be unless admins drastically intervene. I'm in full support of this.

[The Tri State Area and Maine]

Gameplay has been stale and boring for years, and will continue to be unless admins drastically intervene. I'm in full support of this.

This is pretty much what it boils down to, yeah. Regardless of balance between GCRs and UCRs (which doesn't really matter and shouldn't be accounted for, as GCRs only exist as a place for new nations to start, they don't need to be be politically powerful), Gaemplay has been boring and dead, so any change is welcome.

[Galiantus III]

Gameplay has been stale and boring for years, and will continue to be unless admins drastically intervene. I'm in full support of this.

I was being critical at first, but you are right. I also fully support admin doing this.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

I'd note that a lot of discussion here comes down to loaded language.

If you call the current situation stable and not broken, then why fix it?
If you call the current situation stale and unfair, then why leave it?

From a game design point of view, I don't think fair necessarily means fun, and I think the political game would be a lot less interesting if it were an entirely fair system. I also think it's a bad thing to reduce the diversity of choices of types of region in this game. If you split the Feeders, then players lose the option of hanging out in giant regions.

To my point of view, the only real problem is that people don't feel engaged in the WA process because it feels like their vote (or their delegate's vote) doesn't matter. It's that the big power blocs make the votes of the little guy relatively meaningless, and it makes WA success a question of persuading a very small number of individuals, rather than persuading the game's broader populace.

I'm thinking that the game would be more fun if it was about persuading the many rather than persuading the few, but I think there should still be powerful movers-and-shakers who are more important to persuade.

So basically I think breaking up feeders is a bad move.
I think making delegates not have their super-votes is a bad move.
I think scaling delegate power with diminishing returns for more endorsements would make the WA more dynamic again, while not costing the Feeder's their communities.

[Glen-Rhodes]

Gameplay has been stale and boring for years, and will continue to be unless admins drastically intervene. I'm in full support of this.

There will be 2 weeks, maybe a month, of frantic activity in Gameplay when new GCRs are created. You’ve seen the story play out with Osiris and Balder. The existing elite will rush for the new GCRs. Raiders/Imps will lock down their new GCRs with crazy low endcaps and closed communities run by and for their elite class. The other GCRs, even if they’re democracies, will immediately implement the security council model and lock down the regions that way. There will be no dynamism whatsoever after those systems are implemented. And the same people currently running all the GCRs are going to be running the new ones, the same way they’re running the current ones too.

I can’t really see what’s fun about that, really. In the long run, things will be the same as they are. The problem isn’t the mechanics of the game. It’s the people who play it. We’d just end up with more (literally) of the same.

If there was some way to ensure that nobody currently involved in Gameplay was allowed to pile and control new GCRs, then maybe it would actually introduce some new dynamics to Gameplay.

[Unibot III]

So I want to comment here about the “gameplay activity is player-driven, not admin-driven” attitude some have presented here - forgive the academic lecture.

My theory for a long time now is that Gameplay reaches a political equilibrium after about three-six years after a big external shock - those shocks have included administrative changes, server disruptions, moderation changes and decisions, new moderator appointments, and major population influxes - much of the activity and innovation in Gameplay is motivated by extraordinary circumstances which encourage adaption, responses, and exploitation of these external events and changes to NationStates. When the server is largely disruption-free and systemic changes are limited, activity in NationStates Gameplay slowly gravitates towards what I call a “perfunctory zero” - the necessary internal activity required to maintain (rather than evolve or revolutionize) the institutions within the status quo. This happens in part because political actors have a rational, immeadite incentive to work towards achieving an equilibrium, it’s a comfortable, stable political environment, plus it’s also a geopolitical stalemate of sorts - the natural balance of things.

I think this perspective is well supported by NS History, but I won’t belabour you by rehashing old lectures, except to say virtually all activity booms are not directed by players themselves.

Another way to say this is that stability is a rational end for individual players, but a collective action problem for Gameplay at large.

I also believe that a number of game changes, dozens even, over the years have unintentionally increased the means of defense for a region, making regimes more stable. I discussed this in a late essay here. The main takeaway from that essay here is that as changes to the game have been made, the effect has been that Gameplay ‘metabolizes’ internal events and shocks faster than before - players can’t really create an effective disequilibrium for very long even if they coordinate a manufactured crisis (which has happened a lot.) That also means that Gameplay has become more dependent on externalities for activity rather than less.

For this reason, I don’t see anything wrong with arguing for administrative intervention to ‘spice things up’ - that’s virtually the only way Gameplay has ever survived. This isn’t a new, unprecedented situation. My preference is to see the SC powers expanded, the means of defense throttled back a bit, and a new set of GCRs. I’m in favour of the more complicated Venter proposal rather than additional feeders because I think the added complexity - that is, the necessity of interaction and dependence between GCRs inherent in the design - works to keep the arrangement from stabilizing and reaching an equilibrium as soon as it would if they were just normal feeders.

[Cormactopia Prime]

There will be 2 weeks, maybe a month, of frantic activity in Gameplay when new GCRs are created. You’ve seen the story play out with Osiris and Balder. The existing elite will rush for the new GCRs. Raiders/Imps will lock down their new GCRs with crazy low endcaps and closed communities run by and for their elite class. The other GCRs, even if they’re democracies, will immediately implement the security council model and lock down the regions that way. There will be no dynamism whatsoever after those systems are implemented. And the same people currently running all the GCRs are going to be running the new ones, the same way they’re running the current ones too.

I can’t really see what’s fun about that, really. In the long run, things will be the same as they are. The problem isn’t the mechanics of the game. It’s the people who play it. We’d just end up with more (literally) of the same.

If there was some way to ensure that nobody currently involved in Gameplay was allowed to pile and control new GCRs, then maybe it would actually introduce some new dynamics to Gameplay.

You're simply wrong here. Yes, a lot of the same gameplayers would still be involved, but that doesn't mean nothing new and interesting would happen. We could see new and interesting developments in the relationship between the new Feeders and existing regions, in the forms of government they adopt, in the alliances they pursue, in the changes to the balance of power they facilitate. We could see newer players, or even older ones, who have never had the opportunity to lead a Feeder or Sinker, and maybe never will because of how long it takes to advance in the existing GCRs, able to lead one of the new Feeders. We could see a new generation of leaders doing things that could surprise us. We won't know unless we try.

You keep referencing the creation of Balder and Osiris as evidence in support of your argument, but only one of those regions really supports your argument in any meaningful way. Balder stabilized relatively quickly after its creation, but Osiris took at least two years -- and maybe five years, depending on your perspective -- to completely stabilize. In the course of those years, Osiris' instability, or "growing pains" if you'd prefer to use a more polite term, provided a lot of opportunities for gameplay excitement. I'm not just talking about the coups either. Osiris went from being neutral in its early days to leaning defender from early 2012 until mid-2013 to leaning toward imperialists after mid-2013 and then finally becoming a raider region. All of that impacted gameplay and made for some interesting foreign affairs situations. And that impact was sustained over at least two years, not a few weeks or months.

The other thing you're not taking into account is that Balder and Osiris were just two Sinkers. Sinkers are less gameside active than Feeders due to receiving respawning nations rather than newly spawned nations. With five new Feeders, I think we would see a much more dynamic race for control of each of them, because existing gameplay forces might be able to pile one or two of them (as with Balder and Osiris) -- but not all five. Now, in all likelihood you're right, and existing gameplayers will end up leading these regions. But I think in a lot of cases it will end up being existing gameplayers who aren't part of the elite status quo in the current GCRs. I think you'll see people like Glacikaldr, Souls, Manson, McChimp, and well, maybe me!, running one of the new Feeders, and I think that would indisputably be a good thing because you're looking at active players who want to do new things and make an impact, not entrenched Feeder elites who just want to keep things the same and hold another off-site festival. We need new ideas and new situations to keep things fresh.

You're saying this won't change anything, so why bother? I'm saying it could change something, so let's give it a shot. What's the downside for the game?

[Drop Your Pants]

I mean, that's why this discussion is happening at all - feeders are the main hubs of activity at the moment, so gameplayers want it to at least be interesting if things continue that way.

Or you could do what a lot of GPers do, get involved in a GCR instead of sitting on the sidelines complaining about how it's unfair or boring.

[Cormactopia Prime]

I mean, that's why this discussion is happening at all - feeders are the main hubs of activity at the moment, so gameplayers want it to at least be interesting if things continue that way.

Or you could do what a lot of GPers do, get involved in a GCR instead of sitting on the sidelines complaining about how it's unfair or boring.

It's pretty difficult to get involved in GCRs these days, to be honest. Most of them are controlled by small oligarchies who are fine with letting players get involved at low levels, but have no intention of letting them advance into leadership roles, especially if they might bring new ideas to the table or rock the boat in any way. Current GCR leaders are so interested in preserving their power that they have no interest in doing anything new or different, including letting anyone new or different into leadership roles. This is as true of the democratic GCRs as it is of the Delegate-led GCRs.

Just look at the recent Delegate election in TRR as an example. There was a full slate of newer players with new energy and interesting ideas, but who was elected Delegate? Frattastan, a dinosaur, who joins his fellow dinosaurs Aleisyr, Tsunamy, Neenee, and Solorni. Something has to give. We're depriving a new generation of players, as well as older players who never got the chance, of making an impact on this game and moving it toward a new and more active era. We're so focused on keeping everything the same that we're boring ourselves into not even having an actual game anymore. Players either aren't willing to correct this or lack the means to correct it, so it's time for admins to intervene to provide a more interesting gameplay atmosphere.

[Unibot III]

I’ll also point out that while Balder stabilized quickly, its introduction had a very long term impact on Gameplay as a new “imperialist” GCR. It created tension ‘within’ the imperial-sphere (Albion) and outside that sphere as an established political entity: when the PRL was founded and kicked out imperialists, it brought Lazarus into the FRA/LKE war and sparked the Cold War. If there hadn’t been an imperialist sinker, the geopolitical reaction to the PRL would have been way more muted. It’s also probable that the Pan-Sinker Accord wouldn’t have collapsed. And the Khanate wouldn’t have recieved support from Balder (which was, at the end of the day, petty revenge for the PRL.)

Whether Balder stabilized or not is irrelevant to whether it contributed waves of disequilibrium that followed its creation - it’s ‘how’ it stabilized not ‘whether’ it stabilized that determined how it affected future events: you can’t drop a rock in a pond without making waves.