[Proposal] More Feeders

[Weed]

What exactly do you think GCR stands for?

In context of this thread 8 was the right number (I used 9 initially and changed it to 8 later on). Or you'd use 15, as warzones are all GCRs. TRR doesn't have nations spawning in it, so isn't relevant as such to the thread more so than other UCRs for region comparison.

It does have a sustainable source of new members that has historically been recruited from, and is also (at least again from my memory) seeming to keep a larger share of them than it did once upon a time.

The fact we don't call that source 'spawning' or some variation of it doesn't seem that important.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

As visible in my chart on page one, TRR fits right in with the other sinkers in terms of endorsement “activity”/“power.” There’s no reason to degrade it by excluding it.

[Jar Wattinree]

These are the players who make up the majority of the arguments against this proposal.

Every single one of them is entrenched in an existing feeder. Their recruitment base and WA voting power would be significantly reduced if it were implemented.

THEIR CRITICISM OF THIS PROPOSAL COULD NOT POSSIBLY BE OBJECTIVE.

It's really, really hard not to exist as either a feederite or a userite in this game. And yes, since this is an inherently politically motivated proposal (more feeders = new potential raider recruitment grounds), it is a matter of course that those who would be most affected by it would be most vehemently against it. And, objective? Please, like you are one to talk, former Wolfist Lazarene.

[Frisbeeteria]

It's really, really hard not to exist as either a feederite or a userite in this game.

Maybe from your perspective.

I've never considered myself either one. I think there are more players like me than you might guess. People who consider it important are very vocal about it. People who aren't vocal about the differences probably don't care at all. That probably applies to most issue answerers, RMB roleplayers, Generalites, F7 posters, etc. I suspect the people who don't care vastly outnumber the people who do.

[Jar Wattinree]

It's really, really hard not to exist as either a feederite or a userite in this game.

Maybe from your perspective.

I've never considered myself either one. I think there are more players like me than you might guess. People who consider it important are very vocal about it. People who aren't vocal about the differences probably don't care at all. That probably applies to most issue answerers, RMB roleplayers, Generalites, F7 posters, etc. I suspect the people who don't care vastly outnumber the people who do.

Well... I was speaking from a Gameplay perspective. That's basically the bulk of the arguments here, that this is bad from a Gameplay viewpoint. From a technical viewpoint, I am guessing, "more feeders" is unneeded because there's no pressing reason for them like when Balder and Osiris had to be made to relieve Lazarus, unless maybe if there are several consecutive reddit and imgur booms in a month or so...

[Cormactopia Prime]

Please, like you are one to talk, former Wolfist Lazarene.

Can you stop? This isn't the Gameplay forum. This is Technical, where we discuss the merits of a proposal from a standpoint of what's best for the overall game, not engage in petty, partisan smear campaigns. If members of The Pacific can't manage to do that in Technical perhaps you should abstain.

[Jar Wattinree]

Please, like you are one to talk, former Wolfist Lazarene.

Can you stop? This isn't the Gameplay forum. This is Technical, where we discuss the merits of a proposal from a standpoint of what's best for the overall game, not engage in petty, partisan smear campaigns. If members of The Pacific can't manage to do that in Technical perhaps you should abstain.

From a technical viewpoint [...] "more feeders" is unneeded because there's no pressing reason for them like when Balder and Osiris had to be made to relieve Lazarus, unless maybe if there are several consecutive reddit and imgur booms in a month or so.

I see no merits from a purely and totally technical standpoint.

[Cormactopia Prime]

Can you stop? This isn't the Gameplay forum. This is Technical, where we discuss the merits of a proposal from a standpoint of what's best for the overall game, not engage in petty, partisan smear campaigns. If members of The Pacific can't manage to do that in Technical perhaps you should abstain.

From a technical viewpoint [...] "more feeders" is unneeded because there's no pressing reason for them like when Balder and Osiris had to be made to relieve Lazarus, unless maybe if there are several consecutive reddit and imgur booms in a month or so.

I see no merits from a purely and totally technical standpoint.

This isn't about "a purely and totally technical standpoint" either. I realize, as a member of The Pacific, that you're accustomed to doing whatever you're told and thus you're not accustomed to critical thinking, but try to follow what I'm saying here. This is about what's best for the overall game, including what's best for gameplay overall (and not just your corner of it), which goes beyond a merely technical discussion of whether the server requires more Feeders. The discussion is over whether gameplay would be less stale and more dynamic with more Feeders. Now, I realize The Pacific likes its gameplay stale and boring, hence Krulltopia and Aleisyr, but some of us would prefer to actually have a semi-exciting game to log into every once in a while.

It would be nice if we could discuss what's best for the game instead of smearing each other based on gameplay affiliation, wouldn't it? Personally I would have liked to have not spent the above paragraph ripping The Pacific, but if that's how you folks insist on conducting yourselves, I can do it too.

[Flanderlion]

This is about what's best for the overall game, including what's best for gameplay overall (and not just your corner of it), which goes beyond a merely technical discussion of whether the server requires more Feeders. The discussion is over whether gameplay would be less stale and more dynamic with more Feeders.

No, the discussion is whether the game as a whole would be better off. Gameplay is a small part of it, not the whole thing.

You could achieve the goals without harming the game, which this one would do.

Edit: Cormac edited his post, so included quote on what it was referring to.

[Cormactopia Prime]

No, the discussion is whether the game as a whole would be better off. Gameplay is a small part of it, not the whole thing.

You could achieve the goals without harming the game, which this one would do.

How would this harm the game? A slight inconvenience to the tiny minority of gameplayers who participate in the Feeders isn't harm to the game.

[Klaus Devestatorie]

The issue for me is more this: The feeders are more or less where you'd like them to be in terms of activity. Any less and I think we'll start going back to the days of "boring feeders that don't do anything", which was pretty common until a few years ago. (A certain feeder had very close to no government or military activity for years - really.)

Which is not to say that maybe more feeders could be a good idea, but I'm not sure that it'll really have the desired effect. Potentially a (maybe even strong) positive payoff, but for me there's too much of a risk of a negative payoff, I think.

I'd prefer to focus on whether there isn't enough UCR activity at the moment, and the underlying reasons for that. My personal opinion (which at some point should probably be tested against the evidence) is that the abundance of recruitment (i) Spread nations out too thinly; (ii) Makes new nations stay in feeders due to being bombarded with TGs.

To me, the obvious solution is to abolish stamps. But if anyone has alternative ideas on why UCRs appear to have gotten somewhat more stale (in general! please don't @ me with "there are some really exciting UCRs out there!"), and how to fix it, please do.

There's plenty of UCR activity and plenty of big active UCRs... but if you go take a look, you'll notice that there's significantly fewer of those UCRs involved in what we'd call "gameplay" compared to old times. Part of that is that R/D just stopped being interesting or worth participating in, and part of that is that most of the people really interested in Gameplay politics all wound up going to GCRs.

[Jar Wattinree]

I see no merits from a purely and totally technical standpoint.

This isn't about "a purely and totally technical standpoint" either. I realize, as a member of The Pacific, that you're accustomed to doing whatever you're told and thus you're not accustomed to critical thinking, but try to follow what I'm saying here. This is about what's best for the overall game, including what's best for gameplay overall (and not just your corner of it), which goes beyond a merely technical discussion of whether the server requires more Feeders. The discussion is over whether gameplay would be less stale and more dynamic with more Feeders. Now, I realize The Pacific likes its gameplay stale and boring, but some of us would prefer to actually have a semi-exciting game to log into every once in a while.

So... Gameplay?

Suddenly your previous comments lose their meaning. On the one hand, you are saying this should be Technical only. Next, you're saying that it is also Gameplay.

So, to reiterate previous arguments -- like a good Pacifican drone -- adding more feeders won't solve the problems you see because there are none except for invented Gameplay (!!!) problems of the moment, and in a year at the most these new feeders will be stale and boring like the current ones -- and bolstering the power of userite regions that have captured them. There is a reason why the Pacific is the only natural-born community, all of the others have had people enter and try and take over from the onsite instead of letting the unique players who spawn in them form their own organic communities to actively engage in Gameplay in new and different ways.

Oh, wait, that's not what is really going to happen. Cf. Balder and Osiris' creation.

Besides, there is much, much more to NS than just boring old Gameplay -- take a gander down in Forum 7, or post in Arts and Fiction, or maybe take up some roleplaying. Then the game can be exciting for you. More feeders won't give you that excitement, only a temporary one. What you see is staleness, and that is largely of your own making, of your own specialization into Gameplay this and Gameplay that. This applies to all of us Gameplayers posting in this thread.

Me, I'm just content to log into this game and pretend I am a drone in a monolithic government that is so boring and so stale it hasn't seen a single change in many, many years. Not even a good ol' coup. What a boring game.

[The Tri State Area and Maine]

Please, like you are one to talk, former Wolfist Lazarene.

Can you stop? This isn't the Gameplay forum. This is Technical, where we discuss the merits of a proposal from a standpoint of what's best for the overall game, not engage in petty, partisan smear campaigns. If members of The Pacific can't manage to do that in Technical perhaps you should abstain.

This needs to be emphasized. This isn't Gameplay, nobody cares about supposed GCR superiority (which doesn't exist from a Technical standpoint I would assume, and if it did than that's more reason to nerf the individual GCRs.) or Feederites or Userites.This discussion is strictly on whether the game needs 5 more Feeders, and whether it will benefit the game or not.

It's really, really hard not to exist as either a feederite or a userite in this game.

So all of Gameplay is centered around 9 regions? Sounds like a problem to me.

And yes, since this is an inherently politically motivated proposal (more feeders = new potential raider recruitment grounds)

I mean, pretty much everyone can have a new recruitment ground from it. Every group is benefited equally besides GCRs.

Too lazy to respond specifically to the 7 posts that popped up while I was typing this, but adding 5 new GCRs doesn't really effect anyone outside of Gameplay (everyone else does their issue writing, roleplaying, etc, in their own regions.) From a Gameplay standpoint, it benefits Gameplay. If it benefits one group, and the rest don't care either way, it sounds good to me.

[Flanderlion]

No, the discussion is whether the game as a whole would be better off. Gameplay is a small part of it, not the whole thing.

You could achieve the goals without harming the game, which this one would do.

How would this harm the game? A slight inconvenience to the tiny minority of gameplayers who participate in the Feeders isn't harm to the game.

Primarily activity. I've wall of texted a few posts earlier, so not going to tap it out again this time.

People want active RMBs. If the RMB isn't active, they leave either the region or the game. New players not sticking around I'd personally put as fairly harmful for the game.

Doesn't matter how much activity offsite has, because players don't see it/benefit from it. Feeders have just reached the point where gameside activity is beginning to sustain itself, dramatically decreasing it means we'd turn into Sinker like activity, and as I detailed earlier, they're a poster child for what isn't good. RMB is the place where nations ask questions, say hi, or testing, or whatever other first greetings they do.

Just saw there was a few new posts while writing this. This affects far more than just gameplay. New player experience, existing communities, WA are especially affected. Even RPers who RP on RMBs or really anywhere but the NS forums.

[Jar Wattinree]

<snip>

McChimp was talking like a Gameplayer (pointing out that all of the objectors are Gameplaying feederites) so I answered in kind. The entire post was about Gameplay, had Gameplay flavoring, and Gameplay bias, what did you expect?

[Cormactopia Prime]

So... Gameplay?

Suddenly your previous comments lose their meaning. On the one hand, you are saying this should be Technical only. Next, you're saying that it is also Gameplay.

Are you really this dimwitted, or do you just pretend to be for comedic effect? I hope for The Pacific's and the Montresor family's sake it's the latter.

Technical isn't exclusively for discussion of actual technical issues, it's also for discussion of how to improve the game. That kind of discussion isn't always strictly technical. But there is a difference between discussing broader game improvement issues and engaging in partisan politicking and smearing as Pacificans have consistently been doing in this thread. My point isn't that every discussion in Technical needs to be restricted to technical points, but rather that this is not the place for airing petty IC (or OOC for that matter) grievances with Souls or anyone else. It's for discussing the merits of proposals as they would or wouldn't benefit the game. All I'm asking is that you folks restrict yourselves to that instead of attacking people based on where they're from or what you perceive their motivations to be. Then I'll be happy to do the same, as I'm sure everyone else will be.

So, to reiterate previous arguments -- like a good Pacifican drone -- adding more feeders won't solve the problems you see because there are none except for invented Gameplay (!!!) problems of the moment, and in a year at the most these new feeders will be stale and boring like the current ones -- and bolstering the power of userite regions that have captured them. There is a reason why the Pacific is the only natural-born community, all of the others have had people enter and try and take over from the onsite instead of letting the unique players who spawn in them form their own organic communities to actively engage in Gameplay in new and different ways.

Oh, wait, that's not what is really going to happen. C.f. Balder and Osiris' creation.

Besides, there is much, much more to NS than just boring old Gameplay -- take a gander down in Forum 7, or post in Arts and Fiction, or maybe take up some roleplaying. Then the game can be exciting for you. More feeders won't give you that excitement, only a temporary one. What you see is staleness, and that is largely of your own making, of your own specialization into Gameplay this and Gameplay that. This applies to all of us Gameplayers posting in this thread.

I'm not here for F7, Arts and Fiction, or RP. I'm here for GP. If your solution to GP being stale is that everyone should just do something else, you have no solutions and you're just an anti-GPer. You should see yourself out of this conversation since this is a conversation about improving GP.

Me, I'm just content to log into this game and pretend I am a drone in a monolithic government that is so boring and so stale it hasn't seen a single change in many, many years. Not even a good ol' coup.

Which is fine for you, and you'll still be able to do that with more Feeders. Do the rest of us have to be as stale and bored as The Pacific? I realize misery loves company, and The Pacific is surely among the most miserable regions in this game, but the rest of us are here for a fun game.

[Galiantus III]

I'm rather annoyed at this thread. On the one hand, I think it would help the game by inviting more people to participate in gameplay, and I believe all the activity would serve as a nice burst of energy for the whole game. But then there's the side of me that realizes it will only last for a little bit, then things will return to a business as usual, stale game. Those advocating for it are wrong about the good it will do, and those advocating against it are wrong about the bad it will do.

The fact is, your average player isn't going to feel the affects of this at all. The existing feeders are very active, and a small reduction in their total share of new players will hardly affect their numbers. What will affect their numbers is the quality of their retention efforts and their communities, as illustrated by TNP, TEP and TWP. In the short term, the new feeders will displace a lot of gameplayers in existing regions, but their respective powers will eventually be established and stable, with communities of varying degrees of activity. Overall, the population of players in GCRs will probably increase, while the population in UCRs will decrease.

So I view this change as being neutral, but good, if anything. I will support it if it is the only change admin will make, but I fully recognize that it will likely not make much of a difference.

[Jar Wattinree]

So... Gameplay?

Suddenly your previous comments lose their meaning. On the one hand, you are saying this should be Technical only. Next, you're saying that it is also Gameplay.

Technical isn't exclusively for discussion of actual technical issues, it's also for discussion of how to improve the game. That kind of discussion isn't always strictly technical. But there is a difference between discussing broader game improvement issues and engaging in partisan politicking and smearing as Pacificans have consistently been doing in this thread. My point isn't that every discussion in Technical needs to be restricted to technical points, but rather that this is not the place for airing petty IC (or OOC for that matter) grievances with Souls or anyone else. It's for discussing the merits of proposals as they would or wouldn't benefit the game. All I'm asking is that you folks restrict yourselves to that instead of attacking people based on where they're from or what you perceive their motivations to be. Then I'll be happy to do the same, as I'm sure everyone else will be.

Yes, and I have already said that there is no actual benefit to adding new feeders to the game. The arguments for this are interesting, but I, speaking as I myself a player of comedic root, don't find them convincing enough to warrant any change. Not that it matters because I'm not an administrator or a game mod so my opinion shouldn't count anyway except as a player, not a feederite or a Gameplayer.

Next.

So, to reiterate previous arguments -- like a good Pacifican drone -- adding more feeders won't solve the problems you see because there are none except for invented Gameplay (!!!) problems of the moment, and in a year at the most these new feeders will be stale and boring like the current ones -- and bolstering the power of userite regions that have captured them. There is a reason why the Pacific is the only natural-born community, all of the others have had people enter and try and take over from the onsite instead of letting the unique players who spawn in them form their own organic communities to actively engage in Gameplay in new and different ways.

Oh, wait, that's not what is really going to happen. C.f. Balder and Osiris' creation.

Besides, there is much, much more to NS than just boring old Gameplay -- take a gander down in Forum 7, or post in Arts and Fiction, or maybe take up some roleplaying. Then the game can be exciting for you. More feeders won't give you that excitement, only a temporary one. What you see is staleness, and that is largely of your own making, of your own specialization into Gameplay this and Gameplay that. This applies to all of us Gameplayers posting in this thread.

I'm not here for F7, Arts and fiction, or RP. I'm here for GP. If your solution to GP being stale is that everyone should just do something else, you have no solutions and you're just an anti-GPer. You should see yourself out of this conversation since this is a conversation about improving GP.

Likewise. You missed everything you had quoted me saying.

Me, I'm just content to log into this game and pretend I am a drone in a monolithic government that is so boring and so stale it hasn't seen a single change in many, many years. Not even a good ol' coup.

Which is fine for you, and you'll still be able to do that with more Feeders. Do the rest of us have to be as stale and bored as The Pacific? I realize misery loves company, and The Pacific is surely among the most miserable regions in this game, but the rest of us are here for a fun game.

lol I'm no cosmopolitan. I don't need other feeders to stagnant in.

re: fun game. Admin's already doing stuff to make things more fun -- Cards, for instance, not to mention the awesome N-Day and the soon upcoming Z Day -- but new feeders is not something that would benefit the game as a whole. Everything you see is what already exists and will just be repeated once Admin implements these radical and innovative new changes to the game. Surely you of all people see this too, since you are adamant in pointing this out. Why not take the long view and admit that "Hmm, maybe this isn't such a good idea after all".

[The Tri State Area and Maine]

How would this harm the game? A slight inconvenience to the tiny minority of gameplayers who participate in the Feeders isn't harm to the game.

Primarily activity. I've wall of texted a few posts earlier, so not going to tap it out again this time.

People want active RMBs. If the RMB isn't active, they leave either the region or the game. New players not sticking around I'd personally put as fairly harmful for the game.

Doesn't matter how much activity offsite has, because players don't see it/benefit from it. Feeders have just reached the point where gameside activity is beginning to sustain itself, dramatically decreasing it means we'd turn into Sinker like activity, and as I detailed earlier, they're a poster child for what isn't good. RMB is the place where nations ask questions, say hi, or testing, or whatever other first greetings they do.

Just saw there was a few new posts while writing this. This affects far more than just gameplay. New player experience, existing communities, WA are especially affected. Even RPers who RP on RMBs or really anywhere but the NS forums.

Feeders will still have plenty of activity. I don't see how 4,000 nations isn't active enough. Besides, more regions means more options for communities to engage it. World Assembly is probably benefited from the change, and I wasn't aware that regional communities mattered in NS.

[Flanderlion]

Primarily activity. I've wall of texted a few posts earlier, so not going to tap it out again this time.

People want active RMBs. If the RMB isn't active, they leave either the region or the game. New players not sticking around I'd personally put as fairly harmful for the game.

Doesn't matter how much activity offsite has, because players don't see it/benefit from it. Feeders have just reached the point where gameside activity is beginning to sustain itself, dramatically decreasing it means we'd turn into Sinker like activity, and as I detailed earlier, they're a poster child for what isn't good. RMB is the place where nations ask questions, say hi, or testing, or whatever other first greetings they do.

Just saw there was a few new posts while writing this. This affects far more than just gameplay. New player experience, existing communities, WA are especially affected. Even RPers who RP on RMBs or really anywhere but the NS forums.

Feeders will still have plenty of activity. I don't see how 4,000 nations isn't active enough. Besides, more regions means more options for communities to engage it. World Assembly is probably benefited from the change, and I wasn't aware that regional communities mattered in NS.

You would think. And honestly, I think us/TNP/TEP would be fine, and likely TSP as well, as we've all got the critical levels of activity that would take a while to kill the RMB. TWP (was honestly bummed when I checked their RMB and they were the only Feeder without a most in the last hour, even though they've stayed mostly active since then), and the new ones, I've got less faith in. 100% or 80% in an active RMB environment to less than 50%? That's not a good change. It won't obviously mean that everyone who spawns in a region with an inactive RMB will leave, but it increases the likelihood, and a moderate chance of leaving multiplied by thousands equals a problem.

Lazarus at the time of posting this has over 6.4k nations, but no posts within the last hour. Yet there are regions with only a hundred players or so that have the most active RMBs in the game at times. That's why I separate WAs (better metric than raw nations) and activity/community, as although generally similar, there are so many differences. Some regions have had 0 WAs in the past but been incredibly active, while others have many but have low or near 0 activity.

I still think features making GP easier to get into, less destructive and more constructive, and better balancing the WA is better than the brute force idea of making more GCRs, which could have great outcomes for a few, but more likely has bad outcomes for many.

[Wintermoot]

The issue for me is more this: The feeders are more or less where you'd like them to be in terms of activity. Any less and I think we'll start going back to the days of "boring feeders that don't do anything", which was pretty common until a few years ago. (A certain feeder had very close to no government or military activity for years - really.)

Which is not to say that maybe more feeders could be a good idea, but I'm not sure that it'll really have the desired effect. Potentially a (maybe even strong) positive payoff, but for me there's too much of a risk of a negative payoff, I think.

I'd prefer to focus on whether there isn't enough UCR activity at the moment, and the underlying reasons for that. My personal opinion (which at some point should probably be tested against the evidence) is that the abundance of recruitment (i) Spread nations out too thinly; (ii) Makes new nations stay in feeders due to being bombarded with TGs.

To me, the obvious solution is to abolish stamps. But if anyone has alternative ideas on why UCRs appear to have gotten somewhat more stale (in general! please don't @ me with "there are some really exciting UCRs out there!"), and how to fix it, please do.

I remember when stamps came out one of the arguments made in their favor was that it would make the UCRs more competitive in making it easier for new UCRs to recruit up to the level of the largest and most prominent UCRs at the time, but in order to do that it made it so regions didn't have to put in as much work to recruit on par with them. Pre-stamps, the best way to get many nations was to manually recruit, and it took a lot of work and organization to get people to do that in a sustained manner, so most people ended up in regions with active and dedicated communities that had put a lot of work into their regions. I'm not sure that's necessarily the case now. The irony of the whole thing is that many of the largest and most prominent UCRs of that time are the largest and most prominent UCRs of today, showing that it wasn't just the recruitment advantage that made them so prominent to begin with.

Nonetheless, I think things have gone too far in the other direction...the ecosystem isn't large enough to support this much competition, and the net effect is that UCRs end up cannibalizing each other regardless of how much effort they put in to make a great region. I wonder if many would-be founders have decided it's just not worth the work required to make and maintain decently large UCR.

Perhaps the issue isn't with the existence of stamps, but how far they lowered the barrier for a region to sustain constant recruitment. Perhaps if stamps were more expensive, it would raise that barrier up a bit, thus lowering their demand and use while still maintaining a source of income for the game since the raise in price would hopefully make up for the drop in demand.

[Cormactopia Prime]

I wonder if many would-be founders have decided it's just not worth the work required to make and maintain decently large UCR.

The answer to this question is yes. I am one such person, and I've heard the same thing from many other people.

Perhaps the issue isn't with the existence of stamps, but how far they lowered the barrier for a region to sustain constant recruitment. Perhaps if stamps were more expensive, it would raise that barrier up a bit, thus lowering their demand and use while still maintaining a source of income for the game since the raise in price would hopefully make up for the drop in demand.

I don't think this is a good solution to the problem. It would just make the situation even more pay-to-play, as Founders with the means to buy stamps would still buy them, and Founders without the means to buy them would still be at a competitive disadvantage. I would be even less likely to found a region if stamps were more expensive, but still existed, than I am now. But you're 100% right that the new recruitment system is the problem for UCRs.

[Galiantus III]

Nonetheless, I think things have gone too far in the other direction...the ecosystem isn't large enough to support this much competition, and the net effect is that UCRs end up cannibalizing each other regardless of how much effort they put in to make a great region. I wonder if many would-be founders have decided it's just not worth the work required to make and maintain decently large UCR.

Perhaps the issue isn't with the existence of stamps, but how far they lowered the barrier for a region to sustain constant recruitment. Perhaps if stamps were more expensive, it would raise that barrier up a bit, thus lowering their demand and use while still maintaining a source of income for the game since the raise in price would hopefully make up for the drop in demand.

I keep saying this, but what we really need to do is make it harder to found a new region. For someone to found a region they should have a nation with a minimum population, or support from other players, or be a WA member, or something to suggest they have an idea what they are getting into. This would at least raise the caliber of leadership in UCRs by a small amount, and help concentrate players into fewer regions overall.

[Jar Wattinree]

I keep saying this, but what we really need to do is make it harder to found a new region. For someone to found a region they should have a nation with a minimum population, or support from other players, or be a WA member, or something to suggest they have an idea what they are getting into. This would at least raise the caliber of leadership in UCRs by a small amount, and help concentrate players into fewer regions overall.

Minimum population sounds like the easiest solution, like maybe 250 million as a decent limit. Plenty of time for the new nation to pick and choose their new home either in the GCR or whichever attractive UCR telegram pops up. This has the effect of bolstering the WA populations of existing regions, introduces new blood to these communities, and increasing onsite activity in the region. Side effects include: fewer regions being founded and fewer unique communities popping up. But this seems like a fair price to pay.

Lest I forget the other base, gameplay would not be affected since sleepers and puppies are a matter of course for both side of the R/D spectrum, so patience is no big deal to them.

[Frisbeeteria]

what we really need to do is make it harder to found a new region.

Minimum population sounds like the easiest solution

Before you invest in this idea as some sort of solution, I can almost guarantee it won't fly. [v] doesn't like barriers to newbies. Any such program would kill an important special case, Class Regions. The majority of class regions are created by teachers who haven't visit the site before and have only 5 million populations. If we ask them to wait for a month, they'll leave and not come back.

This would at least raise the caliber of leadership in UCRs by a small amount, and help concentrate players into fewer regions overall.

This seems to be a solution in search of a problem. Newbie players who create Hermit regions aren't likely to play well with others regardless of the restrictions you place them. They're not disturbing anyone being off by themselves, are they? At worst, they're creating a few extra pages in the World Census reports, and some few of them may be adding to the level of spam with poor recruiting campaigns. Where is the harm?