[Proposal] More Feeders

[Mallorea and Riva]

We have discussed the possibility of adding more feeders.

I think there's a fair bit of support for having more places that nations can spawn, but there's some question about how to do it -- new feeders or open up the possibility for nations to spawn in UCRs, how many feeders if we do feeders, etc. -- and it may take some time before [v] finds the time to actually do anything with any of these ideas.

Bumping this thread because, beyond this post, there was never any acknowledgment this proposal had gotten administrative attention or was being considered and it's now been more than two and a half years since it was posted with no acknowledgment or action. Was the idea ruled out? Is it still waiting to be implemented? Given this thread had eight pages of player feedback and this is an idea that has come up again and again over the years, it would be good to have admin input.

Aside from that, I'd like to note that the Feeders' size and power hasn't decreased from the OP's analysis. What has changed is that even more of gameplay and even more WA voting power has been consolidated in the Feeders. The population ranges Souls mentioned have increased for the three Feeders that don't regularly eject nations, and The North Pacific is now approaching the 10K nation mark. Despite some suggesting that Feeder Delegate endorsement counts always wax and wane, if you take a look at Souls' stats and where Feeder Delegates are now, you see remarkable stability in those numbers for the most part from two and a half years ago.

One of the arguments against the addition of new Feeders was that UCRs were still able to remain competitive if they tried really hard, but you've seen across the board decreases in UCR populations so that now you have regions like Europeia that once hovered just above or below 1,000 nations slipping to a population of 753. 10000 Islands is now the only UCR that isn't a puppet dump with a population above 1K, meaning you have one Feeder that is on the brink of 10K nations, two above 8K, and only one UCR that is above 1K with most far below 10000 Islands as the population outlier. That is a gross imbalance, and though the imbalance isn't entirely reflected in WA voting strength with some UCRs retaining more WA voting power than some Sinkers, that number is constantly dwindling. The mentions made two and a half years ago that 10000 Islands' Delegate once had more than 1K endorsements and could again at some point would be absolutely laughable today.

I believe what has also changed in the past two and a half years is a recognition by more gameplayers that this part of the game has badly stagnated, so I expect you would see even greater support among gameplayers today for the idea of adding more Feeders both for the dynamism it would bring to gameplay overall and the degree to which diluting Feeder power and influence might help UCRs be relevant again. I don't know what kind of toll the size of the Feeders might be taking on the servers, but that might be a consideration as well. I'd like to get a discussion going on this again and hopefully hear from an admin this time.

I'm glad you bumped this. Your post, by sheer coincidence, came within a few minutes of a post of mine behind the scenes on this exact topic.

So yes, this is something that we're looking into, and we're aware of the valuable input in this thread. That's not a guarantee that "more Feeders" will necessarily happen (though we are looking at it!), but we are critically examining solutions to the GCR issues you identify above. It may be that a series of changes (of which more Feeders could be a part) will be the end result, but in the meantime nudging this for additional feedback is appreciated.

Let's do our best to avoid the vitriol associated with the "this is a UCR/GCR/Codger plot to [insert nefarious gameplay purpose here] at the expense of [everyone else]" back and forth which will inevitably creep into the discussion to some extent.

[Zukchiva]

Personally, I am in support of more Feeders.

It's clear that the # of WAs are growing in Feeders whilst UCRs mostly remain same numbers. Personally believe this isn't good as it should be more easily possible for UCRs to be closer to the levels of Feeders, like some are for Sinkers right now. Also don't really like five regions always holding dominance over everything simply due to their mechanics, but that's just me. While it's true Feeders would probably still hold that dominance even if there's more of them, at least that dominance would be lessened considerably as Souls said in the OP.

Although I would ofc hope that any changes don't make Feeders smaller than Sinkers. I personally prefer Feeders stable and less-likely to be couped and Sinker-level-WA-#s seems good enough for that xD.

That being said, I do agree that other changes will be needed as I don't think solely making new Feeders will resolve the statistical trends on this matter. It's possible we'll be back here again in X decades saying the Feeders are too big again. I don't have any ideas on how to fix this, although recruitment reform would probably help- although I have no idea what said reform would look like.

[The Python]

Yes yes yes.

We need new feeders, they have grown too large compared to the sinkers.

Also there hasn't been that much gameplay drama in ages (for example, the last GCR coup was in 2019). This will hopefully also bring new activity.

[Bormiar]

One of the arguments against the addition of new Feeders was that UCRs were still able to remain competitive if they tried really hard, but you've seen across the board decreases in UCR populations so that now you have regions like Europeia that once hovered just above or below 1,000 nations slipping to a population of 753. 10000 Islands is now the only UCR that isn't a puppet dump with a population above 1K, meaning you have one Feeder that is on the brink of 10K nations, two above 8K, and only one UCR that is above 1K with most far below 10000 Islands as the population outlier. That is a gross imbalance, and though the imbalance isn't entirely reflected in WA voting strength with some UCRs retaining more WA voting power than some Sinkers, that number is constantly dwindling. The mentions made two and a half years ago that 10000 Islands' Delegate once had more than 1K endorsements and could again at some point would be absolutely laughable today..

Why is this the case? Is it telegram rules? Have GCRs just gotten too good at keeping their WAs?

Because GCRs are forced to survive through however many regimes may take control, it seems clear that eventually they will reach a stable regime that may stay forever. Creating more feeders would certainly be fun and a decent fix, but I think the better one would be to boost the power of UCRs by some measure (and I know people have been discussing this for a while).

That being said, if that's not possible, I'm wholeheartedly in support of this.

[Galiantus III]

@Cormac

Thanks for bumping this. I just skimmed this whole thread yesterday because it does a good job formalizing the problems we see in gameplay.

---

My first concern when discussing adding new feeders and/or sinkers is the inability of our system to expand and contract as needed to maintain interesting gameplay. The existing system is static, rather than dynamic, and this is why we will always come crawling back to technical when things stabilize in a configuration we don't like. Yes, we could add one or two feeders now, but what will happen several years from now? Someone will inevitably come back to technical either saying "the existing feeders are struggling, remove the feeders you added" or "the feeders have again grown too large, please add more". If we're going to address this problem, we need to do it in a way that totally removes the need for admin intervention.

If we add new feeders in any quantity, I suggest we do it a bit differently: add new GCRs with the potential to become feeders, but which only become feeders when the state of existing feeders go outside defined boundaries. Admin would create several of these "neo-feeders", and then the number of feeders would fluctuate in response to feeder power. If feeders become "too powerful", one of these regions would become a feeder to help balance things. If feeders become "too weak", the weakest feeder reverts to a "neo-feeder". Thus at no point in the future would we come to admin begging for change one way or the other, since the number of feeders would be defined by gameplay and site popularity.

[Old Hope]

One of the arguments against the addition of new Feeders was that UCRs were still able to remain competitive if they tried really hard, but you've seen across the board decreases in UCR populations so that now you have regions like Europeia that once hovered just above or below 1,000 nations slipping to a population of 753. 10000 Islands is now the only UCR that isn't a puppet dump with a population above 1K, meaning you have one Feeder that is on the brink of 10K nations, two above 8K, and only one UCR that is above 1K with most far below 10000 Islands as the population outlier. That is a gross imbalance, and though the imbalance isn't entirely reflected in WA voting strength with some UCRs retaining more WA voting power than some Sinkers, that number is constantly dwindling. The mentions made two and a half years ago that 10000 Islands' Delegate once had more than 1K endorsements and could again at some point would be absolutely laughable today..

Why is this the case? Is it telegram rules? Have GCRs just gotten too good at keeping their WAs?

Because GCRs are forced to survive through however many regimes may take control, it seems clear that eventually they will reach a stable regime that may stay forever. Creating more feeders would certainly be fun and a decent fix, but I think the better one would be to boost the power of UCRs by some measure (and I know people have been discussing this for a while).

That being said, if that's not possible, I'm wholeheartedly in support of this.

All people who decide to join the region game not immediately(e.g. initial issues players) will have a high chance to stay in the GCR because they turned recruitment off. And that's more people than you'd think. And people who do decide to join the region game will notice - hey, I just need to stay in this region because that's where nearly all the action is anyways! And most importantly, many people will try to stay in the GCR's precisely because they want to test how this region game works, in a big active region.... and many never move away.
The overwhelming outrage about the idea makes clear that banning WA nations in regions with founders won't happen. This is probably the best idea because we do NOT want nations to spawn in inactive regions either...

[Comfed]

Just tossing some names out there in keeping with the oceanic theme:
The Northeast Pacific
The Northwest Pacific
The Southeast Pacific
The Southwest Pacific
The Comfed Pacific
The North Atlantic
The South Atlantic
The West Atlantic
The East Atlantic
The Atlantic
The North Sea
The South Sea
The West Sea
The East Sea
The Sea

[ShrewLlamaLand]

Current feeders are definitely too large, especially TNP.

This would be a very positive change both in terms of gameplay, and addressing the massive influence of feeder delegates.

Also there hasn't been that much gameplay drama in ages (for example, the last GCR coup was in 2019). This will hopefully also bring new activity.

Once potential new feeder regions have stabilised, I don't think that just adding more feeders will necessarily result in more regional instability, or a massively increased number of GCR coups. If coups were limited simply by the large size of GCRs, we'd see many more sinker coups as they're much smaller regions (and we don't).

This is more of a gameplay issue: while trying to pull off a coup is hard, the issue is more that people tend not to like it when you try.

Just tossing some names out there in keeping with the oceanic theme:
The North Atlantic
The South Atlantic
The West Atlantic
The East Atlantic
The Atlantic

Agreed with this suggestion, I think a simple doubling of the number of the feeders with a naming theme "The xxx Atlantic" would work nicely.

[Kylia Quilor]

More Feeders would be very interesting. I've supported the idea for a long time.

[Islands Of Ventro]

I think that there should not be more pacifics (name whise) A community vote on these sort of things would be fun. Like doing it for a even and then revealing the region at the end and people can fight for power of it.

[Traden]

Here are my ideas:

Colovia
Argenguay
Lanibia
Sriy Darka

[The Python]

Also there hasn't been that much gameplay drama in ages (for example, the last GCR coup was in 2019). This will hopefully also bring new activity.

Once potential new feeder regions have stabilised, I don't think that just adding more feeders will necessarily result in more regional instability, or a massively increased number of GCR coups. If coups were limited simply by the large size of GCRs, we'd see many more sinker coups as they're much smaller regions (and we don't).

This is more of a gameplay issue: while trying to pull off a coup is hard, the issue is more that people tend not to like it when you try.

New feeders will create some drama and activity while they stabilise for the first ~2 weeks.

Agreed with this suggestion, I think a simple doubling of the number of the feeders with a naming theme "The xxx Atlantic" would work nicely.

If the amount of feeders was doubled, then while WA endoes between feeders and sinkers will probably be more equal, the net size of TNP would be less than the smallest sinker now so...

[Altmoras]

From a game balance perspective something needs to change, The Feeders have done nothing but grow over the past decade and they're unlikely to ever shrink. Either admin needs to revitalize the recruitment system and make it a lot easier for new nations to find UCRs they might be interested in, or we need new feeders, the latter is certainly the simpler solution.

[Lord Dominator]

Firstly, raw population count isn’t the most useful point of comparison in any case - WA is more indicative both of actual people and how retention efforts are going.

If we were to make more Feeders, I believe it’d be more reasonable to more than double the current number. A pure doubling would have TNP at somewhere over 500 endos on the delegate, assuming a pure drop-off in endos (and after a probably long and slow decline in numbers). A tripling would by the same presumption leave TNP at around the same place as XKI, which I think we can reasonably agree is the UCR best at recruiting and retention, going by their numbers. I think it’s fairly reasonable to suggest that Feeders (and the Sinkers, to a lesser extent) peak at around the same WA power/population with their best efforts as the similar best efforts in the UCRs, if we wish to go that route.

On a different note, I have been a low key proponent of many more Feeder than that (20 or 25 total) as a method of more or less allowing each existing Gameplay group of some significance to have their own (with some extras I believe), in order to bypass existing problems the current recruitment system has in the tragedy of the commons area.

Regardless, if more Feeders were to be added in numbers greater than 1, I strongly recommend they be all at once (to avoid a single currently dominant group or groups from taking them all), and possibly with a known time of start to enable the same kind of faction efforts we get N-Day (as an example).

Tl;dr -
1. Tripling Feeder numbers probably brings in peak Feeder efforts in line with peak UCR efforts

2. Quadrupling or septupling Feeder numbers could hypothetically enable a complete switch of Gameplay regions to Feeders

3. Simultaneous release of new Feeders ensures a diversity in short-term control, having a known release time enables N-Day style politics (if a small number are created, immediate politics reduces inversely to new Feeders).

[Kylia Quilor]

I think Feeders should always be bigger than UCRs, that's just the nature of the beast, but they shouldn't be as much bigger, so I disagree with the idea that we need to somehow have TNP be at the same level as 10KI

[Old Hope]

I think Feeders should always be bigger than UCRs, that's just the nature of the beast, but they shouldn't be as much bigger, so I disagree with the idea that we need to somehow have TNP be at the same level as 10KI

TNP? No. Definitely not. I agree there.
But the feeder with the lowest endorsements, The Pacific, an autocratic region condemned by the Security Council ;with a delegate that does not really hunt endorsements, has a bit more than the UCR with the highest endorsements, Europe, which constantly puts effort into this.

[New Jacobland]

I think Feeders should always be bigger than UCRs, that's just the nature of the beast, but they shouldn't be as much bigger, so I disagree with the idea that we need to somehow have TNP be at the same level as 10KI

TNP? No. Definitely not. I agree there.
But the feeder with the lowest endorsements, The Pacific, an autocratic region condemned by the Security Council ;with a delegate that does not really hunt endorsements, has a bit more than the UCR with the highest endorsements, Europe, which constantly puts effort into this.

Not for long...

[Galiantus III]

Creating more feeders would certainly be fun and a decent fix, but I think the better one would be to boost the power of UCRs by some measure (and I know people have been discussing this for a while).

Either admin needs to revitalize the recruitment system and make it a lot easier for new nations to find UCRs they might be interested in, or we need new feeders, the latter is certainly the simpler solution.

I'm curious what specific changes to UCRs or recruitment either of you would suggest (if new feeders wasn't an option).

@Lord Dominator:

While I like the idea of having lots of feeders for the purpose of gameplay, I also like having large feeders for the sake of new players' experience. Before we determine how many GCRs to add, we need to have a good idea about the ideal feeder size (by WA population, of course).

[Altmoras]

Creating more feeders would certainly be fun and a decent fix, but I think the better one would be to boost the power of UCRs by some measure (and I know people have been discussing this for a while).

Either admin needs to revitalize the recruitment system and make it a lot easier for new nations to find UCRs they might be interested in, or we need new feeders, the latter is certainly the simpler solution.

I'm curious what specific changes to UCRs or recruitment either of you would suggest (if new feeders wasn't an option).

A "find a region" page that is prominently advertised to new players and allows you to select things you're interested in (gameplay, roleplay, democracy, NS Sports, monarchism, leftism, w/e) and be shown recruitment messages from regions that fit those criteria. Right now the recruitment you see is just a random sample of the first X messages that make it into queue before you get annoyed and block them, with no regard for what you actually give a crap about.

I think Feeders should always be bigger than UCRs, that's just the nature of the beast, but they shouldn't be as much bigger, so I disagree with the idea that we need to somehow have TNP be at the same level as 10KI

If 5 new feeders were added I don't think we'd see the existing feeders shrink to the current size of XKI in terms of WAs. The average feeder WA population is currently 926, which is more than double XKI's 454. Creating 5 new feeders would theoretically reduce the growth of each existing feeder by 50%, however that is simply a reduction on growth and not the existing legacy population the current 5 feeders have built up over the last 18 years. Lazarus saw its growth reduced to 1/3rd nearly a decade ago and it still enjoys a ~26% size advantage over the other two refounders by virtue of age. The new feeders might be around the size of XKI/TCB/Europe, but even they would probably grow past the big UCRs given enough time and no changes to the tragedy of the commons that is the current recruitment system.

[Lord Dominator]

Creating more feeders would certainly be fun and a decent fix, but I think the better one would be to boost the power of UCRs by some measure (and I know people have been discussing this for a while).

Either admin needs to revitalize the recruitment system and make it a lot easier for new nations to find UCRs they might be interested in, or we need new feeders, the latter is certainly the simpler solution.

I'm curious what specific changes to UCRs or recruitment either of you would suggest (if new feeders wasn't an option).

@Lord Dominator:

While I like the idea of having lots of feeders for the purpose of gameplay, I also like having large feeders for the sake of new players' experience. Before we determine how many GCRs to add, we need to have a good idea about the ideal feeder size (by WA population, of course).

I offer multiple suggestions on the number of new Feeders for precisely the reason of determining size - 5 covers mild reduction, 10 covers the more drastic equaling proposal, and 15/20 is my proposal for very drastic changes.

[Comfed]

Adding more feeders won't magically make the current feeders smaller instantly, by the way - it would take some time for the new feeders to be roughly equal to the current feeders, especially because they've got the advantage of an established government.

[Galiantus III]

A "find a region" page that is prominently advertised to new players and allows you to select things you're interested in (gameplay, roleplay, democracy, NS Sports, monarchism, leftism, w/e) and be shown recruitment messages from regions that fit those criteria. Right now the recruitment you see is just a random sample of the first X messages that make it into queue before you get annoyed and block them, with no regard for what you actually give a crap about.

That would be great! I'd like to see a topic on it.

Adding more feeders won't magically make the current feeders smaller instantly, by the way - it would take some time for the new feeders to be roughly equal to the current feeders, especially because they've got the advantage of an established government.

If anything, the most desirable situation would be a wider range of feeder sizes. Some large and stable, some "small" (for a feeder) and tumultuous. This diversity would be a good thing.

[Fauxia]

Adding more feeders won't magically make the current feeders smaller instantly, by the way - it would take some time for the new feeders to be roughly equal to the current feeders, especially because they've got the advantage of an established government.

It would be better to stagger them, most likely, probably two at a time for optimum conflict. But the moment anyone notices a new feeder exists, people would start pouring into the region looking to take it over. That's the nature of gameplay.

[The Python]

Adding more feeders won't magically make the current feeders smaller instantly, by the way - it would take some time for the new feeders to be roughly equal to the current feeders, especially because they've got the advantage of an established government.

It would be better to stagger them, most likely, probably two at a time for optimum conflict. But the moment anyone notices a new feeder exists, people would start pouring into the region looking to take it over. That's the nature of gameplay.

When the original feeders were created, they were not all created at the same time, so I imagine admins would create each new feeder at different times, especially if it's more than like 2.

[Refuge Isle]

I've been interested in the power imbalance between UCRs and GCRs for a while now, and have been doing data processing in that area for the last several weeks to figure out how it went from what I remember in 2012 up to the way things are now.

Feeders can be powerful, sure, and not every UCR is going to be a strong, competent region, throwing loads of effort into recruitment and development. For those that do, UCR superdelegates are more or less where they were ten years ago, while feeders continue to consolidate power. This is despite the total number of World Assembly nations continuing to climb. It's hard for me to guess what the total effect on more feeders would be. Likely, it may become much harder for power to collect, as it has been, by the nature of having more spawn options. Perhaps that would make it less likely for feeders to luck into power-players that carry those regions by rule of large numbers. Perhaps that's enough. I suspect not, though.

Looking at endorsement numbers over time, power has continued to accumulate in feeders regardless of leadership or government style. Over all the diversity of events, systems, personalities, screw ups, and innovations, the trend continues in the same direction. That, to me, is more indicative of a problem with the system beyond just the number of feeders. Especially when, all the while, the total volume of minor delegates has continued to drop.

I suspect that an increase in feeders, while helpful, would only be a temporary bandage. Something more comprehensive in the realm of recruitment needs to be done as well, but this is not the thread for those solution ideas. There is likely more we can glean from data rather than just acting on what feels right. I still support the idea of more feeders either way.

I think Feeders should always be bigger than UCRs, that's just the nature of the beast, but they shouldn't be as much bigger, so I disagree with the idea that we need to somehow have TNP be at the same level as 10KI

Context is everything. For a general statement of "should a region be able to command 1,100 votes on the delegate and 2,500 WA nations in a region?" No, I don't really feel that's ideal for the general health and diversity of the game. For a question of "should XKI be larger in WAs than TNP?" the answer is really "well, they used to be. For years, in fact." Changes in XKI's government and changes in telegram system hit the region hard, and feeders aren't as undeveloped sluggish as they used to be. So the dynamic is now different, and the average feeder is now no longer the size of the average UCR superdelegate. That's no indication of what is good or right, however.