[Proposal] More Feeders

[Fauxia]

snip

Thanks for the graphs Luca, very cool to see!

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.

Well, whether GCRs are bigger than the largest UCRs is ultimately decided by the arbitrary mechanics of the game in the first place. Had the admins created many more feeder regions in the first place, it would seem crazy to say "GCRs should be bigger than UCRs".

Not that I think you'd disagree, I'm basically reiterating your point. That said, I don't think the instinct to preserve GCR "superiority" here is a bad one. Turning what has become I think a pretty important gameplay fact on its head would not be a great idea in general. Plus, I'm not sure on a per-nation basis feeders are as active as UCRs. Certainly it is true with the sinkers.

Obviously we'd get used to it if it did change, but I feel like moderation is the way to go here, unless someone can come up with a really strong reason to break that status quo. Personally, I think it's probably good for activity that regions new players spawn in are some of the most active in the game.

[A Bloodred Moon]

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.

Yes and no. A Feeder is inherently a better/more rewarding target than a Sinker, considering it is literally the spawning place for new players. Sinker populations also tend to be less active in my experience. It is also worth considering as to why everyone’s afraid of pulling a coup, earning the opposition of the Feeders. Should their influence be weakened, the game might change to some extent.

Besides, as soon as people notice there are new Feeders there would likely be a struggle between factions over them.

I agree with Alt that more substantial change is needed, but I think adding more Feeders and weakening the current ones would be a positive step. A potential option might be to make all new nations spawn in the new Feeders for a while, thereby ensuring the current Feeders don’t grow (and will hopefully decline in endorsements).

[Bears Armed]

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.

The original feeders were created before large-scale organised raiding/imperialism became a thing.

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 like this idea, a lot (and back when non-manual recruiting was authorised I warned that the potential spamminess of this would probably lead many people to ignore all recruiting attempts...).

[Flanderlion]

I still think the idea of more Feeders should be exclusively looked into as a 'what is best for new players' lens. As like, new players are more important to the game than Gameplay, and adding new Feeders will hurt new players but not significantly help GP in the long run. I've posted on this at length before, and don't think many views have changed over the years. My view is having new players into super active environments is the best solution. GP has stagnated because essentially the old conflicts are gone. Defender - raider, raiders lost, defenders won, there are still odd raids, but raiders have managed to mismanage raiders from the peaks of DEN days to now where raiders don't have hundreds of players willing to jump when someone calls. Feeders - UCRs, UCRs won after us Feeders backed down when we held ourselves to a higher standard. NS Antifa/Far right - NS Antifa won years ago, and now the NS right is gone completely. That's on players, not mechanics. I do think adding more feeders would give a brief pump to activity, but quickly settle down and the status quo would be worse than now in a few years.

Thought for a while, but like, OOC if the admin priority is more on adding politics rather than NPE, then either venters, but more the admin suggestion of founder succession/large UCR regions with suitable numbers of nations surrendering executive founders in return for nations spawning in the region would be better (where is codifies the trade off between security and recruitment more). I personally think the effort should be put into improving UCR recruitment/rewarding and punishing the good/bad UCRs, so the good UCR's rise/have easier recruitment and the bad stop taking nations and letting them fade into CTE. There are so many nations that end up in inactive UCRs that try to talk on inactive RMBs then just stop logging in.

[Unibot III]

@Flanderlion:

The advantage of just using new feeders is it requires no new code development. The con is the new feeders will likely stabilize in terms of their relationships with other GCRs once their endorsements hit a critical mass — 2-3 years.

Another idea would be to revisit a simplified version of the “venter” proposal where only feeders contribute to venter population (rather than sinker regions too.) That way the new GCRs are always dependent/impacted fundamentally by its political relationships with other GCRs.

I don’t think it’s fair to say new players won’t benefit from new GCRs — the stagnancy of the game for established players is a drain on the efforts of established parties to integrate new players (i.e., bored GPers neglect responsibilities / recruitment / orientation).

Political crises and formative GP events often are not very visible to new players, but new players benefit from the positive spin-off second-hand from having more active and engaged establishments. Although we tend to dismiss the importance of NSGPers, many of them are the people who are engaging newcomers and pulling them in, retaining them etc.

A big danger for NS is community leaders and organizers getting bored with a stagnant political environment. I think that is exactly what happened prior to 08 and I worry it’s happening again.

I agree with you regarding the mismatch between new players and inactive UCRs.

[Galiantus III]

The advantage of just using new feeders is it requires no new code development. The con is the new feeders will likely stabilize in terms of their relationships with other GCRs once their endorsements hit a critical mass — 2-3 years.

That's the stabilization problem I've been talking about. If 3 years from now we're back here having the same discussion, that's an indication the simple solution was not a solution at all. I'd much rather wait a year knowing Admin was working on a solution like venters or another idea with substance than have them introduce feeders now and call it good.

But perhaps there's a way to have the best of both worlds: What if admin created several new GCRs (lacking feeder mechanics), and announced they would receive unique mechanics related to feeders at some undisclosed point in the future? Perhaps they hint that warzones or the WA will fall somewhere in the mix. Then Admin works behind the scenes to develop their chosen system, all while people try to gain control of regions that aren't even feeders yet. Finally, on an apparently normal day, when it appears everything is stable, admin releases their new feeder mechanics to these regions.

Tl,dr: Add dummy feeders while we wait for admin to make actual changes.

[ShrewLlamaLand]

I think it's fair to say that there are two main problems people have with the current feeder regions: they have too much gameplay influence due to large size, and they're too stable.

The first problem is very easy to solve, simply add more feeders (personally I think doubling the number to ten would be ideal). People have pointed out that this means, in terms of raw size, feeders will be smaller than current sinkers, but in reality this isn't a problem because WA population and endorsement counts are far more important factors than raw numbers. Chicken overlords is currently the largest region in the game and no one has ever complained about their overbearing gameplay influence.

The instability problem is harder to fix, and simply adding new regions will do nothing to address the current stability of feeders, at least after an intial few weeks or so while a government is established. I also don't think that introducing conditional feeders (which as people have suggested would only be active under certain cirumstances, e.g. population of current feeders is less than x) would help here either, as all this would accomplish is making some feeders smaller than others. Introducing new feeder regions with unique gameplay mechanics might help, depending on what those mechanics are, but I don't like this idea as it feels like a lot of effort would go into just making things more complicated as a band-aid fix to a gameplay problem. I'll add that, imho, the stability of feeders is also less of an issue if those regions have less influence, as they would if there were simply more feeders.

Personally though, after reading back through this thread I'm leaning more towards saying that the main issue isn't with the number of feeders, but that it's too hard for UCRs to effectively recruit new nations. Recruitment through telegram stamps is expensive to maintain in the long run, the API is too slow for mass recruitment, and in general advertising to new nations is too competitive as they're just bombarded with dozens of telegrams upon founding (and as a consequence are more likely to just ignore everything caught up in the telegram spam).

I don't really have any solid suggestions on how to address this, but imo part of the solution needs to look into UCR recruitment - either making it more effective in general, or making it possible for new nations to spawn into UCRs - rather than (or maybe in addition to) new feeder regions.

[Kavagrad]

Simply turn all GCRs into Warzones.

Will it help? I don't know, but it'd be funny.

[Mallorea and Riva]

What impact do players think additional feeders would have on the UCRs?

[Cormactopia Prime]

What impact do players think additional feeders would have on the UCRs?

In the immediate term, there may be some drain from the UCRs as people focus on the shiny new Feeders. That has to be acknowledged, I think.

Longer term, though, I think it would be a healthy development because it would reduce the consolidation of power in the Feeders and make it seem more worthwhile to actually be playing the game in UCRs. At this point it's like the UCRs are junior varsity, the Sinkers are varsity, and then the Feeders are like skipping playing college ball and going straight to pro. Reducing their power and influence by diluting it with more Feeders would, imo, level the playing field a bit more and not make it seem like such a waste of time to play in UCRs. But that's longer term. I do think there will be some drain from UCRs in the shorter term.

[Lord Dominator]

I imagine neutral - I don’t think it’ll really directly change anything about the realities of UCR management (just the FA side). I advocate more of them as a solution to the number of regions power is concentrated in, rather than where (since the where is principally dependent on the recruitment system the game has).

[The Python]

What impact do players think additional feeders would have on the UCRs?

At first, UCR's (and probably some GCR's), especially R/D-based regions would probably become more influential and active as established gameplayers and regions attempt to take and control the new feeders, which will probably last about 2 weeks until the new GCR's stabilize. In other words - raise activity very short term.

Once they stabilize, the new GCRs communities will become their own communities, no longer controlled by UCR's. As the new GCRs become their own communities, it'll probably have a drain on UCR's going to the new GCR's, as Cormac said. However, in the long term, I agree with LD in which it probably won't affect UCR's that much.

However, depending on who gets which new feeders, it might affect R/D gameplay long-term. Raiders get them = Build raider government, so extra raider org(s). Defenders get them = Build defender government, extra defender org(s).

Edit:

Simply turn all GCRs into Warzones.

Will it help? I don't know, but it'd be funny.

Yeah... having 1 or 2 feeder warzones might be cool and funny but all of them.... let's not

[Old Hope]

Simply turn all GCRs into Warzones.

Will it help? I don't know, but it'd be funny.

Hmmmm maybe. But it will probably cause players to spawn in a distrustful athmosphere, which has several drawbacks:
-Potential of lower player retention(BAD)
-Possibility of narrow acceptance values in feeders, resulting in people going to TRR
-If feeders grow too unstable you get something worse than powerful feeders... a super powerful 3000+ endorsements TRR... and TRR cannot be turned into a warzone because there are no ejections.

So... no?

[Unibot III]

What impact do players think additional feeders would have on the UCRs?

Short term: positive, indirect spin-off activity — it’s going to engage community players and if you’re engaging them, even if their focus is in a new GCR, you keeping them engaged in the game overall and available to organize, recruit, orient etc. Take, for instance, regions like Europeia, there is no doubt in my mind that the creation of Balder/Osiris was an indirect source of activity and interest for UCRs like Europeia that were involved in those developments.

Long term: An overlooked factor in GCR retention is endorsement masses — GCRs like TNP have learned that the best way to game their retention numbers is to endorse new members: endorse them quickly and endorse them frequently. People don’t want to leave a region if they have twenty or thirty endorsements. If you’re interfering in the size of a GCR, you’re going to interfere with their ability to retain new WA Members away from UCRs, because you’re jamming the feedback loop (e.g., big GCRs becoming bigger by being big.) I don’t think it will be a substantial gain for UCRs overall, but it shouldn’t be non substantial either — if that makes sense. A subtle long term gain.

[Galiantus III]

What impact do players think additional feeders would have on the UCRs?

That depends on how many are added. At low numbers (roughly 1-5), I agree with what people are saying. However, the impact will be exponential beyond that point. The more feeders there are, the more players will move to fill them, because free recruitment is extremely valuable. Plus the more feeders there are, the easier it is to control one. There is obviously a point where adding more feeders would cheapen them in the eyes of players, but that's far beyond anything we'd actually put into practice.

[Flanderlion]

What impact do players think additional feeders would have on the UCRs?

Immediate term (like the first week or so) a positive effect, as players will be more active like they always are after big GP changes.

Short-term (1-3 months) - probably positive as well, as generally when people get active again they stick around for a bit, and do things.

Medium-term (3-12 months) - at this point it'd be negative, as the players that came back/were more active in the UCRs after the changes lose their activity/the onward activity fades, while the players that went from the UCRs to the new GCRs will be in the stage of holding citizenship only in name in UCRs, while having all their time/energy/feelings in their new GCR regions.

Long-term (12+ months) - still negative, several UCRs would have completely died as the founders/members lost interest, and the natives have been left in inactive RMBs to die. UCRs will be less relevant in FA terms, as there will be more significant GCR potential allies to court, with more power/being more interesting, leading the other UCRs to be left alone.

TLDR - initially good for UCRs, long term bad. A change like this should be looking at a holistic view of what happens to new players rather than just what is good for UCRs/GCRs/GP alone.

[Mallorea and Riva]

What impact do players think additional feeders would have on the UCRs?

Immediate term (like the first week or so) a positive effect, as players will be more active like they always are after big GP changes.

Short-term (1-3 months) - probably positive as well, as generally when people get active again they stick around for a bit, and do things.

Medium-term (3-12 months) - at this point it'd be negative, as the players that came back/were more active in the UCRs after the changes lose their activity/the onward activity fades, while the players that went from the UCRs to the new GCRs will be in the stage of holding citizenship only in name in UCRs, while having all their time/energy/feelings in their new GCR regions.

Long-term (12+ months) - still negative, several UCRs would have completely died as the founders/members lost interest, and the natives have been left in inactive RMBs to die. UCRs will be less relevant in FA terms, as there will be more significant GCR potential allies to court, with more power/being more interesting, leading the other UCRs to be left alone.

TLDR - initially good for UCRs, long term bad. A change like this should be looking at a holistic view of what happens to new players rather than just what is good for UCRs/GCRs/GP alone.

I'd like to see reactions to this analysis, because this was similar to my gut reaction (minus the specific timelines, I don't know what those would look like).

[Galiantus III]

Seems like a good analysis to me. My general long-term expectation is more GCRs means fewer UCRs.

Edit: I should clarify that I don't see fewer UCRs as a bad thing. I actually see it as a good thing if it means generally more players are concentrated in fewer regions. Not only does that mean more players are in active and exciting regions, but those regions are valid targets for gameplay.

[Lord Dominator]

I don’t strictly disagree, but only if we add a lot of them. 10 I think we’d start to see those sorts of effects, but 5 more wouldn’t really do that.

My proposal for 15 or 20 is more or less designed with that at least partly in mind.

[Unibot III]

Immediate term (like the first week or so) a positive effect, as players will be more active like they always are after big GP changes.

Short-term (1-3 months) - probably positive as well, as generally when people get active again they stick around for a bit, and do things.

Medium-term (3-12 months) - at this point it'd be negative, as the players that came back/were more active in the UCRs after the changes lose their activity/the onward activity fades, while the players that went from the UCRs to the new GCRs will be in the stage of holding citizenship only in name in UCRs, while having all their time/energy/feelings in their new GCR regions.

Long-term (12+ months) - still negative, several UCRs would have completely died as the founders/members lost interest, and the natives have been left in inactive RMBs to die. UCRs will be less relevant in FA terms, as there will be more significant GCR potential allies to court, with more power/being more interesting, leading the other UCRs to be left alone.

TLDR - initially good for UCRs, long term bad. A change like this should be looking at a holistic view of what happens to new players rather than just what is good for UCRs/GCRs/GP alone.

I'd like to see reactions to this analysis, because this was similar to my gut reaction (minus the specific timelines, I don't know what those would look like).

Not similar to my analysis, I think it’s alarmist and unidimensional — we didn’t see that kind of zero-sum shift of activity from UCRs to Balder & Osiris — what we saw was high level activity in the GCRs meant high level activity in UCRs. The whole game was abuzz and it caused waves that were indirectly felt everywhere. The activity in GCRs didn’t sever existing relationships between established players and their UCRs.

I see it in my own head as like ripples of activity — for a handful of contributors they may like the new GCR communities that form so much that they decide they like them enough to stick around and play a key role (these are your Revert’s, your Luxembourg’s etc.) These folks join the new GCRs in their first 24 hours essentially and they decide to stay as foundational members. Most other organizers won’t commit long term to being involved with the new GCRs as citizens.

My experience is the new GCRs also tend to undergo a period of regionalist panic (sort of) a few months in, trying to define the region and weed out uncommitted/disloyal citizens.

There’s so much second-level activity generated, however, from the creation of new GCRs, because UCRs strike relationships with the new GCRs — and newly formed GCRs are smaller and newer meaning they need allies more and they’re frankly more vulnerable to external influence. You’re effectively boosting the diplomatic activity and intrigue for dozens of major regions in one move. Mature GCRs often like partnering with other GCRs, new GCRs will sign a treaty with your second cousin.

Established players also tend to add more to their time in NS overall when they’re engaged in the game — meaning when they get pulled in, they spend more time in both UCRs and GCRs — I can think of at least one GCR delegate of a new GCR who was also moonlighting as a President of a major UCR. The game isn’t as simple as blocs of GCRs and UCRs and players pulled between them, there’s complex spillage, crossover, and interdependencies. New GCRs provide more activity for other regions because they’re more dependent on support and partnerships, but I see no reason to think that as the GCRs mature they’ll wipe out UCRs and steal their players or whatever.

Another thing worth noting is the creation of new GCRs isn’t like other GCR drama, it’s much heavier in terms of indirect activity because there’s more space for diplomatic involvement. If you coup a region, most regions won’t find it appropriate to wade in except to condemn the coupers — a coup generates a few statements, strongly worded messages, and a few covert pile contingents from the Black Hawks. A new GCR is different because there’s a lot more for other regions to do in terms of how they can be involved in the development of these regions and their foreign policy and regional security network.

[Cormactopia Prime]

<snip>

Just chiming in to say I essentially agree with Unibot's counter-analysis, and I think Flanderlion's analysis is overly pessimistic. What Flanderlion predicts is nothing like what happened when Balder and Osiris were created, and Unibot's counter-analysis is much better grounded in the actual history of creating new GCRs.

I very much believe that the creation of more Feeders would be a net benefit for both Sinkers and UCRs in that it will better level the playing field by diluting the power of the Feeders. It may also be beneficial for Feeders, for that matter, if it forces them to actually work a little harder toward power and influence and engage more with others to get it, because every gameplay region benefits from more dynamic gameplay including the Feeders. That aside, I think the overly pessimistic analysis that the new Feeders will just be courted by and stick with the other GCRs doesn't take into account that those who shape the governments of those Feeders may not be interested in going that route. The diplomatic history of both Balder and Osiris includes quite a lot of UCR engagement, up to the present day.

The problem between GCRs and UCRs at the moment isn't even that they don't engage with each other. Name one GCR other than the Pacific that isn't closely engaged with any UCRs (and even the Pacific engages with them on a regular basis for anti-fascist military operations). The problem is that when they engage with each other, the power imbalance always means that the UCRs involved are the junior partners. Diluting the power of the Feeders could help tip that scale so that there is a somewhat more even playing field, though the Feeders will still be bigger than most UCRs. That's the real issue. There will always be GCR-UCR engagement, the issue is making UCRs more relevant in that engagement instead of constantly the lesser party expected to follow the GCR lead.

In regard to the drain from UCRs, I do agree with Flanderlion that it will happen but it will be temporary, and many folks that get involved with the new GCRs will also remain active in their previous UCRs. Again, this isn't just a guess on my part, it's me looking back at the history of Balder and Osiris.

[Flanderlion]

Admin has already previously put forward a suggestion in the past that would spawn new nations in successful UCRs that chose to take it. If the issue is inbalance between GCRs and UCRs, it seems a solution that has less negatives for UCRs, while still improving the UCR/GCR power dynamic would be the better option.

I stand by my analysis, and most of the stuff Cormac/Unibot said I'd already factored in. But tbf, I don't think I properly factored in the fact new GCRs would probably be more likely to accept embassies etc. with UCRs. Still though, my concern about splitting where new nations go is my primary concern about this, as I think #1 is an active RMB where people will quickly respond to new players, and the easiest game way I can think of to increase the chances of an active RMB is making more people in the region. Not saying current situation is ideal, it is far from it. But that is my primary concern for whether change should occur. Possibly even a new player and global chat would help with that, as evidently the alliances function has already been coded and it could be repurposed for that, then it doesn't matter as much where a nation ends up as they won't be left completely alone.

From a GP lens exclusively, I do think the whole idea from [v]/Sedge has more merit, as it'll result in larger, more active, but less stable UCRs, while reducing the share of new nations Feeders get, and also providing more of an opt out for certain groups that have no interest in R/D. All of which seem to be wins.

GP needs better recruitment/regions, better nation management and better R/D end games imo. Regions recruitment which would be helped by the UCR spawning idea bar the Oligarchy option which has none of the instability addition (viewtopic.php?p=30044813#p30044813), and hopefully recruitment changes as well (I should be able to pick nations via the API, then pay stamps without the ratelimit to send the TGs). Nation management would be via accounts. And endgames would be served by annexation coupled by larger influence costs to put the win condition as taking over and building the region rather than taking over and refounding it as a trophy.

Edit: Removed 'UCRs like' stub sentence as commonwealth of liberty's RMB isn't as active as it once was, so need to find a new UCR with a super active RMB as an example of why it's not just number of nations that determine how active a RMB is.

Edit 2: Added new player/global chat as an option for mitigating/improving the RMB issues which is my primary concern with spreading new players out more.

[Kylia Quilor]

I'm sure this will never come back to bite me buuuuut

I agree with Cormac and Unibot here.

Plus, there's also the fact that people who lose out on an internal GCR fight don't always just drift to another GCR - some will move to a UCR. As a result, the early day chaos in a new GCR will have a lot of circulating movement of players.

[Galiantus III]

Thought for a while, but like, OOC if the admin priority is more on adding politics rather than NPE, then either venters, but more the admin suggestion of founder succession/large UCR regions with suitable numbers of nations surrendering executive founders in return for nations spawning in the region would be better (where is codifies the trade off between security and recruitment more). I personally think the effort should be put into improving UCR recruitment/rewarding and punishing the good/bad UCRs, so the good UCR's rise/have easier recruitment and the bad stop taking nations and letting them fade into CTE. There are so many nations that end up in inactive UCRs that try to talk on inactive RMBs then just stop logging in.

I like this, but I'm not sold on the idea of opening it up to UCRs. First, if the goal is to draw a distinction between secure regions and those which get free recruitment, this just muddies the waters. Second, some regions have very political names we would never want to act as feeders: Nazi Europe, The Communist Bloc, etc. I would prefer to have a decent population of potential feeders that were named by Admin, and avoid this problem.

[ShrewLlamaLand]

Second, some regions have very political names we would never want to act as feeders: Nazi Europe, The Communist Bloc, etc. I would prefer to have a decent population of potential feeders that were named by Admin, and avoid this problem.

Nazi Europe literally doesn't exist anymore, regions with the word "Nazi" or that endorse Nazi themes are banned.

Outside of literal Nazi regions, which are definitely problematic, I disagree - I wouldn't have a problem with nations spawning in The Communist Bloc, or a dictatorial region (no bias), or really any other hypothetical region endorsing xxx ideology... provided it suits the nation being created.

It would probably be a lot of work for the admins, but imo this sort of system would work perfectly if new nation stats were matched to regions based on their stats, i.e. only new communist nations opting to join a UCR would be likely to spawn in TCB.

This sort of problem could even be protected against further by making regions need to opt in and be vetted and approved by admins to allow UCR spawning, and to prevent nations spawning into inactive regions, there could be a cutoff of, say, 50 WA nations with the spawn rate further scaled to WA population (or similar).

Obviously these aren't exact numbers or anything, but I do like the idea of UCR spawning and I'm just throwing suggestions out there.