Idea: Non-Updating Regions

[The Nation of the People of the Nation]

Currently NS has a bit of a problem in that there are tens of thousands of puppets that don't really need to update every 12 hours. Whether they be card puppets or military puppets. This creates extra server lag and prolongs update to the point where update is still not back to pre-drew-boom levels after WA population (and therefore assumed unique users) going down for months.

My suggestion would be to have the ability to make a region that doesn't update, it doesn't have a delegate and is limited in that they shouldn't be able to recruit, change the WFE after founding, or have an RMB. These would be only useful for puppet storage, and use of them would be voluntary. I've considered a cap on updating puppets but that might have a lot of knock on effects.

I do admit this is an R/D QOL change more than anything, but the number of puppets some have is getting ridiculous and update could probably be returned to pre-boom levels after this. A downside that I see is that everyone would have an equally good JP, although this is also an upside in that it encourages R/D puppets to move to these regions.

Any thoughts?

[Comfed]

I don’t see why WFEs couldn’t be changed, and RMBs be gotten rid of.

[The Nation of the People of the Nation]

I don’t see why WFEs couldn’t be changed, and RMBs be gotten rid of.

My thinking is to discourage anyone from using them as actual regions further. I don't think active regions opting out of update is a good idea, thus the heavy restrictions.

[Parhe]

If they do not update, does that not mean nations in them would not CTE eventually?

[The Nation of the People of the Nation]

If they do not update, does that not mean nations in them would not CTE eventually?

I didn’t consider that honestly. Depending on how much database space each nation takes up that wouldn’t be the worst thing. Would negate the need for puppet keep alive scripts.

[Fauxia]

If they do not update, does that not mean nations in them would not CTE eventually?

I didn’t consider that honestly. Depending on how much database space each nation takes up that wouldn’t be the worst thing. Would negate the need for puppet keep alive scripts.

Nah, that would make the server lag as nations would be created much faster than they CTEd, unless (more likely) most nations wouldn't move their nations to the region in the first place, so the entire idea is sort of rendered null.

[Flanderlion]

Seems to cause more issues than it solves. Plus, I would rather admins spend their time on other stuff than use it on something only a few people will use.

[SherpDaWerp]

Update does more than just calculate the number of WA endos, too. Reranking all stats (worldwide), population increases, and checking for CTE (as Parhe mentioned) would all still have to apply to whatever "non-updating regions" that get created.

Especially given that "WA endorsements" is a nation stat (censusid 66), and therefore any nations in a non-updating region would still have to have their endos checked come update time, there's exactly 0 point in doing this.

[The Python]

Maybe the regions do update, but WA endos aren't counted, and it only does maintenace work like deleting old nations and ranking them etc.

[Frisbeeteria]

The various responses are demonstrating that there are many problems associated with this suggestion. It also seems to be a solution in search of a problem.

Seems to cause more issues than it solves. Plus, I would rather admins spend their time on other stuff than use it on something only a few people will use.

This summarized my take on this suggestion.

[Drew Durrnil]

Currently NS has a bit of a problem in that there are tens of thousands of puppets that don't really need to update every 12 hours. Whether they be card puppets or military puppets. This creates extra server lag and prolongs update to the point where update is still not back to pre-drew-boom levels after WA population (and therefore assumed unique users) going down for months.

My suggestion would be to have the ability to make a region that doesn't update, it doesn't have a delegate and is limited in that they shouldn't be able to recruit, change the WFE after founding, or have an RMB. These would be only useful for puppet storage, and use of them would be voluntary. I've considered a cap on updating puppets but that might have a lot of knock on effects.

I do admit this is an R/D QOL change more than anything, but the number of puppets some have is getting ridiculous and update could probably be returned to pre-boom levels after this. A downside that I see is that everyone would have an equally good JP, although this is also an upside in that it encourages R/D puppets to move to these regions.

Any thoughts?

My revamped version of this: When a nation creates a region, a new button would appear that states "Puppet Storage Region". Of course, when the update adding this feature potentially happens, the "Puppet Storage" tag would have to be removed. When the "Puppet Storage Region" option is selected, the WFE does not have to be filled out before region creation. In a puppet storage region, there will be no WA delegate, no RMB, and no regional officers, which removes the ability to create polls, send recruitment telegrams, eject nations from the region, and so much more. Also, updates would not happen with the exception of nations CTE'ing.

[Frisbeeteria]

It also still seems to be a solution in search of a problem.

[The Nation of the People of the Nation]

Update does more than just calculate the number of WA endos, too. Reranking all stats (worldwide), population increases, and checking for CTE (as Parhe mentioned) would all still have to apply to whatever "non-updating regions" that get created.

Especially given that "WA endorsements" is a nation stat (censusid 66), and therefore any nations in a non-updating region would still have to have their endos checked come update time, there's exactly 0 point in doing this.

The idea is to just have those nations not update at all. While I agree this isn't a pressing issue it still would be quite nice for R/D. As for what I mentioned previously, all R/D puppets would move to a region such as this as they would be the best jump points possible. As for others, it could be tacitly encouraged or outright required for ridiculous amounts of puppets to go to one of these regions.

[Drew Durrnil]

Update does more than just calculate the number of WA endos, too. Reranking all stats (worldwide), population increases, and checking for CTE (as Parhe mentioned) would all still have to apply to whatever "non-updating regions" that get created.

Especially given that "WA endorsements" is a nation stat (censusid 66), and therefore any nations in a non-updating region would still have to have their endos checked come update time, there's exactly 0 point in doing this.

The idea is to just have those nations not update at all. While I agree this isn't a pressing issue it still would be quite nice for R/D. As for what I mentioned previously, all R/D puppets would move to a region such as this as they would be the best jump points possible. As for others, it could be tacitly encouraged or outright required for ridiculous amounts of puppets to go to one of these regions.

Did you forget? This would cause buildup of nations in puppet storage regions, which would in turn cause unbearable server lag. Sooner or later, the Drewpocalypse 2.0 will happen.

[The Nation of the People of the Nation]

The idea is to just have those nations not update at all. While I agree this isn't a pressing issue it still would be quite nice for R/D. As for what I mentioned previously, all R/D puppets would move to a region such as this as they would be the best jump points possible. As for others, it could be tacitly encouraged or outright required for ridiculous amounts of puppets to go to one of these regions.

Did you forget? This would cause buildup of nations in puppet storage regions, which would in turn cause unbearable server lag. Sooner or later, the Drewpocalypse 2.0 will happen.

The main cause of server lag (iirc) is update. If the game doesn't have to rerank/update the nations they cause minimal lag. That is the point in the first place, if an admin would like to correct my assumption on that please do.

[Frisbeeteria]

they cause minimal lag

Likely, but having regions with a "Get out of CTE Free!" would lock up a ton of nation names very fast. There's more to the game than server lag at update.

[Sandaoguo]

This is addressing a symptom, rather than a cause.

It's true that these puppet farms are a problem and it's only going to grow. People are making puppet regions that rival the size of GCRs, for the sole purpose of building card decks. The long-term problem with that is that all these puppets will get their own cards and they'll be useless common types nobody wants. So when the next season comes up, the card farmers will make even more puppets, to increase their chances of getting high-value cards. It's realistic to see a single person having 10,000+ nations just for card farming. With each subsequent season, they'll need to do the same thing. That's what needs to be addressed.

For those game mods who don't really see the issue... it's not a sustainable practice. Database architecture can handle it just fine. Update code could be optimized, though there's a limit to that. But what can't be optimized is the ballooning API dumps. The dumps are already difficult to work with, and they're just going to grow larger and larger with every farming boom.

Also, depending on how the card-selecting formula works behind the scenes, the card game will eventually break. Sooner rather than later. Unless you weight the chances of pulling more valuable cards higher every season, the likelihood of getting common-types of card farm puppets significantly increases each season. The regular players who aren't farming and using scripts are going to keep drawing these cards and eventually decide the mini-game isn't worth playing at all.

[The Unified Missourtama States]

Also, depending on how the card-selecting formula works behind the scenes, the card game will eventually break. Sooner rather than later. Unless you weight the chances of pulling more valuable cards higher every season, the likelihood of getting common-types of card farm puppets significantly increases each season. The regular players who aren't farming and using scripts are going to keep drawing these cards and eventually decide the mini-game isn't worth playing at all.

The pack generation doesn't work that way, no worries, everyone has the same chance.

Whether or not you like it, puppets are an integral part of so much technical gameplay, they're not going away.

[Frisbeeteria]

Database architecture can handle it just fine.

As we keep reminding players, the core game from 2002 isn't in a database. There's more to the game than you may be aware.

[Sandaoguo]

Database architecture can handle it just fine.

As we keep reminding players, the core game from 2002 isn't in a database. There's more to the game than you may be aware.

I’m very aware that much of the NS code is old and its data isn’t stored in databases, though I imagine it’s far *more* than you might think as well. In any case, the fact that not everything is stored in databases is more of a reason to clamp down on these puppet storage regions. Every database infrastructure out there can easily handle 10s of millions of rows of data. Non-database infrastructure can only do so much, be optimized so much, etc.

And in any case, the API dumps don’t benefit at all either way. Those are still static XML files, where each nation increases the size by essentially the same amount. There’s no “abbreviated” XML for farming puppets. No matter what NS does on its end to address the farming issue, the daily dumps will grow more difficult to work with.

Also, depending on how the card-selecting formula works behind the scenes, the card game will eventually break. Sooner rather than later. Unless you weight the chances of pulling more valuable cards higher every season, the likelihood of getting common-types of card farm puppets significantly increases each season. The regular players who aren't farming and using scripts are going to keep drawing these cards and eventually decide the mini-game isn't worth playing at all.

The pack generation doesn't work that way, no worries, everyone has the same chance.

Whether or not you like it, puppets are an integral part of so much technical gameplay, they're not going away.

“Everyone has the same chance” is exactly the problem... Every nation gets a card, and every card has a chance of being placed in a pack. As I said in my post, unless you weight the chances of pulling higher value cards more with each season, then mathematically the chances of pulling non-valued common cards goes up the more those cards populate the global supply. And that supply is increasing every time a card farm is expanded or a new one is made.

I do have pretty good knowledge of data analysis and coding, yall. Ostrich head in the sand strategy usually doesn’t end well.

[Comfed]

Not an admin, but I think what would happen with the ballooning amount of puppets is that the bar for having a higher rarity card would just go down.

[Riemstagrad]

just a side-note to this discussion: The number of cards in each rarity is relative to the total nations at season start. The chance to pull a legendary card stays the same, no matter how many farming puppets are created. If farming puppets stay alive longer than ordinary commons, legendary-pull chances later in the game will stay low, but i'm not sure that they stay alive longer.

That's not an opinion in favor of giant puppet-farms. I'm only saying that the current set-up of the cards game doesn't push players to create ever-larger farms.

About the idea of non-updating regions: I think that it brings many troubles if nations can completely escape update. One of the functions of update is the daily clean-up.

[Drew Durrnil]

just a side-note to this discussion: The number of cards in each rarity is relative to the total nations at season start. The chance to pull a legendary card stays the same, no matter how many farming puppets are created. If farming puppets stay alive longer than ordinary commons, legendary-pull chances later in the game will stay low, but i'm not sure that they stay alive longer.

That's not an opinion in favor of giant puppet-farms. I'm only saying that the current set-up of the cards game doesn't push players to create ever-larger farms.

About the idea of non-updating regions: I think that it brings many troubles if nations can completely escape update. One of the functions of update is the daily clean-up.

Thats why the only aspect of update that should be in puppet storage is CTE'ing. Also, you should be able to mark your nation as a card-farming puppet, but thats for another discussion.

[Sandaoguo]

just a side-note to this discussion: The number of cards in each rarity is relative to the total nations at season start. The chance to pull a legendary card stays the same, no matter how many farming puppets are created.

Is there proof of this? Because I'm trying to think of all the ways Legendary-level cards are determined, and it doesn't mesh at all with what you're saying here. Legendaries aren't, as far as we know, generated at random. There are certain requirements to become Legendary, and those requirements aren't easily and quickly met. But there are no requirements to being a Common card except, well, existing.

If it were true that "the chance to pull a Legendary card stays the same," the only way that would be true in an environment of increasing global supply (of which almost the entirety is common-level cards) is if one of these two things has to be true:
1. The requirements for Legendary status are continually lowered, increasing global supply of Legendary-level cards.
2. The chance for any given pack to include a Legendary card is increased per season.

Mathematically, there is no other way for an increasing global supply of low-level cards to not lower the chances per-deck of drawing high-level cards. Implementing #1 above would only be a solution up to the point where it's difficult or impossible to define criteria that distinguish between enough nations, so that you don't end up with a bulging supply of high-level cards. In other words, you can only lower the requirements so much before the whole class gets an A+.

Implementing #2 would a solution to the vicious cycle of card farms begetting even more card farms. But it would not do anything to shrink existing farms, and it would be very difficult to predict what % chance would actually be high enough that farms aren't incentivized to grow each season. In any case, it also wouldn't address the side effects of card farms, particularly how they will make working with the API daily dumps more and more difficult each year.

[SherpDaWerp]

just a side-note to this discussion: The number of cards in each rarity is relative to the total nations at season start. The chance to pull a legendary card stays the same, no matter how many farming puppets are created.

Is there proof of this? Because I'm trying to think of all the ways Legendary-level cards are determined, and it doesn't mesh at all with what you're saying here. Legendaries aren't, as far as we know, generated at random. There are certain requirements to become Legendary, and those requirements aren't easily and quickly met. But there are no requirements to being a Common card except, well, existing.

The "threshold" for having enough badges to be legendary changes each season, so that the percentage of legendaries out of the total stays the same. Both seasons have the same (or within a rounding-error margin) percentage of legendary cards out of the total - roughly 0.1%.

It's like at the creation of a season, NS puts together a compiled score of "badges" with stuff like "top 1% badge = 5 points", "commended = 20 points", "staff = 50 points", or whatever, and then the top x% of that score gets legendary, the next x% gets epic, and so on.

Granted, we only have 2 seasons to base this off so far but it seems like a relatively reasonable assumption about how the card rarities are assigned.