Suggestion: delay feeder welcome TGs

[Sedgistan]

Background reading: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=257817 and viewtopic.php?f=15&t=442947

The feeder regions have grown too large. It stifles gameplay having such a significant amount of power concentrated in a small number of regions, and their significant inbuilt recruitment advantage impedes the ability of others to grow dynamic, interesting new regions (whether gameplayers or not). Feeders are great for occasional scheming and significant political events, but the real creativity in NationStates tends to come from player-created regions. It's also bad on a technical level having such bloated regions.

There have been various suggestions on overcoming this, and I have other ideas that I would like to see implemented as well. However, there is one relatively simple change that would create a less unbalanced playing field between feeders and player-created regions. That is delaying their welcome telegrams to nations founded in the feeders.

At present when a nation is founded, it immediately receives the site welcome TG from Max Barry and a welcome TG from the relevant feeder. Without fail, these welcome TGs all strongly suggest the recipient to go straight to their telegram filters and block all recruitment telegrams. The West Pacific's one even does this right at the start of the message.

I suggest this welcome TG be delayed by 5 minutes, which should allow 5 recruitment telegrams to be received first. That gives player-created regions that are often paying for their recruitment or carrying it out manually, a better chance of recruiting that new nation.

The intention here is not to decimate feeders. They will always be large, and significant because of their unique mechanics, prominence and size, but the balance between them and player-created regions has got out of whack.

I have not suggested this for sinkers, as while their size is a concern, they don't have the same disruptive effect on recruitment.

A final note - yes, I'm a mod. It's still just a suggestion. This idea is not endorsed by admins.

[Old Hope]

I have a better idea: Nations moving into a Feeder/sinker by being founded/re-founded/ejected do not get a welcome TG. They get a good introductory TG instead(e.g. welcome, ejection, re-found TG).

[Eluvatar]

5 minutes is certainly a more moderate delay than I've seen suggested before, and may yet have a significant effect.

[Old Hope]

5 minutes is certainly a more moderate delay than I've seen suggested before, and may yet have a significant effect.

I like my idea more. That way it is not delayed for nations moving in voluntarily.

[Sedgistan]

I have a better idea: Nations moving into a Feeder/sinker by being founded/re-founded/ejected do not get a welcome TG. They get a good introductory TG instead(e.g. welcome, ejection, re-found TG).

I'm not entirely clear on what you're suggesting here. What's the difference between the existing welcome TG and an "introductory TG"?

[Old Hope]

I have a better idea: Nations moving into a Feeder/sinker by being founded/re-founded/ejected do not get a welcome TG. They get a good introductory TG instead(e.g. welcome, ejection, re-found TG).

I'm not entirely clear on what you're suggesting here. What's the difference between the existing welcome TG and an "introductory TG"?

I meant a TG for founding(the welcome TG) and improved TG's for being ejected/refounded.

the admin TG's not the region TG's.

[Baedan]

Not entirely sure what Old Hope's talking about but I do think it would make sense not to apply the delay to nations that move into feeders normally, instead of being founded there.

[The Notorious Mad Jack]

I don't see why this change is needed. "Stifling gameplay" isn't necessarily a bad thing and UCRs already have the advantage of being able to post recruitment ads on GCR RMBs. Further changes would unbalance the game in their favour.

[Old Hope]

Not entirely sure what Old Hope's talking about but I do think it would make sense not to apply the delay to nations that move into feeders normally, instead of being founded there.

Remove welcome TG's(by the region) for founded, ejected or re-founded nations. Have informative TG's by admin instead.

[Pluvie]

Interesting! I don't hate this idea actually because then GCR welcome TGs would essentially just act as recruitment TGs. They'd have the disadvantage of not being first but the advantage of always being sent if a nation doesn't move to a new region really quickly. I think this would be a fair way to balance the automatic advantage of GCRs

[Sedgistan]

Not entirely sure what Old Hope's talking about but I do think it would make sense not to apply the delay to nations that move into feeders normally, instead of being founded there.

Remove welcome TG's(by the region) for founded, ejected or re-founded nations. Have informative TG's by admin instead.

Ah, I get it. No, I think it's better for feeders to be able to send their own telegrams. Each one has their own culture, and by getting to write their own telegram they get to pitch it to appeal to people who might fit in with that culture. Preventing feeders from being able to "sell themselves" entirely via telegram would be a serious disadvantage to them, which is not what I'm after.

I don't see why this change is needed. "Stifling gameplay" isn't necessarily a bad thing and UCRs already have the advantage of being able to post recruitment ads on GCR RMBs. Further changes would unbalance the game in their favour.

I'm not sure if you're being serious here or not. An argument that gameplay should be stifled is of no interest beyond petty tribalism; I will note that the current situation makes it harder for non-gameplay focused communities to recruit to their region. I don't think anyone considers recruitment ads on RMBs to be effective, or anything more than a mild nuisance to feeders, which can be swiftly dealt with by suppression.

[Flanderlion]

I disagree with the premise that Feeders are too large, for new players it's better to have a lot of activity concentrated in the regions they start. A large proportion of nations in Feeders are nations that logged in once, approx 2/3rds are nations who have a residency under 28 days, so they're just numbers rather than actual activity.

Also I disagree about the real creativity coming only from UCRs, Feeders have pioneered card programs, working WA endorsement schemes/WA programs blocs, host cultural events, issue things, poll competitions, and in the case of TSP, a better form of democracy (allowing gamesiders to vote) than most large UCRs.

Also Admin said that if the size of Feeders become an issue they'll deal with it. As this isn't admin endorsed, it stands to reason that they don't view it as an issue atm. Also, Feeders are far shy of their 14k+ nations in the past. Sinkers in fact 4th, 5th and 6th in nations, with TRR coming in at #8. A UCR (puppet storage) is #1 and another is a few hundred nations from removing a Feeder from the top 10 by nation count.

With the OP links, the first one, admin essentially says 'it's fine, it's part of the assymetrical balance between Feeders and UCRs'. The second one has a brilliant post by a great player, so I'll just quote it below:

I'm struggling to see how doing this would benefit the game as a whole. Obviously I'm from a GCR, so I naturally think harming GCR community to help some dead in 6 months UCR isn't exactly ideal, especially as dead regions often lead to the players who were in there CTEing.

I like having the TGs as having a record of where my nation is founded (and so I can delete the rest), I don't exactly want to have to read all the junk mail my nation gets to save the right one. The ideas like removing welcome TGs entirely are kind of ridiculous, and harms everyone who moves region (or is even founded) just to appease a few userite recruiters, which, even if they feel entitled due to the stamps they pay, aren't worth more than all of us other players.

The welcome TGs are exactly what it says on the cover, a welcome to the game/region TG explaining things. The default TG doesn't do an adequate job of explaining properly the region you are in, how to stop the recruitment TG spam etc. but thankfully welcome TGs step into the void, and take up the slack. Somehow I think that a TG saying 'join X' wouldn't be the same level of help to a player. That said, the default TG is good, and although it can't be comprehensive (shortness is important if you want someone to read it) overall changing it idk about.

There is a slight delay on the welcome TG appearing, which should be removed. When a nation is founded, there should be two TGs that greet it, the default one and the region one, rather than the default one then a bit later comes the welcome one just before the horde of spam regions.

Instead of rallying against welcome TGs, why not ask for a change that would benefit everyone, an ability for a nation to request recruitment TGs for nations that are looking for new regions but aren't new?

[Comfed]

I created a nation today to test. I got six telegrams: Max’s welcome telegram, The Pacific’s welcome TG, and four recruitment telegrams in five minutes. Under Sedge’s proposal, the only difference is that the Pacific’s welcome telegram would have arrived after four recruitment telegrams. I fail to see a problem with this.

[Roavin]

I have an even simpler solution:

Without fail, these welcome TGs all strongly suggest the recipient to go straight to their telegram filters and block all recruitment telegrams. The West Pacific's one even does this right at the start of the message.

Just disallow this ^.

---

But apart from that, I generally have an issue with how recruitment currently works anyway. New players are overwhelmed by, basically, spam. Half of those regions won't exist in 6 months. And then there are regions like The Invaders that continue to recruit like mad and have new nations join them with an appealing telegram, only to not offer those players any possibilities for engagement and leave them to cease to exist in droves. Just imagine the number of nations that join that region and then leave the game as "boring", which could otherwise have been the next Eluvatar or Evil Wolf or Todd McCloud or Kandarin or Benevolent Thomas or Xoriet or August or HEM etc.; I lose sleep at night over this thought.

The reason feeders advise this is in part retention, yes, but also because it simply makes the game better for new nations. I remember being massively annoyed at the recruitment spam on April 7, 2016 when I was founded; it has not gotten better. And yet, recruitment is important for UCRs, and the good ones put a lot of effort into returns of <1%, of which another single-digit percentage actually stick around for any meaningful length of time. I don't have a solution to this but there has got to be a better way for new nations, UCRs, and GCRs alike.

[Galiantus III]

We've discussed similar ideas before. This definitely has the right intent behind it, but it doesn't really address the core issues; which Roavin has done a good job summing up.

The point of having a region is engagement. The people who stick around the longest, keep coming back, and support the site are invariably those who find a community they can fit in with. And, unfortunately, the current state of things is not great at doing this.

Most UCRs are horrible at this. Founders often start out with a dream to build a big region with a unique and engaging community, but it turns out doing so is a lot of work they weren't prepared for. So they get bored and die off, and this propegates to anyone they recruited.

GCRs are decidedly better at this, but they still have their problems. I remember being a new player, and the size of the GCRs was a huge problem for me. The automatic belief of many new players is that they can't get involved in such a large region. Lost in a sea of nations, they quietly play in solitude, cut off from a community by a cacophony of RMB chatter and noise.

If I could concoct a perfect scenario, it would be a world with about 50-100 regions, all of which are GCRs. This would solve the size problem, virtually eliminate spam, increase the intrigue of regional politics, and prevent any "activity voids" that might lure new players out to soon-to-be-dead regions. Unfortunately, this would mean eliminating UCRs, which would be massively disruptive, and carries its own problems.

Perhaps a better solution, that fits better within what Sedge is suggesting, is to instead restrict telegram recruitment done by UCRs. This would be based on some metric of size and activity. It would both cut down on spam and funnel nations to the more engaging communities. A lot of UCRs will hate this, but with the current tragedy of the commons scenario playing out, it is necessary.

Many UCRs want to be big and grow, but in doing so they starve each other for activity and make recruitment a bad experience for new players. Players seeking to create large regions should thus be compelled to collaborate, rather than compete. It is better both for the resulting regions and for new players if what would have been five recruitment TG's show up as one.

[Sedgistan]

I disagree with the premise that Feeders are too large, for new players it's better to have a lot of activity concentrated in the regions they start. A large proportion of nations in Feeders are nations that logged in once, approx 2/3rds are nations who have a residency under 28 days, so they're just numbers rather than actual activity.

Also I disagree about the real creativity coming only from UCRs, Feeders have pioneered card programs, working WA endorsement schemes/WA programs blocs, host cultural events, issue things, poll competitions, and in the case of TSP, a better form of democracy (allowing gamesiders to vote) than most large UCRs.

I don't agree that starting off in a massive region is necessarily best. Active, yes, but being in a massive region is potentially overwhelming, getting to know people when RMBs are filling a page within minutes is harder, it's not as easy to rise quickly to prominence in a feeder, and there's no guarantee that it'll be a good fit for you. It's good for new players to read over recruitment telegrams and explore other regions around the world. As for creativity, I don't deny that the cards program was an innovation, but the rest are hardly unique to feeders. It's easier to innovate when you're starting from scratch and building the place yourself.

Also Admin said that if the size of Feeders become an issue they'll deal with it. As this isn't admin endorsed, it stands to reason that they don't view it as an issue atm. Also, Feeders are far shy of their 14k+ nations in the past. Sinkers in fact 4th, 5th and 6th in nations, with TRR coming in at #8. A UCR (puppet storage) is #1 and another is a few hundred nations from removing a Feeder from the top 10 by nation count.

With the OP links, the first one, admin essentially says 'it's fine, it's part of the assymetrical balance between Feeders and UCRs'.

Me saying this isn't admin-endorsed is only to caution people not to take this as an announcement of a change simply because I'm a staff member. I hadn't discussed my suggestion with admins beforehand. However there have been staff discussions about the size of feeders over the last year, and they are larger than ideal. As for Violet's post from years back that came before any effect of the introduction of Welcome TGs could be seen, and I disagree with her.

The second one has a brilliant post by a great player, so I'll just quote it below:

I'm struggling to see how doing this would benefit the game as a whole. Obviously I'm from a GCR, so I naturally think harming GCR community to help some dead in 6 months UCR isn't exactly ideal, especially as dead regions often lead to the players who were in there CTEing.

I like having the TGs as having a record of where my nation is founded (and so I can delete the rest), I don't exactly want to have to read all the junk mail my nation gets to save the right one. The ideas like removing welcome TGs entirely are kind of ridiculous, and harms everyone who moves region (or is even founded) just to appease a few userite recruiters, which, even if they feel entitled due to the stamps they pay, aren't worth more than all of us other players.

The welcome TGs are exactly what it says on the cover, a welcome to the game/region TG explaining things. The default TG doesn't do an adequate job of explaining properly the region you are in, how to stop the recruitment TG spam etc. but thankfully welcome TGs step into the void, and take up the slack. Somehow I think that a TG saying 'join X' wouldn't be the same level of help to a player. That said, the default TG is good, and although it can't be comprehensive (shortness is important if you want someone to read it) overall changing it idk about.

There is a slight delay on the welcome TG appearing, which should be removed. When a nation is founded, there should be two TGs that greet it, the default one and the region one, rather than the default one then a bit later comes the welcome one just before the horde of spam regions.

Instead of rallying against welcome TGs, why not ask for a change that would benefit everyone, an ability for a nation to request recruitment TGs for nations that are looking for new regions but aren't new?

Your post doesn't apply to this situation as I'm not advocating the removal of welcome TGs. I still want feeders to be able to send them, and I still want feeders to be able to develop thriving communities. They just have too big an in-built advantage at present to the detriment of player-created regions. NationStates is more dynamic when there are a larger number of active regions rather than having activity concentrated in a much smaller number of mega-regions.

[Sedgistan]

I have an even simpler solution:

Without fail, these welcome TGs all strongly suggest the recipient to go straight to their telegram filters and block all recruitment telegrams. The West Pacific's one even does this right at the start of the message.

Just disallow this ^.

I prefer a technical solution that can be implemented and done with, rather than one goes down to mod discretion. Feeders would have every incentive to try and get around this, whether with subtle hints or other telegrams they send, and it's not beneficial to anyone to have mods judging that. Additionally, there will be players who do like the feeders' telegram and want to stay part of that community, having read and dismissed a decent number of other recruitment TGs. Advising those players on how to block more recruitment TGs seems reasonable.

But apart from that, I generally have an issue with how recruitment currently works anyway. New players are overwhelmed by, basically, spam. Half of those regions won't exist in 6 months. And then there are regions like The Invaders that continue to recruit like mad and have new nations join them with an appealing telegram, only to not offer those players any possibilities for engagement and leave them to cease to exist in droves. Just imagine the number of nations that join that region and then leave the game as "boring", which could otherwise have been the next Eluvatar or Evil Wolf or Todd McCloud or Kandarin or Benevolent Thomas or Xoriet or August or HEM etc.; I lose sleep at night over this thought.

I don't feel like "benefit feeders because you don't know if UCRs will be around in 6 months" is a good reason to maintain this significant benefit to feeders. Yes, some UCRs don't last long. Many of those don't recruit anyway. Of those that do - well this change would make it easier for them to recruit; also by the time a nation has moved once into a new community it's that much more willing to move again should it find it doesn't like the one it is in.

As for the point of there being regions like The Invaders continually recruiting yet not offering anything to engage their players. Without knowing the details of their situation, I agree that what you describe sounds like a bad outcome for players and the game. I don't think that's a reason to benefit feeders though. It's a reason to consider something like a Security Council "Embargo" proposal category which blocks a specified region from recruiting. If anyone thinks that's an idea to explore, please start a new thread for it.

The reason feeders advise this is in part retention, yes, but also because it simply makes the game better for new nations. I remember being massively annoyed at the recruitment spam on April 7, 2016 when I was founded; it has not gotten better. And yet, recruitment is important for UCRs, and the good ones put a lot of effort into returns of <1%, of which another single-digit percentage actually stick around for any meaningful length of time. I don't have a solution to this but there has got to be a better way for new nations, UCRs, and GCRs alike.

I would love to see some sort of "joining" page where new players have some regions suggested to them and have an easy way of exploring other ones that may be interesting to them. I'd also like to see a % of nations founded in UCRs, and intend to start a separate thread on that topic at some point; it's an old idea. However, both are much bigger projects. My suggestion in this thread is a smaller scale change that brings benefits and should be relatively quick to implement if it goes ahead, and doesn't block the potential for other changes in the future.

[Sedgistan]

Perhaps a better solution, that fits better within what Sedge is suggesting, is to instead restrict telegram recruitment done by UCRs. This would be based on some metric of size and activity. It would both cut down on spam and funnel nations to the more engaging communities. A lot of UCRs will hate this, but with the current tragedy of the commons scenario playing out, it is necessary.

Many UCRs want to be big and grow, but in doing so they starve each other for activity and make recruitment a bad experience for new players. Players seeking to create large regions should thus be compelled to collaborate, rather than compete. It is better both for the resulting regions and for new players if what would have been five recruitment TG's show up as one.

This is a really bad idea that does nothing to combat the problem this thread is trying to address (imbalance between feeders and UCRs) and instead makes it almost impossible to create new regions.

The problem isn't 100 new players being wasted between 50 UCRs that are too small to function; it's that a significant portion of those 100 players never leave the feeder they were created in.

[Honeydewistania]

Full support for this idea.

[LollerLand]

As someone who has spent most of their time in NS being in UCRs, I completely support this idea. Feeders will still be the largest regions in the game, but if this proposal can change the usual conversion rates for recruitment telegrams from less than 1% to even 2%, it would be a huge boost for UCRs while not doing any real damage to feeders as majority of the new nations will still not read the telegrams and/or will tend to remain where they are spawned.

[Roavin]

But apart from that, I generally have an issue with how recruitment currently works anyway. New players are overwhelmed by, basically, spam. Half of those regions won't exist in 6 months. And then there are regions like The Invaders that continue to recruit like mad and have new nations join them with an appealing telegram, only to not offer those players any possibilities for engagement and leave them to cease to exist in droves. Just imagine the number of nations that join that region and then leave the game as "boring", which could otherwise have been the next Eluvatar or Evil Wolf or Todd McCloud or Kandarin or Benevolent Thomas or Xoriet or August or HEM etc.; I lose sleep at night over this thought.

I don't feel like "benefit feeders because you don't know if UCRs will be around in 6 months" is a good reason to maintain this significant benefit to feeders. Yes, some UCRs don't last long. Many of those don't recruit anyway. Of those that do - well this change would make it easier for them to recruit; also by the time a nation has moved once into a new community it's that much more willing to move again should it find it doesn't like the one it is in.

As for the point of there being regions like The Invaders continually recruiting yet not offering anything to engage their players. Without knowing the details of their situation, I agree that what you describe sounds like a bad outcome for players and the game. I don't think that's a reason to benefit feeders though. It's a reason to consider something like a Security Council "Embargo" proposal category which blocks a specified region from recruiting. If anyone thinks that's an idea to explore, please start a new thread for it.

Excuse me, where did I say, either explicitly or implicitly, that feeders should benefit? Your portrayal unduly and dismissively dumbs down my overall point, particularly since I go on to mention the difficulty of recruitment efforts by UCRs. If anything, my point was that the status quo sucks particularly for new nations and UCRs. I reject your characterization of my stance.

[Galiantus III]

Perhaps a better solution, that fits better within what Sedge is suggesting, is to instead restrict telegram recruitment done by UCRs. This would be based on some metric of size and activity. It would both cut down on spam and funnel nations to the more engaging communities. A lot of UCRs will hate this, but with the current tragedy of the commons scenario playing out, it is necessary.

Many UCRs want to be big and grow, but in doing so they starve each other for activity and make recruitment a bad experience for new players. Players seeking to create large regions should thus be compelled to collaborate, rather than compete. It is better both for the resulting regions and for new players if what would have been five recruitment TG's show up as one.

This is a really bad idea that does nothing to combat the problem this thread is trying to address (imbalance between feeders and UCRs) and instead makes it almost impossible to create new regions.

The problem isn't 100 new players being wasted between 50 UCRs that are too small to function; it's that a significant portion of those 100 players never leave the feeder they were created in.

Yeah you're probably right. My idea was born out of a lack of sleep and a desire to stay on topic despite having a completely different idea (which I'll make a different thread for). Your idea has merit to it, and I look forward to seeing what other ideas spring from it.

[Sedgistan]

Excuse me, where did I say, either explicitly or implicitly, that feeders should benefit? Your portrayal unduly and dismissively dumbs down my overall point, particularly since I go on to mention the difficulty of recruitment efforts by UCRs. If anything, my point was that the status quo sucks particularly for new nations and UCRs. I reject your characterization of my stance.

That part of your post read like a justification for feeders telling nations to block recruitment TGs because UCR recruitment as a whole is a mess. Looking back, I think I read too much into it, so apologies for the mischaracterisation.

[Refuge Isle]

Also support Sedge's idea

[Topid]

I have made numerous posts over the years this has been ongoing, tracking the increasing percentage of WA nations accumulating in GCRs.

I personally strongly doubt this will change anything. I do not think nations stay in GCRs because the telegrams GCRs send are terribly effective. Based on what seems to have worked for me in recruitment messages most of them tend to be a bit long... I think nations stay in GCRs far more now than ever because making recruitment more open has resulted in far too many regions sending messages to new nations, and new users now hating recruiters. In other words, GCRs don't get big because their telegrams are good, they get big because dozens of telegrams are annoying and so the nation chooses to do nothing. IMO the internet evolved passed the point when dozens of spam messages was acceptable upon account creation and we failed to evolve to a system that works. When I was running telegrams for regions, the vast majority of replies are got were angry messages about the volume of messages pouring in.

It's just not a great system, and NS is one of the few games left where alliances seek you out through mass messages. To be comparable with modern games region selection would be a third screen on nation creation and regions would appear there to choose from. Maybe we should still have to do stuff in the background to be in queue to show up first, but it should be one group of 10 or so regions presented at once with expandable pitches. That is way less annoying than dozens of notifications that go on and on.

EDIT: I guess I would say to make my point more clear, this won't solve the problem. All I see this as is a band aid patch that might make it a bit harder on feeders, but if doesn't solve the problem isn't that just hurting engagement further with no upside? Personally, if we aren't going to change the system to make nations more likely to move regions, I am glad the first info they get is info pertinent to where they may by default end up staying. Just my thoughts.