[Suggestion] "Start in/Find Region" Page

[Galiantus III]

Start Region Selection Page
Given the current discussions around recruitment, I was waiting to see if someone would post a topic on this. That hasn't happened, so here this is.

This suggestion was inspired by Topid:

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.

Based on this, I propose the current system of recruitment via telegrams be scrapped. Instead, a third page in nation creation would present users with an interface to find a region to start in. By default, ten regions would be listed. If the user selects a region, that would be where their nation is born. The page could also be skipped, causing the nation to end up in one of the feeders like normal.

Page Layout
The page needs to be simple and play into user intuition. The user would see only four elements on this page, in this order:

1. Text at the top: "Choose region"
2. A button to skip region selection.
3. The list of 10 regions. Each would simply have its name, flag, and number of nations. A dropdown menu would reveal a blurb about the region, written by a communications officer of the region. The blurb would also contain a button that says "Move to %%REGION%%".
4. Filters (described below. Also look at mockup to see what I mean).

Filters
To give the user some way to look at other regions beside the 10 listed by default, the user could select filters. There would only be a few filters, and they would be very basic.

Filters would appear in the same style as the survey questions. For example, asking if the user wants a region with nations like themselves might look like this: "Nations with dissimilar values can easily cooperate" - followed by the usual scale of agreement. Agreement would be interpreted as "show me regions with diverse types of nations", and disagreement as "show me regions with nations like mine". Other questions might subtly try to determine the size of community the user wants to join, or how open they are to elements of gameplay.

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Everything below this point is me spit-balling ideas how to select the listed regions. It's not technically part of this proposal, but is something that must be discussed. If you have other ideas for this, please post them.

Advertising Slots
The ten listed regions would come from regions with "advertising slots". The total number of available slots would be fixed, and each slot could be "won" via some form of competitive play; this is the "stuff in the background" Topid was talking about. Regions with multiple slots would have a higher chance of showing up on the new third page. I want to invite debate how these slots are won, but here are some ideas off the top of my head:

• Warzones: Each warzone could assign a slot to any region. Preferably more warzones would be added.
• Nation Types: Some slots would be given to regions with the highest concentration of a particular nation type (i.e. "Inoffensive Centrist Democracy). This evaluation would obviously need to be a function of WA nations only.
• Nation Stats: Same idea as with nation types, but based on average census rankings.
• Bank: Some slots could be rented to the highest bidder for a duration of time, using bank earned from cards.
• Events: Ad slots could be a prize for winners of events like N-day and Z-day.

[Comfed]

This is a bad idea.
- It’s very complicated
- Many regions that do not engage in styles of play that can be quantified by numbers (such as RP regions) would lose out
- The GCRs in general, but especially the sinkers, would effectively become large founderless regions.

[Topid]

Agreed, changing more than needs changed here making it too complicated.

[Galiantus III]

This is a bad idea.
- It’s very complicated
- Many regions that do not engage in styles of play that can be quantified by numbers (such as RP regions) would lose out
- The GCRs in general, but especially the sinkers, would effectively become large founderless regions.

- The core idea here is the third page that lists 10 regions (selected in some manner), and has a skip button - that's the simple bit.
- The method of selection is where things can either be complicated or simple. I'm just throwing out ideas here. If we just want a system up and running it would probably just be a re-skinning of the current recruitment via telegram system. The difference is new players are presented with choices in the context of "regions are a part of the game, choose one if you like" instead of "here's an inbox full of spam".
- How this would affect the feeders is debatable. I'm not attached to any particular method of selection, I'm just throwing out possible ways to select. Perhaps one of the ten regions listed could always be a feeder, and that feeder would be where the newly created goes if they click the "skip" button.
- Since this is part of new nation creation, the sinkers would be unaffected.

[Atheris]

Why not, when you skip it, then you don't end up in a region at all? Could be useful for returners who don't like to read RMB messages but don't want to make a new region.

[Jar Wattinree]

Why not, when you skip it, then you don't end up in a region at all? Could be useful for returners who don't like to read RMB messages but don't want to make a new region.

You’re putting the horse before the cart. Why not not make a nation at all and go play call of duty instead?

[Atheris]

Why not, when you skip it, then you don't end up in a region at all? Could be useful for returners who don't like to read RMB messages but don't want to make a new region.

You’re putting the horse before the cart. Why not not make a nation at all and go play call of duty instead?

'Cuz I like it here.

[Frisbeeteria]

Why not, when you skip it, then you don't end up in a region at all?

Can't do it. Update depends on regional membership. Nations don't update unless they're in a region.

[Atheris]

Why not, when you skip it, then you don't end up in a region at all?

Can't do it. Update depends on regional membership. Nations don't update unless they're in a region.

Damn, that sucks. Oh well.

[Sandaoguo]

This is actually a very good idea, whatever the few naysayers here think. (No, it's just not true that you can "quantify" RP regions. Literally everything can be quantified. Your entire personality is quantified by online ad services every day.)

The "bank" idea is where I have issues, but the overall idea of have a "personality quiz" or similar offer you some regions to look into is good. How I would do this is have regions set various "traits" in the admin controls, which match up to the filters. There could also be generic traits: "I want to see very small regions" (population filter) | "I want to see very active regions" (RMB activity filter) | etc.

"Skip" would simply be "Stay in [X] Pacific"

[Sedgistan]

The problem something like this would have to overcome (and I like the concept of this, whether it comes before or after the nation is actually founded and placed in a region) is that most new players to NationStates have no idea what the actual ways people play NS are. They think they're going to be managing a nation, whether that's dictator-for-life or idyllic democracy, and maybe going to war with some other nations. Raiding/defending, regional governments, roleplaying, sports, social regions, WA stuff and all that - which are significant parts of regional identifies - won't mean anything to them.

So what you want to avoid doing is getting a new player moving to the R/D focused "Leftist Alliance" because they're a left-winger and think their nation should be allied with other lefties, when actually they'd be an amazing roleplayer and should join a region that has extensive world-building RPs in the International Incidents forum.

[Galiantus III]

Is that a problem, though? The current system doesn't respect new player ignorance either; new players are just as clueless now as they would be with this. But at least this presents the concept in a more official and palatable way.

Also, our current system already fails to tailor recruitment to the player. The telegrams that show up are determined by the persistence of recruiters and the order they fall in queue. So all filtering is up to the player, who is new, and has no idea what these regions are about. At least with this we can recommend regions to new players in an intelligent way, and new players can actually filter the regions in a way that has some meaning to them, without having to read several pages worth of telegrams.

[Flanderlion]

NS needs a better tutorial for new players. We get an enormous amount of potential players trying the game once then leaving. A better tutorial could explain briefly how some regions are more GP vs RP etc focused, the risks of offsite, that the game is at its core a once a day game but people have built upon it to make it a login whenever you want one.

On having a quiz etc for new players, haven't made up my mind yet. I think status quo isn't ideal atm but I am concerned that a quiz would be more likely to put players in dead regions.

Either way, despite me wanting accounts/annexation/issue/nation stats/SC Gen to be able to reorder proposal queue, I do think NPE is what the game as a whole should be putting resources into. It's the biggest issue that affects the largest amount of players/potential players and it's not working. Players are arriving, having no clue what there is to do, then leaving. Some are even being recruited into dead regions. Others end up being recruited into OOC problematic ones (not meaning ideologies, meaning creeps)

[Comfed]

I just think we should expand the FAQ.

And I don’t support putting nations in regions that have a specific purpose before they even create their nation - the feeders exist for a reason.

[Sandaoguo]

The problem something like this would have to overcome (and I like the concept of this, whether it comes before or after the nation is actually founded and placed in a region) is that most new players to NationStates have no idea what the actual ways people play NS are. They think they're going to be managing a nation, whether that's dictator-for-life or idyllic democracy, and maybe going to war with some other nations. Raiding/defending, regional governments, roleplaying, sports, social regions, WA stuff and all that - which are significant parts of regional identifies - won't mean anything to them.

So what you want to avoid doing is getting a new player moving to the R/D focused "Leftist Alliance" because they're a left-winger and think their nation should be allied with other lefties, when actually they'd be an amazing roleplayer and should join a region that has extensive world-building RPs in the International Incidents forum.

That doesn't sound like a problem with this suggestion. If anything, something like this would help, because regions would be adding "roleplay" or "raider" or "defender" or whatever into their traits.

On having a quiz etc for new players, haven't made up my mind yet. I think status quo isn't ideal atm but I am concerned that a quiz would be more likely to put players in dead regions.

Exceedingly simple to remove inactive regions from any results.

You guys have a very weird idea of how people discover what games have to offer. When you join an MMO, most of it you learn by playing. Not by reading every single variation of gameplay that exists first. You don't decide "This new person should join this RP region and learn about the II forum" and so we must find some way to funnel them there--- you give that person an overview of what the game has to offer, let them decide where to go, what they end up liking, when they change their mind, etc.

[Galiantus III]

On having a quiz etc for new players, haven't made up my mind yet. I think status quo isn't ideal atm but I am concerned that a quiz would be more likely to put players in dead regions.

Indeed. Not something I would want to see happen either. I think excluding regions with no WA nations would be a good start, though some other requirements might be needed.

I just think we should expand the FAQ.

How would that make recruitment telegrams less annoying or improve the experience for new players?

And I don’t support putting nations in regions that have a specific purpose before they even create their nation - the feeders exist for a reason.

I suppose this could happen after nation creation.

[Galiantus III]

Since there has been recent discussion about this idea in the development thread, let's revisit it.

Page Location
I initially proposed this as a third page of nation creation, but others have suggested making it optional, or even its own separate "find region" page nations can go to after initially creating a nation. I personally like the idea of a separate page, since this would interfere less with nation creation, and would allow for more useful region-finding features to be added in the future.

What's really important is that new players are easily directed to this page. This could the page that opens from pressing "Tired of life in %%REGION%%?" or "Move to a New Region", and it could be linked in the initial welcome telegram.

However, this doesn't mean the nation creation page can't still influence where new nations start:

Survey Questions
The existing survey questions can still be used to group nations together. And with the "Democracy/Autocracy" idea, this could be done more efficiently. Nations would store their survey answers (if they answered at all), and would be sent to one of the Democracy regions where other nations answered closest to them. For example, if everyone in a region strongly agrees marijuana should be legal, players that answer that way when they initially create their nation are more likely to start there. This means regions would be encouraged to find a niche and fill it, in order to attract like-minded people. And this minimizes the possibility of someone starting in a region that totally misaligns with their genuine political beliefs (i.e. sending someone with capitalist views to The Communist Bloc).

Tags
We already have a system of tags we could use to help players narrow down regions, but in practice this works out horribly, since regions self-select tags without limitation or consequence. I think a system like what Bears Armed suggests would go a long way in giving tags actual utility (emphasis mine):

This would be accompanied by (1) a change in coding (as already suggested more than once, by various players, in this forum...) limiting regions to no more than 10-12 tags each & barring their use of both members from any conflicting pair of tags (e.g. both 'fascist' & 'anti-fascist') so that they can no longer try to game the Tags system by claiming to b everything at once;

Admittedly, tags are a separate idea to this, but making tags useful would be a huge benefit to any region selection page.

[Kylia Quilor]

But not everyone uses their issue answers in anything resembling a way that would make grouping based on RL opinions meaningful or useful. My first nation in NS ever represented virtually none of my RL opinions in any capacity beyond being atheist (it was a fascistic imperial dictatorship that was basically an atheist theocracy, along with a whole host of other stuff, 99% of which I didn't agree with IRL), so...

Plus, plenty of people and regions may just... not want to attach RL political views to their regions that have nothing to do with RL politics?

[Galiantus III]

One way this could be implemented is with some changes to the Change Region page, combined with more ways for new players to locate the page.

Right now the Change Region page is basically a hybrid of the World page and the Regions page. It includes (1) the "Found a new region" button, (2) the featured region, (3) the top 10 regions by size, excluding feeders, sinkers, puppet storage, and passwords, and (4) the tag cloud. I believe the following modifications to the page would be useful to anyone trying to find a region:

1. Remove the featured region from this page. It is already on the easily accessible World page, and here it is just clutter. At the very least this would make the page look more similar to the tag search page, which would improve the intuition for using the tag cloud.
2. Move the "Found a new region" button to the bottom of the page. This isn't a huge deal, but I think we should do what we can to encourage new players to find an active region before they try founding a new region of their own.
3. Improve the layout of the tag cloud everywhere it shows up, so it's a little more decipherable than a green blob of words. Break them up into meaningful categories using different colors or expandable boxes. Remove or highlight tags when they are being used in a search. And by default, sort regions by size during a search. Nobody who is looking for a new region cares what the census of the day is, and it adds extra steps to finding a good region.

Of course, new players need to be able to find this page in order to use it. Currently the only way to get here is by clicking the tiny text "Tired of life in [region]?" halfway down the region page. I think this should at least be accessible from the "Note to Leader" system telegram, although it wouldn't hurt to add a link on the world page and make the text on the region page bigger during the nation's first day.