NationStates

Branching off from Minsk's thread on the subject of recruitment solutions, I have an idea that likely warrants its own thread. It's based not just on the idea of appealing to new players, but how to help existing players who are burnt out in their current region find somewhere else to try instead of just leaving the game forever. It's important to remember that existing players no longer often receive new recruitment TGs, since it's relatively low returns and there's quite a stigma to tag:WA recruitment.

The perspective that there are too many regions recruiting, as is a talking point lately, is probably not the problem as much as telegrams are over-relied on to be a recruitment solution. Instead, I think we probably need to have a new type of system created to help here. Possibly a page that replaces the current The World page. I don't really have the history on the feature being added, but if the point of regions tags were to help people find regions, they're not really doing that so much as being symbolic, or some form of region self-expression. So maybe we need something that capitalises on the region tag's concept more.

We currently have a primitive and clunky way to report regions by tag, but there are so many single-nation regions or dead regions in this format, that most any search reports over a thousand largely irrelevant results, viewed ten regions at a time, with absolutely minimal information on anything that pops up besides size and whether or not it has a delegate.

I recommend nuking this system and replacing it with a more advanced region finder, where players may search by keywords, filter by tag, with results displayed in aesthetically enticing boxes which display:

• The region's flag
• The region's banner as a backsplash (if it has one)
• Every region tag it has
• The first X characters of the WFE A small region-entered advert, or the first X characters of the WFE if an advert has not been set.
• Its WA population or delegate voting power
• Found date?

These result should be able to be sorted randomly, by WA population, region age, or with some type of intervention from recruiters in the respective regions.

There are third-party Discord finder sites such as Disboard which use this idea to get advertisement out for servers with a substantial degree of success. Perhaps we can use this same concept where regions who have a WA population greater than or equal to five, consistently over the course of several days, get automatically enrolled, and their respective region recruiters can help bump their region's result into better visibility.

If we wish to further expand the likelihood of nations moving out of their feeders, we can include a link to this page in Max's Note to Leader telegram upon nation creation.

I've come round to this (and others) view about there being an onsite page for finding a region. Initially I thought it should just be an offsite resource maintained by players, but now I'm for a more site endorsed approach.

WA population of regions should be a game census, as this and several other things rely on WA nations rather than raw nation count to rank regions (as raw is not an accurate representation often).

Would regions who had a WA population lower than 5 be displayed? What if a region had 6 then lost 2 WAs, and was under, would they be automatically removed? I'm not 100% on 5 WAs being the threshold, but guessing its a placeholder number. 1 WA is enough to say that this a region at least 1 person cares about, but also 10 means it isn't just some jump point where someone left their WA in.

Also there might be a place for allowing regions to write their own description rather than the first X characters of a WFE.

Flanderlion wrote:Would regions who had a WA population lower than 5 be displayed? What if a region had 6 then lost 2 WAs, and was under, would they be automatically removed? I'm not 100% on 5 WAs being the threshold, but guessing its a placeholder number. 1 WA is enough to say that this a region at least 1 person cares about, but also 10 means it isn't just some jump point where someone left their WA in.

I'd put the threshold somewhere between 2-5. It shouldn't be too hard to get on the list, but there should also be evidence multiple players consider the region important.

Also there might be a place for allowing regions to write their own description rather than the first X characters of a WFE.

A couple months back someone suggested submitting a description would give you about a month of visibility on this kind of page. If this was paired with the WA requirement (and filtered out passworded regions), this page would be a nice consolidation of all the communities making any kind of recruitment effort. It would be a great place to start looking for a region.

This bit comes under my area. I'd really like a page like this, but haven't been convinced by some of the previous ways people have suggested it be implemented. That Disboard page looks like a great starting point - it's more in line with what I'd envisaged.

I don't think we should use the WFE for the text description if possible - regions should be able to set their own via the regional controls. That means that if a region can't be bothered to set one, maybe it doesn't appear, immediately filtering out regions that nations probably shouldn't be moving to. But then this only works as a "find a region" page not a "the world page" - so the alternative would be to pull text from the WFE if none is set.

How would new nations get directed to this? Max's welcome TG can link to it, but it almost feels like there should be an annoying banner at the top of the page asking you to click to find a region until you either X that banner closed or do actually move. If you want nations moving, you need to push them to this page. (A radical D/A tie-in would display this during the nation creation process, and only display Feeders/Democracies as options to spawn in.)

Potentially the top three regions displayed should be your current one (so they can make an attempt to retain/engage you), a random daily(?) featured one, and - potentially a paid spot (everyone will hate me for that suggestion).

The big problem previous suggestions for these pages have for new players has been the crude matching - do you want a roleplay region? Invader region? Cards one? At the point of entry into the game, new players have absolutely no idea what those are, and won't know what they might enjoy. So there's a question about whether we need to modify how we handle tags, and/or have descriptions of them to make this work. There remains the incentive for regions to tag themselves with everything, which needs addressing.

Refuge Isle wrote:Branching off from Minsk's thread on the subject of recruitment solutions, I have an idea that likely warrants its own thread. It's based not just on the idea of appealing to new players, but how to help existing players who are burnt out in their current region find somewhere else to try instead of just leaving the game forever. It's important to remember that existing players no longer often receive new recruitment TGs, since it's relatively low returns and there's quite a stigma to tag:WA recruitment.

The perspective that there are too many regions recruiting, as is a talking point lately, is probably not the problem as much as telegrams are over-relied on to be a recruitment solution. Instead, I think we probably need to have a new type of system created to help here. Possibly a page that replaces the current The World page. I don't really have the history on the feature being added, but if the point of regions tags were to help people find regions, they're not really doing that so much as being symbolic, or some form of region self-expression. So maybe we need something that capitalises on the region tag's concept more.

We currently have a primitive and clunky way to report regions by tag, but there are so many single-nation regions or dead regions in this format, that most any search reports over a thousand largely irrelevant results, viewed ten regions at a time, with absolutely minimal information on anything that pops up besides size and whether or not it has a delegate.

I recommend nuking this system and replacing it with a more advanced region finder, where players may search by keywords, filter by tag, with results displayed in aesthetically enticing boxes which display:

• The region's flag
• The region's banner as a backsplash (if it has one)
• Every region tag it has
• The first X characters of the WFE
• Its WA population or delegate voting power

These result should be able to be sorted randomly, by WA population, region age, or with some type of intervention from recruiters in the respective regions.

There are third-party Discord finder sites such as Disboard which use this idea to get advertisement out for servers with a substantial degree of success. Perhaps we can use this same concept where regions who have a WA population greater than or equal to five, consistently over the course of several days, get automatically enrolled, and their respective region recruiters can help push their region into visibility.

If we wish to further expand the likelihood of nations moving out of their feeders, we can include a link to this page in Max's Note to Leader telegram upon nation creation.

This is why we have a "Surprise Me!" button. Then again, I wouldn't be opposed to this idea.

Sedgistan wrote:The big problem previous suggestions for these pages have for new players has been the crude matching - do you want a roleplay region? Invader region? Cards one? At the point of entry into the game, new players have absolutely no idea what those are, and won't know what they might enjoy. So there's a question about whether we need to modify how we handle tags, and/or have descriptions of them to make this work. There remains the incentive for regions to tag themselves with everything, which needs addressing.

It's not just new players who would benefit from descriptions. There's a few that are ambiguous as to what they're meant to signify, is democratic meant to mean it's a region of democraticly run nations, or a region that's run democratically? Who knows, it was never decided, or really meant to be. However once we start using it for mechanics it's necessary for us to agree on what those tags mean.

/re the issue of regions tagging themselves with everything:

Hagenhamm wrote:Another addon that would be nice, or fit in with good tag use; a way for regions to filter out the sort of nations they don't want to show up for show up for, sort of like we can tailor recruitment telegrams withs tags, with the tradeoff that regions that are more selective* are more likely to appear on the page, and appear higher for those players that do match their tags.

*a region being considered more selective if fewer nations match the filter they set.

region tags could be made less effective if overused in the same way. It doesnt' work if we're replacing the world page, but if this is just a feature to help players find a region then it could help.

So basically, a more advanced region search. Alright. Well first, unless my morning brain isn't working....wouldn't a flag search be almost useless? There are a near-infinite number of flags. This would only be useful for American teens going through a patriotic phase imo . The same thing with banners, sorta. Maybe using the default few would bring results, although idk why that would be criteria for the region best suited for you. Tags, alright. WFE characters? People would be looking for what they can expect from a region, not how they wrote their WFE. And lastly, WA population/voting power....wouldn't people be gravitating to TNP then? What new person would pick the 69th most powerful region instead of the 1st? Of course, people can see that by looking through the Delegate votes, but if they've gone to that page, I think they've already settled into their region of choice. I think only tags and WA power would see use. But for sure, a region list that weeds out backwaters and shows you what you want to see would be ideal. Meaning it'd exclude puppet storage and passworded regions, of course. But the idea is a good one.

I don't agree with removing the old system but adding this page or adding the WFE thing to the old page would be a good idea.

Flanderlion wrote:Would regions who had a WA population lower than 5 be displayed? What if a region had 6 then lost 2 WAs, and was under, would they be automatically removed? I'm not 100% on 5 WAs being the threshold, but guessing its a placeholder number. 1 WA is enough to say that this a region at least 1 person cares about, but also 10 means it isn't just some jump point where someone left their WA in.

Basically, yeah. The main purpose of the suggestion is to connect players to regions that are actually alive.

We need to check the WA population over the course of a few days to make sure that it isn't just an r/d group doing a tag or detag, and that people actually live there. There are around 360 regions that have at least 5 WA members, and likely that is fine. I've been watching changes for the last couple weeks and it's rather unusual that any anomalies happen at that level, but the 5 WAs can be a different number if so desired. The biggest disruption is whether or not there is a current occupation in the world.

The main thing is that we want to populate the list with regions where people actually live and could benefit from new added players instead of regions that are populated by a single hermit or which have r/d player's uncleaned up puppets giving new players the wrong impression.

Flanderlion wrote:Also there might be a place for allowing regions to write their own description rather than the first X characters of a WFE.

Sedgistan wrote:I don't think we should use the WFE for the text description if possible - regions should be able to set their own via the regional controls. That means that if a region can't be bothered to set one, maybe it doesn't appear, immediately filtering out regions that nations probably shouldn't be moving to. But then this only works as a "find a region" page not a "the world page" - so the alternative would be to pull text from the WFE if none is set.

I like this and think it's great.

Sedgistan wrote:How would new nations get directed to this? Max's welcome TG can link to it, but it almost feels like there should be an annoying banner at the top of the page asking you to click to find a region until you either X that banner closed or do actually move. If you want nations moving, you need to push them to this page.

Sedgistan wrote:The big problem previous suggestions for these pages have for new players has been the crude matching - do you want a roleplay region? Invader region? Cards one? At the point of entry into the game, new players have absolutely no idea what those are, and won't know what they might enjoy. So there's a question about whether we need to modify how we handle tags, and/or have descriptions of them to make this work. There remains the incentive for regions to tag themselves with everything, which needs addressing.

If you wanted such an aggressive take, then the annoying banner is fine.

For my part, what I'm most concerned about is nations which are five days old to two months old, not ones who are founded out of the gate. So adding the link in Max's TG is good and positive, I feel, but ideally the region finder page should be on the left-hand sidebar (like I said, possibly replacing The World page). We want people who have had a bad experience or or who haven't found their current region to be a good fit the ability to get matched with another region to try out before quitting. So if this is prominently displayed just like the link to the WA or their current region, we can ensure that it remains as accessible as possible.

Sedgistan wrote:(A radical D/A tie-in would display this during the nation creation process, and only display Feeders/Democracies as options to spawn in.)

Yeah, I'm definitely not going to address that in this thread. As Refugia's founder, along with the vast majority of other UCR folks that are aware of your proposal, I'm hard-against D/A in no uncertain terms. This idea is a part of the set of possibilities that I would like to constructively float as alternative solutions which do not damage the game in the ways I feel D/A would. D/A will have no credibility from me here, I think there are other options and the region finder page can be one of them.

Sedgistan wrote:Potentially the top three regions displayed should be your current one (so they can make an attempt to retain/engage you), a random daily(?) featured one, and - potentially a paid spot (everyone will hate me for that suggestion).

I agree that this may be a better use of the daily featured region, especially if this page would replace the world page.

Minskiev wrote: Well first, unless my morning brain isn't working....wouldn't a flag search be almost useless?

I think you are misunderstanding what I'm suggesting. We're not searching by flags, we're returning the region flag as a part of the enticing box that displays the results on the search criteria. The search criteria is based on name and tag search. The banners would also be returned as a box decoration. Something in this school of thought. Even though the Best Nation event was a flop, the design concept would certainly be useful for promoting a region over the current system.

Refuge Isle wrote: their respective region recruiters can help bump their region's result into better visibility.

What would you say to using an existing medium, stamps, to purchase preferential placement for a short period? Let's say you spend 1,000 stamps to be in the top 10 slots for a day or three if someone searched on your tag? Or maybe for the first 1000 searches that included two of your tags? (We'd obviously need a limit on region page tags, or everyone would add every tag.) Or some other aspect of preferred placement using stamps?

Does that make us pay to play, or is it the same as buying stamps for recruitment telegrams?

Frisbeeteria wrote:

Refuge Isle wrote: their respective region recruiters can help bump their region's result into better visibility.

What would you say to using an existing medium, stamps, to purchase preferential placement for a short period? Let's say you spend 1,000 stamps to be in the top 10 slots for a day or three if someone searched on your tag? Or maybe for the first 1000 searches that included two of your tags? (We'd obviously need a limit on region page tags, or everyone would add every tag.) Or some other aspect of preferred placement using stamps?

Does that make us pay to play, or is it the same as buying stamps for recruitment telegrams?

I understand by your response and Sedge's that the site is looking to support itself, and I am not against the notion as a necessary component of NationStates existing.

We would have to be careful to maintain a balance between those who are willing to drop 50,000 stamps into the region with limited hesitation, and communities who are completely without means to do so. At the moment, this is achieved by manual telegram recruitment being moderately more effective than stamps-based means, but stamps based means being significantly more convenient and automatically run as long as the available stamps last.

So, if you wanted to implement a stamps-based "featured" mechanic to the region finder, I think that's workable, but some sort of manual bump system is necessary to allow regions without financial means to directly impact their visibility. In a stamps-based featured system, you will likely run into an issue where a great number of regions are willing to dump stamps into the program and dilute their "featured"ness. A possible solution to that could be the ability to sort results by "featured" a la Amazon.com, along with a "bumped recently" option, and a "WA nations" option. Perhaps to give them equal viability, the sort option must be selected before results can be returned.

Refuge Isle wrote:

Minskiev wrote: Well first, unless my morning brain isn't working....wouldn't a flag search be almost useless?

I think you are misunderstanding what I'm suggesting. We're not searching by flags, we're returning the region flag as a part of the enticing box that displays the results on the search criteria. The search criteria is based on name and tag search. The banners would also be returned as a box decoration. Something in this school of thought. Even though the Best Nation event was a flop, the design concept would certainly be useful for promoting a region over the current system.

Ah. Yeah. That'd be nice.

Sedgistan wrote:How would new nations get directed to this? Max's welcome TG can link to it, but it almost feels like there should be an annoying banner at the top of the page asking you to click to find a region until you either X that banner closed or do actually move. If you want nations moving, you need to push them to this page.

I think the least annoying way to do this, while still doing something to direct every player to this page, is by adding it to the top ribbon alongside Notices, Telegrams, Issues, etc. For new nations, put a red notification there until they open the page once. Now this page is easily accessible by everyone, and new players will be directed there, but it's not an annoying pup-up. Alternatively, this could be the landing page immediately after nation creation.

(A radical D/A tie-in would display this during the nation creation process, and only display Feeders/Democracies as options to spawn in.)

The big problem previous suggestions for these pages have for new players has been the crude matching - do you want a roleplay region? Invader region? Cards one? At the point of entry into the game, new players have absolutely no idea what those are, and won't know what they might enjoy.

I don't think you can do much for a new player other than start them off in a relatively active region. And this seems like a good argument to keep the page available even for older nations. Basically, I don't see the need to make this a part of nation creation.

So there's a question about whether we need to modify how we handle tags, and/or have descriptions of them to make this work. There remains the incentive for regions to tag themselves with everything, which needs addressing.

The reason to choose every tag is to maximize the number of searches your region turns up in. If there was a (general) negative correlation between the number of tags on a region and its chances of being in the top of a search, I think that should mostly solve the problem.

Potentially the top three regions displayed should be your current one (so they can make an attempt to retain/engage you), a random daily(?) featured one, and - potentially a paid spot (everyone will hate me for that suggestion).

I don't think I'd want the current region displayed as part of the list, but it could be helpful for new players to indicate which region they are currently in. Somewhere on the page could say "Current region:" followed by the listing for their current region. This makes it obvious this is the region they would be leaving if they joined another region.

Part of me wants to say just scrap TG recruiting and use this page. Instead of telegrams, you'd send listings, via the same method you send telegrams. The default listings would be selected from regions that used this system. And if they refine their search, sent listings that meet the criteria would show up near the top. So there would be little change to the current methods available for active recruitment, it's just that instead of a telegram being sent, they are making it drastically more likely their region's listing is seen by that nation.

Refuge Isle wrote:I understand by your response and Sedge's that the site is looking to support itself, and I am not against the notion as a necessary component of NationStates existing.

That's not actually my primary driver. I'm looking for methods that are not entirely random, but do not effectively permit only long-time players to dominate the page. Please feel free to suggest other methods:

• Do we want something that costs influence? How could we keep that in balance with the mega-regions already having far more than anyone else?
• Do we want something that shaves stats (like a WA vote does) for everyone in the region?
• Do we do region-wide TG recruit bans when a region has a listed ad?
• Can region members pay for it using Trading Card Bank?
• What idea can you add to this list?

Monetizing with stamps is just the obvious choice. What else can be done to give the little region a shot at it?

Frisbeeteria wrote:

Refuge Isle wrote: their respective region recruiters can help bump their region's result into better visibility.

What would you say to using an existing medium, stamps, to purchase preferential placement for a short period? Let's say you spend 1,000 stamps to be in the top 10 slots for a day or three if someone searched on your tag? Or maybe for the first 1000 searches that included two of your tags? (We'd obviously need a limit on region page tags, or everyone would add every tag.) Or some other aspect of preferred placement using stamps?

Does that make us pay to play, or is it the same as buying stamps for recruitment telegrams?

Pretty sure that is the same scheme most dating sites use to separate people from their money. Buy boosters to get your name featured more prominently?

Frisbeeteria wrote:

Refuge Isle wrote:I understand by your response and Sedge's that the site is looking to support itself, and I am not against the notion as a necessary component of NationStates existing.

That's not actually my primary driver. I'm looking for methods that are not entirely random, but do not effectively permit only long-time players to dominate the page. Please feel free to suggest other methods:

• Do we want something that costs influence? How could we keep that in balance with the mega-regions already having far more than anyone else?
• Do we want something that shaves stats (like a WA vote does) for everyone in the region?
• Do we do region-wide TG recruit bans when a region has a listed ad?
• Can region members pay for it using Trading Card Bank?
• What idea can you add to this list?

Monetizing with stamps is just the obvious choice. What else can be done to give the little region a shot at it?

A lot of what you're suggesting, influence, bank etc, is what is tied to more established players. But to keep a region manually bumped in the results listing should take an attentiveness that cannot simply be bought with resources.

Frisbeeteria wrote:

Refuge Isle wrote: their respective region recruiters can help bump their region's result into better visibility.

What would you say to using an existing medium, stamps, to purchase preferential placement for a short period? Let's say you spend 1,000 stamps to be in the top 10 slots for a day or three if someone searched on your tag? Or maybe for the first 1000 searches that included two of your tags? (We'd obviously need a limit on region page tags, or everyone would add every tag.) Or some other aspect of preferred placement using stamps?

Does that make us pay to play, or is it the same as buying stamps for recruitment telegrams?

Instead of preferential placement what if you could use stamps to stay up longer. If your ad had to be renewed every day or something, but you could renew it automatically for a number of stamps each day. This would be more analogous to how stamps work with recruitment. They don't make your recruitment more effective. they just mean you don't have to put as much effort into it. It feels less like pay to win.

Haganham wrote:

Frisbeeteria wrote:What would you say to using an existing medium, stamps, to purchase preferential placement for a short period? Let's say you spend 1,000 stamps to be in the top 10 slots for a day or three if someone searched on your tag? Or maybe for the first 1000 searches that included two of your tags? (We'd obviously need a limit on region page tags, or everyone would add every tag.) Or some other aspect of preferred placement using stamps?

Does that make us pay to play, or is it the same as buying stamps for recruitment telegrams?

Instead of preferential placement what if you could use stamps to stay up longer. If your ad had to be renewed every day or something, but you could renew it automatically for a number of stamps each day. This would be more analogous to how stamps work with recruitment. They don't make your recruitment more effective. they just mean you don't have to put as much effort into it. It feels less like pay to win.

If we wanted some ability to bump a regions result to better visibility - the default order (which could be changed, like normal region searching can be) should be whoever paid/clicked/whatever metric we use for bumping then ordered by WA after. So regions could make themselves more visible, but it wouldn't interfere with ordering if a player wanted only a region with high civil rights.

I like this idea, and I like Refuge Isle's mock up. It sounds like a great way for not-new nations to find a new home.
I like the idea that a region has to opt in to being listed. Say the executive, or maybe any RO, had to click a button on the Admin page each day to ensure they were still listed. That would help ensure only actively recruiting regions were included. Stamps could then be used to buy fewer button clicks - eg, if I spend 1000 stamps, I get to go an extra 24hours before needing to click the button again. That way less affluent players aren't so disadvantaged, as Hagenham suggests. (Maybe base the number of stamps on the average number of tag:new nations that are spawned each day?)
I don't agree with the focus on WA / Nation count - that puts the bias towards large established regions. Some of the more fun regions I've been in were small with no WAs at all. Though I suppose a list should be sorted somehow, and I don't have many better suggestions. Maybe time-of-last-RMB-post? As long as all sizes of region could opt in, I guess it's ok.
Similarly, influence related costs puts bias towards large regions. Card bank related costs would encourage unnecessary card farms.
I wouldn't switch off recruitment TGs while the region is advertised though. I don't see what's wrong with regions using both approaches at once. And if these new adverts are more successful than TGs, people might decide that TGs are no longer worthwhile if they had to choose between the two approaches.
I don't agree with displaying your own region - since you're already there, they should have managed to convince you to stay! However, there should be an easy way for a player to see what their own region ad looks like.

Frisbeeteria wrote:Monetizing with stamps is just the obvious choice. What else can be done to give the little region a shot at it?

If you do monetize like that, perhaps make the cost proportionately higher for larger (in terms of number of nations? number of WA nations? total Influence?) regions?

Little St Nick wrote:I don't agree with displaying your own region - since you're already there, they should have managed to convince you to stay! However, there should be an easy way for a player to see what their own region ad looks like.

Displaying your own region makes sense if we're putting a big red noticeable thing to get players to use the page. The page will likely end up being the introduction to regions for many players, so it's fair to let them see how their own region presents themselves. Yes we have welcome telegrams to do that, but they suffer from the same problem we're trying to fix, players get too many telegrams at nation creation and so they don't read them.

Little St Nick wrote:I don't agree with the focus on WA / Nation count - that puts the bias towards large established regions. Some of the more fun regions I've been in were small with no WAs at all. Though I suppose a list should be sorted somehow, and I don't have many better suggestions. Maybe time-of-last-RMB-post? As long as all sizes of region could opt in, I guess it's ok.

Perhaps it does put too much bias on established regions to have a sort by WA option. However, I still think the nation/population information being returned in the results would be useful for indicating whether or not a region was alive before a player moves there. RMB posts in the last X hours is a decent suggestion, but WA nations are less manipulatable if the results are real time.

Little St Nick wrote:Similarly, influence related costs puts bias towards large regions. Card bank related costs would encourage unnecessary card farms.

Agree. Although I can understand the interest in wanting to get excess influence/bank out of the system, the power dynamics that such a market would cause would be punitive for regions who are smaller and wish to remain smaller. The bump system puts everyone on equal footing, and I suspect admin may be more interested in having a sort by featured option be stamp-related rather than influence/bank.

Little St Nick wrote:I wouldn't switch off recruitment TGs while the region is advertised though. I don't see what's wrong with regions using both approaches at once. And if these new adverts are more successful than TGs, people might decide that TGs are no longer worthwhile if they had to choose between the two approaches.
I don't agree with displaying your own region - since you're already there, they should have managed to convince you to stay! However, there should be an easy way for a player to see what their own region ad looks like.

I'm inclined to agree.

At this point, I don't see the advantage of regions being forced to choose between the region finder page and telegrams. I think the suggestion comes from the perspective that there are only so many players who will see this page. In reality, a region finder page would be useful for anyone who wishes to explore or change regions, including players who may have been parked in the same place for a year. NationStates would lose this quality of life upgrade for older players, as they might miss out on a region they would otherwise be matched with if it is running telegrams, while those nations aren't typically targetted by recruitment telegrams anyway.

So the page should be on the left-hand sidebar, always available, with the same results for everyone all the time the region has actively opted-in / is bumping their result.

A better relevant balance question is what, if any, should the cooldown be on a region bumping their region?

Bears Armed wrote:

Frisbeeteria wrote:Monetizing with stamps is just the obvious choice. What else can be done to give the little region a shot at it?

If you do monetize like that, perhaps make the cost proportionately higher for larger (in terms of number of nations? number of WA nations? total Influence?) regions?

Interesting! I can't immediately think of any problems with this. We already use this idea when it comes to ejecting high influence nations. We could use the same concept with promoted regions to balance cost by their existing size, making it correspondingly difficult to become a TNP-sized superpower.

Haganham wrote:Displaying your own region makes sense if we're putting a big red noticeable thing to get players to use the page. The page will likely end up being the introduction to regions for many players, so it's fair to let them see how their own region presents themselves. Yes we have welcome telegrams to do that, but they suffer from the same problem we're trying to fix, players get too many telegrams at nation creation and so they don't read them.

I personally believe it would be unnecessary clutter on the page. Presumably if a player is on the region finder page, they are intentionally looking at regions other than the one they are in. The region they are in can be returned as a normal search result, apples to apples, but there's no benefit that I can think of to make this a mandatory part of the screen.

We have a find-a-region page, it's just not very good.

It currently shows nations from "not Puppet Storage + not Feeder + not Sinker + not Password" in order of most nations. At some point I was going to change that to be in order of most WA nations. But something a little richer would be good!

Showing the regions as separate boxes rather than as rows in a table could be a very helpful idea. We could use region history to determine region age (for regions with no founding event, we could say "at least X years" or similar).

Some further ways we could potentially sort regions:

• Median nation closest in NS 3d freedom scores to your nation
• Greatest diversity of freedom scores among nations
• Least diversity of freedom scores among nations
• Most nations (or most WA nations) that logged in at some point yesterday
• Most nations that voted on the last WA resolution to end voting
• Fastest growing region (in WA nation count) (arithmetically or geometrically)

I made a mockup in Bootstrap (yes, yes I know) as to what this could look like, does anybody have any thoughts?


The top bar would have three (or more?) featured regions, determined by some method, and it would contain links to expanded profile cards on the region. (More on that in a bit.) Underneath, you'd have "recently bumped regions" per this line of discussion. Each region would have regional tags, stats, and history displayed on their "bump" card, which would also be the first card you see if you search for a region.

Images of the expanded sections:


You could click on the name of the region, and get an expanded card, similar to the "featured regions" at the top. The expanded card would look like this:


Menu options would include Regional Officers, Regional Tags (exactly the same as on the "bump" card), and Top Dispatches, which would be the pinned dispatches in the region.

The two new menu options are shown in this spoiler:


The "Visit Karma Now" button on this page has a dropdown - contained in this dropdown would be a few links that could be settable by the region. I used a few of the most prominent links on the Karma regional page for this.


Anyway, I feel that this somewhat is a decent stab at a potential page.

Onto technical matters behind this absurd blob of CSS and JS Bootstrap-based framework, I would envision a "bump" system similar to what has been discussed already in this thread - regions can pay stamps to bump their region once every day, at a cost of say, 1000 stamps per bump. The "Featured Region" bar would also have a paid slot, say, 5000 stamps for a week's publicity in the slot. (too little, too much? for both time and stamps)

Of course, we need to allow for a "manual" way of bumping as well. One potential option would be based off the number of manual recruitment telegrams sent by the region, where say, 60-70 telegrams sent bumps the region in the same manner as 1000 stamps. The top region for manual recruitment (per day, by telegrams sent) would get one of the featured region slots on the bar as well.

Those of you counting would have noticed that there is still a third slot on that bar - I propose that it be selected in much the same manner as the region of the day, but with some minimum WA requirements, say, 15 WA nations in the region at the previous update. Again, that number could be up for debate, is it too many or too few? Should it be tied to a percentage of the WA nations in the world like WA proposals are tied to % delegate approvals?

Anyway, food for thought.

EDIT: After discussing this topic with somebody off-site, I moved the tags to under the region name, removed the accordion for tags, and made changes to the "visit [REGION] button," it has now been split into two buttons: "View [REGION]!" and "Move to [REGION]." Iconography has also been added to help differentiate the buttons.

I like the above post, it looks good (even if not fully fitting NS's UI theme).

I like the 3 slots for featured, one random, one paid, and one work.

The random, either Aav's method or the default way, not much more to say about that.

Paid, ideally there would be an auction type system so it'd never be empty and players could determine the worth. If you win the auction, the bid is deducted and you have 24 hours (or 26) with the slot. Meanwhile all other bids would remain (but could be cancelled at any time unless they were in the lead.) There probably would need to be some form of cool down so a region with deep pockets wouldn't continuously have the slot, but even if that did, I don't see it as the end of the world. Should be a decent earner for NS over time.

Manual, each region can bump their region once every X hours. Most recent bump has the spot. That way the spot will be always maintained by a region that is active. Regions might get 2 seconds or 2 hours until the next region bumps them off.