[Summit #1] Comments on the summit agenda [OPEN]

[Unibot III]

His point was that Quelesh alone was this major roadblock to refounding.

He's been a delegate of The Eastern Islands of Dharma for like, more than a year. >_> Why should he not have been?

[Cerian Quilor]

Because two months and over 30 endos.

[Communist Eraser]

Of course, because game mechanics are virtually universal across regions, it's not possible to split NationStates into several different R/D games (and nor would it be desirable to do so), and yes, each representative is here to advance their cause - but bear in mind that promoting your way of playing shouldn't require killing off someone else's.

Is it not possible to give different mechanics to regions based on tags? I haven't fleshed out my thoughts, but perhaps nations residing in a region that has a R/D tag receives mechanics to make it easier to attack other R/D tagged regions etc (And harder to do stuff to other regions) .

[Cerian Quilor]

The nations I raid with don't sit in regions that have those tags - and those that do would be moved to regions that don't have those tags to hide.

[Lyanna Stark]

Because two months and over 30 endos.

Out of curiosity, is there any way to tell the total amount of influence that Jakker had throughout his time as Delegate (considering: other natives that had to be kicked, the password that was implemented, defenders getting kicked, etc.)?

I think the difference is also the fact that Dharma didn't have a sleeper nation as the point, but instead just a raider pup--if it had been a sleeper Quelesh wouldn't have been as much of a block. Meaning, if the raiders had (for some reason, Dharma is a bad example here) had a sleeper in the region for a long time before they would have been, well, fine influence-wise and been able to grief "properly". I don't think using Quelesh as an example of "proper griefing is too difficult these days" is really a fair example.

EDIT: In response to the Summit #1 thread, I have to say that [violet] opening the field to practically anything scares me a bit as I don't think we need a gigantic overhaul or some big change the size of influence. I guess, however, we'll see what comes up and then work from that--no reason to get all nervous now.

I also liked what Sedge said a lot.

[Jamie Anumia]

Because two months and over 30 endos.

Out of curiosity, is there any way to tell the total amount of influence that Jakker had throughout his time as Delegate (considering: other natives that had to be kicked, the password that was implemented, defenders getting kicked, etc.)?

I think the difference is also the fact that Dharma didn't have a sleeper nation as the point, but instead just a raider pup--if it had been a sleeper Quelesh wouldn't have been as much of a block. Meaning, if the raiders had (for some reason, Dharma is a bad example here) had a sleeper in the region for a long time before they would have been, well, fine influence-wise and been able to grief "properly". I don't think using Quelesh as an example of "proper griefing is too difficult these days" is really a fair example.

The Analysis feature would be the closest you'd get to working it out. Even then, that can't be used to work out how much he had all the way through. Unless you monitored the influence of a nation over a period of time.

[Mahaj]

Because two months and over 30 endos.

Jakker himself admitted that he used all his influence banning natives, and could have done it in 20-25 days if he had saved influence.

[Astarial]

Because two months and over 30 endos.

So what would be a reasonable arbitrary number, for you? One month, and 15 endos, to banject a nation that had been delegate for a year (and probably in the region far longer)?

Why is that number reasonable, and two months/30 endos not reasonable?

Some things should take time and effort and investment, and should keep you from doing other things while you try to do them. Completely destroying a region is, to my mind, one of those things.

[Cerian Quilor]

Because two months and over 30 endos.

Jakker himself admitted that he used all his influence banning natives, and could have done it in 20-25 days if he had saved influence.

This isn't about passwording, this is about banning/ejecting, Mahaj.

[Cerian Quilor]

I firmly believe that the R/D gameplay has slowly narrowed to the point where very little occurs other than tag gameplay.

This is absolutely not true. Tags will be the most common military action because the low-investment of time and manpower for a return, but tagging is not the only thing happening in R/D, and far from that.

[Mahaj]

Jakker himself admitted that he used all his influence banning natives, and could have done it in 20-25 days if he had saved influence.

This isn't about passwording, this is about banning/ejecting, Mahaj.

So he should have been able to clear the entire region, is what you're saying?

[Frisbeeteria]

What does any of this have to do with posted agendas? Take this threadjack to Gameplay or something, because it clearly isn't about the summit.

[Communist Eraser]

The nations I raid with don't sit in regions that have those tags - and those that do would be moved to regions that don't have those tags to hide.

Yes but in my world, if you move to those regions who don't you those tags, you'll need to stealth raid or be a fake native to take them - political methods which I support.

[Moronist Decisions]

I'm curious if those present believe that some discussion of the future role of the Warzones as part of the R/D playing field should be discussed. Just a thought.

[Solm]

Heh, just posted my response, sorry about the delay. I had originally written the post a bit longer, and so was forced to cut it down. As a result, I removed some technical details that I hope to further elaborate on in the future summit threads. But, overall I do hope that through this summit we can see the R/D game drastically improve on both sides, and even in the middle, so that we can make a more enjoyable experience overall.

[Unibot III]

So far, Sedge (after all that cafaful over whether he should participate) has my vote for best framework to go into the debate with (focusing on encouraging more gameplay, not limiting) and Solm for the most accurate substantive agenda (with Earthie a worthy mention, but I think Solm is more focused on the major problem).

[violet] takes the award for absolutely scariest agenda (let's change all the things!). >_> Mallorea and Riva's post is kind of hilarious at how inaccurate it (griefing, difficult? There's a major threat of griefing with nearly every occupation raid nowadays).

I think Warzone Codger touches on a good point, but he doesn't analyse enough. In particular:

My experience in the Warzones has shown me there are many, many regions who want to participate in R/D - see the countless number of regions that offer a "military", but never actually does anything, (The "best" of those turn up in the Warzones: They are organised enough to tell players move and endorse someone –which is actually quite a feat for most regions-, but with no timing at all).

This is true, many militaries are stuck doing stuff in the Warzones because their legislatures are stalemating over the issue of Raiderism or Defenderism -- the neutral compromise is to be a Warzone Military. This isn't a military problem, it's a political problem. I think the stalemates are a consequences of regions leaning towards defenderism, but not having the non-updaters to be useful in defenderdom, so they avoid the political drama and stick with a Warzone military. If both defender and raider non-updaters were useful, you'd see a fuller political debate over interests occur.

I technically agree with Cerberion on most of his points (I don't think we need to be concerned with the WA resignation loophole -- if there was a backlog of detags, it would make detagging really hard to do, for one thing). I do think diversification is a problem, but I'm worried that the method that Cerberion intends to diversify gameplay with is by discouraging tagging, as opposed to making occupational raiding more competitive. I'm wondering what his thoughts are on the Dissension Button model to bring non-updaters into the game again and combat piling.

Andacantra's post doesn't really get into any substantive technical change. As I've said before, I dunno how the admins can code people to like others more. That seems to be a community-issue. But as I've said and Blackbird has added to this point a bit more, there are two ways you can go about making R/D more "nicer" between players: (1) you can make R/D more personal so that we monitor what we say more, (2) you can make R/D more "charactered", so that we all understand what we say is just part of the game. I'm more partial to the second option. One way to promote the latter is for moderation to not make such an effort to distinguish between "Roleplay" and "Gameplay" -- perhaps they ought to be more interconnected, yet the Gameplay forum is moderated as a "Gameplay" forum, instead of a "Gameplay Community" forum.

I think Xanthal's post wins the most "refreshingly different" post, since he has a clear focus here that we don't usually get to hear. I agree with his theory and background, but I'm not a fan of changing the zero-sum system for becoming delegate -- I think that's a game fundamental that doesn't need to be changed and could be used by griefers just as much as natives. I think tinkering with influence and figuring out ways that natives can get more involved with the liberation of their own region should be a focus -- since I think something like the Dissention Button proposal is a good way to get natives and non-updater defenders more involved with liberations and wars of attrition against piling. I'd be interested in hearing Xanthal's position on the Dissention Button proposal.

There's a lot to unpack in Crushing Our Enemies's post. But one thing I would note is that the emphasis on update-raiding as opposed to non-update-raiding has the effect of evening out things. Smart defenders aren't usually going to move early to stop a forming raid unless we're sure it's a newbie raid that isn't going to react by grabbing more people and barraging or alternatively, just moving at update to a different target when they know they're caught. So essentially more non-update-raiding would have the effect of making it updater-defenders vs. non-updater and updater raiders, whilst liberations are also updater-defenders vs. non-updater and updater raiders, but there's not really a lot of balance in this equation while non-updater defenders are left out of the fun. I think around the Sept. - Nov. 2011 era we had quite a balance because raiders weren't piling nearly as much, occupations tended to be shorter and that tended to keep the R/D game feeling fresh with liberations to invoke change. I think this is perhaps a disagreement over where the diversification issues lie -- you're more concerned with the diversity of how regions are taken, I'm more concerned with diversity of what a raid entails. I don't really care if Dharma is taken during a tag-run or stealth or what have you, all of them seem to me to have skill and strategy involved -- but I do think it's a diversity issue that something like the Stargate raids just sit for a month and holds up raider resources while defenders have few chances to liberate and no raiders are willing to go "you know it's been a while.. perhaps we should go do other things".

Spartzerium's post is my favorite raider representative post, I think it's fairly balanced and focused. I'm really not sure how beneficial Halcones' proposal will be, because I think raiders will just stop caring about tagging and there could be issues with liberation difficulties. However, it's refreshing to see a raider note the problems of piling and the non-competitiveness of liberations. I'm wondering whether Spartz is familiar with the Dissention Button proposal and whether he could support that as an idea to combat piling in a "balanced" method.

[Cerian Quilor]

Griefing as in getting rid of all the natives and refounding is indeed quite difficult, Unibot.

[Unibot III]

Griefing as in getting rid of all the natives and refounding is indeed quite difficult, Unibot.

Yeah, if we ignore RORMs.

Or Whitereach.

Or Roman Empire.

Hell, you griefed my own region down to two nations after approx. two months with only two liberations (one a totally forlorn hope) launched against you during that time.

There wasn't even any competition in RORMS, Whitereach or Roman Empire till the refound stage where defenders had a quasi-equal chance at intercepting the refound (in RE's case, TBR made a mistake and left RE with only a few endorsements). As it stands now, griefing is a month or two month commitment, but without any competition for the raiders. Griefing is time-consuming, it isn't difficult -- stop confusing those two terms; time-consuming is only "very difficult" for impatient people.

[Mallorea and Riva]

Griefing as in getting rid of all the natives and refounding is indeed quite difficult, Unibot.

Yeah, if we ignore RORMs.

Or Whitereach.

Or Roman Empire.

A bunch of small/medium regions stacked with troops. Besides Roman Empire survived.

Hell, you griefed my own region down to two nations after approx. two months with only two liberations (one a totally forlorn hope) launched against you during that time.

Hey it's not my fault the UDL couldn't get enough troops to Liberate your region that they did for say, Italia.

There wasn't even any competition in RORMS, Whitereach or Roman Empire till the refound stage where defenders had a quasi-equal chance at intercepting the refound (in RE's case, TBR made a mistake and left RE with only a few endorsements). As it stands now, griefing is a month or two month commitment, but without any competition for the raiders. Griefing is time-consuming, it isn't difficult -- stop confusing those two terms; time-consuming is only "very difficult" for impatient people.

Yes you consider piling to be the most significant problem facing R/D at this time. But I am fairly convinced that you did not in fact read my agenda in the Reps Only thread considering your response to it, and as such I do not expect to hear from you to lobby me towards various solutions to the list of other problems I set forward that had nothing to do with griefing.

[General Halcones]

in RE's case, TBR made a mistake and left RE with only a few endorsements

Incorrect. The Brotherhood of Malice made a mistake, not TBR. It was their operation. We were merely there as support. Besides, the plan was to password just before update, then refound. A glitch caused that to fail.

[Unibot III]

A bunch of small/medium regions stacked with troops. Besides Roman Empire survived.

Haaha, survived ...with no natives. So you wish to be able to grief big regions -- you do understand that if you were able to grief big regions (and you are.. you just don't sit your leads long enough into regions, *coughs* Macedon) easier, you would be able to crush smaller and medium sized regions fairly easy, because really your only limitation is patience, not competition.

Hey it's not my fault the UDL couldn't get enough troops to Liberate your region that they did for say, Italia.

We got more troops out for Dharma than we did for ITALIA, so your zinger is inaccurate. The problem is that piling reduces our opportunities down to about one chance to liberate. We hit our timing perfectly with ITALIA, we didn't with Dharma.

It is not your fault that defenders have low chances of liberating, that's a systemic problem in NationStates: game changes and the actual existing system have eroded the capacity of liberators to change events once an invasion occurs. You and your constituents are only doing what is in their interests, pile.

Yes you consider piling to be the most significant problem facing R/D at this time. But I am fairly convinced that you did not in fact read my agenda in the Reps Only thread considering your response to it, and as such I do not expect to hear from you to lobby me towards various solutions to the list of other problems I set forward that had nothing to do with griefing.

I read your statement, dear representative. Did you?

According to the word count, 85.4% of your statement was an exuberant and passionate love letter to the days of ole where griefing was unrestrained (minus getting DOS and everything). I was well within in the right to focus my criticism on such a subject and your portrayal of the "struggles" of the contemporary griefer. I think my favorite part of your statement was your cheeky note about how if griefing was easier, diversification would be fostered. What diversity, dear representative? Due to the lack of liberations, we only have three forms of professional raids, tag-raids and occupation-raids that can be branched off into two further (and very predictable) forms: (1) raids of bigger-regions that are piled heavily till the raider delegate, without facing any opposition for two weeks, will put up a password and then leave before a WA Liberation proposal could open him up to any sort of vulnerability *makes chicken noises*, (2) raids of smaller regions that are piled heavily till the raider delegate can sit without opposition for two months and then try to destroy the region. By making griefing easier, you do not aim to diversify gameplay, you aim to meld the second two categories into one virtually identical type of operation and make that more popular, all the while not addressing the issue of piling.

The 10% of your agenda reserved for the native, non-updater defender and feederite interest groups are well noted. How you intend to make griefing easier, but meanwhile give natives and non-updaters more of a chance to fight back, all the while ignoring the issues of piling and the erosion of the contemporary liberation is unclear at best, vacuous at worst.

I wish you well during the Conference, but I am not enthusiastic about the outcome of your service as a representative.

in RE's case, TBR made a mistake and left RE with only a few endorsements

Incorrect. The Brotherhood of Malice made a mistake, not TBR. It was their operation. We were merely there as support. Besides, the plan was to password just before update, then refound. A glitch caused that to fail.

TBR moved their support, that was the undoing of the mission.

[Frisbeeteria]

What does any of this have to do with posted agendas? Take this threadjack to Gameplay or something, because it clearly isn't about the summit.

[Unibot III]

What does any of this have to do with posted agendas? Take this threadjack to Gameplay or something, because it clearly isn't about the summit.

I'm sorry, Chair. But that was direct commentary on the substance of Mallorea and Riva's agenda. I dunno how I can be anymore direct.

His agenda is focused on an area based on an inaccurate account of grievances.

[Jakker]

I think Lyanna's point is something important to keep in mind:

First, in reply to [violet], I don’t believe that large or complicated changes are necessary to make this game ‘interesting and fun’. Changes surely need to be made, but most would seem to be moderate in the greater scheme of things, at least as I see things. We don’t have to turn the game completely upside down in order to spice up the R/D world.

Full post can be found here: viewtopic.php?p=12092102#p12092102

For what I've gathered, some of the main points being brought up is to reduce tag raiding, increase stealth raiding, increase native agency, decreasing piling, and decrease griefing. While I agree with this agenda, I think this can be done without too much change. In terms of reducing tag raiding, if scripts that auto-logged in nations and answered issues were made illegal, it would greatly reduce tag raiding. The script is used to keep hundreds of nations alive to pinpoint update time. Without the script, this would be more harder to maintain and boom, tag raiding still happens, but it needs to be done the old fashion way of maintaining your own triggers and then tagging will decrease. Also, if a raider or defender refounded a region, they will mostly likely use a script like this. Getting rid of it would make things interesting for everyone.

Secondly, in terms of promoting stealth raiding, just get rid of the script that allows someone to check track of endorsements in a region. Make people do it the old fashion way. This will allow sleepers a greater chance of being under the radar and thus stealth raiding will be done more if people know there's a greater chance that they won't get caught.

In terms of decreasing piling, this is something that I don't think should be touched. Any way you try to decrease it will just be micromanaging the game and hurting raiders. If I am a raider or a defender going for an update raid/liberation, I would want to use as much resources as I have right? If I have 20 updaters, I am going to use all 20. I'm not going to say, "We're only going to use 15 to make things more competitive." We all want to win. Yet somehow using all of your resources after the initial raid is viewed as wrong? Yes, I agree. I want things to be competitive and for defenders to try and liberate, but that's my choice. If I want to somehow find 50 non-updaters to endorse me to make things not competitive, I have that right. Trying to decrease that will only hurt raiders because what will be done? Only a certain about of non-updaters are allowed in a region to endorse? But yet defenders who will attempt for a liberation will try and get as many people as physically possible. It should be really hard to liberate because think about it. A liberation is basically a raid on a region, but everyone knows what the target is. What if I told all defenders that I wanted to raid a certain region? Defenders would come and endorse the delegate to keep it protected. And now that raid just became incredibly hard because the delegate has more endorsements and the defenders are watching it. Same difference as a liberation. I would avoid micromanaging this aspect and simply let gameplayers handle it on their own.

I agree a lot with what Communist Eraser has been saying throughout including this post: viewtopic.php?p=12003633#p12003633

More direct interaction would make things exciting. How direct is the question and something I hope gets looked at further.

[Sichuan Pepper]

I would just like to point out to jakker that using a script to refound a region is illegal under current rules.
I do not like scripts being used at all but that is a discussion for another place and not something I intent to pursue.