Um...k? - a Newbie's N-Day Review

[Dertarae]

This was all very confusing, even with the information available on the forums.

So... the goal is to join a faction and win, right? In the first hour, Crabs rose to first, so I joined up with them. Looked like a lot of people did the same thing I did by taking shelter in numbers and siding with the biggest bully on the playground... Is that even really any kind of contest at that point? I don't understand how capping faction sizes or the number of factions wouldn't have been more reasonable. Perhaps restricting N-Day participation to WA nations might be a good way to limit botting, cloning, and swarming.

And what's with specialist assignments? Why are they random? Wouldn't it make sense to either let the user pick a specialty or link specialties to a specific spread of NSStats or government types?

Also, was I sabotaging my own faction by swatting down their launches, or was I swatting down enemy launches? On one hand, it makes no sense that I'd be capable of sabotaging my teammates' launches, but on the other hand, the ledger remarks on my activity made it look very much like that's what I'd done. If I didn't sabotage my teammates, can we please clarify the phrasing in the activity logs? If I did sabotage my teammates, can we please get some kind of warning and confirmation dialogue box in future N-Day events that we're about to do that before we do? Maybe could we get a more detailed explanation of these kinds of things in the document of stuff Max Barry thought was useful to know? If internal sabotage is not an intended part of gameplay, can we please remove that altogether?

edit - Can we also get some kind of participation banners? You could earn them for things like never producing a bomb and participating only by making shields, producing nothing but bombs, completely destroying a nation with no help, and probably a few other things more experienced players than me could think of and appreciate. At least then, you get some incentive to participate beyond being on the winning swarm. (Also edits for grammar and spelling.)

4 / 10 - underwhelming and perplexing; not enough guidance, parameters, or incentive

[Roavin]

I should note that you had the misfortune of this being your first N-Day, where there was an imbalance in the factions. I'm very sure it will be different next year (as it had been in the years prior), so when you're around then, peek in again, join your faction's Discord server, and enjoy the fun. There's usually lots of banter, fun and light-hearted propaganda memes, many individuals willing to help, etc. going on no matter which faction you're in.

[Dertarae]

I should note that you had the misfortune of this being your first N-Day, where there was an imbalance in the factions. I'm very sure it will be different next year (as it had been in the years prior), so when you're around then, peek in again, join your faction's Discord server, and enjoy the fun. There's usually lots of banter, fun and light-hearted propaganda memes, many individuals willing to help, etc. going on no matter which faction you're in.

Thank you, Roavin. I'll look forward to next year then.