New Idea competition with free legendarys!

[Treciene]

[ignore, bottom post]

[The Unified Missourtama States]

there should be a junk reverse button

Please read the original post before replying to threads.

[Coffin-Breathe]

5. Close the loophole, that allows unlimited card accumulation without paying for card space

It's impossible to collect region or rarity collections when the deck space "loophole" is closed. I'd wager it's not even a loophole but it was made like that by design.
Take my region card collection, I have 1000 deckspace atm, the next upgrade to 1100 cards would cost me 100 bank.
Imagine what it would cost me to get enough deck space for all my region cards, about 8000 cards, The 8000 cards upgrade as site supporter: 6.241 bank, and without 25.281. Cumulative:167.480 bank, without 1.352.560.
That would be simply impossible.

As I can remember, it is written in the initial explaination of the rules of the card-game, that the limitation of card-space is implemented to prevent especially such oversized collections (to force the players to decide, which cards to keep and which ones to junk/sell). Therefore I´d bet against you
But this would be simple to handle (fair), by limiting the space as by now, but not increasing the cost about, let´s say, a hundred bank for steps above one thousand while increasing those steps to three or five hundred (cards); I guess, it´s not to much of an action for a player who could afford to amass such a big ammount of cards (by trading/farming/whatever) to pay such a price without hampering him/her to much.
The "bonus effect" would be, that this would encourage more players (farmers) to take a little bit more care of their puppets/storages/farms and which cards to keep instead of simply hoarding every card without even knowing (of possible bids) or trading them (other than mass-relocation from one puppet to another or their main).

[Tarockanien]

Think you misunderstood, it'd be per account not per nation.

That'd be really hard to implement, then you'd also need to do a cross-reference for IP and email, it would be a second WA scanner but for every nation in the census.

Well, although that´s correct, it would have to be done only one time for every nation; then a puppet or farm could easily being marked for being one by the system.

[Tarockanien]

Also for context, currently, a normal scripted up farmer can answer 30 issues in a minute, so for your idea to work we'd end up having imposed very tough restrictions on the ability of new nations and stat RPers to get cards.

I´m very glad that someone at last stated this, because every time a discussion that involves farming arises, one or more people argue, that farmers do invest "so much time and effort".
It takes me between one up to five minutes to decide, which answer to click on an issue (for this single nation, no farms, no scripts), not included the hours watching the market, looking for desired cards by going through countless collections (storages) or other "nation and collection management issues". Like almost every other "single nation player".
So please stop argueing about "time investment for farming", especially if you`re using scripts.

[Giovanniland]

Also for context, currently, a normal scripted up farmer can answer 30 issues in a minute, so for your idea to work we'd end up having imposed very tough restrictions on the ability of new nations and stat RPers to get cards.

I´m very glad that someone at last stated this, because every time a discussion that involves farming arises, one or more people argue, that farmers do invest "so much time and effort".
It takes me between one up to five minutes to decide, which answer to click on an issue (for this single nation, no farms, no scripts), not included the hours watching the market, looking for desired cards by going through countless collections (storages) or other "nation and collection management issues". Like almost every other "single nation player".
So please stop argueing about "time investment for farming", especially if you`re using scripts.

You've obviously overlooked two points:
1) Farming may be fast when you consider 30 issues per minute, however that's a tiny amount of nations and not likely to earn much bank. Big farmers have hundreds of puppets and when adding batches upon batches of puppets, it can get quite time-consuming;
2) Farming is just one of the many things card traders do. Most of them collect some sort of card for their collection, so that includes bidding on countless cards, watching auctions, adding cards to collections, "processing" cards from their farming (i.e. think about whether a card will be junked, or sold to another collector cause I know it fulfills the requirement of being in said collector's deck). Some farmers even go out of the ordinary to write guides about farming or collecting, write news articles about the current card happening, maintain regional card guilds, plan contests!
Adding all that up, it can be a significant amount of time spent just for a game. It's their choice, and whether spending that amount of time for a game can be debated, but the point I want to make is that there's a reason some farmers are generally seen as positive influences in the community despite owning vast amount of cards: they spend a lot of time and effort on beyond farming, and they're also helpful to other new collectors. Sure, that's not every big farmer but still a significant amount of them. And when they farm on many nations, they also help generate cards you (and other small collectors) need for your collections. I don't think anyone will convince you to leave your opinion of "card farmer bad", but just stating my thoughts about your comments.

(edit: while this thread is also a discussion thread over farming and how it can be improved; I don't think continuing this specific debate would be helpful)

[9003]

Let's try to stay on topic, and if you want to debate the rights and wrongs of card farming feel free to post your own thread.

This is about addressing new ideas for cards as outlined in the op please make sure to read the first post before adding off topic stuff in or debating about if card farmers should be allowed or not.

[Treciene]

Main Nation Name: Treciene
Gift Nation Name: Treciene

The Idea: You can get any type of card for the specific market value it has without having anyone have to own it. Remember, Market Value, not Junk Value. So you can make a S1 British Rashah for 1,560.40 bank, or S2 Womble 312 for 0.01 bank. You will need to work hard to get all those good cards, but at the end, its worth it. You have what no one else has.

[Riemstagrad]

Main Nation Name: Treciene
Gift Nation Name: Treciene

The Idea: You can get any type of card for the specific market value it has without having anyone have to own it. Remember, Market Value, not Junk Value. So you can make a S1 British Rashah for 1,560.40 bank, or S2 Womble 312 for 0.01 bank. You will need to work hard to get all those good cards, but at the end, its worth it. You have what no one else has.

This can't work. For only 10 bank you can buy 1000 copies of a random common, then trade it back and forth 10 times between you and a puppet for 300 bank, and you end up with 300k deck value. Then repeat (and increase the numbers).

[Treciene]

Main Nation Name: Treciene
Gift Nation Name: Treciene

The Idea: You can get any type of card for the specific market value it has without having anyone have to own it. Remember, Market Value, not Junk Value. So you can make a S1 British Rashah for 1,560.40 bank, or S2 Womble 312 for 0.01 bank. You will need to work hard to get all those good cards, but at the end, its worth it. You have what no one else has.

This can't work. For only 10 bank you can buy 1000 copies of a random common, then trade it back and forth 10 times between you and a puppet for 300 bank, and you end up with 300k deck value. Then repeat (and increase the numbers).

There can be a buy cool down for like 5-10 cards, and also you can sell your card for as much as anything.

[9003]

Main Nation Name: Treciene
Gift Nation Name: Treciene

The Idea: You can get any type of card for the specific market value it has without having anyone have to own it. Remember, Market Value, not Junk Value. So you can make a S1 British Rashah for 1,560.40 bank, or S2 Womble 312 for 0.01 bank. You will need to work hard to get all those good cards, but at the end, its worth it. You have what no one else has.

I like this idea but there does have to be some limits to how often or how many you can make, it would solve the issue of 0 owner cards sitting in limbo forever.

maybe the price goes up based on the number of copies of the card you own similar to deck expansion, tho that could be broken via puppets so make it based on total cards currently owned. Legendary would quickly not be cost effective to buy but commons would remain fair game to get a few copys of them before the price was to much.

[Treciene]

Main Nation Name: Treciene
Gift Nation Name: Treciene

The Idea: You can get any type of card for the specific market value it has without having anyone have to own it. Remember, Market Value, not Junk Value. So you can make a S1 British Rashah for 1,560.40 bank, or S2 Womble 312 for 0.01 bank. You will need to work hard to get all those good cards, but at the end, its worth it. You have what no one else has.

I like this idea but there does have to be some limits to how often or how many you can make, it would solve the issue of 0 owner cards sitting in limbo forever.

maybe the price goes up based on the number of copies of the card you own similar to deck expansion, tho that could be broken via puppets so make it based on total cards currently owned. Legendary would quickly not be cost effective to buy but commons would remain fair game to get a few copys of them before the price was to much.

seems fair

[Vylixan]

Main Nation Name: Vylixan
Gift Nation Name: Vylixan Dora

Idea
Every month on a fixed date + time a WA nation can buy a card not from a fellow traders but from the 'system'. The card in question can not have an MV that is higher then 200% of the JV.
This card needs to be selected and locked in 24 hours in advance and will be delivered like a bought card, ignoring deck space limits.
The selected card needs to meet the MV constraints at the fixed date + time to be send to the player.
The used nation needs to have the bank to pay the MV value of the card at the fixed date + time to complete the transaction.
Optionally it is publicly visible what card is selected to introduce an element of competition. Optionally only a certain time before the event different from the lockdown time.
Optionally a nation needs to fulfill some other criteria to be able to participate.
Optionally a nation has to pay more then the MV.

What will this do?

It is possible for people to get cards that are hard to get but not expensive, but not quick enough to make it a separate business model
It makes it a lot easier to complete impossible collections,
It gives some incentive to deflate cards at times so that they can be purchased. It is now a good idea to deflate certain cards in an organized manner to be able to get them, instead of running pull events on them.
Since pull events are times when an extreme number of issues get answered in short amount of time it lessens the number of issues that are randomly answered somewhat.
It encourages card players to use their WA
It lowers the need for endless farming for people that are chasing low owners cards. (Mostly region collectors)
The time constrains and fixed date + time prevents people from switching WA and thus getting multiple cards.
The fact that you have 24 hours to deflate (or inflate if you want to sabotage a player) a card introduces an added element of suspension, excitement and competition.
But also community collaboration if multiple people band together to deflate them same card.
And of course owners of said card will try to prevent deflation.

What this will not do is totally solves all the issues, for that we would need to combine multiple solutions and ideas to change the game.
This will also not stop people from chasing, pull-eventing or inflating legendaries or high MV cards if they can easier use those options.

This changes the game a bit though.
This feature can be adjusted by tweaking the amount of occurrences of the event, the max percentage above JV the card can be, the lock down period, the visibility period, the number of cards you can get, the nation criteria etc.

_{Yes this builds on Treciene's idea}

[9003]

It is voting time! My apologies that it is starting a bit later then expected but it will still run for one week voting is open to anyone but remember 1 vote per player. No puppet voting to buff your idea up. To vote simply put the number of the idea that you think is best.
I also encourage you to discuss the ideas more and any other ideas that come up. New Ideas will not be gifted cards sorry!

[The Unified Missourtama States]

Once Big Farma has moved to API, issue answering statistics won't be as skewed as the majority of real issue answerers are done on site and I'm assuming the editors can filter API vs site issue answering.

So there's another problem which has come to mind with this, real people answer issues through the API too, apps like Stately work completely through the API interface, so I don't think that's fair.

[Fhaengshia]

To me it looks like the ideas are mainly divided amongst either separating cards from being generated by answering issues, instead using a less server-intensive mechanic, and trying to alter/limit/trick the current techniques for gathering cards via puppets.

I'm undecided at the moment, but for the former, I'm leaning towards ideas from Giovanniland (5), Noah (19), and Praeceps (22). But if cards have to stay associated with issues, then I think both Anisopterra (1) and Pluvie (18) have the idea I think makes the most sense.

I'd really like to hear more to help make up my mind, but if I had to answer right now, I'd choose Giovanniland's idea (5) if the Challenge home page had a link to it from your Nation's page.

[Porflox]

Main Nation: Porflox
Gift Nation: Porflox

My idea is to identify nations as a "puppet" nation which will experience lower card pack drop rates and/or worse card drops. Each individual will also be subject to a maximum number of puppet nations which will be increased by supporting the website and purchasing things in the store to offset costs.

As to how puppets are managed, all of these nations would have to use the same email to verify that they are the same people. Like the WA, mods would be able to ban nations that violate the rule and are not labeled as puppets.

Optional idea:
Another idea of mine was to implement a system to purchase storage upgrades using a set amount of money. However, this makes the Cards game more pay-to-win, which is rather controversial.

[9003]

Main Nation: Porflox
Gift Nation: Porflox

My idea is to identify nations as a "puppet" nation which will experience lower card pack drop rates and/or worse card drops. Each individual will also be subject to a maximum number of puppet nations which will be increased by supporting the website and purchasing things in the store to offset costs.

As to how puppets are managed, all of these nations would have to use the same email to verify that they are the same people. Like the WA, mods would be able to ban nations that violate the rule and are not labeled as puppets.

Optional idea:
Another idea of mine was to implement a system to purchase storage upgrades using a set amount of money. However, this makes the Cards game more pay-to-win, which is rather controversial.

All be it after the event I am more then happy to reopen this discussion. (At this time I won't be able to send legendary out but ideas can still flow in!)

What would current players do? would they have x days to add emails "or else"?

[DavanteAdams]

Main Nation: DavanteAdams
Gift Nation: DavanteAdams

My suggestion (this would probably take a while to code) is that we can have a setting that allows us to get "Card Farming Issues" that really dont matter to any information or anything with the issues editors. Then the nations that DO want to actually answer issues can get their own set of issues that matters and is looked at.

[Porflox]

Main Nation: Porflox
Gift Nation: Porflox

My idea is to identify nations as a "puppet" nation which will experience lower card pack drop rates and/or worse card drops. Each individual will also be subject to a maximum number of puppet nations which will be increased by supporting the website and purchasing things in the store to offset costs.

As to how puppets are managed, all of these nations would have to use the same email to verify that they are the same people. Like the WA, mods would be able to ban nations that violate the rule and are not labeled as puppets.

Optional idea:
Another idea of mine was to implement a system to purchase storage upgrades using a set amount of money. However, this makes the Cards game more pay-to-win, which is rather controversial.

All be it after the event I am more then happy to reopen this discussion. (At this time I won't be able to send legendary out but ideas can still flow in!)

What would current players do? would they have x days to add emails "or else"?

I think the puppets wouldn't be deleted, just have a forced "no cards" setting implemented unless you add an email

[Conklandi]

Main Nation Conklandi
Recieving Nation Conklandi

Idea
For the one about the issues being answered but not read, there could be a question about the issue appear when the player selects an option.

It could be questions like "what is the issue about?" with a bunch of options available or a survey asking the person who answer the issue if there were any mistakes in the issue or improvements needed in order to be better.

If possible, it could have a chance to generate a pack with higher odds to receive high-value cards by maybe 10%, which can incentivize nations taking more time to read the issue.

In terms of the Massive Server Load, the question would serve as a way to reduce it as fewer issues would be answered in the same timespan by players due to the slight increase in time required.

A way to ensure that Ad Revenue would load is NS could show the posts that are voted the most interesting in the create a nation page more prominent than the latest forum topics. This could keep traffic on the site long enough for ads to load and it could potentially lead to more people being interested in the game.

Finally, for the community arms race, Nationstates could create a client for NS players to use for various purposes. It could allow NS to ensure that scripts obey the API rules, the average Joe Player is able to compete with the card farmers since NS could ensure that scripts are more user friendly and easy to install as well as being safe from malware and phishing.

I am not knowledgable in the server load issue, but I hope these ideas are usable as a starting point.

[Porflox]

Or you could make the game completely Pay-To-Win! We should have a way to purchase bank for real-life currency. The site promoter memberships should also generate bank every month, and they should sell subscriptions, so you have to re-purchase them every month. Then these subscriptions would act like the current site supports: They double the amount of puppets you're allowed. But instead of using bank, you have to use real money to purchase puppet capacity upgrades. NationStates subscriptions would also increase the card pack drop rate and increase the card rarity. Finally, a few Legendary cards will be labeled for auction only, and are unable to be dropped from packs. Instead, there will be an auction somewhere between every day or ever week to auction them off for bank, BUT you must have a subscription in order to participate.

[Porflox]

An actual non-joke idea:
We award card packs based off of stats. For example, those who have more badges would get more card pack drops and better rareities than those without. However, there'd be a month grace period where new nations have the equivalent of a couple badges to help boost early card drops and user-retention. This'd also work well with a puppet limit to stop people from simply creating a million puppets then forgetting about them once the card boost is over. THid'd also strongly encourage real issue-answering as random answer nations tend to have worse stats.

[Comfed]

Main Nation Name: Comfed
Gift Nation Name: Comfed

The Idea: (This is where you talk all about your idea.) The price for gifting a card to a nation should depend on that nation’s DV or bank in addition to the card rarity.

Other things that would be nice: Opt-in for stat effects on issues, and if the nation opts in randomize the option order and add a captcha for answering them. Additionally, make issue confirmation opt-out. And take the gifting private command out of the API.

[Ioavollr]

I'm late on this thread, but it still seems relevant.

I've been playing NationsStates for the better part of 15 years and the card game has reinvigorated both my engagement with the site as a whole and focus on my nation. Five or so years ago I left my nation on permanent vacation mode because I'd only check the site monthy or so when I'd remember. Now I'm engaged daily; in the minigame, yes, but also in my region and on a few specialty puppets.

I'll try to summarize what makes the card game so engaging to me:

Chance: the thrill of semi-gambling
Bidding: the strategy of auctions
Collecting: the incremental success
Delayed gratification: the painful wait for a card to appear followed by the thrill of completing a set
Instant gratification: the incentive to answer issues
Interpersonal relationships: recognizing others, outbidding them, or letting them have the deal
Frustration: coming so close to a good deal, only to be outmaneuvered by someone with an extra copy
Learning: turning that lost buy from a month ago into a strategic win today

In my opinion ideas which stymie these core features are non-starters. Replacing strategy with a pure chance system kills the game. Decoupling issue answering with the reward aspect removes the excitement for most players. Replacing chance with a timer makes it tedious. A good solution will preserve those fun, engaging, fundamental features of the game while making it expensive (in terms of time, coding prowess, etc.) for the bulk puppeteer.

My solution is to omit storing card packs and force opening and dealing with surplus cards immediately. By this I mean click the card back or the card isn't added to your deck. Click it or lose it. This quickly makes streamlined code more difficult as it has to deal with a randomly implemented set of new demands, but doesn't affect the average user at all. We still get the instant gratification, chance, reward, etc.

A second part of the solution would be to implement spoiler cards, ones which are (to a human) obviously illegitimate cards, but are a challenge for a script to detect. The space could be filled with fun sayings, factoids, even ads, though that would likely be intrusive and annoying to most players. These spoilers could just take a randomly placed sixth, card-shaped space during a pull. This idea frustrates the automated card junking system, which would hopefully make sifting through puppets a slog, while leaving the average user unaffected. As an added monetization benefit, this would be an ideal space for user-generated ads, like we currently see with mass telegram stamps.

Caveats:
This idea will affect the current game: storing tons of packs on a thousand puppets waiting for a pull event would no longer be a thing. I enjoy the pull events greatly, but that's that.
It would also mean a greater chance of losing a pack of cards, which is unfortunate.