Proposal: Safe Switching

[Eist]

Groups like TITO who have been arguing for "personal responsibility" here, are just hoping more raiders and defenders they don't like get clipped with mod rulings.

I think the problems with the system are not good. However, certain people have pushed this system beyond the limits. You had too many nations switching WA at once, and, on several occasions, you have been caught. You knew what the system was and you went beyond that. This is personal responsibility and on several occasions you did not exercise that. You tried to play against an imperfect system, and lost.

They are against the R/D game in general and call themselves defenders...

If I was against R/D I would not be playing it -- that drum you are beating must be getting thin by now. I don't think these sorts of statements reflect very well on your supposed intellect.

...when they hardly if ever actually defend -- instead they leave the brunt of that work to the people they're happy to watch get caught for multing.

Yes, I've never defended before. Never. Ever. Never even seen an update. What is NationStates? Well done, you have hit that nail right on the head. I bet you gave yourself a little high-five. Seriously though, the work your group does is janitor work, cleaning up trash left by others with little benefit (and one may argue quite a lot of cost, in that leaving it there would show the damage that these tag raids do). I by and large do not see the point, and I certainly don't see the fun.

It's not about quality, Eist. It's about quantity. Save the most communities that you can; watching dozens of communities get trashed so that you can "help" one community a month is a bizarre configuration of priorities.

If the game was changed to limit tag raiding, you wouldn't have to save these communities, they would be "saved" already in that they wouldn't be raided in the first place. They wouldn't need detagging. When you advocate for more tag raiding so you can clean up more trash, your "natives rock!" spiel falls completely flat. It's the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff approach.

Mahaj, those are wonderful numbered bullets you have there, but I don't even know how to respond to your post. I think you should clarify your position in your own head first, then decide whether you should post it.

[Mallorea and Riva]

Option 2 of violets suggestions was my preference. It allowed a lot more players to contribute without the need for switching at all.
My one question on that would be on delegate controls being lost if you were to become delegate in multiple regions by moving through the update.

In the previous thread I was in support of option 1 however....the sheer amount of switching that goes on is steadily growing and I feel will further spiral upwards were it introduced. Lagg is playing havoc and I relate it to multiple switchers being the cause but that's a guess.

That is an extremely valid point. The lag did not exist previously, would option one in any way help to reduce the load on the server? Or would it instead increase it?

[Mahaj]

Option 2 of violets suggestions was my preference. It allowed a lot more players to contribute without the need for switching at all.

Except raiders would literally tag 100 regions in one update.

[Mallorea and Riva]

Option 2 of violets suggestions was my preference. It allowed a lot more players to contribute without the need for switching at all.

Except raiders would literally tag 100 regions in one update.

That's true...
*looks with a dreamy smile at option 2*
Think of it this way, you could defend 100 regions in one update!
Realistically I would still push for option one to become coded, even if option 2 is also used.

[Mousebumples]

While I have no personal interest to engage in the R/D game myself, I prefer option 2 as it could - potentially - allow WA Delegates (such as myself) to engage in the R/D game. I'd hope that - if a Delegate such as myself - doesn't seize any other delegacies around NS, that they could retain their delegacy when returning to their home region. It would also allow for those taking point in an R/D effort to still support their colleagues in other regions.

I can see how this would cut down on stealth, to some extent - so I'd expect that switching may still be needed to a point. After all, if Mallorea and Riva (WA nation) comes into my founderless region, you better bet that I'll be banjecting as quick as I can.

However, I think would simplify things - for both tag raiding and de-tagging - when there's not really an active WA Delegate in the region, to start with.

Regarding concerns over doing 100 tags in a given update, I know that Ballo has said before that the update speed could be increased, if so desired. Perhaps, in exchange for such a switch, that might be an option? If the update runs in under an hour, 100 tags would be ... less feasible - especially if the WA Delegate would need to stay in the region to tag/detag/etc. Of course, that would also limit the number of detags that could be done in a given update. However, it is an option.

Alternatively (not to get greedy but ... ), could we have Option 2 *now* with the addition of Option 1 whenever "Admin Gets Off Butt And Writes Code" ? I really think that Option 2 will open up the R/D game to more players, but there could still be a need to switch, when stealth is required.

*begins preparing a Thanksgiving feast for the techies*

[Mallorea and Riva]

While I have no personal interest to engage in the R/D game myself, I prefer option 2 as it could - potentially - allow WA Delegates (such as myself) to engage in the R/D game. I'd hope that - if a Delegate such as myself - doesn't seize any other delegacies around NS, that they could retain their delegacy when returning to their home region. It would also allow for those taking point in an R/D effort to still support their colleagues in other regions.

The only issue I could see with that is that you would not retain the endorsements you had in your previous region, they would have to be reapplied... but if you had raider friends or defenders with you they could potentially reinstate you as delegate in smaller regions such as yours

I can see how this would cut down on stealth, to some extent - so I'd expect that switching may still be needed to a point. After all, if Mallorea and Riva (WA nation) comes into my founderless region, you better bet that I'll be banjecting as quick as I can.

I agree, I too would ban myself if I saw me moving into my region. That's why I'd like option one to be used either by itself, or with option two, so that safe switching is preserved for stealth.

Regarding concerns over doing 100 tags in a given update, I know that Ballo has said before that the update speed could be increased, if so desired. Perhaps, in exchange for such a switch, that might be an option? If the update runs in under an hour, 100 tags would be ... less feasible - especially if the WA Delegate would need to stay in the region to tag/detag/etc. Of course, that would also limit the number of detags that could be done in a given update. However, it is an option.

It's certainly a possibility, the question is whether this would increase the lag on the server. If so, then decreased time plus increased lag might actually detract from tag raiding in the big picture.

Alternatively (not to get greedy but ... ), could we have Option 2 *now* with the addition of Option 1 whenever "Admin Gets Off Butt And Writes Code" ? I really think that Option 2 will open up the R/D game to more players, but there could still be a need to switch, when stealth is required.

*begins preparing a Thanksgiving feast for the techies*

Now you're talking

[Eist]

Option 2 is sensible in that it negates this multiing issue and this non-ideal situation of masses of puppets being used. Personally, I think the inevitable outcome of a hundred, probably even hundreds of regions being raided every update (200 would be one every 20 seconds at current update speeds -- you know it will happen) is something the mods/admin should think about before implementation. Personally, I do not think it is a healthy direction for this game and will turn many active participants away, although I would bet for those obsessed with tag raiding and janitoring, this would be a wet dream come true.

[Mallorea and Riva]

Option 2 is sensible in that it negates this multiing issue and this non-ideal situation of masses of puppets being used. Personally, I think the inevitable outcome of a hundred, probably even hundreds of regions being raided every update (200 would be one every 20 seconds at current update speeds -- you know it will happen) is something the mods/admin should think about before implementation. Personally, I do not think it is a healthy direction for this game and will turn many active participants away, although I would bet for those obsessed with tag raiding and janitoring, this would be a wet dream come true.

He does have a point.

[Johz]

Option 2 is sensible in that it negates this multiing issue and this non-ideal situation of masses of puppets being used. Personally, I think the inevitable outcome of a hundred, probably even hundreds of regions being raided every update (200 would be one every 20 seconds at current update speeds -- you know it will happen) is something the mods/admin should think about before implementation. Personally, I do not think it is a healthy direction for this game and will turn many active participants away, although I would bet for those obsessed with tag raiding and janitoring, this would be a wet dream come true.

I really recommend you try the 'janitoring' work you describe. When you're sitting down during update, wondering what to do, grab a few fellow updaters and try it. The exhilarating part is the twenty, thirty second switch, I find, but you know, maybe you'll get a kick out of the tense organisation as you try and work out who needs to move where, or getting in and endorsing with mere seconds to go, because someone else is busy sorting out some other detail. Hell, you might even enjoy just banjecting raiders. I'm just suggesting you try it, really.

Back on topic, my preference would be for option 1, because, and here I partially agree with Eist, if hundreds of regions can be raided at once, tag raiding becomes *too* easy. The only thing holding you back is the actual process of tagging, and that shouldn't be too hard for anyone. The first option, however takes away the danger, but it doesn't negate the skill involved, at least not entirely. It still keeps the knacks involved in, say, spotting, while also preventing the god-awful multi issue.

[Todd McCloud]

Going on the record saying that I support this. I don't know if there's a way to build this into game code, but I hope so.

Genius, but you need a term that fits within nation simulation terms.

What about "Appoint a different nation"?


EDIT: I am also in support of Option 2 (and Option 1 for that matter - anything better than the 'do nothing' option). Option 1 seems like the most straight-shot fix, but Option 2 seems to add a different dimension to the game. Quite interesting.

[Mallorea and Riva]

To steal a GA phrase, I would prefer "Giving away your office". Note that I still don't know if the op's idea is viable, but the Option 1 idea still sounds good to me.

[Sichuan Pepper]

I believe something would be need to balance out the quicker switching or being able to update multiple times. It would become extremely crazy. Shortened update as mouse suggested possibly or the region order list that is available currently does allow pinpoint placement of a trigger. Even with variance added ( that was a short term thing) triggers are just placed closer.
I would propose along side changes made to WA mechanics the regions would be listed alphabetically rather than update order.
This would balance it out somewhat. Regions update time could certainly still be ascertained but it would require a lot more work and perhaps less chance of a hundred regions being tagged.

[Mallorea and Riva]

I believe something would be need to balance out the quicker switching or being able to update multiple times. It would become extremely crazy. Shortened update as mouse suggested possibly or the region order list that is available currently does allow pinpoint placement of a trigger. Even with variance added ( that was a short term thing) triggers are just placed closer.
I would propose along side changes made to WA mechanics the regions would be listed alphabetically rather than update order.
This would balance it out somewhat. Regions update time could certainly still be ascertained but it would require a lot more work and perhaps less chance of a hundred regions being tagged.

I agree that if option two were chosen there would need to be some form of balance. What that thing is, however, if option two were to be chosen, I don't know. Your option is a possibility, but is based in the assumption that Halc and I won't go planting triggers one night in hundreds of regions and figure out their update times. I could do it. It'd be annoying as hell but with a little help we could probably track the update time for a hundred regions, then tag them. If I'm willing to put in the colossal effort necessary, I could still do it.

[Mousebumples]

I agree that if option two were chosen there would need to be some form of balance. What that thing is, however, if option two were to be chosen, I don't know. Your option is a possibility, but is based in the assumption that Halc and I won't go planting triggers one night in hundreds of regions and figure out their update times. I could do it. It'd be annoying as hell but with a little help we could probably track the update time for a hundred regions, then tag them. If I'm willing to put in the colossal effort necessary, I could still do it.

Would having the update order shuffle more often - in addition to Wordy's other suggestions - impact how helpful having those 100 triggers would be? Also, for someone who is still somewhat cloudy on the determining of update order ... how would it impact it? (I know the basics of the process, but ... I'll admit that I don't full understand the details of ... everything.)

[General Halcones]

I like both options. If there's a big fault in the game that will lead to key players leaving, thus bringing the game to a close, then I think it is essential that admins put the time in to fixing it.

Option 1 is the real fix, and as has been said, raiders may still use switchers even if option 2 is implemented.

I do like option 2 though. It has so many advantages to us - no more need to make tonnes of switchers which is very time consuming and boring. This would bring a lot more players into tag raiding, and allow us to go to the end of the update each time. One peculiar thing about this option though is that it would result in a single nation holding delegacy in several regions - not sure how the game would comprehend this. Of course, this effectively already happens, just being different nations under the same player.

Option 2 would also bring TITO back into the game, seeing that they can't use switchers (for some unknown reason).

I would suggest the implementation of Option 2 as a temporary fix, which surely could be done very soon? Option 1 can come a while later, once admins have found time and figured out the code.

[Mallorea and Riva]

I agree that if option two were chosen there would need to be some form of balance. What that thing is, however, if option two were to be chosen, I don't know. Your option is a possibility, but is based in the assumption that Halc and I won't go planting triggers one night in hundreds of regions and figure out their update times. I could do it. It'd be annoying as hell but with a little help we could probably track the update time for a hundred regions, then tag them. If I'm willing to put in the colossal effort necessary, I could still do it.

Would having the update order shuffle more often - in addition to Wordy's other suggestions - impact how helpful having those 100 triggers would be? Also, for someone who is still somewhat cloudy on the determining of update order ... how would it impact it? (I know the basics of the process, but ... I'll admit that I don't full understand the details of ... everything.)

Constant update shuffle would make tag raiding nearly impossible. In fact the current suggestion would make it very arduous. Doable, but very time consuming just to get a few tags in place. I don't think the level of work would match up with the result like it does now.

[General Halcones]

Oh, if that were the case, tag raiding would stop altogether. Tag raiding is currently keeping the R/D game alive, in the midst of all the other problems. If the game becomes too difficult to play, I will stop playing it outright. Most games are made with the intention to make it easy and simple for the user, giving them fun and enjoyment. Make it any harder, then there will be no fun in this game whatsoever, and no one will play it.

[Sichuan Pepper]

Constant shuffle would be unfair to raiders and we need balance....if taggers were willing to place 100 triggers then nothing we do will stop them doing that. It is how we used to estimate update before having a list one hand.
It might slow things down or make more work but it wont kill the game...and that is an important consideration.

[General Halcones]

Already too much work, sorry. Make it any more tedious, and I quit.

[[violet]]

Violet made these suggestions earlier in the year. Option 1 is the one that is being considered more seriously as a solution for the issues that some players have with switching. It's different to what Belschaft is suggesting, but so long as a player uses the same email address for all their nations, it'd be impossible to multi.

The precise method doesn't matter, but I think there is a clear consensus that we need a new method of switching WA that is both safer and easier for more players to use. That admins are working on achieving this is excellent news.

I absolutely agree that the method people have to use to switch nations at the moment is just terrible. In order to use switchers, players need to make up a bunch of email addresses and manually keep track of which is in use. It can be done without error, but it's error-prone and it doesn't have to be. It shouldn't be possible to accidentally multy.

The key from a code point of view is to shift the gameside email check out of the daily update. As M&R suggests, the "database issue" is kind of a block at the moment, and the reason why we have the system we do: the game can't quickly scan all active nations to see whether your email address is already in use. So it waits until the next daily update, when it's loading nations anyway.

But it would not be too difficult to change that to hold all WA members' email addresses in memory. Then we can go with whatever system we like, whether that's a handy "Switch!" button or just what we have now but you get your WA Invitation email within moments, not hours.

The key difference would be that no-one would need more than one email address. If we kept the current system, for example, players could still generate WA Invitation emails for many nations in advance, all using the same email address, because the game wouldn't check it for uniqueness until you actually tried to enter the WA. And at that point, if you got it wrong, instead of accidentally multying, and facing modly wrath, you'd just see an error message telling you to resign the other nation first.

So no more accidental multies. Plus easier enforcement for mods, because instead of everybody using lots of throwaway email addresses, only people who actually wanted to WA cheat would do that.

Also worth mentioning that Ballotonia had a proposal to allow nations' endorsements to count in multiple regions, so you don't need to switch if all you want to do is be active in more than one region per update. I would still like to hear what people think about this, as I don't think we debated it fully. However, even if we did do that, it would still be good to overhaul the switching system, which many people would continue to employ for stealth reasons.

[Mallorea and Riva]

*looks at [violet] with puppydog eyes*
Can we pleeeeease have the first option, related to email addresses? The second option, regarding being able to use only a single nation, is a possibility worth consideration as well, but that first option really addresses all of the concerns regarding safe switching that we could ever have.

[Cormac Stark]

*looks at [violet] with puppydog eyes*
Can we pleeeeease have the first option, related to email addresses? The second option, regarding being able to use only a single nation, is a possibility worth consideration as well, but that first option really addresses all of the concerns regarding safe switching that we could ever have.

I agree with Mall that the first option is preferable. Unless I'm missing something, the second option would basically allow people to use a single nation to raid/defend an unlimited number of regions in an update -- which I think would actually make the R/D game too easy, take much of the competitive edge out of it and thus reduce the number of highly skilled players who would want to participate.

On the other hand, the second option could open the R/D game to less skilled players so I suppose that's a positive we could consider. I think the first option though would make the R/D game a bit easier with less risk for less skilled players without reducing the competitive edge for highly skilled players overly much though, so I think it may have the right balance whereas the second option doesn't.

[Topid]

I really like the second option, really like it, assuming it could be restricted slightly.. Especially if it could work like Mouse suggested further back.

The two problems the current WA switcher situation creates other than annoyance is that it can be very confusing for new nations to get involved with, option 2 is obviously much more easy to understand. I think both sides could benefit if the technical aspect of the R/D game was toned down a bit and there were less hoops to jump through to complete an update (admittedly, option 1 is also more simple, but still not as simple as just using one nation).

Secondly, a slight problem I've always seen with the system is that even though military gameplay often goes hand in hand with regional politics, it is often the case a player must choose between one or the other. Given the importance of influence and delegacies to regional politics, many who play with emphasis on that aspect of the game are not able to participate in military gameplay. If it were possible to make a nation able to update in multiple regions, and change the way endorsements work so that they were removed automatically when a region updated without the endorsed/endorser nation in it or when the endorsed/endorser nation resigned from the WA (or switched) it would free many more people to participate in this side of the game that would like to. Especially in the feeders, where influence is everything and many active members would be very hesitant to move their WA (this change would make it slightly less unlikely to see a feeder try to have a larger impact on a battle or the outside game, it could be one step toward making them less isolated).

There are potential problems, most notably that with a list of region update order a raider could theoretically jump region to region in order taking an insane amount of delegacies in one update since they didn't have to worry about switching. That's why I think it is only a viable option if there were a way to restrict it, like say, maybe once a nation updates it can't update again (its endorsements won't count) for 5 minutes. This would also allow raiders to try to 'trap' defenders still, and require some strategy, as well as also give the incentive to switch WA for more experienced players.

I've been thinking of other potential problems, like allowing for more large occupations, but already using the current switching system everyone but the point can participate in many occupations at once with switchers, so this really only frees up the point-man to perform multiple missions at once (which does change things, but only slightly). I've also considered the possibility of someone trying to build a lot of influence in many regions by keeping endorsements in many regions by moving back and forth at updates, but that would require never missing an update (since missing one update would reset every region you didn't move to back to 0), and since no one could actually do this it isn't a real threat. The only possible consequence I can think of this is that since a change like this would allow everyone, even points, to participate in more than one mission at once it could lead for more long occupations since they would be less boring, potentially. I'm not sure I would call that a consequence, but some will certainly call it that, so I list it.

Overall though, I really think if it were possible to implement the second option with the 5 minute (or some other) limit and with the change to when/if endorsements are reset, military gameplay could really get a boost. It would make both large raids and large liberations more feasible, since you could bull from feederite/other governmental players that are as-of-now-tied-down if need be. That combined with the greater ease for new nations to get into the game would be a major bonus, again, if possible.

[Ballotonia]

One peculiar thing about this option though is that it would result in a single nation holding delegacy in several regions - not sure how the game would comprehend this. Of course, this effectively already happens, just being different nations under the same player.

Now jotted down in my notes: if and when Option 2 (allow nations to go through update multiple times, so there's much less need for switching) goes into effect, also limit the number of delegacies a nation can hold to 1. Becoming a delegate somewhere should then auto-drop delegacy elsewhere.

Ballotonia

[General Halcones]

That's what I thought you'd do - in which case, implementing Option 2 would be absolutely pointless. Raiders would still use switchers to tag raid in order to maintain delegacy in all their hits so they could tag at the end rather than during update.