So here are some ideas:
This doesn't correct the root of the problem, but it does address the imbalance of power in the WA.
Rather than give extra votes to WA delegates of the feeders and sinkers, the extra votes will be dispersed throughout the region as a whole, to create a collective action problem, of sorts. In order to make use of the extra votes of the WA delegate, the region at large must be able to show a decisive preference for or against the proposal in question. If more than 2/3 of the region can vote the same way, then the WA delegate gets the extra votes. If the region is not decisive to above that threshold, then no extra votes will be applied to the WA delegate.
Rather than give extra votes to WA delegates of the feeders and sinkers, the extra votes will be dispersed throughout the region as a whole, to create a collective action problem, of sorts. In order to make use of the extra votes of the WA delegate, the region at large must be able to show a decisive preference for or against the proposal in question. If more than 2/3 of the region can vote the same way, then the WA delegate gets the extra votes. If the region is not decisive to above that threshold, then no extra votes will be applied to the WA delegate.
This also doesn't address the root cause, but the imbalance of power in the WA.
Institute a maximum vote count which may be derived from being the WA delegate of a region. Something like 100 per delegate would work fine. The extra votes that the delegate would have gotten will be passed to the nation with the next most endorsements in the region, with a limit of 50, then likewise on to the third, fourth, fifth, etc. until all extra votes have been distributed among the most top endorsed nations in the region. Only the real WA delegate will have executive power.
Institute a maximum vote count which may be derived from being the WA delegate of a region. Something like 100 per delegate would work fine. The extra votes that the delegate would have gotten will be passed to the nation with the next most endorsements in the region, with a limit of 50, then likewise on to the third, fourth, fifth, etc. until all extra votes have been distributed among the most top endorsed nations in the region. Only the real WA delegate will have executive power.
One problem that has been brought up in other recent threads is that GCRs have the advantage of always being able to contact new nations first. This is an obvious imbalance: this is a million times better regional advertisement than using the API because it is automatic, instant, and not subject to the API limit. But this should be a fairly easy fix - just delay these welcome telegrams long enough that a region doing manual recruiting should beat the GCR welcome telegram fairly easily, or only have them send if the nation actually clicked a button to move to the region, rather than at founding.
Another problem others have mentioned is the so-called "recruitment bomb" that new players experience upon entering the game. The idea is to try and cut down on this while also attempting to help new players more quickly find a region they would like.
The idea is that, when a nation clicks on the "Move to [Region]" button in a recruitment telegram, some information about that nation when they clicked the telegram will be stored along with the template for the telegram. This could be answers to the survey questions during nation creation, the classification of their nation, or some other statistics I am not thinking of. The system will then push recruitment telegrams further ahead in the queue for nations that more closely match the average nation that is clicking the telegram. This could also be implemented based on averaging some stats of the recruiting region, or by involving a region's chosen tags in the calculation.
At the same time, the rate at which recruitment telegrams are allowed to arrive in the inbox of a new player will be slowed down significantly. This is so that the order in which the telegrams arrive actually matters, and so that new players don't feel so overwhelmed at receiving so many new messages within their first two minutes of the game.
The idea is that, when a nation clicks on the "Move to [Region]" button in a recruitment telegram, some information about that nation when they clicked the telegram will be stored along with the template for the telegram. This could be answers to the survey questions during nation creation, the classification of their nation, or some other statistics I am not thinking of. The system will then push recruitment telegrams further ahead in the queue for nations that more closely match the average nation that is clicking the telegram. This could also be implemented based on averaging some stats of the recruiting region, or by involving a region's chosen tags in the calculation.
At the same time, the rate at which recruitment telegrams are allowed to arrive in the inbox of a new player will be slowed down significantly. This is so that the order in which the telegrams arrive actually matters, and so that new players don't feel so overwhelmed at receiving so many new messages within their first two minutes of the game.
This would require the implementation of rules limiting how regions may be tagged, along with more clear definitions for each tag, and a new page for players to select a region to spawn in.
At the bottom of the nation creation page, the player would see the following arrangement of buttons:
"Create nation!" or "Select starting region" (optional)
Both buttons are self-explanatory. The important thing is that the player will be presented with a choice to either follow a default setup (a GCR) or go out and look for a region on their own (with a little help). This could be a very useful feature for class nations, as they could more quickly skip right to their region.
In terms of region tags, there would be a few modifications to current mechanics. As of now it is possible to add seemingly conflicting tags to your region. Under this new system, conflicting tags would not be allowed: "Liberal" could not be used with "Conservative", "Socialist"/"Communist" could not be used with "Capitalist", etc. It is especially important that the most common political descriptors are clearly defined, because these tags will be the ones primarily used by new players to select a starting region.
Players exploring possible regions will be presented with an interface which will allow them to choose from groups of mutually exclusive tags. There would be a brief description of what a region is and how to find regions using the interface. Players could search for a region by name, or they could limit the search based on a nicer version of the tag cloud. Regions tagged "Puppet Storage" or "Jump Point" would be excluded from all searches. Regional executives could also mark their region unlisted. The most prominent tags would be the more political ones (i.e. Democratic, Liberal, Religious, Feminist), the size tags, and the more self-explanatory RP tags. Other select tags would be hidden in an expandable section titled "more tags" (Founderless, World Assembly, Warzone, Offsite Forums, etc.) All tags would have an expandable definition, describing what kinds of regions use the tag.
After clicking "Search", players would be presented with a list of the regions matching the tags they selected, sorted so the region with the most recent successful recruitment is at the top. Clicking on the elements of the list would not open up a page to the region, but would instead open up the WFE for the region, with a button below: "Start in [region]". Players could, at any time, click a button in the corner of the page titled "Default Region" and be whisked away to a random feeder.
At the bottom of the nation creation page, the player would see the following arrangement of buttons:
"Create nation!" or "Select starting region" (optional)
Both buttons are self-explanatory. The important thing is that the player will be presented with a choice to either follow a default setup (a GCR) or go out and look for a region on their own (with a little help). This could be a very useful feature for class nations, as they could more quickly skip right to their region.
In terms of region tags, there would be a few modifications to current mechanics. As of now it is possible to add seemingly conflicting tags to your region. Under this new system, conflicting tags would not be allowed: "Liberal" could not be used with "Conservative", "Socialist"/"Communist" could not be used with "Capitalist", etc. It is especially important that the most common political descriptors are clearly defined, because these tags will be the ones primarily used by new players to select a starting region.
Players exploring possible regions will be presented with an interface which will allow them to choose from groups of mutually exclusive tags. There would be a brief description of what a region is and how to find regions using the interface. Players could search for a region by name, or they could limit the search based on a nicer version of the tag cloud. Regions tagged "Puppet Storage" or "Jump Point" would be excluded from all searches. Regional executives could also mark their region unlisted. The most prominent tags would be the more political ones (i.e. Democratic, Liberal, Religious, Feminist), the size tags, and the more self-explanatory RP tags. Other select tags would be hidden in an expandable section titled "more tags" (Founderless, World Assembly, Warzone, Offsite Forums, etc.) All tags would have an expandable definition, describing what kinds of regions use the tag.
After clicking "Search", players would be presented with a list of the regions matching the tags they selected, sorted so the region with the most recent successful recruitment is at the top. Clicking on the elements of the list would not open up a page to the region, but would instead open up the WFE for the region, with a button below: "Start in [region]". Players could, at any time, click a button in the corner of the page titled "Default Region" and be whisked away to a random feeder.
Rather than just add a bunch of new static feeders or sinkers, introduce feeder and sinker mechanics as a reward for regions that do a good job at consistently attracting and keeping new players active. Obviously this is too much power to give regions with founders, so this should be limited to founderless regions only.
The modification to current game rules is that the feeders and sinkers would be the 25 founderless regions with the most WA nations. The top 15 would be feeders, and the other 10 would be sinkers. The Rejected Realms would remain completely unaffected by this change. That is the simple version.
The detailed version is that to be eligible for feeder/sinker status, a region would have to be founderless for over a year, and would have to maintain a spot in the top 25 for 28 days in order to claim its status as a new feeder or sinker. If the region is the least most WA-populated sinker when another region hits 28 days in the top 25 it loses its feeder/sinker status. If the founder of the region is refounded, then not only is feeder/sinker status lost, but the region must again remain founderless for a year before the region can be eligible again. TRR would not be considered eligible ever, just to be clear.
* An alternative suggestion, based on a comment by Feux, would be to re-introduce the option to create true "founderless" regions
(like NationStates), and limit the pool of regions eligible for feeder-sinker status to these specific regions.
Along with this, it is worth considering adding a new SC proposal category which could be used to prevent target regions from gaining feeder/sinker perks (Not sure what we'd call it. "Castrate", maybe? Sorry/not sorry \:P). Some regions, like Nazi Europa, Capitalist Paradise, or Communist Bloc, would not be appropriate locations to start new players, based solely on their name, and there should be an available channel to prevent them from attaining this status. While this could easily be weaponized by the existing feeders, it is important to note that they would derive almost no benefit from passing such resolutions against regions eligible for feeder-sinker status. This is because the feeder-sinker mechanic would always be active in 25 regions, and also because of the ease of users being able to create new regions. The usefulness of this is debatable, however, as this would initially give existing feeder-sinkers much more direct control over the new UCR feeder-sinkers, and there would be other, more engaging ways ways for people to influence the feeder-sinker regions.
The modification to current game rules is that the feeders and sinkers would be the 25 founderless regions with the most WA nations. The top 15 would be feeders, and the other 10 would be sinkers. The Rejected Realms would remain completely unaffected by this change. That is the simple version.
The detailed version is that to be eligible for feeder/sinker status, a region would have to be founderless for over a year, and would have to maintain a spot in the top 25 for 28 days in order to claim its status as a new feeder or sinker. If the region is the least most WA-populated sinker when another region hits 28 days in the top 25 it loses its feeder/sinker status. If the founder of the region is refounded, then not only is feeder/sinker status lost, but the region must again remain founderless for a year before the region can be eligible again. TRR would not be considered eligible ever, just to be clear.
* An alternative suggestion, based on a comment by Feux, would be to re-introduce the option to create true "founderless" regions
(like NationStates), and limit the pool of regions eligible for feeder-sinker status to these specific regions.
Along with this, it is worth considering adding a new SC proposal category which could be used to prevent target regions from gaining feeder/sinker perks (Not sure what we'd call it. "Castrate", maybe? Sorry/not sorry \:P). Some regions, like Nazi Europa, Capitalist Paradise, or Communist Bloc, would not be appropriate locations to start new players, based solely on their name, and there should be an available channel to prevent them from attaining this status. While this could easily be weaponized by the existing feeders, it is important to note that they would derive almost no benefit from passing such resolutions against regions eligible for feeder-sinker status. This is because the feeder-sinker mechanic would always be active in 25 regions, and also because of the ease of users being able to create new regions. The usefulness of this is debatable, however, as this would initially give existing feeder-sinkers much more direct control over the new UCR feeder-sinkers, and there would be other, more engaging ways ways for people to influence the feeder-sinker regions.
So currently, NationStates is an extremely English-dominated game, and that's very unlikely to change. But perhaps a change in feeder mechanics could actually promote the growth of non-English communities. Instead of spawning new nations entirely randomly within the feeders, spawn nations in feeders based on either their IP address or in answer to a question during nation selection, "what language do you speak?". Start with the more common languages besides English, and in this manner expand the site to be more inviting to non-English speakers.
GCRs get free nations, and by extension an easier pool to recruit from. Foundered regions get security. But non-GCR founderless regions get nothing, and thus get less attention. So here's an idea: let founderless regions annex each other to win extra WA votes for their delegate. To keep this fair, feeders and sinkers would be excluded from these mechanics. They could still annex and be annexed, but no extra WA votes would be gained from them either annexing or being annexed. Given enough time, we should see some empires crop up with power rivaling that of the GCRs.
Annexation would happen the same way as embassies, but only delegates could propose, accept, reject, or cancel annexation. If the annexing region and the annexed region are both founderless, non-GCRs, and not passworded, then the annexing delegate would gain bonus WA votes, while the annexed delegate would lose all their votes from endorsements. The bonus votes gained from annexing a region would be half the largest endorsement count ever held in the annexed region (rounded down). Importantly, annexing regions may cancel an annexation at any time, but an annexed region's delegate could not cancel annexation unless they got more endorsements than bonus votes would be gained by annexing them. Lastly, annex chains could exist, but not loops.
The intent of this is to create a gameplay reason for players to invest time in a founderless region, without diminishing the things that make GCRs and Foundered regions unique. This kind of game would also discourage the practice of passwording conquered regions in favor of a more economic, strategic approach for maintaining control. And the more powerful a region was at its height of glory, the more players will invest in capturing and holding the region in the face of active opposition.
Annexation would happen the same way as embassies, but only delegates could propose, accept, reject, or cancel annexation. If the annexing region and the annexed region are both founderless, non-GCRs, and not passworded, then the annexing delegate would gain bonus WA votes, while the annexed delegate would lose all their votes from endorsements. The bonus votes gained from annexing a region would be half the largest endorsement count ever held in the annexed region (rounded down). Importantly, annexing regions may cancel an annexation at any time, but an annexed region's delegate could not cancel annexation unless they got more endorsements than bonus votes would be gained by annexing them. Lastly, annex chains could exist, but not loops.
The intent of this is to create a gameplay reason for players to invest time in a founderless region, without diminishing the things that make GCRs and Foundered regions unique. This kind of game would also discourage the practice of passwording conquered regions in favor of a more economic, strategic approach for maintaining control. And the more powerful a region was at its height of glory, the more players will invest in capturing and holding the region in the face of active opposition.
Thoughts?
