(idea) Make Featured Region a meaningful thing

[Candlewhisper Archive]

So clearly the Featured Region thing is random.

For example, today's featured region is a tiny puppet storage region, with no features to it other than its name. That basically means the "featured region" feature is basically "here's a random region, take a look."

Wouldn't it be great if this game mechanism could become something meaningful instead? As in, a deliberate choice, which doesn't update daily, but maybe once each month, or something like that? There could even be a little blurb next to the link that says why that region is being featured.

I'm thinking being featured would be a function of notability, rather than an absolute positive thing, so it'd be just saying "this region is notable to the game" in some way, rather than being like a commendation.

As to the mechanism of how that'd work, well there's a bunch of different possible mechanisms, but here's a few:

1) Monthly poll that goes up for 24 hours. Highest wins. Any region featured in the last 12 months is not eligible.
2) Form a committee from WA delegates, 1 vote per delegate, otherwise same system.
3) An enlightened despot staff volunteer does the job, then hands it over when they're bored of it.
4) An elected WA nation does the job for 4 months, and then a new election takes place. No nation ever gets more than 1 term.

What do you all think?

[Ausinia]

As wells as smaller regions, that say, are looking for more members to grow bigger, it don’t have the resources?

[USS Monitor]

4) An elected WA nation does the job for 4 months, and then a new election takes place. No nation ever gets more than 1 term.

What do you all think?

Cue someone switching their WA to a different puppet and trying to get elected for another term.

[Flanderlion]

Just change the req to have it judged by WA nations rather than nations.

[Codger]

Nothing to do with the OPs idea but how about making it so the featured region had guaranteed (or 2x, 3x as likely) chance to get cards for each issue while they are featured.

It might attract a whole bunch of card farmers for the day, but it isn't necessarily a bad thing, as encouraging people to visit the region is part of the goal and some of them might even interact with the residents while they are there.

The super crazy card farmers might not bother as moving is an extra step and they have so many nation to go through as is, but might help a regular player who wants more cards

[Candlewhisper Archive]

4) An elected WA nation does the job for 4 months, and then a new election takes place. No nation ever gets more than 1 term.

What do you all think?

Cue someone switching their WA to a different puppet and trying to get elected for another term.

Sure, but democracy provides the check and measure, I suppose. Or a hard rule. I dunno, just brainstorming.

What do you think about Featured Regions being meaningful more generally, though?

[Yeah Rite]

How about more regulations, like 50% of the population cannot be controlled by the same guy and it is scaled to other people etc.

[Herby]

Full disclosure, I was a Featured Region Follower eons ago, and just recently I got back into it with a new puppet (I blame the card game revival).

One, I’m absolutely positively 10000% against turning this into a popularity contest, especially one based on WA votes. We already have WA voting popularity contests, they’re called commendations.

Two, I love the idea that this is random. Most of the time it brings attention to unheralded small regions, regions that otherwise get no attention around here.

Three, making this a monthly thing would ruin it. That would mean only twelve lucky regions a year are featured. Not only is that way too exclusive but I can envision a scenario where these regions could then become raider targets.

Could this be tweaked? Maybe. Gut reaction would be to disqualify any region that’s tagged Puppet Storage. Although that wouldn’t have made a difference today, Columbia isn’t tagged. And yeah it would be nice to make being featured a little more rewarding, but tying it to the card game would probably be a technical nightmare and not worth the effort (techies, that’s your cue!).

[Aclion]

I agree that featured regions would be more interesting if it were more meaningful. But I don't think making it democratic would work, as that would tend to favor regions that are popular, and featuring region that most people have already heard of isn't really the best use. I think the most practical solution is to reduce the pool of eligible regions to eliminate types of region that should never be featured(Puppet storage, Feeders, Sinkers, Commended, Condemned), and to weight the random selection to favor regions with the sort of characteristics we'd expect to see in a region we want featured.

How about more regulations, like 50% of the population cannot be controlled by the same guy and it is scaled to other people etc.

Does NS automatically track nation ownership outside of the WA?

[Greater vakolicci haven]

How about affording some benefits to featured regions, like recruitment telegrams given preferencial treatment?

[Bears Armed]

Could this be tweaked? Maybe. Gut reaction would be to disqualify any region that’s tagged Puppet Storage.

That makes sense to me.

[Birthday Cake Herby]

Another to add to the “got enough attention already” list, Warzone regions. Like today’s.

[Unibot III]

I'm ... against this, I'm afraid. I think the current system is terribly, I dunno, cute. It's a window into places you'd never otherwise venture.

Lavinaria, for instance, is today's featured region. A small UCR that was 'restarted' in 2015 and has been chugging along ever since.

[Idzequitch]

My question would be: Is there a way to make the featured region title more meaningful without turning it into a popularity contest? Because I was intrigued when I saw the title of this thread, but as currently proposed, I would rather stick to the status quo.

Perhaps even just the aforementioned disqualification of regions tagged "Puppet Storage" would help.

Edit: Also, if the length of being featured is going to be lengthened, a week seems more appropriate than a month, at least in my opinion.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Maybe the best check could be RMB activity. If a region hasn't seen any posts to its RMB in the past 6 months, it's either a dead region, or puppet storage, or a community that does most of its communication off-site. Regardless, it won't be an interesting place to visit.

[Yuletide Yggdrasil]

I think there's definitely something to this whole concept, even if we haven't quite landed on the appropriate direction to go, yet.

I like the idea of the "Featured Region" being somehow more meaningful. However, as has been brought up, the worry that it would become a popularity contest is definitely a valid one.

As Herby brought up, the randomness of it somehow makes it more charming, and even democratizes the whole thing a bit. And as Unibot said, there is something "cute" about how strange, backwoods, insignificant little regions can become the featured region.

The "puppet-storage" tag as a disqualifier seems like a common sense move. However, would this simply result in folks not using the tag anymore? It's certainly seems like a good step. I don't know much about the various puppet storage regions, but can anyone think of examples of puppet storage regions that should be featured region-worthy? Despite their pointless existence, do many of them contain fun, idiosyncratic themes that would be a shame to remove from the potential featured region pool?

Yeah Rite's idea regarding excluding regions where, say, 50% of the region is all owned by a single individual also seems, on the surface, a good idea. However, in very small, "minuscule" regions this percentage may carry a far greater weight. And personally, I would like to see featured some regions of just two or three nations living a quiet little existence in some corner of NS that never interacts with the wider world. I even enjoy coming across those regions where it's just one nation who has password protected the region and resides within as a hermit, leaving a cantankerous message scrawled across the WFE professing their desire to be left alone and perhaps an explanation as to why.

Candlewhisper's above idea about exclusions being tied to RMB activity does, again, seem a smart move on the surface, but also could result in excluding regions that may be worthy of note. I can imagine regions that don't have much outwardly-visible communication but would still be an interesting place to visit, even just as a detached observer. At the very least, those regions' natives may delight in the "feature" and engage on the RMB, when normally communication is off-site or via TG.

I recently came across Democratia, a fascinating little region preserving a slice of NS history that, to me, deserves an occasional spotlight from the "featured region" function. It seems to frequently go through periods longer than 6 months without RMB activity. And also does not pass the test of its inhabitants not being more than 50% controlled by a single user.

Anyway, I do like the idea, but believe it requires thoughtful consideration.

[Imperium Anglorum]

1) Monthly poll that goes up for 24 hours. Highest wins. Any region featured in the last 12 months is not eligible.

I'd be surprised if there are more than 100 worthy candidate regions in the game that would be widely known enough by any one player to make an informed choice.

2) Form a committee from WA delegates, 1 vote per delegate, otherwise same system.

Delegates are mostly inactive, like members.

3) An enlightened despot staff volunteer does the job, then hands it over when they're bored of it.

Perhaps, I can't see why anyone would want this job.

4) An elected WA nation does the job for 4 months, and then a new election takes place. No nation ever gets more than 1 term.

People get bored and don't want to do it (or, in another setting, why things don't just work without people earning wages).

[Aclion]

Candlewhisper's above idea about exclusions being tied to RMB activity does, again, seem a smart move on the surface, but also could result in excluding regions that may be worthy of note. I can imagine regions that don't have much outwardly-visible communication but would still be an interesting place to visit, even just as a detached observer. At the very least, those regions' natives may delight in the "feature" and engage on the RMB, when normally communication is off-site or via TG.

It could work if paired with things like how many dispaches there are, how many regional officers the region has how many telegrams get send within the region, how many links there are on the WFE. It's unlikely that a region inactive on all of those front would be very interesting.