[Proposal] Faction Gameplay

[Th Empire of Wymondham]

We just need a chance to corner [violet] into taking a serious look at this one- at least a few of the mod team thinks it's got some serious merit and would probably be worth the techie time to figure out. Besides being a really cool and well-thought out idea, it's also a fantastic example of how to go about making a technical suggestion.

I'll never complain about NS admins or moderation again if this is implemented. Bless you.

^

[Rockina]

I'll never complain about NS admins or moderation again if this is implemented. Bless you.

^

^

[Kawaii Schoolgirl]

Such great news to hear it's being taken into serious consideration. I love how much detail Koth's put into this concept as well, I'm excited to see what come's of this.

[Nagatar Karumuttu Chettiar]

If this is implemented it will freshen up NS for some older players, and newer ones alike. I would love this to be put into action!

[Marxist Germany]

This would definitely improve the activity on this game and give people an incentive to stay besides waiting 6 hours for issues or being on forums.

[Drawkland]

Two cents from an outsider who doesn't look around on GP often.

I think this idea is very cool. Adding the additional layer of intrigue and gameplay is definitely something I would find beneficial as a whole. I love all the sub-communities in NS and the GP community is definitely one of the most unique and intrinsically linked to the game itself. Obviously, anything that keeps that community alive is a plus for sure.

My only issue with this (besides the fact that I can't wrap my head around the way Impact works) is that it sorta eliminates this new potential sphere of the game for regions who don't have a gazillion nations in them. I know of several communities who would probably love to take advantage of this feature, but due to having a low WA nation count, would be barred from such a thing even if they banded together (thanks to the proposed WA nation count to justify creating a Faction).

This could be circumvented, perhaps, by having a way to form "inert" Factions that don't require as much WA nation power to get started but, as a consequence, don't have any clout outside of their Faction. This is something you outlined with the Sanctuary and Neutral Ground idea, which is great. It would just be nice if groups of regions with specific subcultures, but not necessarily a lot of WA nations required to start a Faction as they're described here, would be able to band together to create their own Factions.

I'm just thinking being able to have an avenue for such groups to create Sanctuary-like Factions would be good, because it enables them to take part in what is potentially a grand, game-encompassing feature, without just being stuck in the ten-thousand region doldrums of Sanctuary/Neutral Ground with no real stake in them.

I imagine this as having 3-5 regions minimum being able to pledge to start a Faction*, but not having any Impact/ability to add other regions to the Faction as territories. Of course, as mentioned before, this doesn't stop a potential raiding group from raiding said regions and manually moving them to a different faction. I believe with this in mind there could be a way to have both the major gameplay-style Factions having their fun and intrigue while allowing smaller-scale regions and communities to also take part in this feature without having to try and get a massive UCR/GCR on their side or submit to a Faction that isn't really based in their interests. Especially with the extra Faction-based WA voting power suggestion done away with, I don't see a particular downside to having this in with it all.

Maybe I'm not making too much sense or something, but I feel like I ought to mention this, since I doubt very many non-GP people will be looking at this until it's basically already implemented. I doubt my suggestion for this is perfect, but it's just an idea thrown at the wall here.

*Perhaps a raw nation requirement, in lieu of a WA nation requirement, could be utilized instead. You could say "But then you could just have a dedicated puppetmaster put together 3-5 regions with dozens of nations in them to have a faction created!" to which I say, why would anybody do that? Sanctuary and Neutral Ground would exist for the small regions with not much to go with, and puppet regions could easily be surmounted by a raiding force if they wanted to claim said regions. This suggestion is mainly just to help the regions who would want to exist in a Sanctuary-style ecosystem, while still existing in their own specific Faction which suits their style and sub-community.

Also, now that I look at Koth's mock-ups of the potential interface for Factions, would Faction pages have an FMB? Basically an RMB operating where any nation in a region in the faction can post on? In a similar vein, would there be embassies between Factions (perhaps called "Alliances" to distinguish between the two)? Or would the current image mock-ups basically be the only cosmetic features of Factions? Just a few other things to consider.

[Goatentah]

Also, now that I look at Koth's mock-ups of the potential interface for Factions, would Faction pages have an FMB? Basically an RMB operating where any nation in a region in the faction can post on? In a similar vein, would there be embassies between Factions (perhaps called "Alliances" to distinguish between the two)? Or would the current image mock-ups basically be the only cosmetic features of Factions? Just a few other things to consider.

You could have something similar to the options you get for embassy posting on the RMB:
a) where you can have anybody in the faction post,
b) any Regional officers/Regional officers with Communications in the faction can post, or
c) only delegates/founders of the regions that make up the faction can post

[Astarial]

I think this is an excellent idea, and I'm glad the mods are taking a serious look at it. Kudos to you, Koth!

I do have a couple of suggestions. First, I'd like to suggest that proposed Elector regions have to agree to the switch - that it can't be unilaterally enacted by the chair. This would prevent regions with an inattentive founder and non-executive delegate from being incontestably claimed by a faction they don't like. It would also allow regions who would prefer to remain "up for grabs" (such as, perhaps, Anarchy?) to not be tied strongly to any particular faction.

Second, for Impact generation, perhaps the algorithm could take into account WA nations and average national influence and/or population. GCRs would be helped by the WA portion but hurt by average influence/population given their size, which would keep them from completely dominating factional play. New UCRs would have room to grow by leaps and bounds as their population and WA count increased, mirroring how interregional impact really does increase along the same lines... and older UCRs, especially those that have been around for years, would be valuable powerhouses for factions to draw upon - rewarding longevity and stability.

Done right, it would also mean that giant puppetdumps with no WAs and one-nation regions with a single high-population nation would, appropriately, have little Impact on a faction.

[Reventus Koth]

Two cents from an outsider who doesn't look around on GP often.

I think this idea is very cool. Adding the additional layer of intrigue and gameplay is definitely something I would find beneficial as a whole. I love all the sub-communities in NS and the GP community is definitely one of the most unique and intrinsically linked to the game itself. Obviously, anything that keeps that community alive is a plus for sure.

My only issue with this (besides the fact that I can't wrap my head around the way Impact works) is that it sorta eliminates this new potential sphere of the game for regions who don't have a gazillion nations in them. I know of several communities who would probably love to take advantage of this feature, but due to having a low WA nation count, would be barred from such a thing even if they banded together (thanks to the proposed WA nation count to justify creating a Faction).

This could be circumvented, perhaps, by having a way to form "inert" Factions that don't require as much WA nation power to get started but, as a consequence, don't have any clout outside of their Faction. This is something you outlined with the Sanctuary and Neutral Ground idea, which is great. It would just be nice if groups of regions with specific subcultures, but not necessarily a lot of WA nations required to start a Faction as they're described here, would be able to band together to create their own Factions.

I'm just thinking being able to have an avenue for such groups to create Sanctuary-like Factions would be good, because it enables them to take part in what is potentially a grand, game-encompassing feature, without just being stuck in the ten-thousand region doldrums of Sanctuary/Neutral Ground with no real stake in them.

I imagine this as having 3-5 regions minimum being able to pledge to start a Faction*, but not having any Impact/ability to add other regions to the Faction as territories. Of course, as mentioned before, this doesn't stop a potential raiding group from raiding said regions and manually moving them to a different faction. I believe with this in mind there could be a way to have both the major gameplay-style Factions having their fun and intrigue while allowing smaller-scale regions and communities to also take part in this feature without having to try and get a massive UCR/GCR on their side or submit to a Faction that isn't really based in their interests. Especially with the extra Faction-based WA voting power suggestion done away with, I don't see a particular downside to having this in with it all.

Maybe I'm not making too much sense or something, but I feel like I ought to mention this, since I doubt very many non-GP people will be looking at this until it's basically already implemented. I doubt my suggestion for this is perfect, but it's just an idea thrown at the wall here.

*Perhaps a raw nation requirement, in lieu of a WA nation requirement, could be utilized instead. You could say "But then you could just have a dedicated puppetmaster put together 3-5 regions with dozens of nations in them to have a faction created!" to which I say, why would anybody do that? Sanctuary and Neutral Ground would exist for the small regions with not much to go with, and puppet regions could easily be surmounted by a raiding force if they wanted to claim said regions. This suggestion is mainly just to help the regions who would want to exist in a Sanctuary-style ecosystem, while still existing in their own specific Faction which suits their style and sub-community.

Also, now that I look at Koth's mock-ups of the potential interface for Factions, would Faction pages have an FMB? Basically an RMB operating where any nation in a region in the faction can post on? In a similar vein, would there be embassies between Factions (perhaps called "Alliances" to distinguish between the two)? Or would the current image mock-ups basically be the only cosmetic features of Factions? Just a few other things to consider.

Thanks for your contributions!

I hope I'm not giving off the impression here that there's no place in this system for smaller groups. If your perception is that groups of regions with a low WA count between them aren't going to be the biggest fish in the sea right out of the gate, you're right, and that's intentional. But that doesn't mean they're barred from participation, not at all. They may have to play a slower and steadier game to expand, but the intent of the system isn't that GCRs and other big regions will choke out everyone else by default. If that's the impression, I may not have explained Impact very well (you mentioned not understanding it, so that's on me).

I hesitate to make any changes to the proposal that encourage the development of Sanctuary-lite factions. You're basically just asking me to re-invent the region at a higher level, and that's not my intention. Optimally, the mathematics of the formula that determines how many Electors a faction is allowed would essentially give small factions a way to protect their core regions in lieu of a strong power base, eliminating the need for "inert" factions. The idea of tiny factions with no ability to impact the greater system at all does not interest me, these regions should be contributing as member states in a bigger faction. Remember, there is a soft cap of around 250 factions even possible, I'd like to avoid rewarding stagnation in a system designed for Gameplay. In a similar vein, I can't support anything about this system relying on something like raw nation count, especially if it's being used to justify the creation of non-contributing Sanctuary-lite factions.

I think this is an excellent idea, and I'm glad the mods are taking a serious look at it. Kudos to you, Koth!

I do have a couple of suggestions. First, I'd like to suggest that proposed Elector regions have to agree to the switch - that it can't be unilaterally enacted by the chair. This would prevent regions with an inattentive founder and non-executive delegate from being incontestably claimed by a faction they don't like. It would also allow regions who would prefer to remain "up for grabs" (such as, perhaps, Anarchy?) to not be tied strongly to any particular faction.

Thanks Asta! The idea of needing prospective Elector regions to agree to become Electors is a good one, and I'm going to say this is part of my overall proposal now. I had just sort of assumed this would be the case, but on a technical level it's important that this is considered.

Second, for Impact generation, perhaps the algorithm could take into account WA nations and average national influence and/or population. GCRs would be helped by the WA portion but hurt by average influence/population given their size, which would keep them from completely dominating factional play. New UCRs would have room to grow by leaps and bounds as their population and WA count increased, mirroring how interregional impact really does increase along the same lines... and older UCRs, especially those that have been around for years, would be valuable powerhouses for factions to draw upon - rewarding longevity and stability.

Done right, it would also mean that giant puppetdumps with no WAs and one-nation regions with a single high-population nation would, appropriately, have little Impact on a faction.

This touches on an aspect of the Impact generation system I was musing on last week but never got around to posting about, so good job being on my same general wavelength on this topic. I don't like the idea of factions factoring in statistics on the national level, two levels below it. For that reason, I can't get behind using Influence or national population as a basis for Impact generation, it just seems out of scope to me.

There is another solution that addresses the "GCR problem", though. If we don't assume that there's only one singular factor for the speed at which a region generates Impact, we can instead factor many aspects of a region's general make-up into how much Impact they generate. The primary factor, in my opinion, should still be straight up # of WA nations endorsing the native delegate. This can be modified negatively or positively from there given secondary or tertiary factors, the weights of which I haven't yet come up with a concrete basis for.

There are two secondary factors I've given any amount of thought to:
1) The proportion of WA nations in a region in comparison to its non-WA nations, which I will henceforth call WA Participation for brevity.
2) The rate of WA nations endorsing the delegate out of all WA nations in a region, which I will henceforth call Delegate Support for brevity.

WA Participation I think is an important factor for balancing GCRs, who have thousands of nations but only a fraction of those are in the WA. This does mean though that puppet flooding would be a viable tactic for lowering Impact generation, which has positive and negative implications. Positive in that it incentivizes recruiting your region's natives into the WA, negative in that it also incentivizes ejecting those who don't comply. For this reason, I think WA Participation should not be a huge secondary factor. Enough to be considerable and boost small regions with high WA Participation, but not enough to turn the tide too badly and outright cripple GCRs.

Delegate Support, then, I think should be the more weighty factor. If your region has 100 WA nations and your delegate has 15 endorsements, the level of support is low and your impact on the world stage is lower because of it, and that should be reflected in the mechanics of the system. it's also a much more simple problem to solve and is already the MO in most GP regions anyway.

I welcome any other suggestions for secondary factors in Impact generation, by the way, but I would again like to stay away from mechanics that exist at the nation level. Impact is generated at the region level, and it should be region-wide mechanics and statistics we focus on when it comes to determining their impact.

[Minoa]

I think I can name this feature “Alliances”, because “Factions” is already taken by the Nuclear Apocalypse special event.

Out of curiosity, how would the proposal affect or appeal to regions that do not take part in R/D, and exist mainly for role-playing purposes?

[Dead I Jack]

I have to admit, I've read the OP and I've read some of Koth's follow up posts. I still don't really understand the idea on a basic level. Can you provide the exact list of features without comments to what you think the strategy employed will be?

[Nilrahrarfan]

This will lead to raiders creating factions with their own tropies, and the Anti Fairy Pact growing in size. Plus, the Pacific might be able to be more of a threat. Also, we have something like this: Embassies.

[Cataluna]

This will lead to raiders creating factions with their own tropies, and the Anti Fairy Pact growing in size. Plus, the Pacific might be able to be more of a threat. Also, we have something like this: Embassies.

Embassies are nothing like this; educate yourself.

[ROM]

I would just like to poinrt out that this is everything and I would very much be in favor of this being put into the game. Great ideq Koth.

[Old Hope]

Just wanting to note that there is a flaw in this proposal, obviously, a faction shouldn't be able to take a region just by raiding, they should have to pay a considerable amount of Impact(but not as much as for claiming the territory outright without having the delegate, maybe half of it). That way, the faction that controls the WA delegate has a considerable advantage, but they cannot make the impact system meaningless(If you don't implement this then regions could never get under the control of another faction without their delegate's assent, at least not for long - making Impact meaningless).

[Kurnugia]

Sorry if it comes off as a bit gravediggy, but I'd like to hear an update on this proposal.

[Reventus Koth]

Nothing gravediggy about it, I'm still actively interested in seeing this get admin attention. November is gonna be rolling around soon and I'll have been waiting an entire year just for the littlest bite of acknowledgment from the team.

I don't really feel any drive to keep putting time and energy into expanding the idea until I get any reassurance whatsoever that it will make any difference. I've had multiple mods tell me that this is an exemplar for how to write a Technical proposal, yet it doesn't seem like it has given me any edge whatsoever.

Sorry to the team if this comes off as impatient, but radio silence is kinda crushing.

[Galiantus III]

Since this topic came back up, I wanted to generate some discussion. I like many, I am eager to see this implemented.

Territories and Impact
First of all, I find the current state of the Impact system unsettling. The problem I see is that the largest faction will always be able to spend more impact than every other faction in a given time period, and always in such a way that they increase their impact pool. Other factions may be able to outbid them in individual claims, but simply outbiding the larger faction is not a detriment to them because they can just go buy a region of similar power with the impact they would have spent. This means the largest faction will always grow faster than any other faction, and if a faction (or alliance of factions) ever controls more than 50% of all impact generation, it would be relatively easy for them to eliminate all competition and make every non-elector into their territory.

The only way I can see impact working as intended is if unwilling territories of a faction tend to generate less impact than it costs to hold on to them. Essentially this means territory leadership should be able to influence how much impact the faction can tap, but to a lesser degree than elector regions. If, for example, territories could protect half the impact they generate, territories could act as a drain on factions they dislike, and a boon to factions they do like. This also helps the gameplay situation since it means factions can use both military force and negotiation with belligerent territories to win impact.

Impact Generation
I wrote this response a while back, and I want to bring it up again:

I am opposed to foundered or passworded regions generating impact for their faction. If they can, then a group of players wanting to maximize power could hide behind founders and gain an unfair advantage. The Impact system is assuming that military gameplay is a viable way to prevent this from becoming a numbers game, but founders counter military gameplay.

I'd like to be clear that regions with passwords or live founders would still contribute to faction creation and maintenance, if they have WA members, and could even chair a faction. I also retract this somewhat: The point of them not generating impact is so that military gameplay can be all the more important in building a faction, and to encourage players to spend more time in founderless regions, trying to build them up. This can still be accomplished if all regions generate impact, but founderless regions generate more, or have a higher cap.

I suggest the impact generated by each region should be the square root of the number of WA nations in it. This means one region with 100 WA nations would generate 10 impact per update for their faction, and 100 regions with one WA nation would generate a total of 100 impact per update for their faction. This, in addition to limiting impact generation to non-passworded founderless regions, would force regions to play a balance between optimizing power and optimizing security. In this way, GCRs could in fact join together in the way Pergamon wants, without being disadvantaged.

Elector Regions
Koth has been talking vaguely about how to determine the number of electors a faction may have, but we have yet to detail this. The apparent concept is that factions composed of smaller regions can have more electors, while factions of larger regions can have fewer electors.

Here's a concept I put together:

Factions have 20 elector slots they may fill, and different regions fill different numbers of slots, depending on the number of WA members in the region. If a region grows and causes its faction to exceed the number of slots allowed, it will go on a timer to become a territory, unless in subsequent updates it shrinks back down, or unless the faction chair chooses a different region to make a territory.

WA Nations	Slots
0 - 9	1
10 - 24	2
25 - 49	3
50 - 99	4
100 - 249	5
250 - 499	6
500+	7

Also, I think territories should be able to participate in elections and stuff if the faction chair chooses to allow them. Some territories will want to participate as full-fledged members of a faction they chose to join, and the main purpose of the distinction between electors and territories is to define which regions can and cannot be claimed from a faction via impact.

[West DEN And East Invaders]

I'd prefer DEN being unbanned.

[Bowzin]

I am going to go ahead and gravedig because I really like this idea and I would love if the NS Team would give us any comments regarding it, even if just to say its never going to happen. At least that way we have closure.

[Reventus Koth]

Today marks one year since I posted this thread. At the time, I didn't really expect much from it, I wanted to start a conversation about some ideas I had to address the big problems that face Gameplay these days. I didn't expect all of the massive and critical support I received on this thread and other platforms. I didn't expect many of my in-game rivals to put things aside to give credence to the idea. I didn't expect multiple moderators to be excited about the proposal, one even going as far as to call it an exemplar of a Technical thread and saying that she'd try to get admin eyes on it.

What I didn't expect is for that to not only never happen, but to get nothing but a deafening wall of silence in return.

Now, of course, there's nothing that says the admins ever have to give even a modicum of a damn about suggestion threads, I get that. I know that this post can come off as entitled and whiny that my proposal was special and deserved more attention, I get that. I realize that a change of this magnitude would require a lot of work that a small team of volunteers may not be interested in doing, I understand that.

But fuck, can somebody just say that if that's the case?

I'm not even expecting this to get done at this point; it would be flattering for the pace the admins work on anything in Gameplay to be called glacial. All I want at this point is for [violet], Ballotonia, or Eluvatar to just properly tell me this isn't happening. I don't want to hold onto hope for another year that I'll be listened to. I think a proposal that has had this much momentum behind it, momentum that only ground to a halt at the admin level, deserves at least that. Just tell me something, so that I can figure out if I should still care about this idea.

[Brooklyn and Queens]

The only change this proposal needs: an opt-out button. I'd personally love to have my region take part, but I know there are undoubtedly others who are satisfied with the way regions currently work, and others who use regions like Reddit threads pretty much (not to mention the school-run regions). Otherwise, I 100% back this.

[Reventus Koth]

The only change this proposal needs: an opt-out button. I'd personally love to have my region take part, but I know there are undoubtedly others who are satisfied with the way regions currently work, and others who use regions like Reddit threads pretty much (not to mention the school-run regions). Otherwise, I 100% back this.

I know it's pretty buried in the thread because I have not updated the OP with the fruits of the many discussions that contributed to the proposal, but there is an opt-out in the form of the game-created faction called Sancutary. Look that word up in the thread for more details on how I'd implement that.

[Brooklyn and Queens]

The only change this proposal needs: an opt-out button. I'd personally love to have my region take part, but I know there are undoubtedly others who are satisfied with the way regions currently work, and others who use regions like Reddit threads pretty much (not to mention the school-run regions). Otherwise, I 100% back this.

I know it's pretty buried in the thread because I have not updated the OP with the fruits of the many discussions that contributed to the proposal, but there is an opt-out in the form of the game-created faction called Sancutary. Look that word up in the thread for more details on how I'd implement that.

Ah, I see. Well in that case my good sir, full steam ahead! It would be nice to see a game take its players' suggestions seriously for once (and not in a dumb PR move sort of way).

[Sylven]

Today marks one year since I posted this thread. At the time, I didn't really expect much from it, I wanted to start a conversation about some ideas I had to address the big problems that face Gameplay these days. I didn't expect all of the massive and critical support I received on this thread and other platforms. I didn't expect many of my in-game rivals to put things aside to give credence to the idea. I didn't expect multiple moderators to be excited about the proposal, one even going as far as to call it an exemplar of a Technical thread and saying that she'd try to get admin eyes on it.

What I didn't expect is for that to not only never happen, but to get nothing but a deafening wall of silence in return.

Now, of course, there's nothing that says the admins ever have to give even a modicum of a damn about suggestion threads, I get that. I know that this post can come off as entitled and whiny that my proposal was special and deserved more attention, I get that. I realize that a change of this magnitude would require a lot of work that a small team of volunteers may not be interested in doing, I understand that.

But fuck, can somebody just say that if that's the case?

I'm not even expecting this to get done at this point; it would be flattering for the pace the admins work on anything in Gameplay to be called glacial. All I want at this point is for [violet], Ballotonia, or Eluvatar to just properly tell me this isn't happening. I don't want to hold onto hope for another year that I'll be listened to. I think a proposal that has had this much momentum behind it, momentum that only ground to a halt at the admin level, deserves at least that. Just tell me something, so that I can figure out if I should still care about this idea.

Sad to see this thread slip down the technical forum again with this post unanswered.