New Idea competition with free legendarys!

[9003]

As seen here the current set up is not ideal for the cards world.

Some of the biggest challenges currently facing the cards mini game are as follow:

• The Massive amount of issues being answered but not read
• Massive server load
• Lost potential ad revenue
• Card farming is in an arms race to be the fastest possabile.

Issues are being answered but not read
This messes with several metrics that the issue editing team uses. When cards became bound to issues there was a 1000 fold increase in the amount of issues being answered. Most of these resulted in the first option being chosen many many many times more then any other options. This prevents issues editors from being able to identify issues that are leading or poorly worded.

Massive Server Load
This is becoming more and more of an issue. Each time a nation answers an issue that nations stats go up or down and then the server reorders the 86 lists that contain the stats. When farmers come in and speed answer issues this triggers this action many times very quickly and takes a massive toll on the server

Lost potential ad revenue
Nationstates is run on ads you see them in the banner on the side. They might annoy you but they make the game money that it needs to keep it alive. Any solution should drive traffic to the website in a manor that allows the ads to load.

Cards Farming Arms Race
Currently the cards community coders are in an arms race to get as fast as possabile in a means to reach peak efficiency. This cases the other issues presented but it is important that any solution has the mindset to be run at both its peak efficiency and at an average Joe speed.

All Solutions Must Be Long Term
Any solution to the issue must work for the long term not just the here and now. It is important that this can be a long term fix rather then a ban-aid fix.

The Solution May Not be Implemented
I am not a Admin or even site staff for that matter. I can not guarantee they will even read this thread, however I can guarantee is free legendary cards!

FREE CARDS LIKE LEGENDARY ONES!
If you want free cards it is simple all you need to do is purpose a:

• Unique
• functional
• realistic
• and addresses all of the points above

You will be awarded a Legendary card just for submitting an idea!
There is a limit of 1 idea per player so make sure its a good idea.
You have until October 24th to submit any ideas
After October 24th we will vote on the best idea, The best idea at the end of voting will win a copy of Fris s2

This thread can function as a discussion of the various ideas as well if after getting feedback on your idea feel free to update your idea up until the October 24th deadline.


Please use the following format for posting ideas, if you want to revise your idea please edit your original post of the idea rather then adding a new post.

Code: Select all

[b]Main Nation Name:[/b] (This is your main nation you want to be identify as)
[b]Gift Nation Name:[/b] (Where you want your legendary card sent to)

[b]The Idea:[/b] (This is where you talk all about your idea please make sure to go into lots of details the more you have the better.


REMEMBER IN NO WAY IS ANY OF THESE IDEAS GUARANTEED TO BE IMPLEMENTED

[9003]

1. Anisopterra's Idea Gifted: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 1/season=2

2. Well I didn't say they have to be good ideas by Tinhampton Gifted: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 3/season=2

3. Dismiss the issues for cards by Authoritaria-Imperia Gifted: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 4/season=2

4. East Durthang With Captchas for cards Gifted: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 7/season=2

5. Giovanniland Cards + Challenge for the win! Gifted: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 1/season=2

6. Honeydewistania's idea Opt in for stats mode Gifted: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 8/season=2

7. Separate Issues and cards and have some other method of giving them out. Gifted: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 0/season=2

8. Evrigenis Link card directly to AD views Gifted: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 7/season=2

9. Fhaengshia's idea to have the accept buttons not show up for 15 seconds Gifted: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 3/season=2

10. The Unified Missourtama States's Idea to honeypot issues Gifted: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 3/season=2

11. Japanese Beetles's Favorite Stat Idea Gifted: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 5/season=2

12. HumanSanity's Loot Box Idea Gifted: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 3/season=2

13. Warzone Codger's idea to open the flood gate and allow them to use the API Gifted: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 8/season=2

14. Sanghyeok's idea to add a confirmation button Gifted: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 9/season=2

15. Flanderlion's idea to turn farming into useful power like unfolding proteins Gifted: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 5/season=2

16. Riemstagrad's idea to make card farming into a more literal farm with a "designated main" Gifted: Your welcome! (I also could not find a nation named "better keep your well deserved legendaries" )

17. Luck stat by Dabberwocky Gifted: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 9/season=2

18. Pluvie's idea to tag puppets as puppets Gifted: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 0/season=2

19. Noahs idea with a Gen pack button Gifted: declined.

20. Racoda's Ban Scripts and have other ways to get cards Gifted: declined.

21. Shaor's idea of a card hub Gifted: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 3/season=2

22. Praeceps' one pack per 24 hours Gifted: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 9/season=2

23. Titanne's idea of daily packs based on stats Gifted: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 2/season=2

24. Treciene's idea to buy cards for MV with bank Gifted: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/ ... 9/season=2

25. Vylixan's idea to be able to buy cards form the system Gifted: Pending your main is out of space

[Empirical Switzerland]

Tagging this.

[Sanghyeok]

Thank you for the opportunity. (No ideas yet, I will be thinking).

[Newark Aristocracy]

[Deleted because I'm a bleeding idiot ]

[Sanghyeok]

---

But I don't think this would help with the card issue.

[The Unified Missourtama States]

If this is really that big of an issue perhaps it's time to get rid of cards, people can obviously not be responsible users of this site.

If that's too extreme there is the option of a WA style cheatscanner for a one-player rule, then instead of a game of force cards becomes one of true investing risk and skill.

[Sanghyeok]

If this is really that big of an issue perhaps it's time to get rid of cards, people can obviously not be responsible users of this site.

If that's too extreme there is the option of a WA style cheatscanner for a one-player rule, then instead of a game of force cards becomes one of true investing risk and skill.

I don't like the WA rule. Lots of people play without a WA nation.

[Evrigenis]

Main Nation: Evrigenis
Gift Nation: The East Pacific Tea Company (thank you for donating to TEAPOT!)

Have an option to for founders/executive delegates to exempt their regions from update and their issue choices to not be counted. Similar to the "dismiss issue" or "no stats changes setting" concepts, this would allow large card farmers (who often create their own regions) to opt out of adding to server load. This also enables the currently existing scripts to continue to work.

The obvious downside to this is that some players do not have puppet storage regions (cough cough me), so if this were implemented, it would best be used in combination with another solution (like the below).

Add a parameter to nation creation which designates it as a card farming nation. Cards are generated directly in proportion to ads viewed, with a 20% chance of generating a pack per view and up to 4 ads per day.

Use Idea 1 for voting (for now).

[The Unified Missourtama States]

If this is really that big of an issue perhaps it's time to get rid of cards, people can obviously not be responsible users of this site.

If that's too extreme there is the option of a WA style cheatscanner for a one-player rule, then instead of a game of force cards becomes one of true investing risk and skill.

I don't like the WA rule. Lots of people play without a WA nation.

I'm aware and considerate of that. I did not say that you'd need to be in WA to get cards.

[Sanghyeok]

But even so, I don't think you should limit it to one per player.

[Animu Place]

Main Nation Name: animu place
Gift Nation Name: animu place
The Idea: i think we should have a card farmer mode which would make having a chance to get a pack around a 1/3 chance
but it will take around 10-15 seconds so the ads can run
for the sever load issue we could have all issues answered after one issued is answered

[Anisopterra]

Hello everyone.
This might not be the most elegant proposal, but perhaps a nation setting (enabled like vacation mode) that disables stat changes would help. (or rather, disables stat changes for issue-based stats, as DV/endorsements/influence aren't directly changed by issues). Of course, this idea completely relies upon the concept of cards always being inherently tied to issues.

This would deal with a few of the presented issues outright:

• the data collection tool used by the editors could automatically discard the issue choices made by nations with this setting enabled.
• If stat changes aren't being made, then the server wouldn't have to process them
• If this is an optional setting that needs to be enabled, then it won't affect the normal player.
• If the issue effect page still exists (with an effect line, and a message informing the player that "No stats" mode is on) it won't change the active card-farming process in any significant way, and so won't affect large-scale farmers' routines

With that, there are a few more problems that need to be addressed. Firstly, the question of ad revenue, and then the issue of longevity.

• Ad revenue is a difficult one. Specifically, trying to encourage people to allow the ads to load. The concept of a no-stats mode, by itself, does not really address this, but it thankfully doesn't make the problem worse. I am not personally familiar with the tools used by more serious farmers, but I know from experience that manually farming one's puppets often still gives enough time for advertisements to load, especially when one is sorting through the puppets' decks. However, that's basically a non-answer. It's possible that a reduced load on the servers (from not forcing it to calculate stat changes) would improve load times, and thus make it more likely for the ad to be loaded in, but that's only a guess. As I'd prefer that the advertising on the site remains unobtrusive, I have little I can offer here.
• For longevity, I feel like this solution would deal with the issues data/server strain problem effectively, discounting a misunderstanding of how the site's systems work.

To summarize: the implementation of a nation setting that acts as a "no statistics" mode, that, when enabled, prevents any stat changes from being made, in addition to not being counted in the issue-answering data used by the editors.

If you have any feedback on my idea, I'd be happy to hear it!

[Tinhampton]

Main Nation Name: Tinhampton
Gift Nation Name: Tinhampton

The Idea: Get [violet] Herself to take out some adverts on NationStates.net explicitly promoting trading cards in perpetuity... perhaps place dozens of them on each issue page as well so that they take an extremely long time to load, thereby preventing rapid issue answering too

[The Emirate of The Emirate]

Card Packs DLC!
You know those old baseball card packs you got from the dollar store? You can get them now in Nationstates! Just spend some bank, and then you can get what you want! Here is what I thought of:
Regular Pack: 0.50 Bank
Legendary Pack: 5.00 Bank
Rainbow Pack: 1.00 Bank

[The Unified Missourtama States]

Card Packs DLC!
You know those old baseball card packs you got from the dollar store? You can get them now in Nationstates! Just spend some bank, and then you can get what you want! Here is what I thought of:
Regular Pack: 0.50 Bank
Legendary Pack: 5.00 Bank
Rainbow Pack: 1.00 Bank

there's a lot of problems with this idea, first of all you get bank from cards, so I don't know how you'd get the bank in the first place if you don't have any packs to get bank from...
Second your prices are horrifically nonsensical.

[Authoritaria-Imperia]

Main Nation Name: Authoritaria-Imperia
Gift Nation Name: A Holy Cannoli Empire

The Idea:

Issues are being answered but not read

This messes with several metrics that the issue editing team uses. When cards became bound to issues there was a 1000 fold increase in the amount of issues being answered. Most of these resulted in the first option being chosen many many many times more then any other options. This prevents issues editors from being able to identify issues that are leading or poorly worded.

What if there were a 20% chance to get packs from dismissing an Issue? Then the most widely-used scripts could be coded to dismiss Issues instead without compromising the chance of packs. (Are analytics about Issue dismissals as big a deal as the option statistics?) This would help with server load (as far as changing stats) as well.
Edit: I may have been ambiguous here — I'm suggesting that the dismiss button offer the same pack chance that Issue options provide. This means every Issue action (answering and dismissing) would offer a pack chance. If necessary, Admins could make a rule that auto-answering scripts have to dismiss all Issues (rather than selecting an option).

Reserved for entrees

Hang on — we aren't the entrées, right?

Edit: Many many thanks for the Legendary, 9003 — that's so kind of you!

[9003]

Updated and gifted 3 legs out to very yummy entrées

[East Durthang]

Main Nation Name: East Durthang
Gift Nation Name: East Durthang

The Ideas: (Use #1 for the voteable idea.)

1) Introduce a random chance of captcha when answering issues. This still allows people to use large quantities of nations and/or hotkeys to speed up their navigation while slowing down the rate of rapid rate and "scriptibility" of issue answering. It would need to be done in such a manner that the issue is rendered impossible to answer until the captcha has been completed. Receiving card pack could result in an even higher chance of captcha in order to answer the issue. (This could be accomplished by precalculating whether an issue is going to trigger a card pack when the issue is received.)

2) Add some of the more common hotkeys to the game to make them equally accessible to all players, thereby balancing the playing field.

3) Introduce other mechanics for receiving card packs. These could help reduce some of the thoughtless decision making when answering issues, though it would likely be most of interest to the more casual card farmers.

• Earning a banner = several card packs.
• Earning a badge = several card packs.
• Adopting a policy = several card packs.
• Give some amount of card packs upon reaching 30/60/90/etc. days nation age, various population thresholds, specific civil rights/economy/political freedoms score, etc.
• Separate chance for each GA/SC resolution voter to receive card packs upon resolution pass/fail.
• Possibly give card packs on various real world holidays (e.g. everyone gets some amount of packs for the winter holidays) or on days significant to NS (like its creation date).

3.5) Create a yearly card festival event which is designed to be a time where getting cards is both easier and encouraged. Due to operating on a known schedule it would be easy to know to temporarily upgrade server resources to account for the event. It could also focus on exclusive non issue based ways to obtain cards/packs and serve as a mechanism to reintroduce cards from prior seasons. This could include raffle mechanics built into the game, such as having a raffle every 6 hours which only WA nations can participate in and gives the winner a massive amount of card packs.

[Giovanniland]

Main Nation Name: Giovanniland
Gift Nation Name: Giovannicards

The Idea:
My idea isn't the best one there is but it would be a simple solution: separate issues from cards and then tie cards to the challenge mini-game.
Each time a nation challenges another, there would be a 20% chance to generate a pack. This would happen for said nation's first four challenges in a given day (that way it's also equal to the 4 issues a nation gets every day). Further challenges would not generate packs until the next major update.

Advantages:
The first two points, related to issues, would be solved by the fact my proposal separates cards from issues. That way, the issue statistics used by the Editors would turn back into realistic ones, and the server wouldn't need to spend a ton of resources to recalculate all the stat changes every time issues are answered by card farmers.
I don't think this would hurt any small players, in fact the bigger effect it would have is to put a temporary drain on big farmers' tool advances, since the whole tools would need to be redone.
Bonus: people know the challenge mini-game doesn't get much love, so this would increase popularity.

Disadvantages:
Of course no idea is perfect. I presume that, if scripts similar to the ones we use for card farming today are developed for this new idea, the ad revenue problem will stay. Plus, the aforementioned drain in scripts would only be temporary. New scripts will be made long-term, similar to the ones we have today. Though that'll be a lesser impact on the server, as the result of a challenge match doesn't change many things on the server, unlike issue results.

[All Wild Things]

The "Dismiss Issues" idea has the downside that people who want to both answer issues seriously, and collect cards, can't. Good idea tho.

I'm with Gio on the "separate cards from issues". It seems like the obvious solution to the problems listed in the OP. However, I don't agree with linking it to the challenge game instead. I'd see two potential ways - one is to have a special "card generator" button that you'd click instead of answering issues. You could click it 4 times a day, and have a 20% chance of generating a pack each time. Another option would be to do away with the clicking altogether, and be randomly assigned packs for manually logging in every day. It could be set so that you have the same odds - the equivalent of 4 chances at 20% probability.

Does anyone know why it was linked to issues in the first place?

[9003]

Updated,

I do like the idea of giving some love to challenges but the tools will shortly follow

As for captchas it would curb things similar to Nday so not a bad idea (there are also ways to monetize captcha to make NS more money)

[Authoritaria-Imperia]

The "Dismiss Issues" idea has the downside that people who want to both answer issues seriously, and collect cards, can't. Good idea tho.

Oops, I was ambiguous. My suggestion is that both answering and dismissing an Issue offer a chance for a pack — there could then be a rule passed or something that Issue auto-answerer scripts must select "Dismiss" instead of an option, which would fix the analytics thing.

[Lord Dominator]

Main Nation Name: Lord Dominator
Gift Nation Name: Lord Dominator

The Idea:Decouple cards from issues entirely, by having every nation not on vacation mode or inactive receive say 1 pack per day (figures can be adjusted). This alone would presumably solve the issue tracking being borked and server load, simply by reducing the number of issues being answered back to just the people who actually want them to be answered. Then, if possible apply a rate limit to card pack opening that is sufficiently long enough to discourage the use of scripts, or at least to put an upper limit on how much farming can be done in a given timespan (for example, 1 pack opened per 5 seconds is likely faster still than all but the fastest manual switchers, but should still be sufficient to allow full page load, and limits farms to a maximum of 720/hour). This rate limit (5 seconds was chosen as an example, it needn't be the actual hypothetical limit), if possible to apply, would hopefully solve the missing ad revenue, as well as halt the arms race to a point where the script assisted can do better than the manual movers, but only by so much. A captcha would similarly solve this problem, though could be more obviously annoying. In any case, this effectively 2 part solution would fix the relevant problems to my knowledge, and either individual one would be permanent I believe.

Edit: thinking on it, an N-Day style captcha on pack opening may be superior to a rate limit, if it operates about the same in mainly slowing down the really fast and gigantic switchers.

[Awesomeland012345]

Recently, there was a discussion on the cards discord that was sparked because N-Day requires Captchas. iirc, Virgolia said that they would cry if Captchas were added to cards. Of course, this wasn't to be taken literally, but it helps explain that adding Captchas to cards would make it so much more painful. I personally would not enjoy it, but I'm sure I would get used to it. Not that I'm not against it. It would be very, very, very painful though. But that's only me, others may have other opinions.