Chicken Overlords and game health

[Sandaoguo]

The simplest solution here is to just puppetsweep. Not everything has to be some neutral universal game rule. Massive puppet regions like this don’t add any value to the game, while they do come with considerable costs. Admins really shouldn’t think twice about reducing their size. It’s not like you’re angering 13,000 players.

[All Wild Things]

The simplest solution here is to just puppetsweep.

Excuse me showing my ignorance (again), but what exactly is the problem that this is supposed to solve? The only real clue seems to come from Galiantus:

Site admin has confirmed that "There are server issues when regions get very large."

That quote is five years old. Is it still definitely a problem? And what exactly are the server issues? The quote is kind of vague. I know that part of the reason for Frontier/ Strongholds is to reduce Feeder sizes. But five years in the making gives me the impression that this isn't a knee-jerk "quick let's fix this issue by reducing region size" reaction. So I suspect that a more.measured response than a sudden puppet sweep could be taken.

[Galiantus III]

Site admin has confirmed that "There are server issues when regions get very large."

That quote is five years old. Is it still definitely a problem? And what exactly are the server issues? The quote is kind of vague. I know that part of the reason for Frontier/ Strongholds is to reduce Feeder sizes. But five years in the making gives me the impression that this isn't a knee-jerk "quick let's fix this issue by reducing region size" reaction. So I suspect that a more.measured response than a sudden puppet sweep could be taken.

Given that site staff are still talking about it, it is certainly still a problem. If it wasn't there would be no reason to list it as a reason.

I agree a sudden puppet sweep isn't the best response. If the need for puppets in other contexts was removed via other changes, that would both shrink lots of regions and reduce the number of nations CO needs to stay the largest. If a more direct response to size maxing is needed, that is a more complex discussion.

[Haganham]

I agree a sudden puppet sweep isn't the best response. If the...

more importantly, a puppetsweep would be a severe and retroactive punishment for something that staff has repeatedly assured players is allowed. Which would seriously impact future play. No longer would payers we be able to go outside the norm but within the rules without worrying that staff might retaliate against us.

[Fauzjhia]

Preventing people from using a script to auto-login in all their once per 28 days, would be a simple fix.

right now, the Womble wall is just getting bigger, and its not like these nation ever play, they don't answer issues. they don't participate in z/n days, they don't play cards.
they do nothing....

[Comfed]

Almost certainly being maintained by a script that uses the autologin shard.

Which adds another idea to the pile: make api private commands not count towards CTE activity requirements

You literally just killed all the shared regional nations. The Northern Lights for instance. The only reason why those shared regional nations work is because there is no manual login to the account, and cause it to be an accidental puppet of a user with records, etc. etc.

I think that most regional nations are actually manually maintained. I don’t think it’s so hard to find people with clean warning records to manage the nation.

[The Python]

The simplest solution here is to just puppetsweep. Not everything has to be some neutral universal game rule. Massive puppet regions like this don’t add any value to the game, while they do come with considerable costs. Admins really shouldn’t think twice about reducing their size. It’s not like you’re angering 13,000 players.

For breaking which rule? Exactly, as Haganham said, a puppetsweep is a punishment for rule violations, and right now it should be clear that Chicken overlords violates no game rules.

[Outer Sparta]

I agree a sudden puppet sweep isn't the best response. If the...

more importantly, a puppetsweep would be a severe and retroactive punishment for something that staff has repeatedly assured players is allowed. Which would seriously impact future play. No longer would payers we be able to go outside the norm but within the rules without worrying that staff might retaliate against us.

There are no rules broken by the person in charge of all the Womble puppets, but obviously they just sit there and do nothing but inflate their region. If I had puppets, I would want them to do something (card farm, RP, etc.) and I thought the Wombles were card farmers at first, but nope.

[Quebecshire]

The rules as they currently stand are not an inherent indicator of what is good or bad for the site. If CO were breaking an existing rule, I would have filed a moderation report. It's not, naturally. But I think the behavior taking place is not something we should continue the precedent of allowing, so I opened this discussion.

Continuing to respond to legitimate criticism's of CO's technical standing with "what rule have they broken" is pretty clearly in bad faith, as that point is clearly meant to circumvent our criticisms raised.

[The Python]

Continuing to respond to legitimate criticism's of CO's technical standing with "what rule have they broken" is pretty clearly in bad faith, as that point is clearly meant to circumvent our criticisms raised.

Saying CO is bad is something very different to advocating for a literal puppetsweep.

[Haganham]

Haganham said, a puppetsweep is a punishment for rule violations

Did I?

[The Python]

Haganham said, a puppetsweep is a punishment for rule violations

Did I?

Ok, I must have misinterpreted this:

I agree a sudden puppet sweep isn't the best response. If the...

more importantly, a puppetsweep would be a severe and retroactive punishment for something that staff has repeatedly assured players is allowed

[WayNeacTia]

The rules as they currently stand are not an inherent indicator of what is good or bad for the site. If CO were breaking an existing rule, I would have filed a moderation report. It's not, naturally. But I think the behavior taking place is not something we should continue the precedent of allowing, so I opened this discussion.

Continuing to respond to legitimate criticism's of CO's technical standing with "what rule have they broken" is pretty clearly in bad faith, as that point is clearly meant to circumvent our criticisms raised.

Where exactly does CO fall in the update order?

[The Reformed American Republic]

Wait, what rule did they break again?

If this was an issue of a clear cut rule violation, I would have posted a moderation report, not a technical thread.

I'm just curious on what you want done. Do you want them capped so they cannot add more nations, some of their nations deleted, the whole region deleted, etc?

[Refuge Isle]

The rules as they currently stand are not an inherent indicator of what is good or bad for the site. If CO were breaking an existing rule, I would have filed a moderation report. It's not, naturally. But I think the behavior taking place is not something we should continue the precedent of allowing, so I opened this discussion.

Continuing to respond to legitimate criticism's of CO's technical standing with "what rule have they broken" is pretty clearly in bad faith, as that point is clearly meant to circumvent our criticisms raised.

Where exactly does CO fall in the update order?

About 15% into update; ten minutes at minor and fifteen to twenty at major.

I don't personally believe this is very important to the discussion. Update order only really affects r/d people. If the nature of the question is site stability from a single region containing so many nations, coupled with the possibilities of them all dying at once being contingent on one player, these questions remain regardless of the region's placement.

[WayNeacTia]

Where exactly does CO fall in the update order?

About 15% into update; ten minutes at minor and fifteen to twenty at major.

I don't personally believe this is very important to the discussion. Update order only really affects r/d people. If the nature of the question is site stability from a single region containing so many nations, coupled with the possibilities of them all dying at once being contingent on one player, these questions remain regardless of the region's placement.

I think we need to have a serious conversation about Chicken Overlords and the puppet spamming in question taking place there.

To my knowledge, the nations in the region hold no gameplay purpose (cards, r/d, etc). As far as I'm aware, they exist solely to inflate the size of the region. The region is currently more than 10,200 nations large, with the founder expressing interest in meeting/exceeding 13,000 nations. If the nations cease to exist, there is concern that they will crash the site, similar to how the closure of embassies in The Embassy caused issues.

Chicken Overlords already takes longer than any region to update, which is kind of ridiculous for the r/d scene, and while I'm not cards expert, I believe this poses complications and concerns for future cards stuff. While I don't have the highest hopes that any action to resolve this will be taken, I think it's becoming more of a nuisance to the health of the game from a technical/practical standpoint.

I think the players and ideally site staff should finally address this issue and it's technical-problematic nature in a serious fashion.

As you can see, the OP seems to think it is very relevant, henceforth why I asked.

[Thousand Branches]

Admittedly I’d love to hear something from the admins or the mods about this. There’s been a bunch of old quotes thrown around but not really any modern notes from the site staff that this is legitimately a problem. If this has problems with site health and/or is causing serious problems on NS, I would rather hear that from someone who can actually confirm or deny that this is a problem.

I’m also well aware of the fact that site staff are busy so this is more meant as a polite request than anything. If we could get a confirmation one way or the other, that would be very helpful.

-A

[Sandaoguo]

I agree a sudden puppet sweep isn't the best response. If the...

more importantly, a puppetsweep would be a severe and retroactive punishment for something that staff has repeatedly assured players is allowed. Which would seriously impact future play. No longer would payers we be able to go outside the norm but within the rules without worrying that staff might retaliate against us.

Why does this matter? Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. These puppet farms add nothing to the game. Everybody is using an auto login script to keep their 10000 puppets from CTE'ing. They aren't doing anything except taxing server resources, making the card game pointless, and prolonging game updates.

Why should anyone else care that the puppeteers get upset, feel like they were retroactively punished, etc? That's the whole point of me saying not everything needs to be some universal neutral rule. Puppet farms are okay until they aren't, and admins should be brave enough to do something obviously good for the game without needing to come up with a specific rule or definition to do it.

[WayNeacTia]

more importantly, a puppetsweep would be a severe and retroactive punishment for something that staff has repeatedly assured players is allowed. Which would seriously impact future play. No longer would payers we be able to go outside the norm but within the rules without worrying that staff might retaliate against us.

Why does this matter? Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. These puppet farms add nothing to the game. Everybody is using an auto login script to keep their 10000 puppets from CTE'ing. They aren't doing anything except taxing server resources, making the card game pointless, and prolonging game updates.

Why should anyone else care that the puppeteers get upset, feel like they were retroactively punished, etc? That's the whole point of me saying not everything needs to be some universal neutral rule. Puppet farms are okay until they aren't, and admins should be brave enough to do something obviously good for the game without needing to come up with a specific rule or definition to do it.

Then let's get rid of ALL puppets. Everyone gets one nation that is automatically in the WA. This way, everyone is subject to the stat changes from resoultions, and everyone plays on an completely even playing field. Problem solved.

[Parhe]

I agree a sudden puppet sweep isn't the best response. If the...

more importantly, a puppetsweep would be a severe and retroactive punishment for something that staff has repeatedly assured players is allowed. Which would seriously impact future play. No longer would payers we be able to go outside the norm but within the rules without worrying that staff might retaliate against us.

That already happened with the recent sweep of nearly all nations with Nazi references.

Anyhow, the only issue I see is regions becoming too large. If that is really the only objective problem, then make it so regions have a cap on size. Like I mentioned, very feel UCRs ever reach anywhere near five or seven thousand accounts and those which do tend to be dominated by puppets.

I don't see why some people are so hostile to puppet collectors. Even without login scripts, you can easily keep thousands of puppets. If all accounts are set to vacation mode, than you could have thousands by only logging onto a hundred a day, which is extremely easy. Heck, back in the early 2010s, I would log into up to four hundred a day. If Womble really wanted to have the largest region based solely off puppets, then he or she could easily still manage without a login script.

[Haganham]

more importantly, a puppetsweep would be a severe and retroactive punishment for something that staff has repeatedly assured players is allowed. Which would seriously impact future play. No longer would payers we be able to go outside the norm but within the rules without worrying that staff might retaliate against us.

Why does this matter?

Because ex post facto punishment is shit and will poison and community it's introduced into.

I don't see why some people are so hostile to puppet collectors.

People aren't hostle to puppet collectors. They do however recognize that the common thread of mass creation of puppets and their impact on the game; recruitment, cards, issues, stats, events, and polls are all being negatively impacted by excessive and careless creation of puppets.

Even without login scripts, you can easily keep thousands of puppets. If all accounts are set to vacation mode, than you could have thousands by only logging onto a hundred a day, which is extremely easy. Heck, back in the early 2010s, I would log into up to four hundred a day. If Womble really wanted to have the largest region based solely off puppets, then he or she could easily still manage without a login script.

And if that was how it were being done I would have much less objection, as at least the person is actually putting the work in instead of using a script.

[Flanderlion]

Players having tens or even hundreds of puppets I think is fine. I personally want API logins to continue to reset the CTE timer. Pretty sure players would just legally or illegally do it via HTML site instead. It's a moderation thing, as like if someone has enough puppets to be a problem, it's fairly noticeable.

Just I view thousands as excessive, and no matter the reason for them, I don't view it as positive for the game as a whole when someone has that many. Those nations cost the site, but don't bring the positive of more players/ad revenue/NS store revenue etc.

Technical solutions like changing mechanics to not promote having thousands of puppets will help (e.g. cards) but in the end it's still going to come down to moderation/puppet sweeps for players like Womble/Parhe and the like who have thousands.

It will be very unpopular with the less than 10 players who would be affected by a limit of 1-2k (1k officially, 2k threshold for potential enforcement) but for the game/majority of players it will improve their own experiences.

[Parhe]

I don't see why some people are so hostile to puppet collectors.

People aren't hostle to puppet collectors. They do however recognize that the common thread of mass creation of puppets and their impact on the game; recruitment, cards, issues, stats, events, and polls are all being negatively impacted by excessive and careless creation of puppets.

I would like to point out that you don't seem to be speaking for everyone. However, I will add, Womble's puppets and other "useless" puppets impacts only a few of those. Recruitment is only hurt if puppets are left in regions targeted for recruitment (if someone is targeting a UCR tagged puppet storage, I won't feel bad for them wasting resources), cards would only be impacted if Womble's puppets were used at all to pull or bid for cards, issues would only be impacted if Womble's puppets actually answered issues, and the same for events and polls. The only one of those impacted by Womble's and others' "useless" puppets is stats, which are set when the puppet is created. And even with stats, these puppets also help to push up the rankings of other non-puppet accounts and the puppets of smaller holders.

Players having tens or even hundreds of puppets I think is fine. I personally want API logins to continue to reset the CTE timer. Pretty sure players would just legally or illegally do it via HTML site instead. It's a moderation thing, as like if someone has enough puppets to be a problem, it's fairly noticeable.

Just I view thousands as excessive, and no matter the reason for them, I don't view it as positive for the game as a whole when someone has that many. Those nations cost the site, but don't bring the positive of more players/ad revenue/NS store revenue etc.

Technical solutions like changing mechanics to not promote having thousands of puppets will help (e.g. cards) but in the end it's still going to come down to moderation/puppet sweeps for players like Womble/Parhe and the like who have thousands.

It will be very unpopular with the less than 10 players who would be affected by a limit of 1-2k (1k officially, 2k threshold for potential enforcement) but for the game/majority of players it will improve their own experiences.

I'm not sure how the average player will have an improved experienced by others not being allowed to have a few thousand puppets. It isn't like we've reached the point where the website is actually being noticeably hampered by the number of accounts on the site. I'd be willing to bet less than ten percent of active accounts are held by people with over two or even one thousand current puppets and, outside of whatever Womble has, very few accounts will be culled to force people within your suggested two thousand limit.

[Haganham]

People aren't hostle to puppet collectors. They do however recognize that the common thread of mass creation of puppets and their impact on the game; recruitment, cards, issues, stats, events, and polls are all being negatively impacted by excessive and careless creation of puppets.

I would like to point out that you don't seem to be speaking for everyone. However, I will add, Womble's puppets and other "useless" puppets impacts only a few of those. Recruitment is only hurt if puppets are left in regions targeted for recruitment (if someone is targeting a UCR tagged puppet storage, I won't feel bad for them wasting resources), cards would only be impacted if Womble's puppets were used at all to pull or bid for cards, issues would only be impacted if Womble's puppets actually answered issues, and the same for events and polls. The only one of those impacted by Womble's and others' "useless" puppets is stats, which are set when the puppet is created. And even with stats, these puppets also help to push up the rankings of other non-puppet accounts and the puppets of smaller holders.

First Womble isn't the only one with a massive collection of puppets. Puppets harm recruitment because when they spawn they waste our stamps and clog up our scripts; they harm cards by creating thousands of uninteresting cards; issue editors have complained that card farmers in particular are messing with their tools by skewing their data while generating packs; and no, puppets do distort rankings, as their stats aren't distribute as player's are, but concentrated in a particular way depending on the purpose of the puppet.

[Parhe]

I would like to point out that you don't seem to be speaking for everyone. However, I will add, Womble's puppets and other "useless" puppets impacts only a few of those. Recruitment is only hurt if puppets are left in regions targeted for recruitment (if someone is targeting a UCR tagged puppet storage, I won't feel bad for them wasting resources), cards would only be impacted if Womble's puppets were used at all to pull or bid for cards, issues would only be impacted if Womble's puppets actually answered issues, and the same for events and polls. The only one of those impacted by Womble's and others' "useless" puppets is stats, which are set when the puppet is created. And even with stats, these puppets also help to push up the rankings of other non-puppet accounts and the puppets of smaller holders.

First Womble isn't the only one with a massive collection of puppets. Puppets harm recruitment because when they spawn they waste our stamps and clog up our scripts; they harm cards by creating thousands of uninteresting cards; issue editors have complained that card farmers in particular are messing with their tools by skewing their data while generating packs; and no, puppets do distort rankings, as their stats aren't distribute as player's are, but concentrated in a particular way depending on the purpose of the puppet.

I was defending the CO puppets in particular because they are the main subject of this thread and are getting negative reception for doing nothing.

1) Maybe it is because I am old school, but I'm not going to feel bad for anyone who "wastes" stamps by recruiting. Just do manual recruitment, for all I care. Of the "best" regions I've been in since 2011, most recruited manually and/or with threads on the forums. Also, despite my suggestion, if the flood of puppets have led to people spending more on telegram stamps to send out more recruitment telegrams, then that seems to show puppets do marginally help the website financially, even if not as much as non-puppets.
2) I sort of agree with uninteresting cards, but that is not objectively an issue. Heck, some people, iirc, specifically try to collect these cards. And, as an owner of thousands of "useless" puppets, myself, I've actually been told by several people that they like the cards of my puppets. One more thing I will add is, based on my limited interaction with people involved with cards, players generally do want cards of their own main nations to rank high in rarity and the influx of puppets seem to benefit that.
3) Card farmers, which neither CO or I utilizer puppets for. I've voiced my opinion elsewhere on puppets made identical to one another solely for the purpose of farming more cards. Even when I do answer issues on my puppets, I read the options and think through the choices.
4) Can you be more clear? All nations' starts are done in a way for a purpose. Do you means spawned nations being disproportionately Anarchy or Whatever-People-Complained-Womble's-Puppets-Spawn-As?