Chicken Overlords and game health

[Flanderlion]

I don't think it's an issue with the distribution, it's more an issue that they exist at all.

Chicken Overlords (and many other farms) are a problem because the regions are ranked by population rather than WA population. Therefore, the game gives them the impression of being major regions (and presumably active ones), when they're in all reality dumping grounds for puppets.

This thread has tied all sorts of reasons to why change has to happen, but primarily the reason why Chicken Overlords is a problem is that the game doesn't let us forget about its presence. Nobody would care about CO if it was ranked #13,000, not #1.

In general, I think the Regions page is poorly organized these days. It's currently ranked by Census by default - which begs to question who in their right mind wants to search by "Sector: Agriculture" on a daily basis.

Ranking by census is mostly non-functional. To organize the list by something vaguely sensible, you have to have the good senses to open the drop down menu and go to something useful.

Some thoughts:

• A new ranking "WA Population" should be the default ranking.
• You should also be able to sort WA Delegates by endorsement, rather than just an alphabetical list. Who out there is using alphabetical order?
• The current "WA Endorsements" Census ranking is not particularly helpful as a substitute to the above categories because it's measuring endorsements / per capita rather than a straight endorsement figure.

We've talked about doing this in the past, and nothing ever seems to come of it. So I would expect continued complaints about card-farming until someone acts on it.

I agree all the solutions should be implemented, but due to mostly other reasons. I don't think hiding the region from view actually solves the core issues with certain individual players having excessive numbers of nations. Eventually admin will change from a 'we can handle this load for now' to a 'why should we have to handle this load that doesn't help anyone' lens and we'll see action on this, but for now it's a mixture between not noticing/other priorities/looking at it from the wrong lens.

Cards needs a technical change so mass puppet creation isn't necessary to play, but in terms of Wombles etc. admin just needs to give a direction to moderation 'if a player has excessive numbers of nations, puppet sweep them to protect site resources'. No need for technical changes, if a player has excessive (I view it as multiple thousands but admin might have a different number) numbers of nations, it's fairly hard to miss.

For someone that's had experience as an admin elsewhere, you're awfully oblivious to the importance of player feedback.

What issue is it causing players though, beyond an increase to the update time?

viewtopic.php?p=39062030#p39062030

[CoraSpia]

I don't think it's an issue with the distribution, it's more an issue that they exist at all.

Chicken Overlords (and many other farms) are a problem because the regions are ranked by population rather than WA population. Therefore, the game gives them the impression of being major regions (and presumably active ones), when they're in all reality dumping grounds for puppets.

This thread has tied all sorts of reasons to why change has to happen, but primarily the reason why Chicken Overlords is a problem is that the game doesn't let us forget about its presence. Nobody would care about CO if it was ranked #13,000, not #1.

In general, I think the Regions page is poorly organized these days. It's currently ranked by Census by default - which begs to question who in their right mind wants to search by "Sector: Agriculture" on a daily basis.

Ranking by census is mostly non-functional. To organize the list by something vaguely sensible, you have to have the good senses to open the drop down menu and go to something useful.

Some thoughts:

• A new ranking "WA Population" should be the default ranking.
• You should also be able to sort WA Delegates by endorsement, rather than just an alphabetical list. Who out there is using alphabetical order?
• The current "WA Endorsements" Census ranking is not particularly helpful as a substitute to the above categories because it's measuring endorsements / per capita rather than a straight endorsement figure.

We've talked about doing this in the past, and nothing ever seems to come of it. So I would expect continued complaints about card-farming until someone acts on it.

I agree all the solutions should be implemented, but due to mostly other reasons. I don't think hiding the region from view actually solves the core issues with certain individual players having excessive numbers of nations. Eventually admin will change from a 'we can handle this load for now' to a 'why should we have to handle this load that doesn't help anyone' lens and we'll see action on this, but for now it's a mixture between not noticing/other priorities/looking at it from the wrong lens.

Cards needs a technical change so mass puppet creation isn't necessary to play, but in terms of Wombles etc. admin just needs to give a direction to moderation 'if a player has excessive numbers of nations, puppet sweep them to protect site resources'. No need for technical changes, if a player has excessive (I view it as multiple thousands but admin might have a different number) numbers of nations, it's fairly hard to miss.

What issue is it causing players though, beyond an increase to the update time?

viewtopic.php?p=39062030#p39062030

So it leads to less revenue for the site? That's the issue? If it was such a major one then admin might care. They appear not to.

[Flanderlion]

So it leads to less revenue for the site? That's the issue? If it was such a major one then admin might care. They appear not to.

Had a little more in that, but you can mostly sum it up to:

Less revenue + greater costs for site (double whammy)
Sucking up nations into inactive areas making the game lose nations faster - as activity breeds activity, and inactivity breeds inactivity.
Ruining of site events e.g. BN game especially

[Parhe]

Chicken Overlords (and many other farms) are a problem because the regions are ranked by population rather than WA population. Therefore, the game gives them the impression of being major regions (and presumably active ones), when they're in all reality dumping grounds for puppets.

This thread has tied all sorts of reasons to why change has to happen, but primarily the reason why Chicken Overlords is a problem is that the game doesn't let us forget about its presence. Nobody would care about CO if it was ranked #13,000, not #1.

Puppet farms have been among the top ten regions for the better half of a decade now but it only recently has gotten so controversial for some reason.

I strongly oppose the staff deciding a new puppet limit and then retroactively enforcing the rules. If a limit is ever set, then established puppets should be grandfathered in. If we puppet sweep people with thousands of puppets, then a lot of good names will just become completely unobtainable. At some point, Womble will probably lose interest and the accounts will CTE.

[The H Corporation]

Chicken Overlords (and many other farms) are a problem because the regions are ranked by population rather than WA population. Therefore, the game gives them the impression of being major regions (and presumably active ones), when they're in all reality dumping grounds for puppets.

This thread has tied all sorts of reasons to why change has to happen, but primarily the reason why Chicken Overlords is a problem is that the game doesn't let us forget about its presence. Nobody would care about CO if it was ranked #13,000, not #1.

Puppet farms have been among the top ten regions for the better half of a decade now but it only recently has gotten so controversial for some reason.

I strongly oppose the staff deciding a new puppet limit and then retroactively enforcing the rules. If a limit is ever set, then established puppets should be grandfathered in. If we puppet sweep people with thousands of puppets, then a lot of good names will just become completely unobtainable. At some point, Womble will probably lose interest and the accounts will CTE.

I agree. they will inevitably lose interest, it's not like they will do this forever until the end of the world. Besides it will be unfair for most of us who have card farms that actually put some effort on their puppets. I did not make a lot of flags for nothing

[Radicalania]

Okay, so reading through and a solution comes to mind- what if regions getting marked as Puppet Storage are automated- when your percentage of WA nations is below, say, 5/10% for example (debate this figure another day pls) you get marked as a puppet storage region. Puppet storage regions only update once per week on a Monday as to limit damage to R/D. They don't show up on stat boards (or only on specific stat made for/against puppets in regions). And their Region history (or certain parts of it like moves in and out or smth idk what is needed and what isn't) (but not WFE) gets deleted at update to prevent too much data being stored. And you have to manually go in and opt in to have a card (which I thought was a thing anyway tbh, I can't remember).


It sort of sorts everyones issues out, and doesn't negatively effect the regions who are seeking either the most nations in NS, or are Card Farmers or are storage for R/D- these are people who generally dont care about regional history for their puppet storage. And should a region decide it doesnt like being Puppet Storage any more it can simply get more WA nations in it/CTE its puppets, and when Puppet Storage Update Day comes round it decides they're not PS anymore.

Obviously that would involve a lot of technical work, but it could reduce the load on the site at update/re:regional history pages and help keep the vast majority of the anti-Puppet people happy (except on NDay when we come out of the cracks and solo your Factions)

EDIT: I've just thought about how that could be effected by R/D and maybe that's either an interesting new mechanic for R/D or something absolutely that should be avoided and dammit Martyn that was a terrible idea. Pick a camp.

[Apatosaurus]

-snip-

This is needlessly complicated and has its own can of worms (for example, what if a region organically has less than 5% of WA nations, but not because there's puppets in it). What is easiest and works best is just for the census for largest regions to be based on amount of WA's or Delegate endorsements.

[CoraSpia]

-snip-

This is needlessly complicated and has its own can of worms (for example, what if a region organically has less than 5% of WA nations, but not because there's puppets in it). What is easiest and works best is just for the census for largest regions to be based on amount of WA's or Delegate endorsements.

That would work, but if people getting drawn into puppet storage regions is the big issue then one answer could be for the mods to enforce a rule whereby if a region is for puppet storage it must be tagged as such, and that tag generates a big warning at the top of the page like it does for school class regions.

[Haganham]

That is impractical for defenders, even for raiders it would be impractical for all but the largest regions. The only time i can really see it being used it for high profile coups.

Just like the Guardian Network was impractical? It can be done. I mean, we're sitting here in a thread discussing a region that afaik seems to be at least one person inflating a region with thousands of puppets.

You're seriously underestimating the scale you'd need to do this at, by several orders of magnitude. You're talking about maintaining tens of millions of puppets.

[Galiantus III]

Okay, so reading through and a solution comes to mind- what if regions getting marked as Puppet Storage are automated- when your percentage of WA nations is below, say, 5/10% for example (debate this figure another day pls) you get marked as a puppet storage region. [...] They don't show up on stat boards (or only on specific stat made for/against puppets in regions).

Chicken Overlords (and many other farms) are a problem because the regions are ranked by population rather than WA population. Therefore, the game gives them the impression of being major regions (and presumably active ones), when they're in all reality dumping grounds for puppets.

[...]

• A new ranking "WA Population" should be the default ranking.

I like the principal of region visibility being tied to WA population, and I especially like the idea to completely disqualify certain regions (and potentially the nations in them) from participating in WA census rankings.

Unlike raw nation population, WA population correlates very well with the presence of actual people. It isn't difficult to build a region with a ton of nations. It is difficult to build a region with lots of WA members. That right there indicates which stat has higher value. Of course this doesn't mean raw nation count should just be shelved; but it does mean that should not be the primary way of ranking.

More generally, the whole concept of regional rankings is constructed poorly. For individual nations it works fine, but they don't mean much when you get out on a regional level. Since the rank is just a comparison of the average stat of all nations in the region, extremely small regions actually have an advantage in every stat except Number of Nations (obviously), WA endorsements, and Influence. The end result is no one really cares about regional rankings, except to look at a few metrics.

But that's it's own tangent. Basically, I think the idea to just take the spotlight off CO (and similar regions) makes the most sense. Every other idea I've seen here is trying to attack the problem with a sledgehammer that either makes intrusive changes to the way the game is played or offloads the problem to the moderation team. But removing the publicity could very well be all that is needed. It is a low-effort solution that could have a significant impact on CO, while leaving everyone else unaffected. So I would encourage something like this.

[Bears Armed]

Okay, so reading through and a solution comes to mind- what if regions getting marked as Puppet Storage are automated- when your percentage of WA nations is below, say, 5/10% for example (debate this figure another day pls) you get marked as a puppet storage region. Puppet storage regions only update once per week on a Monday as to limit damage to R/D. They don't show up on stat boards (or only on specific stat made for/against puppets in regions). And their Region history (or certain parts of it like moves in and out or smth idk what is needed and what isn't) (but not WFE) gets deleted at update to prevent too much data being stored. And you have to manually go in and opt in to have a card (which I thought was a thing anyway tbh, I can't remember).

No.
1./ Some players prefer not to have any WA member nation at all, and they should be free to form "non-WA" regions -- as they sometimes do -- without being penalised like this.
2./ There are regions with long histories & RMBs that, due to a fall-off in membership, are now kept from CTEing by the presence of just a few nations with those all non-WA... or even by the presence of only one such nation. Those are not 'puppet storage' regions, as such though, and should not have their pasts wiped out . (I recognise that you suggest wiping only some -- incompletely defined -- part of their Happenings, but suspect that the overall state of the game's coding actually might limit this to an all-or-none decision.)

[Parhe]

Okay, so reading through and a solution comes to mind- what if regions getting marked as Puppet Storage are automated- when your percentage of WA nations is below, say, 5/10% for example (debate this figure another day pls) you get marked as a puppet storage region. [...] They don't show up on stat boards (or only on specific stat made for/against puppets in regions).

Chicken Overlords (and many other farms) are a problem because the regions are ranked by population rather than WA population. Therefore, the game gives them the impression of being major regions (and presumably active ones), when they're in all reality dumping grounds for puppets.

[...]

• A new ranking "WA Population" should be the default ranking.

(and potentially the nations in them) from participating in WA census rankings.

No. For obvious reasons.

[Silkie6]

Ironically, I just tried to see how many nation I could create in a 1 to 1 1/2 minute time frame. I was able to found 5 nations.