[Proposal] Faction Gameplay

[Marxist Germany]

The Faction Chair is an incredibly important and influential role to play. It is expected that every feeder and sinker would inevitably be the Chair of their faction, because I can't imagine two GCRs existing in the same faction when, with the amount of endorsements they have, they could easily Chair their own faction and wield far more power over the game. A Chair region would be able to contribute a number of votes in the World Assembly proportional to their faction's overall power (which I'll call Impact later), much like how the WAD's power in the WA is equal to its endorsements. A Chair also has the power to rename their faction, appoint Electors, incorporate Territories into the faction, and utilize the faction's power on the world's scale in other ways I haven't thought of yet.

I would rather not we screw up with WA votes further.

[Lord Dominator]

The Faction Chair is an incredibly important and influential role to play. It is expected that every feeder and sinker would inevitably be the Chair of their faction, because I can't imagine two GCRs existing in the same faction when, with the amount of endorsements they have, they could easily Chair their own faction and wield far more power over the game. A Chair region would be able to contribute a number of votes in the World Assembly proportional to their faction's overall power (which I'll call Impact later), much like how the WAD's power in the WA is equal to its endorsements. A Chair also has the power to rename their faction, appoint Electors, incorporate Territories into the faction, and utilize the faction's power on the world's scale in other ways I haven't thought of yet.

I would rather not we screw up with WA votes further.

WA votes were not mentioned as an additional power in that paragraph...?

[The Stalker]

Sounds like it could be fun, NS really needs a new element like this to breath life back into it.

I still wish some of the ideas from the R/D conference thing were added.

[[violet]]

I'm sorry about the lack of response. Anything labelled "R/D Proposal" in Tech, I usually wait until the shooting has died down and I can look over the corpses and see what survived. That turned into outright neglect this time, so please accept my apologies.

I think this is a very well-structured proposal. Below are my thoughts. I don't want anyone to take these as the ultimate word on anything; they are my initial impression.

In my experience of adding gameplay elements, what usually happens is I come up with an idea, then I try to figure out how to make it as simple as possible without completely destroying it. If you can do that successfully, you get a good core concept that can be actually implemented. And often that process of stripping back to the core idea helps you reveal and value it properly, instead of covering it up with extra levers and systems.

The danger of starting out with something quite complicated is that along the way you inevitably discover problems and edge cases and exploits, all of which need you to bolt on something extra to fix, and so by the time you're done, you have something way more complex than anyone intended. And that makes it inaccessible to a lot of people, who just can't be bothered figuring it all out.

Overall, this proposal strikes me as a really strong core concept plus extra stuff that is fairly complicated without adding much extra value. If I were to start implementing this tomorrow, I could see myself spending 10% of my time on the unambiguously good stuff and 90% on the rest. That's not a good ratio, and so, as a whole, I would not like to implement. But I do think there is something valuable at the heart of it, and if that can be unearthed, then it would be worth doing.

Here's my impression of the idea, which I've broken into different categories.

Excellent

These are ideas/concepts I think are clearly good. They would add value to the game without being a nightmare to implement.

(1) A level of organization ("Faction") that sits one higher than regions. That is, a Faction is made up of regions, just like regions are made up of nations.

(2) A region is represented within a Faction by their Founder or Delegate.

(3) The leader of a Faction ("Faction Chair") is the region whose Delegate has the most endorsements. This means that regional elections are more significant, as they may also affect the leader or power balance of a Faction.

Arcane

These strike me as somewhat complicated without necessarily providing much value for players--especially non-elite R/D players. Most also require the creation of supplementary pages and systems for things like tracking history, conducting auctions, running elections, and managing joined consent from multiple parties. Some of these can be very challenging to implement, especially when they must be able to handle many edge cases mid-stream, such as nations ceasing to exist, losing endorsements, switching regions (multiple times), and changing their minds.

(4) There is a metric named Impact, which is similar to Influence in that it is accumulated over time based on the number of WA endorsements held by the Faction.

(5) Regions are classed as either Electors or Territories. The rules for deciding which regions are which are complex and arbitrary.

(6) Regions are claimed for a Faction via an auction process, where Factions spent accumulated Impact.

Conceptually Problematic

These are ideas that strike me as having far-reaching implications. They might be fine. But they might also be very disruptive to fundamental parts of the site. They would probably be resisted by non-R/D players, and may require concessions.

(7) Faction Chair nations get bonus votes on World Assembly resolutions at vote.

(8) Adds a strategic war game as the game's ultimate top level.

(9) Adds a new layer of regional conquest without removing any existing R/D elements, so must introduce new intrusion for regions, many of whom don't much care for that.

Not Very NationStates-y

And this just doesn't seem to sit very comfortably with the fundamental nature of the site:

(10) Regions don't choose which Faction they're in. Instead, regions are claimed by existing Factions. This treats regions as the playthings of elite raiders and defenders, rather than groups with their own autonomy. (There is an alternative version discussed in this thread that gives regions some autonomy, but not enough to shift it out of this category in my view.)

[Reventus Koth]

Thank you, [violet], for finally saying something about this. It really can't be understated how much of a weight on my chest this has been for the last year. I appreciate the thorough categorization of the concepts outlined in the thread, and I understand why many of the features I've come up with seem overly complicated or not engaging with the majority of the site's userbase. I can certainly see why a solid portion of it would be a nightmare for a development team as small as NationStates has. For the most part, I wanted to throw as much of what I could at the wall to see what stuck.

It is my personal opinion that the mere addition of only what you classified as "Excellent" features (I very much appreciate the compliment) would not do much to solve the initial problems I perceive with the R/D metagame that I outlined in the OP. I see myself in a future where only these features are implemented telling myself "man, this really didn't add much beyond superficial categorization", and I don't think I'd be alone among Gameplayers in thinking that.

It is, administration team willing, a place to start though, if you think this is worth pursuing. I think there's potential in the "seed" of that idea, though it is evident that not all of the places my mind go are realistically attainable with the resources available to us on NS. If it is the case that you believe the core concept is worth your development time, I'd like to know what the next steps should be on getting the ball rolling again. It's easy to stop here, not really communicating about where the idea's going and both sides making assumptions about the direction it's being taken in, or the momentum the idea has. I suppose I'm just afraid of getting complacent with a single response to the thread is all, haha. Let me know what I can do, [v].

[[violet]]

A constructive next step would be to strip the concept back to what you consider to be the most important part and rebuild as simply as you can around that.

I outlined the parts I think are best, but you might have a different opinion. Which is fine; you have spent more time thinking about this than me.

Just FYI, in a general sense, the aspects I personally like best are inclusive and open-ended. That is, they give everyone a choice, and the collective weight of those choices add up to an outcome. That's essentially how the core of NS multiplayer works.

For example, the whole auction process around Impact--unless I've missed something (which is certainly possible), all the significant decisions would be made by a very small number of people: the Faction Chairs. They personally decide to bid or not and that's it. That's unlike current R/D, which at least has a required role for footsoldiers; instead, it's essentially an elite cadre of maybe 20 people making decisions that the other 40,000 NS users have to live with.

Don't get me wrong: I do think it's valuable to give that elite 20 more of an endgame. But I'm not thrilled about giving them an endgame that only they are allowed to play. Obviously this proposal would rest on top of the existing political game, so regular players wouldn't be entirely powerless: they can affect who their Delegate is, and this can affect who get to be the Faction Chair. Presumably a central point is also that there would be a lot of politicking between Factions around who should claim/dispute which region, too, which would involve people who are regional powerbrokers but not necessarily Faction Chairs. But still, it's very closed-off, especially compared to what strikes me as the more NS-y system of allowing regions to select their own Faction.

[Wallenburg]

I would rather not we screw up with WA votes further.

WA votes were not mentioned as an additional power in that paragraph...?

A Chair region would be able to contribute a number of votes in the World Assembly proportional to their faction's overall power (which I'll call Impact later), much like how the WAD's power in the WA is equal to its endorsements.

[Lord Dominator]

WA votes were not mentioned as an additional power in that paragraph...?

A Chair region would be able to contribute a number of votes in the World Assembly proportional to their faction's overall power (which I'll call Impact later), much like how the WAD's power in the WA is equal to its endorsements.

I'll admit my mistake yea

Generally agreed though

[United Federated States of Omega]

I hate to dig this back up but I did want to ask this. [v] mentions that she thinks the "elite 20" should have some kind of an endgame. If this isn't it, could we get some kind of indication about what that could look like and when we might expect to hear from the staff about the development and provide input on such an endgame? Thanks as always for y'all's time!

EDIT: I'd be happy to split this off into another thread if that would make more sense, so please just let me know.

[The Stalker]

what strikes me as the more NS-y system of allowing regions to select their own Faction.

Yea that's more a system i'd like to have. I lead a number of regions, I would probably wanna create a faction made up of those regions and choose the faction chair holder.

I don't wanna see a new level of raiding added. >_<

[United Federated States of Omega]

Let me start by asking a simple question: when can the gameplay community expect to hear from the administration about what an endgame will look like?

Here's why I ask: [v] has alluded to something being in the works with this quote from her response to the factions proposal where she said: "I do think it's valuable to give that elite 20 more of an endgame." That statement came more than two months ago and since then all we have heard is radio silence. If it is so valuable when can we expect to hear something about this endgame? I understand the staff is unpaid and I get that y'all have other things to do on a daily basis to keep the game up and running. At some point though, GP will need help in order to keep the community alive. I believe we are approaching that point, and I suspect I am not alone in that belief. If it's not factions, so be it. I'm just asking for a timeline for when we could expect to hear something from the staff.

Thanks as always for all y'all do.

[Flanderlion]

I don't think GP is particularly dying at present. We've had coups, big libs, lots of small ops etc in the last few months.

That said, I still think the endgame should be Annexation, with the focus on region building rather than destruction.

[Sedgistan]

Merged into the main thread on Factions. I think you're reading more into Violet's comment than you should. This is a discussion on a Technical suggestion - she wasn't hinting at big plans already in process, but was suggesting further discussion on (amongst other things) what could be an "endgame".

If you've got thoughts on that, share them.