April Fools Minigame 2021? (The Best Nation in the World!)

[Noahs Second Country]

Tweaks to the matchmaking could make this a good fun permanent feature, like the challenge minigame. Maybe an opt-in system?

There just wasn't enough time for things to play out in 28 hours.

[Honeydewistania]

This April Fools event was disappointing and I think it could have been a lot better by letting people manually choose who the best nation was out of the whole community pool, maybe with some mechanism for preference voting. I lost count of the times I picked 'neither' because all the choices were faceless 'r/d'/card-farm puppets. Even though "829,257 votes were cast", the RNG was frustrating and kept me from having fun with this.

I agree. To add to this, you shouldve been able to only vote for WA nations

Woulda been unfair tho.


Anyone knows who was the lowest ranked nation? (Besides unranked people)

[New Jacobland]

GG Farnhamia!

[Hakinda Herseyi Duymak istiyorum]

Tweaks to the matchmaking could make this a good fun permanent feature, like the challenge minigame. Maybe an opt-in system?

There just wasn't enough time for things to play out in 28 hours.

Please make it a permanent mini game. Nation-states can be a little more fun and there must be some information showing how many votes we got

[Mombombu]

i dunno about you guys but im not really enjoying this years april fools event

usually it's an interesting concept, like nukes, or cryptocurrency, or trading cards but this year its basically just flipping a coin and it doesn't feel all that interactive

just my two cents, i dont mean to devalue any of the work that was put into it

[Hakinda Herseyi Duymak istiyorum]

Farnhamia I congratulate you

nations that I wish them to win.
Samudera
The African Emirates

[Strike]

This would be cooler if you could go to a nation page and give them a vote. Then regions could go against each other and it would become a fun arms race, similar to N-Day.

This time I tried to avoid the type of contest that gets immediately dominated by players with thousands of puppets, as it's hard work fending off bots during these events. It's meant as more of an exploratory journey through parts of NationStates you might not normally see. But I understand that team-based competitive events are more fun for a lot of people.

Its nice to have things that are different though and I think this almost worked. Honestly, as seriously un-fun as it was with all the puppets, I still kept coming back and playing a little more just to see if RNG would produce any nation I'd ever heard of before .... which was fun in a pulling card packs kind of way but also thankful the event has ended and I'm not tempted to keep doing it kind of way.

How about we do it again

This time you only get nations from your region to go up against each other. At the end of the first time period, all 1st place nations in all regions get moved to a second pool where the global game commences.

Seems best of both worlds. You have a mini-game that people can actually care about because its comparing nations they are familiar with, then, you have a global game that is interesting because the participants are both pre-filtered and more relevant but at the same time incredibly diverse and disparate.

[Hakinda Herseyi Duymak istiyorum]

This time I tried to avoid the type of contest that gets immediately dominated by players with thousands of puppets, as it's hard work fending off bots during these events. It's meant as more of an exploratory journey through parts of NationStates you might not normally see. But I understand that team-based competitive events are more fun for a lot of people.

Its nice to have things that are different though and I think this almost worked. Honestly, as seriously un-fun as it was with all the puppets, I still kept coming back and playing a little more just to see if RNG would produce any nation I'd ever heard of before .... which was fun in a pulling card packs kind of way but also thankful the event has ended and I'm not tempted to keep doing it kind of way.

How about we do it again

This time you only get nations from your region to go up against each other. At the end of the first time period, all 1st place nations in all regions get moved to a second pool where the global game commences.

Seems best of both worlds. You have a mini-game that people can actually care about because its comparing nations they are familiar with, then, you have a global game that is interesting because the participants are both pre-filtered and more relevant but at the same time incredibly diverse and disparate.

I think the only problem with the current vote is not seeing the number of votes. Puppet nations are also a nation, I don't understand why they make you so uncomfortable.

[Goobergunchia]

I don't think seeing puppets is inherently bad because if somebody has some cool themed puppets that they've put work into, it's not a bad thing to give them a bit more visibility. I also don't mind seeing, like, shared Founder nations or similar. And I definitely wouldn't want a feature making it publicly visible that a nation was a puppet, even if its puppetmaster remained secret.

The big problem is low-effort puppets that don't have their own national identities (like the Wombles, or obvious card farms, or obvious R/D nations sitting in jump points) and I suspect that excluding the big Puppet Storage regions would mitigate this problem to the extent that it would be at most a minor annoyance.

[Luziyca]

I don't think seeing puppets is inherently bad because if somebody has some cool themed puppets that they've put work into, it's not a bad thing to give them a bit more visibility. I also don't mind seeing, like, shared Founder nations or similar. And I definitely wouldn't want a feature making it publicly visible that a nation was a puppet, even if its puppetmaster remained secret.

The big problem is low-effort puppets that don't have their own national identities (like the Wombles, or obvious card farms, or obvious R/D nations sitting in jump points) and I suspect that excluding the big Puppet Storage regions would mitigate this problem to the extent that it would be at most a minor annoyance.

Definitely.

As it is, this got boring really quickly.

[Hakinda Herseyi Duymak istiyorum]

I don't think seeing puppets is inherently bad because if somebody has some cool themed puppets that they've put work into, it's not a bad thing to give them a bit more visibility. I also don't mind seeing, like, shared Founder nations or similar. And I definitely wouldn't want a feature making it publicly visible that a nation was a puppet, even if its puppetmaster remained secret.

The big problem is low-effort puppets that don't have their own national identities (like the Wombles, or obvious card farms, or obvious R/D nations sitting in jump points) and I suspect that excluding the big Puppet Storage regions would mitigate this problem to the extent that it would be at most a minor annoyance.

Not wanting puppets means you don't trust your nation enough. I trust my nation and I would like to live in my own nation.You can easily consume cigarettes and alcohol in my country.I will soon enact the right to public protest and euthanasia.

[The Derpy Democratic Republic Of Herp]

Congrats to Farnhamia and holy shit I didn't expect to get so many votes!! Thank you all for 6th place!!

[Strike]

Yea I love puppets. This is a puppet. but you may not know it because it has its own flag and unique identity - not just one of 1000 nations known as NATIONNAME 1234. In most cases I am against numbers being included in nation names either way

[Palindromes]

If they do this event again in the future or add it as a permanent minigame, they better create an API endpoint for it.

[Minoa]

Farnhamia, I think you make a good leader for this.

As for the others: next time, make it opt-in. I was actually not happy at all about being dragged into such a contest, as it put unnecessary pressure on my mental health. The World Census is one thing, as it keeps getting reviewed every day, but a contest where nations are given two random nations is a different thing.

I wish that I could be de-ranked now so that other nations behind me can go up one rank.

[Trotterdam]

So 829257 total votes, over the current NationStates population and taking into account that each vote is between two nations, means an average of 6-7 votes per nation. Just saying.

[SherpDaWerp]

So 829257 total votes, over the current NationStates population and taking into account that each vote is between two nations, means an average of 6-7 votes per nation. Just saying.

Firstly, a "down" vote didn't contribute to nations' rankings. So we're looking at 3-4 ranking votes per nation, max. Secondly, the votes are clearly not evenly spread.

If someone has a better way to search - by all means, enlighten me - but for now, the best method is going by region and checking whether the population is the same as the number of ranked nations. This only works in nations with a population less than or equal 25, however, so you'll have to search from here.

I searched a bunch of regions (without recording which specifically are unranked), and here we have it:
Topid - 12 unranked; Antarctic Oasis - 4 unranked; Nordic Lands - 2 unranked; 100 Nations of Conquest - 12 unranked; Free Market Federation - 3 unranked; Universal Dream Network - 5 unranked; Corporate States of America - 7 unranked; Rireinu - 7 unranked; Teremara - 10 unranked; The Confederacy of Free Lands - 5 unranked.

That's 250 nations, of which 67 are unranked. More than a quarter.

Personally, I'd attribute this to the "knockout" system - designed to reduce puppets (who wouldn't be getting voted) from making it further into the event, instead, it just knocked out anyone who'd been unlucky enough to not get a vote, thus concentrating the votes according to whoever got randomly assigned a few winning combos first. In theory, it was a good approach, but there just wasn't enough incoming data for every candidate to be voted reasonably before low-vote nations started getting removed.

[Minoa]

So 829257 total votes, over the current NationStates population and taking into account that each vote is between two nations, means an average of 6-7 votes per nation. Just saying.

Firstly, a "down" vote didn't contribute to nations' rankings. So we're looking at 3-4 ranking votes per nation, max. Secondly, the votes are clearly not evenly spread.

If someone has a better way to search - by all means, enlighten me - but for now, the best method is going by region and checking whether the population is the same as the number of ranked nations. This only works in nations with a population less than or equal 25, however, so you'll have to search from here.

I searched a bunch of regions (without recording which specifically are unranked), and here we have it:
Topid - 12 unranked; Antarctic Oasis - 4 unranked; Nordic Lands - 2 unranked; 100 Nations of Conquest - 12 unranked; Free Market Federation - 3 unranked; Universal Dream Network - 5 unranked; Corporate States of America - 7 unranked; Rireinu - 7 unranked; Teremara - 10 unranked; The Confederacy of Free Lands - 5 unranked.

That's 250 nations, of which 67 are unranked. More than a quarter.

Personally, I'd attribute this to the "knockout" system - designed to reduce puppets (who wouldn't be getting voted) from making it further into the event, instead, it just knocked out anyone who'd been unlucky enough to not get a vote, thus concentrating the votes according to whoever got randomly assigned a few winning combos first. In theory, it was a good approach, but there just wasn't enough incoming data for every candidate to be voted reasonably before low-vote nations started getting removed.

Pretty much this. If it was opt-in, those who were interested would get a chance. It is much better than dragging in unwilling participants like me.

[Trotterdam]

Firstly, a "down" vote didn't contribute to nations' rankings. So we're looking at 3-4 ranking votes per nation, max.

Regardless of how the internal mechanics work, that's still people consciously choosing not to upvote you when they could have. That's meaningful information.

Personally, I'd attribute this to the "knockout" system - designed to reduce puppets (who wouldn't be getting voted) from making it further into the event, instead, it just knocked out anyone who'd been unlucky enough to not get a vote, thus concentrating the votes according to whoever got randomly assigned a few winning combos first. In theory, it was a good approach, but there just wasn't enough incoming data for every candidate to be voted reasonably before low-vote nations started getting removed.

Yeah. 6-7 votes is around the minimum for what you'd need to reliably identify puppets that should be removed from the ranking. If the anti-puppet pruning actually started kicking in before the end of the event, that's too early. There wouldn't have been enough votes to both give all nations a fair chance and then also collect more detailed preferences on the higher-ranking nations.

[Strike]

Firstly, a "down" vote didn't contribute to nations' rankings. So we're looking at 3-4 ranking votes per nation, max.

Regardless of how the internal mechanics work, that's still people consciously choosing not to upvote you when they could have. That's meaningful information.

Yea, a "neither" vote should count as losses for both

[Australian rePublic]

Congrats Farn!

[Harmonic Empire]

Rather weak april fool event.

[Erynia and Draconia]

Rather weak april fool event.

I agree. The voting system was not good in my opinion, and it was an overall disappointment.

[SherpDaWerp]

Firstly, a "down" vote didn't contribute to nations' rankings. So we're looking at 3-4 ranking votes per nation, max.

Regardless of how the internal mechanics work, that's still people consciously choosing not to upvote you when they could have. That's meaningful information.

I meant that the second nation in the two-nation pick doesn't get any changes for not being picked. AFAIK, you gained "points" for being picked, but didn't lose anything for not being picked. Neither votes probably play no part in Max's 830,000 total.

Personally, I'd attribute this to the "knockout" system - designed to reduce puppets (who wouldn't be getting voted) from making it further into the event, instead, it just knocked out anyone who'd been unlucky enough to not get a vote, thus concentrating the votes according to whoever got randomly assigned a few winning combos first. In theory, it was a good approach, but there just wasn't enough incoming data for every candidate to be voted reasonably before low-vote nations started getting removed.

Yeah. 6-7 votes is around the minimum for what you'd need to reliably identify puppets that should be removed from the ranking. If the anti-puppet pruning actually started kicking in before the end of the event, that's too early. There wouldn't have been enough votes to both give all nations a fair chance and then also collect more detailed preferences on the higher-ranking nations.

Apparently, the expected number of votes that would have to be cast before everyone has an even chance of being voted at least once is in the ballpark of 3.1 million. With an estimate of maybe 20,000 active players, everyone would have to have cast over 150 votes each to even approach that number. (I tried experimentally confirming that but generating random numbers as fast as possible for ~8 hours still didn't even get 240,000 distinct votes!)