Ability to give influence?

[Southern Bellz]

I've seen a lot of topics on influence and I have never seen this idea come up. I think there should be a feature that allows nations to give their influence to other nations. I just think it is something that would encourage international interaction, and can address some of the draw backs of the influence system (such as new delegates not having to the ability to do anything) if the new delegate is popular and people really support them, then they can get influence donated to them. Plus it allows nations with INSANE amount of influence to actually be able to do something with it besides not get kicked. Lets face it, influence effects two things. The ability to eject, and the ability to not get ejected. If you have a ton of influence and want to be able to protect your friends, why shouldn't you be able to.

This is my idea, and I want this topic to focus on this idea alone. I don't care about other theories on influence. If there are ways to improve this idea though, or thoughts on the idea, I welcome it.

Thanks,
SB

[Southern Bellz]

To add to this, one of the major reasons why I think this would be good, because influence is a system in place right now that only rewards time. If there is a new member who rises to the delegate seat in a region quickly, and say the previous delegate supports them (or other people with influence) they can make the new delegate's time much easier.

I think this change, on top of adding a more dynamic international politics will also benefit two groups that talk about influence the most. This change can both empower natives to defend themselves easier (which active neutrals/isolationists/defenders should like) and allow dedicated raider groups to pool influence in long term operations in order to strike quickly.

The way I see it, the systems that take place in this game should encourage (but not require) interaction between other players, as well as allow for creative/influential players to do something interesting with the game. One of the major drawbacks about influence is that it is very slow, this could help speed things up.

[Wopruthien]

I like this idea, one of the best I've seen for a while. Would really benefit both defender/raider a like.

[Sedgistan]

One worry would be that invaders could plant several puppets in a region, conduct a raid at update, and then transfer all the influence to the raider delegate, who would then be able to shut the region down within a few days (meaning that the Security Council/defenders would barely have time to react).

[AP3 10]

Interesting idea; I'd guess such a transfer of influence would be limited in quantity and scope.... perhaps non-instanstaneous and for all to see when a transfer is set up.....

Not sure its possible with our set-up...

[Southern Bellz]

One worry would be that invaders could plant several puppets in a region, conduct a raid at update, and then transfer all the influence to the raider delegate, who would then be able to shut the region down within a few days (meaning that the Security Council/defenders would barely have time to react).

Well it makes sense to me that a region's biggest strength to defend itself could be used as its biggest weapon. I think the mentality that raiders can do X, Y, and Z now is the incorrect mentality to think about this. In this current system the same thing could happen, only instead of one person being able to gain 100% influence, three people can each get 33% and put it on one person. And if this happens, the defenders can easily eject the two nations that gave up their influence. There is a whole risk-reward dynamic to this style (which players don't have to give up their influence if all they care about is themselves not wanting to be ejected) but the idea is fair, and makes for much more exciting dynamics for people who want to take advantage of it, and people who want to look out for themselves, they can do that, but teamwork should ALWAYS trump a person working alone.

This system rewards the active, people that take care to get influence, and delegate to friends properly are the people who are more protected. Which makes way better criteria than just being the first person in the region.

[Kalibarr]

Perhaps a bit off topic, but what about the ability to reduce a nations influence(maybe together with the ability to gift influence)? What if WA members could use some of their influence to "attack" or "lower" another nations influence? Wars could be fought without having to take over a region, and it might help the feeders, because if they didn't actively search for allies they could get undermined to the point where they could no longer effectively defend their region. There would need to be a way to show it, "negative endorsements" might work, but they couldn't be a one time reduction then... hmm.

[Southern Bellz]

Interesting idea; I'd guess such a transfer of influence would be limited in quantity and scope.... perhaps non-instanstaneous and for all to see when a transfer is set up.....

Not sure its possible with our set-up...

Well my suggestion is that this gets coded into the game, haha. I don't know how something like that works, but if influence has all these calculations to obtain your influence level, I don't see why it should be difficult to trade influence.

And I think that your idea of some sort of limit is amazing, and addresses some of Sedge's concern. Say if people can only give away half of their influence a day. So on one hand a nation can give another nation a pretty significant influence jump and yet it takes a long time to give it all away.

[Ballotonia]

Bad idea.

It would be reason to create a large army of puppets, and then move influence to one target nation. The nation with the most influence then belongs to the player who bothered to create the most puppet nations. That's really boring play, but it would be the winning move, and so that is what would be done.

Ballotonia

[Wopruthien]

How about only WA nations can give influence, kind of like they can only give endorsements.

[Southern Bellz]

How about only WA nations can give influence, kind of like they can only give endorsements.

Brilliant, see thanks to going into this with an open minded attitude! I really feel that this change will help NS, no one can deny that influence needs SOME sort of revision. While I thank people who have been critical of this suggestion, the one thing I feel we can't deny that it is one of the more elegant and simple solutions we have seen suggested about influence.

Plus any new system isn't going to be loved by everyone, because it does create a new environment to plat the game in. Just look how unpopular influence was/is. Its an archaic system that hasn't been modified from when it was implemented. I don't think it is too much to ask that this idea is at least looked into and taken seriously by the NS staff.

[Unibot]

No, faster influence rates means raiders would be able to grief regions quicker.. giving less updates for defenders and the Security Council alike to liberate a region. This would only benefit defenders to clean up regions, post-invasion... with the exception of some rare defense missions where the native delegate doesn't already have enough influence to ban and eject the invaders. I don't mind improvements to the game to help crashing become more efficient, I do have a problem with improvements that encourage more grieving. Recently I've been reading how things were under the old grieving rules.. and I can't believe how desensitized we've become with Regional Influence, it has not only become completely acceptable but now even game-suggestions arise to support such behavior that would have gotten people banned from NS, a few years ago. Incredible.

[Unibot]

How about only WA nations can give influence, kind of like they can only give endorsements.

Make forty switchers. That would give you enough influence to destroy a region.

[Crushing Our Enemies]

I think that this would add an interesting dimension to the invading/defending game, and also helps outside of raiding/defending in the situations described in other posts (delegate changes, etc.)

I think this notion, should it be implemented, does not inherently favor invaders or defenders, and who would benefit depends largely on their creativity and ingenuity. There are endless possibilities on how this could be used on both sides, and it would prompt a paradigm shift in tactics the likes of which has not been seen since national happenings was introduced.

In response to unibot, influence is recalculated at update, so we would merely need to say that influence gifts from nations only count if that nation is in the WA at update, in the same region.

[Kalibarr]

How about only WA nations can give influence, kind of like they can only give endorsements.

Make forty switchers. That would give you enough influence to destroy a region.

Make it something that would happen at the update

[Todd McCloud]

It's an interesting idea, really.

We could have a button next to the 'endorse so and so' button that's to the tune of donating a little influence. You can only do it a set number of times, or set number of times per week or month or whatever. This is sort of like being in a group and one of the vets stands up and says "he or she has my trust" in kind of a nationstates-IC-gameplay sort of thing. Sure, endorsements kind of do this, but let's face it there are nations that whore out their endorsements and/or hand it out like candy (feeder dels usually have to do this though, so they're off the hook ). Influence is a little different. It means a little more for most people (I am assuming). For what it's worth, I can see this working on both sides of the fence. It gives a new dimension to the regional security issue as well as the raider/defender wars.


In a perfect world, influence would be taken away from the game. But we've been told that's not going happen. Yet, up and down the line, from the vets to some of the newbs, from the gameplayers to the roleplayers, from the loud and talkative people to those who'd rather be quiet about things, I'm pretty sure it's a common belief that influence as it stands right now isn't where we'd like it to be. Not anyone's fault per say, but it's just the reality of the situation. Where would we like it to be? Well, that's where we differ. But if Max and the mods are willing to listen and work with us, maybe give us a few points to consider, I'm sure we can make something better out of this.

But it all starts with them, because we've kind of been talking a lot over the years. We don't know what goes into the coding of the game or what direction Max wants to take with it (it is after all his game and we are indeed playing his game). But we've been having influence for... what, about five years now? We've been given a face-lift for the game's looks, we've been given a security council that's had problems but is still here and still keeps things interesting. We've been given new forums for about 2-3 years now. Maybe it's time to think about restructuring influence too.

Bellz might have something here. I don't know if it's hard to implement or not, but it's something. If it's agreed that people like it, well, let's change things. If not, let's keep an open mind and attempt to remedy influence. Please?

[[violet]]

I've said plenty of times I'm interested in tweaking influence!

Give me a good idea, I'll do it. But it's got to be workable, and you've got to take into consideration not just the interests of defenders or invaders but also people who don't want to play the invasion game. This particular idea has a really fundamental flaw, as pointed out by Ballotonia above. If we make it possible to gain Influence by creating a script to spawn 1,000 puppets, people will do that.

[Unibot]

I think this notion, should it be implemented, does not inherently favor invaders or defenders

It helps invaders destroy regions easier and quicker.. and helps defenders clean up the mess that invaders make quicker.. that is.. if they can even stop the invaders then. I think it inherently favors the destruction of regions.

[Punk Reloaded]

The problem I have with Ballatonia's assessment is that it seeks to correct a problem that doesn't yet exist. Whatever changes are made within the game, there will be people who seek to exploit those changes.

It's just like RL tax law. People are paid to try to find loopholes. So does that mean we don't try to tweak and help the system just because people will find loopholes? I hope it doesn't mean that.

I think this is a very interesting idea. If some of you are so afraid of invaders gaining a leg up - which by the way, they've been destroyed by influence - allow this to be controlled by the regional administration. For feeders it would always default to the ability of players to transfer influence but in player created regions this would be controllable. Only a regional founder would be able to set it, so regardless who becomes delegate the founder would ultimately have the authority. That is in keeping with some of the powers the founder has been given and so long as the founder doesn't CTE the region could be status quo with today.

The feeder regions, where delegate changes often occur with players have smallish amounts of influence, would ALWAYS allow influence transfers by virtue of being founderless. If raiders start going after feeders, they can certainly try. Won't be easy, but i'm sure some will try and is that so bad? I mean this is a game after all. Moreso, I think it will allow many feeder communities the ability to not be so reliant upon certain members and actually make their regions more secure.

Just my two dimes, but I think this is an idea worth exploring.

[Insatiabia]

I've said plenty of times I'm interested in tweaking influence!

Give me a good idea, I'll do it. But it's got to be workable, and you've got to take into consideration not just the interests of defenders or invaders but also people who don't want to play the invasion game. This particular idea has a really fundamental flaw, as pointed out by Ballotonia above. If we make it possible to gain Influence by creating a script to spawn 1,000 puppets, people will do that.

A few people have already addressed Ballotonia's assessment, and we believe that the problem he pointed out would be eliminated by making influence gifts WA-only, and update with endorsements. That way, every player can only give one influence gift per update.

As for people who do not play the invasion game, allowing influence gifts makes it easier for them to use their rightful powers as delegate - by receiving influence from other nations in their region when they take power. Influence (if I'm not mistaken) was instituted to prevent griefing. For those outside the invasion game, influence is merely a barrier to their powers to eject, ban, and set passwords, as is within their rights as delegates. Allowing influence gifts could make their regions more powerful and more secure if the regional inhabitants use influence gifts to empower their delegates.

[Fudgetopia]

I've seen a lot of topics on influence and I have never seen this idea come up. I think there should be a feature that allows nations to give their influence to other nations. I just think it is something that would encourage international interaction, and can address some of the draw backs of the influence system (such as new delegates not having to the ability to do anything) if the new delegate is popular and people really support them, then they can get influence donated to them. Plus it allows nations with INSANE amount of influence to actually be able to do something with it besides not get kicked. Lets face it, influence effects two things. The ability to eject, and the ability to not get ejected. If you have a ton of influence and want to be able to protect your friends, why shouldn't you be able to.

This is my idea, and I want this topic to focus on this idea alone. I don't care about other theories on influence. If there are ways to improve this idea though, or thoughts on the idea, I welcome it.

Thanks,
SB

I support this motion. To me it seems entirely logical - particularly for a player like myself with a bucket load of influence and yet no real reason to have it. Personally, I'd like the ability to share my influence with my delegate and other player who may need it, particularly as Southern Bellz said, with a newer delegate who needs the support

[Topid]

It would be great for those within feeders, but outside of them it would really stink.

The time it would take for raiders to destroy a region after the hidden password is put on would dramatically decrease, since all the endorsers of the raider would be gaining influence they could give to the lead.

[Unibot]

It would be great for those within feeders, but outside of them it would really stink.

The time it would take for raiders to destroy a region after the hidden password is put on would dramatically decrease, since all the endorsers of the raider would be gaining influence they could give to the lead.

^^ This.

If you're gunna implement it, it is a feederite implementation.

[Southern Bellz]

I've said plenty of times I'm interested in tweaking influence!

Give me a good idea, I'll do it. But it's got to be workable, and you've got to take into consideration not just the interests of defenders or invaders but also people who don't want to play the invasion game. This particular idea has a really fundamental flaw, as pointed out by Ballotonia above. If we make it possible to gain Influence by creating a script to spawn 1,000 puppets, people will do that.

If you only make it this a feature work that one WA nation can send it to another WA nation, then that would be impossible without breaking the rules.

Now what critical flaw is there?

And I think that saying my proposal ONLY applies to the interest of defenders and invaders is kinda unfair, when my position as a Feeder delegate is what spawned this idea. It helps new delegates that are trusted and Natives that want to protect their friends first and foremost. On top of this, look at the types of nations in support of this. Multiple feeder and ex feeder delegates, a handful of neutral players, multiple raiders, multiple defenders. I don't think I have ever seen a solution to influence have so much support, and now that some kinks are worked out, I feel this is something that make make influence workable.

I really feel that this will improve the game?

[Topid]

If you only make it this a feature work that one WA nation can send it to another WA nation, then that would be impossible without breaking the rules.

Now what critical flaw is there?

The time it would take for raiders to destroy a region after the hidden password is put on would dramatically decrease, since all the endorsers of the raider would be gaining influence they could give to the lead.