Sketchy

Drop Logs

Bro why do people still let TKR name wars. @Veinyou should be ashamed for allowing this to go unchallenged

I love this game. In this thread we've seen: "This change won't help new players grow." "This change will help new players grow too fast and leave older players feeling useless." "This change only benefits whales." "This change hurts whales." "This change will entrench the upper tier." "This change will cause everyone to rapidly grow into the same city count." Gotta love this game.

I think you are underestimating the impact of being able to reach c20/c30 faster, and how that will impact people reaching c40. Again, I don't necessarily agree that c40 is the goal here, a c30 is still relevant to tiering in conflicts, at least for now, and as that changes, the costs get cheaper, and people move up anyway. It will get easier over time for people to catch up to the main grouping as it moves up. This will naturally create a range of about 20-30 ish cities where people sit. But what you are ignoring is income. If I reach c30 much faster than I would before, I'll reach c40 much faster if the costs remain the same, which as you've shown, they are. Again, I don't see how anyone can possible argue this doesn't help new players catch up.

Choosing 1-40 as the example range seems a bit off. 40 cities is not a new player. It's basically where the average of the highest nations are right now. Based on current market prices for the planning projects: 1-11 cities goes from ~$110m to $50m 1-16 cities + UP goes from ~$504m to $149m 1-21 cities + UP/AUP goes from ~$1.4bn to $548m 1-30 cities + UP/AUP/MP goes from ~$5.7bn to $4.5bn The idea that won't help new players catch up is silly. EDIT: Upon further inspection, your example is even more off. The total current value of the 3 planning projects is about 1.1bn. The difference between the old and new values for c40 in your own example is 1bn. That means, at least under current prices, it's actually 100m cheaper to go from 1-40 than it was before, all it in all.

There are many different reasons for drop off. The idea that people have to spend over a year in many cases just to reach the low tier (which is continuously moving up), and that the current economic structure incentivizes all the majors to send new players to raid, filtering out a portion of players who don't enjoy that type of play, is going to play a role in retention going down. Still seems like the game will need more updates to fix the issues, but this is part 1 so I guess we'll see what else we get.

It's more about the experience from a new players perspective than them seeing cities being cheaper. The way the ranges in war are now, people below c30, and especially below ~c25 are functionally irrelevant to global conflicts. Alliances funnel them into low tier raiding because the investment cost to boost someone into viable tiering is incredibly high. This never used to be an issue, years ago the games low tier was c10s and the upper tier was mid 20s. People become part of relevant tiering quickly and without burden to alliances. This is only going to grow as a problem. By the end of 2025, the tiering will have shifted like 4-5 cities upwards, and that'll be 4-5 more cities new players need to be part of the game. Changes like these provide alternatives to funnelling every new player into the raid meta, and give alliances incentives to invest in smaller nations. From taking a look at the price changes, it seems like the current playerbase, especially whales, would benefit from having purchased the cities at historically lower prices. People who have put in the effort to be where they are will still be where they are, ahead, and presumably with the lower tier growth, the games econ will accelerate anyway.

Feels like this is somewhat contradictory. Game has massive retention issues, we bring in new players and they drop off all the time. The games become too wide, too spread out. Making things more friendly to new players isn't the least of our concern, it's the only way you'll retain them and grow the game.

I'd like to take a moment to report this flag belonging to @Buck Turgidson This flag is clearly phallic in nature and not appropriate for this game.

That's fair. My point was the tech level of the game has massively improved and has made managing larger alliances easier for smaller groups of people. The barrier for entry to use Locotus might be high, but the existence of it and other alternatives/knowledge in the game is still better than it was. Still I'm not making the case it's easy to make a mass member alliance. I'm making the case it's the most competitive way to play. Edit: Also, I had no idea how to use Locotus when I first came back. I find Borg to be pretty helpful/able to answer questions.

I mean I agree it's not user friendly but it has probably more functionality than any inhouse bot I've seen, and it's open source. I half agree. The game hasn't moved away from big personalities starting new alliances specifically though, it's moved away from big personalities in general. Big personalities form when things happen, drama etc. There isn't much drama in the game, people are focused on playing it lowkey/avoiding conflict. Rest of your post isn't really disagreeing with me, just adding more reasons why my premise is correct. I don't necessarily disagree the game is in decline, but I think you've weaved a little far from the primary claim being made.

So I have been mulling over this thought for some time now, and I figured why not shit my thoughts out on the forums for people to argue. My IA department might slap me around a bit for encouraging competitors to jump into the recruiting pool, but I honestly don't expect any current elite alliances to take this on board and adapt their strategy, so it's more a discussion topic than anything. Elite Alliances, from a pragmatic, efficiency perspective, are obsolete. I am someone who historically helped lead an elite alliance with the original TGH, and Rose was at it's smallest and leanest version under my leadership. I historically have always gravitated towards Elite alliances as a preferred playstyle, so I have some experience with them. The three primary reasons Elite alliances existed historically were: Being lean was more effective politically: It used to be that, numbers mattered a lot more in politics. More specifically, the numbers in your sphere would determine your threat level, and there was a significant advantage to having smaller, leaner, and more competitive spheres. Quality mattered more than quantity, because having a sphere that was too large would result in significant political consequences. Now, that's not really true anymore. There isn't a significant pressure against consolidation, meaning trimming down your numbers isn't as effective as it once was in minimizing the risk of you being hit. Additionally, the game is far more consolidated now in general. The top 8 alliances all have over 125 members. There is far less room to hide for most majors, the chasm between the top 8 and the rest is deep. Smaller alliances beneath the majors who have less members, inevitably have less power by comparison. It's difficult to compete with alliances that have 50-100 more members than you. The more members you have, the higher your score, and the higher your score, the more you recruit. It's a feedback loop that benefits those who consolidate more people into their alliance. Being smaller in member count was more logistically feasible: Now, it's true, that having less members, is in general, a much easier experience. A single person could today, with the current tools available, very easily manage a single alliance of say 50 people, entirely on their own, with enough effort. But generally speaking, if your goal is to be as competitive as possible, than less work is likely not going to be a priority for you. But, what has changed, is the aforementioned tools. When elite alliances were in their infancy, the tech level of this game was prehistoric by comparison to it's current standard. The API was used rarely by a select few of people, many people used web scrapers or other tools. Not only were discord bots not a thing, but discord itself wasn't a thing. People used slack, an insulated program that makes recruitment a more difficult, forums, or IRC, as their primary communication methods, not only for recruitment, but for the logistics of managing their alliance. Bots to manage banking were rare, and most banking was done by hand, using the games incredibly shit interface. Wars were micromanaged by literally looking at the war pages on the website, most tracking wasn't automated alerts, or war rooms, but individuals directing other individuals to do things in normal chats. Now, most alliances have access to banking bots that can be run via discord to easily micromanage their banking. Tech is as accessible as it has ever been, largely thanks to open source bots like Locotus, but many majors have their own inhouse coders that create bots for them as well. It's far simpler logistically, for a small group of people, to manage 150+ people, with the current tech levels, without being overwhelmed and suffering issues due to a skill/talent shortage in their government. What would have once taken a robust low government to manage can now be managed by a smaller group of people. Someone who is motivated to be a competitor in this game, and has no issue with working for it, has no incentive not to compete in the recruitment game. Trickle down has become trickle up: The most significant reason that Elite alliances existed in the past, and the part of their purpose that has become the most redundant of all, is related to the change in the economic meta. Historically, growing your alliance was a grind. New players were a pretty big drain on resources. The way this games economy scales, is that before a certain point, usually around c20 or so, players are basically dependent on governments to grow competitively. A big challenge in the early game, was moving new nations over that hurdle, to where they could self sustain. The model to do this was typically grants, to partial grants, to eventually loans. What this meant, is typically alliances would tax their largest nations, a portion of their income, and trickle it down towards their smallest members, in order to feasibly grow them. This all changed with the rise of the raid meta. Now, a new player can join the game, raid themselves to c20, and immediately propel themselves past all the initial growth hurdles. This makes new players not only not a resource drain, but in many cases, a resource gain, taking a smaller percentage and trickling up to the top tier, the reverse of what happened historically. New players don't impact the growth of whales at all, and as such, alliances can only gain by taking them on. Even in cases where funding them happens, the games inflated economy makes the ROI on new nation investment fairly short, meaning it many cases it's in the interest of larger nations to put some growth towards them, see a return, and then grow even faster. Because of this, there is no economic advantage to being an elite alliance. As we've seen over the past 2 years, all of the mass recruitment aas have begun to close the distance and in many cases over take the traditional elite alliances. While politics has certainly played a role in that in some cases, this is a trend for ALL mass member aas, not just the typical winners. The two best and obvious examples of this are Grumpy and Guardian, whom historically were the natural #1 and #2 in tiering. Today, Grumpy has lost their competitive edge in the upper tier completely to Eclipse and Syndicate. Rose is a little further behind, but their numbers more than make up for that, and regardless if Rose loses 3 more times this year, that gap is likely to close over time. Not only that, but EVH and Singularity both now have low 40s, and at the current rate of growth, by the end of the year will be right below Grumpy. As for Guardian, they've already fallen behind. They have a tiering disadvantage against every single major alliance, including TFP. A tiering disadvantage, paired with a numbers disadvantage means they'll only continue to fall behind the curve as things accelerate. Final Remarks I'll end this by saying that obviously, there are still reasons why someone would prefer to run an elite alliance. There are some, minor, pragmatic benefits, that can be useful. Being leaner in general, is always reputationally better than being bloated. In fact, in general, as much as mass member AAs are encouraged to take more people in, and not to have extremely high standards, having too much bloat can still be a downside, as we are seeing in this war with Rose right now. In general, it just looks bad if your alliance is too bloated, and looks very good, if it isn't. That can help with prospects when it comes to treaties, and is great for alliances who perhaps would rather play a supporting role in the political landscape. But for alliances that want to compete, at the highest level, these relatively small reputational boosts are not worth the trade off. Still, even then, major alliances can still be reasonably lean. The more you recruit, the more diamonds in the rough you find, and they'll add up over time. Most major alliances, even the ones that are more bloated, have more "good players" than the typical alliances below them. An alliance with 200 members only needs a third of those members to be good, for them to still be better than 95% of the alliances in the game. TLDR: All the historical reasons Elite alliances were competitively useful are gone, and it makes no sense to be one anymore.

That was less a loss and more I kicked like 50 people lmfao

Yeah let's kill all possible counters during losing wars. That's what the game needs.

What does the committee even do? I thought they just managed things. It's still alliance reps right? Does the committee actually do anything that would influence the outcome?

Player of the Year: -- Most Influential Player: -- Most Likely to Succeed in 2025: Tartarus Best Alliance Leader: Abaddon Worst Alliance Leader: Roberts Best In-Character Poster: -- Best Villain: -- Nicest Player: -- Most Controversial Player: -- Most Missed Player: Harry Flashman Best Nation Page: -- Best Fighter: Ben Zene Best High Government Member: Goose/Yeetmaster Most Online/Likely to respond in 1 minute: -- Best War Criminal: Epi

Alliance of the Year: -- Most Improved Alliance: -- Best New Merged Alliance: EVH Best Rookie Alliance: -- Best Alliance for New Players: Singularity Most Likely to Succeed in 2025: The Syndicate Most Likely to be Rolled in 2025: Singularity Most Honorable Alliance: Guardian Best Fighting Alliance: Singularity Worst Fighting Alliance: The Immortals Best Alliance Growth: Singularity Best Foreign Affairs Team: -- Best Foreign Affairs Move: Worst Foreign Affairs Move: One Day War Peace Out Alliance with Best Propaganda: Singularity Most Missed Alliance: Roz Wei Best Alliance Flag (please link): -- Best Holiday Flag (please link): -- Biggest Alliance Decline in 2024: The Immortals Best Alliance Theme: --

You sir are uncultured.

Judean People's Front? !@#$ off! We are the People's Front of Judea!

Ah Roberts you finally posted. I don't think that's true at all. We have seen multiple examples of dogpiles, long naps, consolidation of larger spheres, crossphere MD's etc in the past 2ish years, I don't think I have seen one consistent voice who has opposed each instance of this happening, and every major has participated in them at some point. It's always anger directed at whoever was the last person to roll them. It is what it is, that's the meta now. Pretending it's not is disingenuous. Pretending you have personally been consistent on this issue is also disingenuous.

No one cares about standards unless it's their enemy breaking them. People only care about these sort of transgressions if it's their direct rivals or people they dislike doing them. Rose has fought more people, so you have more enemies, hence more public backlash. Since all the CB's for this war seem to mostly have been kept private, I'm assuming this isn't an ideological war at all, but one of removing competition and "outgrowing" a major alliance. I like the public turn to FA, It's been very interesting to read the back and forth, but I would be genuinely surprised if we saw a meta shift away from any of this stuff being debated, after years of it. Perhaps I'm just doom posting, and someone will actually do so, but I have interacted with enough alliances to know regardless of public rhetoric, the actual difference in playstyle is small between them. The growth meta is in the drivers seat of politics.

You got me. Anyway let's speed up the timeline on the TSC merge into Sin please Lefty, it's taking you considerably longer than we planned and I'm a busy man with many important things to do.

Oh nvm, Roberts is posting his opinions in RON instead of on the forums again. I am glad however that Roberts has changed his tune and believes Singularity is absolved from any and all consolidation and it's all just overlap with Spectresphere and Eclipsesphere. I knew he'd come around to us eventually.

You could always type them out anyway.

@Shiho Nishizumiapparently our prayers have been answered, the messiah has arisen, to lead us all to the promised land. I for one can't wait to see a new 5 man raiding AA arise. Truly the change we all need.