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Krampus

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Posts posted by Krampus

    [Sphere] Fate Lies in the Stars

    in Alliance Affairs

    Posted

    15 minutes ago, BigMorf said:

    or maybe just maybe it’s all of the t$ RON crew saying this actually exactly about Hollywood. But hey, gotta stunt on the forums right?? 

    sir, we're an equal opportunity business, you're very welcome to make a tkr ron crew 

    :epic: 

    • Haha 2

    Make Urban Planning Cheaper!

    in Game Suggestions

    Posted

    16 minutes ago, Evlar Ball said:

    The Urban Planning Project is meant to act as a catch-up mechanic but currently only the largest alliances can fund it. It is worsening the elitism it saught to reduce.

    me when I have 142 noobs to buy UP for 😂

    image.thumb.png.fb7acb42dd119573b4a6077488c1e3d3.png

    • Haha 6

    Railroad New Players into joining established alliances

    in Game Suggestions

    Posted · Edited by Krampus

    27 minutes ago, Schnauzerguy said:

    Either vastly increase the top 30 alliance rule or get rid of it. It excludes I think every raiding alliance from new players choices.

    A better way would be asking the person what kind of playstyle they want to go with. A person who's more interested in citybuilding (or base building as it is called in other genres) won't be joining Arrgh, and a person who is interested in raiding/looting won't be joining TFP (where it is illegal to raid), and then letting them pick from there

    I would also like to mention, forcing a new player to do something is not the way to go about doing this. If you force someone, that means the decision won't be theirs, breaking their immersion. If I was told "oi, fresh meat, shut it and go join any of these alliances" I wouldn't be that interested. Instead, if you were to use positive reinforcement to suggest them to do something, for example by giving them some kind of reward for joining an alliance, that would be far more productive than just banning the alternative. Negative feedback will always generate a much stronger emotional response (that's a psychology fun fact), than nudging the player with the carrot.

    Overall though, I agree with the proposal.

     

      

    • Upvote 1

    My thoughts on bots and a plea to blanket ban all third party automation and develop the tools inhouse

    in Orbis Central

    Posted · Edited by Krampus

    1 minute ago, Mars said:

    i didnt say anything, first time i see anything like it so i figured maybe others find it interesting too and to be honest i meant to post it in the borg locutus thread

    oh okay. here are more screenshots of it then https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W-_Dhx34hWhy-Vo4CsZgriqKlqPGmXFCTdDgav34Juo/edit?usp=sharing

     

    But if possible you should also find a way to get a look at BKnet. It's 2017 version was lightyears ahead of the locutus of today.

    • Upvote 3

    My thoughts on bots and a plea to blanket ban all third party automation and develop the tools inhouse

    in Orbis Central

    Posted · Edited by Krampus

    I 100% support the idea of an offical, endorsed-by-the-game bot. If we had some sort of standardization like that, it would at the very least level the playing field of alliances who have competent coders vs those who do not. As things stand, micros and generally small scale alliances without coding departments are disadvantaged by the major alliances being able to do wacky stuff. And believe me, they are absolutely amazing tools out there, with debatable legality.  

    Unfortunately, this would not happen in this decade. Alex has very limited time for pnw as it is, seeing as how it takes an entire year to implement the smallest feature and/or push changes live to the api v3, even the notion of Alex putting together a team to have them make a bot sounds overly optimistic at best and downright unfeasable at worst, given his preoccupation with other things.  

    That raises another question. What features would you @Mars want such an "official" bot to have? There are already some great open-source bots out there, like Rift (despite it being written in Python 🤮), that cover all the basic functions already, such that anyone with a little bit of coding knowledge can yoink the code and put together something functional.

    On that note, i would like to point out the unfeasability of enforcing your blanket ban proposal. Even though Alex can take down the api(s), scraping a webpage or submitting a login form is like 5-10 lines of code at max. There is no way for Alex to prevent others from finding a way around, assuming the coder knows what he's doing. At most, you will make it (somewhat/much depending on the situation) harder for people to gather data for graphs and etc. 

    Even if you somehow found a way to ban all such third party automation, what then? As someone else pointed out earlier, there is a big portion of the game who don't want to spend more time than the absolute bare minimum in the game. You might have 5-6 hours a day free to spend on finding targets or doing other stuff, but there are people who don't have that luxury. Alex would run the risk of losing them from his already shrinking/stagnating playerbase, which from his point of view woud be shooting himself in the foot.  

     

    • Upvote 3
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    An Appeal to The Syndicate

    in Orbis Central

    Posted

    17 hours ago, Zed said:

     

    Greetings, friend!

    I was told somehow that a post on the forums was intriguing. Being a bit elderly and occupied, it took me some time to write up a response. I also wanted to respond to other posts here, so I needed some more time. People wanted walls of text on forums! They will receive.

    Speaking of forums, it is my opinion that as of this time, among active FA leaders, the two sharpest and most dynamic are WANA and Keegoz, and they are ahead of the peloton. The short answer as to why is that the both of them are some of the few people who have a long enough history doing this, here and elsewhere, to remember a time before NPOLT. That is really some ancient history, mind you, but for many people in leadership now it is not that long ago. A time when things did get conduced on forums, and a time when, in-character at least, things were quite sharper.

    This is no insult to someone like Ronny. Ronny is certainly sharp enough to know how things operate. I respect Ronny for this; Grumpy is one of the few foreign servers I will entertain being in. There is one difference here with them, however. I will post a few recent comments from the forums here.

     

     

    Clock seems to indicate that they would be a bad matchup for the Grumpy/Guardian axis. The reasons are, more or less, for the same reasons outlined in the other post link. The mechanics of this game are such that dropping from above is usually the way to win at an easier rate, and it seems neither Clock nor Blackwater have the horses in the upper tiers where this matters. So what would Clock do in this 1v1 scenario? After all, the megawhale territory is on much more even ground among Clock and Hollywood.

    I think you will find that t$ has been remarkably consistent on this point. But… why? Frankly, when you have accomplished what we have over the years, you too might run out of peaks to scale. The G/G axis is strong enough mechanically that they do not have to be experts to use it, but insulting them by using a sporting analogy in saying they “have no bag” is simply false. No one believes that G/G are unskilled bloat merchants. And perhaps, maybe now, we should just decide that we will give this line of work a rest.

    I recall the goal of The Company, when it was founded, was to have a project that would rival Grumpy. It was to provide an alternative home for whales who wanted a different project and grouping. And it seems that The Company has grown. I think many of us in t$ were quite upset that such a project went off to do an independent thing. It is not the first time t$ has suffered a splinter of high-ranking nations that left us wondering how to regroup in those tiers. Despite the shifting fortunes of The Company and t$ relative to each other, and the differing positions we find ourselves in now, I still do not believe that we feel enough animosity towards you to have a conflict. It has been argued about good intentions regarding peace, and the bilaterally of that negotiation, all over these forums in the past few days. People may lament the state of CBs in this game. Sometimes I do. I do not know why we would have a reason to fight Clock at this time given that sentiment, and unless I am missing something do not see why you would want us either.

    An astute reader will remember the comment about mini-spheres, and then wonder why I do not seem to have mentioned them all. In fact, I seem to be focusing on only two others besides the one I reside in. Are the other spheres irrelevant? Well if we have active mini-sphere politics, then no. But remember, I have mentioned three prominent FA voices here so far in this thread among active people. But only three. t$ may not have the greatest love affair with several alliances in that grouping, but I imagine we simply do not care at this point to make an effort to come to blows. Even with some of these alliances, notably Ampersand, I imagine we have even made amends over past conflicts.

    I wish Rose and TFP well, but neither play this game in a fashion that seeks bloodlust, or to always be shaking the political game. This is fine; not everyone needs to do this, and both alliances have built communities in and around them that do put on some good behavior and friendly faces to others out there. If everyone did the same thing, people would feel like things were stale. But without this incessant drive, there just will not be a lot of political intrigue with t$ and those alliances. Again, this is fine in my opinion. Moreover, it really is not even warranted anyway. Yes, t$ has been generally alienated from much of the game between NPOLT and now. Yes, the narratives of the game seem to have not lived up to the hopes that many had following that conflict. What is new about that?

    Occasionally in real life (oh no, OOC attack), I teach statistical research methods to undergraduate students. One of my favorite examples to refer to is to talk about the department of Geography at the University of North Carolina. Did you know that in the 1980s, geography majors at UNC had a vastly higher salary upon graduation than any other major? $250k in the 1980s! How in the world did this small major have such earnings? Well, the most famous student of the program was a man named Michael Jeffrey Jordan. MJ, for short, is a very well known and famous geographer. In fact, he is a household name - I bet everyone here has heard of him, unlike most geography majors. But there is a catch - Jordan is really the only member of his class to earn a very high salary approaching that average. No one else is close. I bet he discovered something really great in geography, and that is how he made his money! Well friend if you believe that, then you may call me George Strait, because I have oceanfront property in Arizona with a free golden gate if you will buy it (all of my exes do live in Texas though).

    But when total nation counts say one thing, and the actual scores of those nations say another, basic statistical methods will lead one to some real truth of the matter. I do not need to go further, because the point was made above by others, and again, perhaps we ought to just let it go. t$ and Grumpy collaborate on Green Unity, and together have built the most economically stable color grouping in the game. It is a shame that there are other alliances which parasite off of the work that our alliances do to ensure this economic viability, without doing any of the work to keep and maintain that bonus.

    Does Clockwater need to be a thing just to fight this G/G axis? It could, but like I mentioned before why bother? People do not seem to like endless repeating war cycles. Both Blackwater and Hollywood have publicly stated on these forums in the past few days they prefer not to fight each other. So let us say that we will take each other at our words. Do I trust Grumpy/Guardian, and TKR? Yes, yes I do. I believe, and will go on public record, that their leaders have integrity to do so. I trust most of this game, in fact.

    Partisan has come and gone from our halls multiple times. Others have led, and often but not always (no names called out here!) done so capably. People will have different styles and approaches. As someone who has seen t$ nearly die multiple times, I have some perspective on things. WANA, Justin, Shiho, Adam, Theo, and others (I hope they do not hate me for omitting their names), have all done a remarkable job at helping us along. They all came to us with a different worldview, and a new set of talents. I have been very glad to see them all. Why would I not?

    Statpadding is not what wins coalition wars. Brilliant solo performances are not what win coalition wars. t$ has survived a great many challenges before, and I hope that as long as this game is still worth my time that it will continue to do so. Besides, despite claimed leaks to the contrary, I doubt you will see t$ sue for peace in fewer than ten days because we have not the will to fight a worthy opponent.

    I do not feel like I need to reiterate, again for those who live under a rock, why malal and t$ do not have the most sterling opinion of each other. I do not feel like I need to point out some of the undefendable things that have emerged from this thread either by some posting here; any reasonably neutral party will see them and call them out for what they are.

     

     

     

    Will the Court of Thalmor give us as entertaining of a trial as Peoples Court?

    Video unrelated - clearly not a representation of me:

     

     

    As someone who has been in t$ for awhile, it is my firm (no pun intended) opinion that some of the most recent executives to come through our halls are among the best we have ever had. Shiho and Jess are both superlative military commanders at the height of anything this game has ever seen. Theo and Justin both made major economic victories in this alliance to rival anything from previous eras. WANA is an original founder of t$ who has come back. Greatness still exists here, even by our standards.

    As for Adam, he unfortunately suffered from the same fate as myself, Chaunce, and Sisyphus (and even Manthrax to some extent) - someone naturally from an IA or adjacent department being pressed into FA work. This is, in part, why we like to joke about Lucas being our next FA Executive; the other part is because we find it amusing to consider the possibility. Even then, Adam was a fine IA executive relative to our standards, and I think he is too hard on himself regarding foreign affairs. After all, I do not think he really did any worse overall than I did during my near year in charge.

    Obsidian Order, a collaboration between two of our children, was something I took for granted as a stable thing when I came into power doing FA. I had absolutely zero idea that things were as bad as they were over there before their split. It was not good. They made a major drive to the narrative by joining Pacifica to form IQ. I tried to sign VE to ease world tensions, but that was hijacked and eventually we got quite a war. But I noticed that the peace negotiations from that war, at the time, seemed to be a bit nastier than normal. There was some real bad blood. I was told years later that Curu following that had a real hatred for me and t$, because of how that war turned out. I really wish I knew why.

    I noticed that in the state the game was in at the time, things had become extremely calcified. IQ and their other friends were not going to break apart. The grouping of EMC was also hardened in their resolve. Almost everyone was aligned on one side or another. KT was out in the third space, as were our splinter children Hogwarts and Church of Spaceology, but they did not have the numbers to really pull things apart. I felt personally responsible to do something to try and break this, but I did not have the foggiest idea about what that was.

    So I decided, with the blessing of Chaunce and Jess, to extract us out. We would be the largest alliance to go paperless in quite some time. Our friends in EMC were pretty shocked at this turn of events. I do not remember what IQ thought, but we never had any real serious dialogue in the time we were paperless, and they never really sought us out. I talked to the other unaligned nations, but nothing really progressed too far and I kept some distance there.

    That move did the very short-term thing I intended. The sauna that was world politics at the time cooled significantly. Success! But I did not do more about it. I had no idea what I could do! I did not want to look like I was turning my back on EMC, like others did. I did not want to fight IQ again, and I do not have to explain that. What would have happened if I joined a “third sphere”? Well there was a risk there, but I did not take it.

    I say all this because I believe that much of the perception of t$ now is based on those years as the point of genesis. I believe that I may not have explicitly failed in my time as FA Executive, but I left an impression of an era that felt hollow. When I read the opinions of people here, this is the furthest era they cite as to how they perceive us. That era was under my watch, and it does not appear that the overall perception is very healthy.

    It is not based on a year like 2015 when we mostly fought defensive undermanned wars. People like to talk about how we only fight “dogpiles”, and forget that much of our old mentality is forged from having to be under the gun for that long. It is part of the shock that haunted me from Git Gud Friday and wanting any way out of the madness. It is not also a perception based on the creation of Treasure Island, Ground Zero, or surviving an 8v1 throw the kitchen sink hit during Git Gud Friday. And even then, Partisan took Hogwarts away from us. Manthrax took Church of Spaceology away from us. Jess nearly led another group away, and I even considered a breakaway; either of those would have probably killed t$ at the time. Theo led The Company away years later, and there have been other splinters still. People have left, and so sometimes have ideas.

    I outlined earlier that t$ has crested many mountains. Alliances reinvent themselves constantly if they want to survive for years. Guardian is a prime example of an alliance that has done this. t$ has done the same, and repeatedly. We are still doing it to this day. t$ would not be here today without the new ideas and people from the KT/TGH exodus. I also outlined that there is a seeming dearth of narratives in the game currently. From our perspective, both are true. t$ took a major chance with signing Pacifica. We found out that was a bad chance. But what other real chance is there to take right now? This is an alliance that has a particular pride in being innovative and groundbreaking, and we have done that many times over the years.

    By our standards, I look around the world now and see something relatively flat. If I am being honest, the way things stand now, I see exactly one real powerplay move we could do - maybe a second, but that is a lot harder for me to think about people accepting. Such a move is not my decision to make, as I am not in charge.

    People in this game are still in a shell from NPOLT regarding behavior. If I made some statement like, t$ has a valid cause to Eternal ZI those people wanting us to disband forever in NPOLT that are still playing, and specifically singling us out compared to many others, well people now would be extremely upset. I remember a bygone era where such an action would have been no problem to levy, and no one would have thought twice about any seeming hypocrisy on our end. But times have changed. I will clarify that t$ does not have intent to do this, but I wanted to put out some rather extreme normative behavior from earlier generations as a hypothetical to talk about community mores. Things have been worse before.

    I am glad to see that things did improve, at least a bit, in two years. I would like to continue that. If the rest of this community, writ large, would like to have some normalization of relations with t$ for supposed unnormative behavior, I believe that would be welcomed by us.

     

     

    Nexus of late has had a chance to make moves on their own accord, and not always moves we would steer them towards if we truly drove their policy. TKR has already stated on their own that we did not treat them with disdain; I hope that was true during Quack and I can tell you from firsthand experience it was true in an earlier era. I was thrilled to see BK not take their own advice to disband and join Bee Kay when they had a cleaning out, and was glad to have them back as allies. This statement is just patently untrue.

    The only real time I can remember that we had major problems with an ally was NPO. I do not need to elaborate on that one.

     

    Quoted post edited to reflect my true and factual opinion.

    On a more serious note, Hilmes was an utter and catastrophic failure as our FA Executive. Your tenure was not anywhere in the area of such a disaster, and I personally admire your service to our alliance.

    @KillzBob

    I am once again asking for your financial reading support

    • Haha 7
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