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New Players Joining Alliances


Guest Frawley
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Guest Frawley

This idea was floated on the Great Job Radio show between a number of participants.

1. New players who join the game will only be allowed to join alliances within the top X% of the game, a number that makes sense and is probably equivalent to the top 30 at this point.
2. New players who joined with an invite code can join the alliance that invited them
3. This restriction lasts for 14 or 30 days.

Benefits:
1. New players join established community members with guides, structures and political engagement, they learn the ropes from these alliances and can then go out into the micro world if they choose too.
2. Less chance of new players joining dead micros with a cool sounding name or structure, finding a dead husk, never getting interested in P&W and leaving.
3. Most top tier alliances buy new nations cities up to a certain limit (current average seems to be 10), this ideally will put more players in the world who are playing in competitive ranges, where wars tend to be more enjoyable (i.e. greater retention)

Exceptions: It was raised in the P&W channel that there have been successful invasions of games by large groups from elsewhere, notably Mensa HQ and NPO, I don't think it would be too much stress for an exceptions process on the forums to created to cater for these relatively rare events.

Edited by Frawley
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I 100% support a motion of this nature.

In paradisum deducant te Angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Ierusalem.
Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cüm Lazaro quondam paupere æternam habeas requiem.

 

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Maybe we can do it for the duration of the biege timer, 14 days? The protection of the biege allows them to make the most of that time and make informed decisions as they are reading through the top alliance's application processes. This also addresses the issues of noobs joining micros and leaving biege to get raided. 

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I am not a member of Guardian p&w

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7 minutes ago, Frawley said:

3. This restriction lasts for 30 or 45 days.

2 minutes ago, Abbas Mehdi said:

Maybe we can do it for the duration of the biege timer, 14 days? The protection of the biege allows them to make the most of that time and make informed decisions as they are reading through the top alliance's application processes. This also addresses the issues of noobs joining micros and leaving biege to get raided.  

The time interval should be as long as it takes most players to go inactive after creating a nation. The 14-day beige timer is a good starting point, but if a typical new player (who doesn't go inactive) waits longer than 14 days before joining an alliance, it should be longer. Does anyone have data on this?

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This kills grassroots growth of micros, but at the same time micros kill enjoyment of the game for hundreds of new nations so I'm not sure how to feel about it.

30 or 45 days is certainly way too long though. 14 or 21 is probably better.

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I support this. I feel the range is up to discussion but micros hurt the game by a absorbing a large number of players, then said players leaving after the micro can’t support them militarily, economically, or activity wise. For those that complain this kills micros, that’s not a bad thing. There are already 240 alliances on Orbis, with maybe 15% being relevant and actually having a positive affect on the game. 

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13 hours ago, Verin said:

I 0 percent support this notion, cause maybe new players wanna play the game with who and how they want to play it.

but whats my opinion matter, I don't *actually* play anymore, I just exist to troll raiders and be obnoxious.

^this

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Nebthet Seshat Asetneferu-Meritra Satsekhem Netjeretkhau

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28 minutes ago, Micchan said:

Sorry but players should be able to play the game in any way they want, this is a terrible idea

While 100% true, the issue is one of ignorance. Even if people have access to the top alliances or really solid micros with awesome econ/war/wtf guides and their gameplay would be enriched greatly, which they do, if they just join some dead-ass crap micro their gameplay will be ruined and they'll never even know that better alliances even existed. And then they never really had a choice, since they didn't know their options.

The only real issue I have with this suggestion is that it precludes the possibility of decent micros that have all the guides and competence, but simply don't have the score at the moment. That could really cause a major unstable equilibrium problem where any alliance that's competent but rolled can't recruit, leaving their numbers dwindled and unable to get ahead since all the new recruits are being taken up my mass-recruitment alliances. For that reason, I withhold my upvote to the OP.

Edited by Sir Scarfalot
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6 minutes ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

While 100% true, the issue is one of ignorance. Even if people have access to the top alliances or really solid micros with awesome econ/war/wtf guides and their gameplay would be enriched greatly, which they do, if they just join some dead-ass crap micro their gameplay will be ruined and they'll never even know that better alliances even existed. And then they never really had a choice, since they didn't know their options.

The only real issue I have with this suggestion is that it precludes the possibility of decent micros that have all the guides and competence, but simply don't have the score at the moment. That could really cause a major unstable equilibrium problem where any alliance that's competent but rolled can't recruit, leaving their numbers dwindled and unable to get ahead since all the new recruits are being taken up my mass-recruitment alliances. For that reason, I withhold my upvote to the OP.

I agree that a new player should join a good alliance to learn the game but forcing them to do it is wrong, so the best solution is to inform them about this in the tutorial or with some automatic message but that's all

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4 minutes ago, Micchan said:

I agree that a new player should join a good alliance to learn the game but forcing them to do it is wrong, so the best solution is to inform them about this in the tutorial or with some automatic message but that's all

I think maybe we should go one step further, and prevent unsolicited in-game messages from being sent to players in their first week. They can still go through the objectives, one of which is to look at the alliance recruitment advertisements, and from there they can send messages TO players, who can of course then respond.

Frankly I just hate the recruitment bots and their "we protect you, we give you loads of money" sales pitch that doesn't mention 90% of what takers are getting into.

Edited by Sir Scarfalot
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I disagree with this, this would make it very hard to grow anyone outside of top 30 (TCW, WTF, ODN, TRF, Guardian, ect) as it would make their sole form of growth being poaching. {Yes I realize TCW is not normally outside of top 30, but it would push out things like BoC or Camelot} finally everyone alliance is small at some point, if you can't recruit without being in top 30 you won't ever make it to top 30, it would just solidify the stronger alliances and make new growth much more difficult.

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On 1/12/2019 at 4:06 AM, The Mad Titan said:

I support this. I feel the range is up to discussion but micros hurt the game by a absorbing a large number of players, then said players leaving after the micro can’t support them militarily, economically, or activity wise. For those that complain this kills micros, that’s not a bad thing. There are already 240 alliances on Orbis, with maybe 15% being relevant and actually having a positive affect on the game. 

I find this statement rich coming from you. 

Not only are you guys talking about stacking the chips in favor of people who already have an advantage, but you've got one of the worst offenders of Protectorate spam saying it's necessary?

Komando is a dead alliance by the looks of it, Defcon 1 might as well be dead for all it's existence matters to anyone, same with Yakuza, goon squad is a wannabe Oblivion with none of the reputation or utility.

Solar Knights is rank 16 and clearly doesn't need your protection, and Animation Domination thinks itself strong enough to protect others and also clearly doesn't need you.

Your Allies are just as bad and the other top alliances aren't any better. You know what's even worse than the number of shitty micros? The number of them that are being protected either by you or by people you're still protecting despite them being organized and strong enough to protect others. 

Start by doing your part. There's good reason to drop every single alliance I named. If they die from that, oh well. If everyone else gets a clue and follows suit just send them to me, I'd love more targets down here to burn to the ground without worrying about NPO coming after me for burning some backwater nobody's down.

I'd love to cleanup the micros for you but you all protect them one way or another, and now you want to deny me the manpower to even do it lol

Edited by Akuryo
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Or we could just unite together in the name of wiping out hazardous micros, yeah? Maybe stop protecting them while we're at it, yeah?

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I have no idea what I'm doing but that doesn't stop me from doing it.

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On 1/18/2019 at 9:26 AM, Akuryo said:

Start by doing your part. There's good reason to drop every single alliance I named. If they die from that, oh well. If everyone else gets a clue and follows suit just send them to me, I'd love more targets down here to burn to the ground without worrying about NPO coming after me for burning some backwater nobody's down.

I'd love to cleanup the micros for you but you all protect them one way or another, and now you want to deny me the manpower to even do it lol

You understand burning existing micros to the ground isn't a good way to retain players, right? The point of the suggestion wasn't to say there can't be micros; it was that they need to be comprised of a critical mass of experienced players to succeed. If the ranking restriction is unpalatable, maybe a restriction on the number of players or the score of an alliance before new players are allowed to join?

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5 hours ago, Edward I said:

You understand burning existing micros to the ground isn't a good way to retain players, right? The point of the suggestion wasn't to say there can't be micros; it was that they need to be comprised of a critical mass of experienced players to succeed. If the ranking restriction is unpalatable, maybe a restriction on the number of players or the score of an alliance before new players are allowed to join?

I don't just burn them to the ground, i give them an option first. When they refuse; and they always do - then i burn them ground. Just ask Lanchester how many opportunities they had.

What score would that be? I popped into my alliance at around 3,000 score. A friend from nationstates made a new nation shortly before that and jumped right in. Should that have prevented? Why should it have been? Certainly i'm roughly 634,519 times more qualified than your average micro leader. If the score was even 10,000 i wouldn't have made it, that's because my experienced members are trapped in warring alliances. Even if they weren't and it was set 15 - still wouldn't have made it. You would've given new members to TCE weeks before it blew itself apart instead of the person who ripped all the idiotic splinters of it to shreds. Except, i wouldn't have been able to, since only one of my 10-11 cities who did that (and who i built there myself), was old enough to join with these restrictions. 

Logically you'd think, giving them a better alternative should work! Surely, i mean there's two right now. You got me and you got samohT. Yet even counting the latters applicants, he's 2/3 the size of Illuminati, which says its 300 days old but actually only just woke again like 3 weeks ago. I bet i do more than Illuminati at the very least to get new people to. My banner ad is, supposedly, doing quite excellently, we have an alright recruitment bot going thats brought a couple people in, our newest member now spams our ad in the discord, and i (come at me you little micro shits) quite happily march right over to these shitty micros, rather frequently, and try to poach them.

It turns out you can't very effectively poach people to a better alliance when they have no clue what that even means. They don't know their micro is bad, or how its bad, me saying its bad and saying i know better and listing all the things ive done to prove it means nothing. I may as well be speaking another language to them. Their whole world is that little micro and i roll up to their doorstep shitting on it infront of them, they just see me as some twirly mustachioed villain. If you talk to their leaders like Windseeker does, you'll find every last one has some prideful optimism that they'll ever be anything better than a black hole.

That's why i've come to the conclusion they're better off being blasted to the ground. Lanchester a good example, i was ever only going to get 1 round. They have a protector now, of course, and they were gonna get 6 days of beige and it only takes 30 seconds to get one with any of these protectorate spam alliances. That ignoring that because i can't get any manpower (apparently a global war this size is hilariously damaging to recruitment efforts, wish id known that before), means most of them aren't even really in my range anymore. 

Now you could go back to your original plan after this, but then you just kill all hopes of new alliances, unless they're like one out of many i hear coming post war that has enough people joining start up to be well and truly beyond any limitations you'd set. Sadly, i and samohT as i'm told, aren't the most social and drawing people in the world. I planned to start this alliance with 4-5 friends, only 3 could make it. If i'm lucky as all hell, post-war i'll get an extra half-dozen or so ontop of the 2 im expecting because their plans changed.

 

You've narrowed your choices down to kill all startups or kill 90% of new players. Let me offer an alternative. The community - as it seems far more concerned than the game admin about this who we all lament is lazy and does nothing but minimal work band-aid fixes - will organize itself to create the tutorial it actually wants for the game. We're far more qualified for it anyway, our section on alliances could not only explain what they are and what they do, but even tell them what questions they should ask and things to look out for when reading those messages and looking at those pages. 

If Alex made the new tutorial as we wish, 85% of us would hate it and scream at him anyway. If we do it our damned selves it's much more likely to be reflective of the way the game actually works rather than the idealistic picture of one university student in India right now. I'd do it myself, but you MAY have noticed, i'm just a tad on the rambly side, and i don't foresee that going so well.

Edited by Akuryo
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There does need to be a tutorial that explains how to play in terms of the actual meta. The issue however is, plenty of people join alliances they know can provide benefits when they are interested in the benefits. There were several top ten alliances that advertised extensive grants and such.  The ones who don't aren't necessarily doing so because they think  they can get an equal value in a smaller alliance. They want something where it feels more personal to them. The meta has a very limited appeal despite having a cult following and very few people will be interested in the inside baseball.

However, all the game has to offer is the political meta, raiding, wars that can seem pointless or just accumulation of stuff.  Epi had it right on the mark that the requirements to get into a serious alliance are usually higher and include installing a secondary app and following rules and waiting to be useful. For most people there's a stress of obligation vs fun trade off and the game doesn't offer a lot of fun for people who as aren't interested in being part of the player-created meta so they aren't willing to take on the stress of playing seriously especially when they're expected to go through an application process for a game as the first thing they do.  There were a lot of decent ideas in Statekraft and it would be good if some of them could be incorporated here or something else that gives an added dimension to the game if people want newer players to have a stake in playing seriously.

Edited by Roquentin
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Meanwhile, Typhon has more or less doubled its member count since the war began.


In the past, I've met certain players in IQ who have also been staunchly against micros, but I'd consider the perspective self-serving. Things like NPO and BK are mass alliances, true, and they often do provide better retention than the fleet full of micros that accompanies this game. However, most alliances aren't like, say, NPO, which has shown the ability to persist for more than a decade across multiple games. Most alliances tend to eventually stagnate and break apart, with many members just quitting the game. Without new alliances forming, alliances will just stagnate, merge, and/or die, and the game will eventually die with it.

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This is a terrible idea and one that completely takes a big portion of the game away for players. Forcing people to join certain alliances only stagnates their interest further than this game already does naturally. Too many people blame mircos for the death of another game when it was the death of politics that killed it. 

Here is the thing, in my terrible little mirco I've actually spent a fair chunk of time engaging players,  who had little desire to use a secondary, trying to entice them into the bigger world they play in. With some success I might add. When I joined this game I went right into a Top Alliance. That was overwhelming since I knew next to no one and felt more of a number than anything. After sometime there I got bored of reading guides and sitting around that I started thinking about walking away from the game. That's when I realized that in order to have fun I'd have to forge my own path so I hooked up with old friend who introduced me to Gov life in PNW. While in Gov I dealt with some terrible mirco drama but realised it was making this boring game a hell of a lot more interesting for me. 

So when I was asked to help a friend make this terrible mirco I jumped on board with the idea that if I actually engaged players who are new in a meaningful way that they will want to play this longer and add to the community. So the small more personal environment might be a great way to get players more involved in the game. 

I understand that so many of you want to blame mircos for players quitting out when there are many reasons why. Things like how alliances don't do anything other than existing, wars that last 3 months too long, the long peace in between wars, the lack of drama and such. A game is supposed to be entertaining so let's make it that.

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FORMER LEADER OF COTL. PLEASE GROW INTERNALLY

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