Quality of Life Improvements

[Adrienne]

This thread is a compilation of Quality of Life suggestions from the Game Suggestions subforum mixed with a few of my own from conversations had with fellow players. Feel free to suggest additional ones here in this thread and I can add them to the list. Nothing suggested here should be a massive change to the game (so nothing that would alter game mechanics, for example, no matter how minor) but rather small changes that would make life a little easier for general members and/or gov.

 

Alliance Pages and Management

1. Remove VM nations from alliance stats. Makes the alliance stats a more realistic representation of the alliance as it currently is.
2. Give the ability to sort member/applicant lists by "Last Online".
3. Allow for alliance leaders to add/remove flags from their in-game drop down list.
4. Remove fields from alliance info pages that aren't changed from their default values (e.g. if an alliance's forum link points to https://politicsandwar.com/forums/)
5. Add a PW wiki page field to alliance info pages.
6. Allow for alliances to add in an alliance/community religion.
7. Allow for a bloc treaty type with multiple alliances.
8. Give the ability to leave a "Declare War" warning to applicants like can be done with members.
9. Make a checkbox to remove expired wars in alliance wars.
10. Allow alliance officers to moderate in-game alliance announcements (i.e. lock announcement threads, delete individual posts, etc).
11. Add a drop down to the input box for alliance member changes, to make it easier to input their leader/nation names.
12. Add an info box to the alliance "Join" screen to allow alliances to input/edit information for applicants.
13. Show default tax rates on the alliance "Join" screen and remove or reduce the two day seniority requirement before collecting taxes.
14. Allow alliances to give in-game awards to their members.
15. Allow alliances to view what trade bloc name members have voted for (also suggested here).
16. Have a "history" page on the alliance page to view alliance score history breakdown and growth over time.

 

Alliance Bank Management

1. Allow for alliance tax brackets to be changed in bulk (allow for multiple members to be added to a bracket at once).
2. Allow for alliance leadership to set tax brackets for an arbitrary range of city counts. Instead of "All 20 city nations" allow for the input of a range like "All nations with 15-20 cities".
3. Fix the top line of the WC/bank pages to allow the headers to still be read as you scroll down.
4. On the alliance bank page, show the total income over the last turn/day to the alliance bank.
   1. Bonus points if it shows you the last few turns/days for comparison
   2. Double bonus points if there's one of those fancy graphs that show how your income has varied over time.
5. Show the current per turn/day value of a tax rate on a given nation when you're selecting a tax bracket for them, will help make educated decisions regarding the impact a particular tax bracket might have on members.
6. Split up the resource tax rate by individual resource instead of having it put collectively (also suggested here).
7. Allow alliances to embargo other alliances (but give members the option to opt out of them).
8. Allow for more than 50 results/page to be shown on the bank activity page.
9. Be able to sort and/or search alliance bank activity (also suggested here).
10. Add raw resources to the warchest view on the control panel in-game (already viewable in the bank api).
11. Allow for the "$" and commas to be ignored when inputting values and/or allow for k,m,b to be used to send cash/resources (i.e. 1m instead of 1000000 to send 1 million food). (Also applies to resources/trading)
12. Replace color based tax exemptions with activity based tax exemptions.
13. Create a "Select All" button to autofill bank contents into the withdrawal fields for easy offshoring.
14. Allow alliances to have a drop down of custom transaction notes.
15. Remove applicants/former members from tax bracket lists (bug).
16. Allow officers to search to find out what tax bracket a member is on.
17. Add a bank withdrawal confirmation screen (see post here for examples).

 

War Screens and Battle Simulators

1. Add military units for both you and your opponents to the war screen so that you don't need to have endless tabs open to decide in what order to attack opponents or to compare your military against theirs.
2. Add average infra/city to the declaration page as this information helps players decide between war types.
3. After moving off beige, default to alliance color rather than gray (save gray for inactive nations rather than active fighters).
4. Add a confirmation screen/checkbox before offering/accepting peace.
5. Similarly to the copy spy results option that was just added, create a "copy attack results" option for standard war attacks as well for ease of coordination.
6. For the battle simulator, don't automatically refresh the options in between runs. It makes it difficult for people to run multiple simulations in a row to get an average. Instead, maybe include a "reset" button so people can decide when they want to clear it.
7. In the war screen changes; an option to simulate ground/air/naval could also be given. Say a check box above the dropdown which says Simulate. This would simulate an attack with your current military versus the opponents current military without manually typing everything in.
8. Increase character limit for war declaration messages.
9. Add a confirmation screen/checkbox before purchasing military.
10. On the war attack page, update max units destroyed figures based on the number of units to be sent out field. Also, add in fields for amount of gas/munitions used with that selected number of units.
11. Add icons for ID/VDS to the active wars screen.
12. Make it easier to tell if you're not able to declare war on someone before you hit declare war.
13. Add units killed from spies to totals on war info pages (or, alternatively, to unit kills on the nation page).
14. Allow nations to set a custom default message.
15. Make the war damage tables more intuitive (see post here for examples).
16. Simplify buying/selling military units:
    • When buying or selling military units, provide a screen showing how many barracks/factories/hangars/drydocks you'll need averaged per city to support whatever amount you're attempting to buy or sell to. Or provide an option to buy or sell to X barracks/factories/hangars/drydocks per city. So if you're coming off a war, have an option where you can sell down tanks to whatever will leave you with 3 factories per city worth of tanks, instead of leaving the player to do the math.
    • Use the @ feature to more easily buy/sell down military to the preferred level
17. Make war results clearer on alliance war pages by showing the result of the participating alliance member (see post here for example).

 

Infrastructure, Land, and Improvements

1. For the bulk import feature, have the default be to all cities but give the option to select which cities to import to. Cities may have differing infra levels/improvement slots, especially during war, or people may want different builds for different cities - but still across multiple cities - so allowing them to choose which cities the import applies to would make things easier (suggested here, here, and here as well).
2. For the "expected daily profit per improvement" line on resource improvements, it appears that after buying/stacking improvements for the bonus, it factors that bonus into the "expected daily profit" figure and inflates it as compared to the other possible improvements. This makes it hard to compare and see if another resource may be better.
3. Allow for improvement numbers to be typed in and submitted instead of or in addition to using the +/- buttons on the city improvement pages (also suggested here).
4. Allow for nations to toggle between a wartime build and a peacetime build they set up.

 

Resources and Trading

1. Allow alliance leadership with bank perms to buy and sell from the market directly instead of having to transfer money/resources to their nation first (also suggested here).
2. Allow nations to trade resources (i.e. steel for aluminum) with and send cash offers to one another.
3. Allow for the site to be able to read commas (and currency symbols) when inputting values (nation score, money, resource amounts, etc).
4. Unstack the trading graphs here in order to more easily visualize trends of individual resources over time.
5. Instead of having the average prices scroll on the market page, keep them static.
6. Allow for a confirmation screen/checkbox on the market before purchasing open trade offers.
7. Allow for the usage of the @ feature when depositing to the alliance bank or making trades.
8. Increase trading limit to 10m.
9. Add "Date Accepted" to the sorting filters (separate from "Date Offered") and set it to the default for "My Offers".
10. Move "Current Top Offers" on the "Create Offer" screen to the left of the form, "Sell Offers" top, "Buy Offers below (dropped below for a mobile) and by default it be displayed.
11. Allow players to set timers on embargos.
12. Give an option to "hide embargoed offers".
13. On the "Create Offer" page, show how much of the selected resource you have, to make things easier on mobile players.
14. Only show trade pop-up if posting more than 1 stdev from average PPU. An alternative suggestion can be found here.
15. Re-separate alliance and global trade markets and remove captcha from alliance trade markets (also suggested here). Alternatively, allow in settings to combine or separate these markets.
16. Restrict it so that you cannot place offers (in a resource) more than the amount of resources you have. If a seller/buyer no longer has the required funds to back a trade, remove it from the trade page.
17. Merge functionality of the buy/sell page into the create offer page (read post here for more explanation).

 

Site Navigation and Alliance/Nation Search Pages

1. Be able to search nations in multiple alliances. (I'd personally suggest an alphabetized drop down menu here instead with the ability to select multiple options rather than having players type in alliance names.)
2. Show for how many more turns/days a nation is in beige for on the nation search list.
3. Allow for bounties to be sorted.
4. Separate the treasure/color bloc pages from the leaderboards to make them easier to get to.
5. Turn the current color bloc names in the Color Trade Bloc Leaderboard into links to each color bloc voting page
6. Turn the number of nations column in the Color Trade Bloc Leaderboard into a series of links to all nations on each color (e.g. the number of nations on olive should link here).
7. Put a link to the game graphs and the stat tracker on the navigation bar (and fix the stat tracker).
8. Allow for a search by discord handle.
9. Allow players to filter alliances by GDP.
10. Categorize/organize projects on the Projects page.

 

Individual Nations

1. Allow for players to set a signature for their in-game messages.
2. Allow for different types of embargoes: baseball, market buy, and market sell.
3. Show custom images on internal pages.
4. Allow for the ability to sort in-game messages.
5. Allow players to delete ads from their account page.
6. Add the option to deposit resources in another alliance bank, like you can your own.
7. Add in new government types (suggestion 1, suggestion 2, suggestion 3).
8. Reduce the cost of resetting city/project timers in accordance with the amount of time left on the timer (i.e. the timer is for 120 turns, reduce by 1 credit every time the timer drops by 30 turns).
9. Make a transaction ledger for alliance history and/or allow for a manual input of alliance seniority with leadership approval.
10. Expand nation factbooks. Additional suggestions here.
11. Show pre-tax net revenue.
12. Remove base score from the nation score formula.
13. Add expected profit for factories like we have for mines.

 

Nation Pages/Stats

1. Add a PW wiki page field to nation info pages.
2. Allow nations to see a list of their current commendations/denouncements.
3. Double the National Motto character limit (and allow characters with accent marks).
4. Give option in settings to hide custom nation descriptions by default. Alternatively, have a "Hide nation description" button on all nation pages that people can toggle on/off (also suggested here). 
   • A variation of this was previously implemented but is broken and in need of a suitable fix.
5. Add Militarization Level to nation pages.
6. Highlight unpowered cities in red so they can be quickly identified.
7. Nation stats additions:
   • Number of people killed in nuclear strikes
   • Total Damage
   • Nukes/missiles blocked

 

Notifications System (Read post here)

1. Group unread notifications of the same type and date.
2. Separate the date and time into separate columns (add another column for time).
3. Change the date format to day and month name instead, e.g. "14 April".
4. Change the time format to 24 hour time, e.g. "23:44" instead of "11:44 pm".
5. Remove the superfluous explanation field at the top of the notification page to reclaim more vertical space.
6. The general format of grouped notifications would consist of 3 columns; date, time, description.
7. The initial description for grouped notifications should contain appropriate links on the keywords embargoed, trade, war, aided, and achievements.
8. Some changes to the way notifications are formatted (see post).
9. Unread grouped notifications are ordered by their last event notification time.

 

Notifications

1. Create a notification for when wars expire.
2. Allow for an alert when you run out of a resource you use for production/upkeep.
3. Notify players when their tax bracket is changed.
4. Get a notification when an enemy's blockade/superiority is removed.
5. Create a page to show results of espionage operations.
6. Add the note accompanying alliance bank transfers to the notification when receiving funds. Also, clean up the notification message to remove resource sent values of 0.
7. Allow players to toggle/filter notification categories based on what's important to them.
8. When you get a notification for a pending trade, include a link to accept/reject it.

 

Baseball

1. Allow for maxing out player stats with a new button or input a number into quickly to specify an upgrade number.
2. Allow for a custom stadium image(/jersey) same as the already existent custom team logo, as a VIP feature.
3. Auto-hide the blow-by-blow table that shows how the game went.
4. Allow for an option to keep baseball player names static so they don't reset on retirement.

 

API & keys

1. Add treasures to the Nation API.
2. Add treaties to the API (Also here).
3. Add nation militarization level to the Nation(s) API.
4. Don't require payment/credits to change API key.
5. Allow people to transfer API calls to others instead of sharing API keys.

 

Miscellaneous/General Ease

1. Remove notifications number from sidebar when looking at the notifications page instead of after.
2. Move notifications/messages to the top bar.
3. Send an automated email to players with nations emerging from vacation mode after an extended period of time.
4. Make usage of Nation vs Leader name consistent.
5. Make resource order consistent.
6. Language change to turn change message.
7. Allow for the treaty web to be expanded upon request past the Top 50 (suggestion 1, suggestion 2, suggestion 3, suggestion 4).
8. Provide a notification if a country you're warring against gets deleted.
9. Allow bounties to be filtered.
10. Give a 2FA log in option.
11. Randomize default color bloc option for new/unaffiliated nations.
12. Add conversions to real time behind the number of turns (see post here for examples).
13. People within the Admin Alliance shouldn't be counted towards the leaderboards.
14. Link forum accounts dynamically with nation ID to minimize the issue of mismatched nation/leader names.
15. Introduce a transparent theme (see post here for example).
16. Separate out memorialized nations of PnW players who have passed from VM nations.

 

Completed Suggestions

Spoiler

1. Change the "member score distribution" chart on alliance pages to a "member city distribution" chart. Cities are a more useful at-a-glance metric than score for most people when breaking down an alliance by members.
2. Add a timeline link for wars you're in to the war screen (under the "date/type" column) instead of leaving it on the drop down menu. This makes it easier to view the page and prevents accidental peace offerings.
3. Get rid of decimals from infra. Makes rebuilding a pain in the butt. Either just round up or down from infra damages. Alternatively, change how to buy infra from "add X number of infra" to "reach X level of infra" so if you have to buy from 524.16 to 1000, you put 1000 instead of 475.84.
4. Bulk Buy infra to a certain level instead of having to do it individually for each city. Alternatively, allow the bulk import feature to purchase infrastructure if the infra is lower than the amount required for the improvements.
5. Allow for a confirmation screen/checkbox on the market before posting trades.
6. Set the "Create Offer" default resource type to match the resource of the originating page (i.e. if a player clicks Create Offer from a screen that was filtering on iron, then the default resource should be iron instead of food).
7. Add the "Back a Page" and "Forward a Page" arrows that are already at the top of all list pages to bottom of all list pages as well (nations, alliances, trades, etc.)
8. Add an indicator next to a nation on the nation search list if they're in VM and include for how many more turns/days.
9. Add city number to the nation search list and allow for sorting by city count.
10. Change the objectives tab to "casino" once all the objectives have been completed. (Casino died)
11. Have unread messages show up at the top of the inbox.
12. Receive a notification if a treasure spawns in your nation.
13. Allow for players to link their forums/discord usernames to their nation page, either as manual input fields or via an (automated) verification system.
14. Institute a "report nation" form/button in-game instead of on the forums/via DMs.
15. Create a mass land purchase feature.
16. Update the battle sims to reflect the mechanic changes.
17. Save custom VIP images so that players don't have to redo them if their VIP runs out.
18. Have the monthly donation timer reset automatically.
19. Reduce Politics & Snore time during turn changes.
20. For the mass infra purchase feature, have the default be to all cities but give the option to select which cities to import to.
21. Don't have the mass infra purchase feature sell off infrastructure.
22. Allow for alliance gov/leaders to see what their members have set their daily update timezones to (via the alliance control panel/opsec alliance API).
23. Move expired treaties to an archive tab.
24. Show how long nations still have on beige.
25. Get rid of decimals from resources. Keeping everything to even numbers just makes it easier to deal with.
26. More customizable alliance permissions.
27. Allow nations to trade treasures directly between each other.
28. Update the Helpful Tools to reflect Urban Planning and Advanced Urban Planning.
29. Increase the leaderboards from top 10 to top 100. Alternatively, include all nations in the leaderboards (suggested filters, upon talking more with Roberts: active, non-VM players, perhaps also with a filter to exclude the brand new nations that only logged in once/haven't built up anything).
30. Merge alliance trade page with global trades page to encourage greater use.
31. Remove alliance descriptions from all alliances pages except the default "Information" page (e.g. don't load custom images or text for alliance control panels, banks, member lists, etc.). Alternatively, allow this to be toggled off/on in settings.
32. Add tax records to the API.
33. Accessibility improvement: don't require interaction with a map for players to switch continents as blind players cannot use screen-reading software with this feature.

 

To be sorted:

Spoiler

 

Last updated 1/15/2023

Edited January 16, 2023 by Adrienne

[Dio Brando]

Only you. ❤️

All these are perfectly sensible ease-of-life improvements, and the easy-to-read format in which they have been presented only makes the task easier for the admin. Full support (and kudos for compiling these!)

Edited May 8, 2019 by Dio Brando

[PackAnimal]

I don't think anyone can say that any in that list aren't a positive change, my full support to all those changes @Alex

[丂ħ̧i̧₣ɫ̵γ͘ ̶™]

This is the first time I upvote a Nizam post.

Well done.

[GoldyHammer]

Thanks for Niz for taking the time to make this list and presenting it in such a clear way. I'm really pleased to see that the feedback so far is positive and people support these changes

[Ivan Ivanov]

20 hours ago, Nizam Adrienne said:

 

1. Change the objectives tab to "casino" once all the objectives have been completed.
2. Allow for bounties to be sorted.

Found mine!

Seriously, though, thank you for the compile. I can’t imagine the amount of stress taken off of Alex’s shoulders now that he doesn’t have to look through each suggestion.

[The Mad Titan]

Only change I would have would be to have cities and score, rather than one or another. Score is pretty important for wars so having both is the best of both worlds.

[Adrienne]

2 hours ago, The Mad Titan said:

Only change I would have would be to have cities and score, rather than one or another. Score is pretty important for wars so having both is the best of both worlds.

Which score chart do you mean? I agree that the alliance score chart is useful and wasn't proposing that disappear. But the new members score chart doesn't seem too useful and was thinking having a city tiering chart would be a better alternative.

[The Mad Titan]

23 minutes ago, Nizam Adrienne said:

Which score chart do you mean? I agree that the alliance score chart is useful and wasn't proposing that disappear. But the new members score chart doesn't seem too useful and was thinking having a city tiering chart would be a better alternative.

Oh yes I agree with that completely. I thought you meant when looking at members it would say city. My mistake. 

Then I guess my contribution that when looking at an alliances members it has score and city. Front alliance page city is a better fit. 

Edited May 9, 2019 by The Mad Titan

[Adrienne]

1 hour ago, The Mad Titan said:

Oh yes I agree with that completely. I thought you meant when looking at members it would say city. My mistake. 

Then I guess my contribution that when looking at an alliances members it has score and city. Front alliance page city is a better fit. 

Okay, cool. I'll try and rewrite that and make it a little clearer. For the city thing, we were proposing having that show on the nation search feature:

On 5/8/2019 at 2:03 PM, Nizam Adrienne said:

Site Navigation and Nation Search Pages

8. Add city number to the nation search list.

Would that would cover when you go to look at alliance members too? (Legit question, want to make sure I've got it straight)

 

Also, changed the following to include currency:

On 5/8/2019 at 2:03 PM, Nizam Adrienne said:

Site Navigation and Nation Search Pages

5. Allow for the site to be able to read commas (and currency symbols) when inputting values (nation score, money, resource amounts, etc).

Edited May 9, 2019 by Nizam Adrienne

[Prefontaine]

There's a lot on here. Would you mind going through each section at pull out what you think is the most important 1 or 2 from each area? I know lots of these are small changes, but still putting them all on a list at once when I bring it to Sheepy might scare the wool off of him. 

 

Thanks for your effort.

[Adrienne]

13 minutes ago, Prefontaine said:

There's a lot on here. Would you mind going through each section at pull out what you think is the most important 1 or 2 from each area? I know lots of these are small changes, but still putting them all on a list at once when I bring it to Sheepy might scare the wool off of him. 

 

Thanks for your effort.

Sure, I can try and do that tonight.

Edit: Just went ahead and did it. Put them in bold.

Edited May 9, 2019 by Nizam Adrienne

[Adrienne]

On 5/8/2019 at 2:03 PM, Nizam Adrienne said:

Infrastructure, Improvements, Resources, and Trading

8. Unstack the trading graphs here in order to more easily visualize trends of individual resources over time.

9. For the "expected daily profit per improvement" line on resource improvements, it appears that after buying/stacking improvements for the bonus, it factors that bonus into the "expected daily profit" figure and inflates it as compared to the other possible improvements. This makes it hard to compare and see if another resource may be better.

^ Added these two in as well.

[Prefontaine]

3 hours ago, Nizam Adrienne said:

Sure, I can try and do that tonight.

Edit: Just went ahead and did it. Put them in bold.

[Ivan Ivanov]

*Carefully, he’s a hero*

[katashimon13]

can we have like all of these and pai updates b4 more gameplay changes por favor

p.s. i had a spreadsheet to do most of the first category if u needs xP
by most i mean like half at best

rawr

[Adrienne]

@Alex, it's been a couple months and there's not been any response here. I just want to make sure these things aren't forgotten because, while there are a lot of suggestions here, most shouldn't take long to implement and would improve the game quite a bit in more subtle ways.

[katashimon13]

we got the buy up to infra one...

im waiting on this one the most ?

rawr 

[ForgotPants]

In the war screen changes; an option to simulate ground/air/naval could also be given. Say a check box above the dropdown which says Simulate. This would simulate an attack with your current military versus the opponents current military without manually typing everything in.

[Adrienne]

22 hours ago, katashimon13 said:

we got the buy up to infra one...

im waiting on this one the most ?

rawr 

I like that one too. I think I didn't include it here because I thought it might take more time but maybe it wouldn't be too bad. Added.

9 hours ago, ForgotPants said:

In the war screen changes; an option to simulate ground/air/naval could also be given. Say a check box above the dropdown which says Simulate. This would simulate an attack with your current military versus the opponents current military without manually typing everything in.

Added.

[katashimon13]

bump

rawr

[katashimon13]

i have risen for bumpy goodness

in my skimming of the suggestion board to find this thread... i saw a bunch of repeat suggestions that we had already compiled within this thread

see u in a month or four @Alex

rawr

[Micchan]

In the "find nations in your war range" ability to select only nations from certain alliances or exclude nations from certain alliances

Also should be automatic that nations from your alliance don't show up

 

Button to hide custom description of other player nations

 

Show military units at the top of the page

Something like this

Edited November 7, 2019 by Micchan

[katashimon13]

moar bumps @Alex
p.s. @Princess Adrienne should updoot the xmas avvy
p.p.s. also update op plz
p.p.p.s hi @Ripperand @Partisan

rawr

[Adrienne]

4 hours ago, katashimon13 said:

moar bumps @Alex
p.s. @Princess Adrienne should updoot the xmas avvy
p.p.s. also update op plz
p.p.p.s hi @Ripperand @Partisan

rawr

maybe i like my christmas avvy...