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Alliance Creation Restrictions


Zed
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1 hour ago, Vero said:

f leaked e404 gov chan and personal accounts of e404 gov itself is anything to go by. I’d say worry about your own recruitment processes before ours.

idc. but i'm not the one asking for ridiculous changes to the game

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4 hours ago, Rossiya said:

Some people don't want to climb through ladders of snot in every game they play.

Then play candy crush and not a political simulator? 

I mean this is pretty easy to figure out. Most of the games playerbase is just like you said and casual. You know what they do? They find a nice established alliance, like the community, and settle down in it. Like a sensible person who doesn't want to put forth alot of effort, they aim for achievable and realistic goals.

People who want to be casual and run an alliance are guaranteed to fail, and guaranteed to drag new players to the abyss with them because, as @Zephyr said, they typically have no recruitment standards aside from hitting the apply button. A fact that is part of the problem. Even as a micro I upheld higher recruitment standards than some years old established alliances do. 

This isn't the only reply I've read in this thread either that comes off as "waahhh too hard don't wanna work for that, please make it easier for me" like, you do understand you're talking about top 3 most difficult things to do in the entire game right? It's the equivalent of starting a small business with no idea how to run one and then demanding the government empty it's pocket to keep you open. That's nonsense.

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14 hours ago, Uncle Iroh said:

So why make them follow a specific path, what if they don't like your ways of doing things? Top major alliances are pretty much the same thing just a different theme. It shouldn't be a numbers game. It should just be a game where people play like they want. Wanna be a 5 city farmer go for it. Wanna be a 30 city raider cool. What's the point if having more active and involved players if all it is rinse and repeat the same thing every year. God forbid someone wants a little spice in their life.

 

One of the things I wanted to refer to in the original post, and some of my other commentary, was that different sorts of alliances are needed for the game to thrive. I do not particularly want every alliance to be a major blob. That does not offer a lot of spice to the game. There will always be people who want an alternative path besides just joining a major alliance and being a drone. I completely understand that. My critique is levied at the numerous small alliances that are created by players who have no experience in the game, only to fail as they have not the means to climb up from their position. Starting out can be difficult, and without an introduction to the game and its players, it will often lead to players disengaging.

I worded some of the original post and suggestions to not exclude players who gained experience and then wanted to go off and recruit new players to form their own community. For example, an alliance founded by you that stayed small for awhile under this premise, to be closer in NS to new players when they start, and would gradually either grow or stay where you were, is something that I think is great.

 

 

10 hours ago, Borg said:

My first alliance was NPO. I left a few weeks later to make a shitty micro with friends. We often didn't know what we were doing but it was a good learning experience, and more importantly, it was fun. 

Seems a bit contradictory to say you want to give new players freedom, but then only suggest mechanics that do the opposite. This would serve to funnel players to alliances with strict membership requirements. 

I get that alliance hopping is annoying but that doesn't mean we need mechanics added to prevent players leaving. Do better vetting, roll them a few times, or be less careless about throwing money around. Preventing people from creating their own alliances just because t$ have a recruitment problem? 

Improving the tutorial would be great. Maybe we could also try to encourage people onto the pnw discord and have more dedicated help channels there (for various aspects of the game). Also some PNW server index which showcase communities (like news servers, banks, or ones dedicated to helping noobs)

 

 

NPO, classically, is one of those communities where if you are not an Imperial Officer, then it can be difficult to see what all is going on. But even then, there is probably something you gleaned from your time there. There may be things they did well that you liked. There may be things that you found off-putting. There are elements of style and culture that you probably learned. That line of experience that you did in joining an established alliance, and then going off on your own, is something I think is a good idea for those people who want to lead. People find friends and create alliances with some regularity here. Not every community has to be large to succeed.

People who are brand new to the game might not always see what might be the best community for them. It can be overwhelming to receive all the pings and messages from alliances that want to recruit. It should be a competitive marketplace, in my opinion. There are people who are going to look at an alliance like BK and love the memes. There are going to be people who are drawn to the democratic ideal that Rose has. Arrgh will appeal to players who want to raid and plunder. The low taxes of Pantheon might be something that someone thinks is an ideal that fits with theirs. There are all sorts of alliances themed around references in pop culture that may be appealing. Or maybe they just like a theme like Children Of The Light has. But there is a two way street with alliances and players; at the end of the day, alliances worth their salt will want to invest in people who come there and have some protections in place for that. Not all of those investments pan out in the end.

I think improving the PnW Discord would be a good start, especially if we are going to integrate its features into the game more. I like your server index idea. There is the game-help channel, but perhaps that could be expanded a bit with some of those ideas you suggest. The community has had hubs like this before, but to my knowledge never really centralized into an official place like the PnW Discord.

 

 

9 hours ago, Zephyr said:

  

I think we agree what makes a sensible path for success creating a new alliance and which I'd also recommend to others (and have done including on this forum), however I disagree with codifying it in the game mechanics and removing the freedom of players experimenting with alliances (whatever their apparent experience level). I also think it's unfair to frame the onus on players to avoid disrupting other players' interest in the game while simply pursuing their own interests and ambitions, such as creating a micro. Furthermore I think you may not fully appreciate why new players join micros. Lastly, I think Alex could probably do more to guide new players during their early game and that this would be a more effective way to retain players.

  • More restrictions on new alliances
    I reject the idea that the game needs to codify our shared view on the most sensible path to new alliance success as it presumes it to be indisputably superior and necessary, but it is not. Some people have relevant real world experience or experience in similar games that is transferable, or a natural ability to organise and lead, or may easily absorb and apply new information that does not require them to sit around for a year waiting for their turn. My concern is with restricting the freedom of players to play the game how they want to, not how you or I think they should. I also think this is for some players the major appeal to playing the game to begin with.
     
  • Circumventing new alliance restrictions
    There's no getting around the credit requirement, however the alliance creation itself can be circumvented by asking a friend to create it for you, or perhaps an alliance reseller industry pops-up to meet the demand of new players. So it's not a very effective measure. On another point, can nations just hit VM and pop-out a year later when they're actually allowed to play how they wanted to? Does this increase the value and likelihood of illegal account trading (more moderation problems for Alex)?
     
  • Unduly burdening returning players
    @Liberty rightly points out that experienced players may reroll or return to the game later and no longer be able to make an alliance. Your suggested fix here increases Alex's moderation load again and also may not be realistic where individuals wish to restart anonymously or no longer have contacts to vouch for them.
     
  • Why people join micros
    I think you might not appreciate that there are a lot of new players that join micros because the entry requirements are so low, sometimes it's as simple as hitting the apply button. These players were never going to join an alliance with a formal forum application, a follow-up interview via Discord, then a week long academy concluded with a series of tests or whatever variation of the application process (indeed some new players are so averse to formal processes they refuse to join an alliance at all). I kind of tested this myself when I first started Typhon as a paperless raiding alliance with no real entry requirements, at one (brief) point I believe we became the most populous alliance in the game. The point here is these were all players that had long been blasted with big alliance recruitment messaging before I ever had their ear, but they didn't want the hassle of jumping through hoops just to join an alliance. This is why micros exist. If micros didn't exist my guess is the retention rate will actually suffer even more as players averse to elaborate application processes will just stop playing even earlier. The other thing to consider is that micros constantly create accessible gov space for these new players to engage in, giving them responsibilities that seem unrealistic to them to ever achieve in large established alliances that make it feel more like a job than a game. In a way the game services players of two different mindsets, those who don't mind engaging with other players and putting in extra effort to integrate with the community, and those that just thought the sound of a nation sim sounded kind of cool and want to cruise by doing their own little thing (serviced readily by the low entry requirements of micros). The last group was never going to jump through hoops to join your prestigious alliance, and taking away micros won't change that but it might kill off a portion of the playerbase. I think that's unnecessary and a shame.
     
  • Improving guidance for new players
    The last time I did the in-game tutorial (a few months ago) it was still telling players to build farms, this needs to be revised as it seems deceptive to explain the improvement purchasing mechanics while asking players to make one of the worst raw resource improvement selections. However, I don't think it's Alex's responsibility to expand on the tutorial and explain to players how best to play the game but simply a general explanation of game mechanics and site navigation; alliances serve the purpose of guiding players and will be more responsive to changes than Alex in adapting a tutorial as gameplay styles change. However, I think Alex could try to explain to new players the larger organisation, responsibility and interaction of alliances in the game and how players can gauge their quality and importance:
    - Explain the purpose of alliances, how they work and what they might provide their members ("Yes they may tax you, but they may also offer grants, loans, guides, advice, banking etc.").
    - Emphasise the fact an unaligned nation is likely to get endlessly raided; it's not realistic to remain unaligned.
    - Why alliances go to war and generally how often.
    - Emphasise the fact alliances vary significantly so players know the right fit isn't necessarily their first alliance.
    - Emphasise some of the typical application requirements, such as using Discord or completing an interview, so that these concepts don't seem so intimidating and outline why these exist and their relationship to a focus on quality membership instead of quantity.
    - Explain the value of Discord in socialising with other players, finding useful P&W related servers (insert link to the official one) or importance for effective war time coordination in an alliance.
    - Help players understand how alliances interact with each other, what the basic treaties mean and point out the treaty web and encourage reading the forum to keep up with political happenings (which itself may translate to a player that is more invested and engaged with what's happening beyond their alliance's bubble).
    - Emphasise that war happens to everyone and it's not game over.
    You might argue these are things an alliance could explain to players, but it doesn't help that the players are trying to make important decisions about who they should join before they appreciate these points, as such Alex's tutorial and objectives are a better opportunity to communicate these points with new players and help them appreciate the actual game experience and what they should expect and how they fit into the Orbis arena. It might also be an idea to throw up a warning message on the alliance join screen when the alliance is new, lead by a new player, or does not have a protector or m-level treaty with a significant sized alliance so the player knows there may be risks associated with joining what might generally be recognised as an inexperienced and riskier start-up.

Having said all that, I think with the game being a text based, player driven nation sim with limited appeal, there was always going to be a lot of players that try it and disappear. With some improvements here and there, maybe Alex improves retention a little, but I've personally never been able to get any of my friends to stick with it. I don't like the idea of restricting how people play based on some notion of 'the right way'. I'm also unconvinced that micros simply existing causes player losses and in fact think such restrictions would cause player losses as I believe the microverse caters to a more casual playerbase that would not choose to play in a more restrictive environment.

 

Every single bullet point in your Improving Guidance For New Players piece is something I would very much welcome and encourage. Every one. If none of the proposed changes I suggested happened, but all of those did, then I think that would be at least some kind of start and a positive change. I agree that explaining the specific best mechanics isn't something that is for Alex to do, and the meta changes too much for that to even be true all the time. But all of these terms are from the administration themselves, and hopefully educate players in a way that benefits both them and the community.

I will admit that circumvention of rules and terms of service is something that can be difficult to enforce. We have even seen recently fluff mechanics like baseball be circumvented on a mass scale. There were many people who were very upset about the treasure mechanics, which led to them being nerfed. I do not have a good answer for how you would stop circumventions like this. Regarding moderation loads, there are times that I wish Alex would slightly expand the administrative and moderation staff of the game to relieve some of the burden on him.

There will be alliances out there, even in the majors or mid-market alliances, that barely have any application process besides clicking the button. I remember years ago when Kastor created Lordaeron and grew it like wildfire. They might not have lasted for a long time, but they did have an easy-to-join model, and they became an alliance that was notable in the wider affairs of the game. There are other examples. I can see some enterprising startups try to do things in this way even with these proposed changes. No application hassle, just smash the join button and come on in! And I think, as long as there is someone there to manage the internal affairs of the alliance who has some game experience, this is totally fine. It is not how I would want to create an alliance, but these types of alliances do have a place in the game and do often have some say in its larger affairs.

I have seen what has happened, first-hand, when alliances run out of new players to step up and serve in government roles, or when they have not managed training players for these roles well. It is not good. I have seen this happen in other alliances, large and small, as well. Even the major powers need to find ways to invest in their players, and upskill them to take on the next generation of leadership roles in the alliance. Any alliance that desires to remain relevant needs to address this problem, and provide those accessible opportunities in government or adjacent spaces. i would like to hope that we can provide ways in the greater community to do this with experienced players guiding new ones.

 

 

9 hours ago, Sketchy said:

An ape can muster together the money to buy a credit. There is enough crap that shouldn't cost credits as is. This doesn't do much.

One year is too long. While most people shouldn't be making alliances without experience, some people pick things up faster, and you'll naturally drive out people that might have been good leaders by forcing them to wait an entire year. The key issue is people who go straight to making their own alliances.

4 Months and 10 cities (or perhaps more) minimum if you are going to go that route. You risk killing many middle tier alliances and splinters this way. If a person can rise through the ranks within an AA and form a splinter in under a year, they should be able to follow through.

How would this be enforceable if the formation of those alliances isn't restricted for pirates, finance groups etc?

Would players under a certain age simply be unable to apply to them? If that is what you a suggesting, seems fine.

Game has needed something like this for awhile.  Preferably some sort of keyword/tag system to allow alliances to define their identity and attract like-minded people.

 

One year might be too long, and I do not want to get to tied up on the exact specifics of the OP. You address what I am trying to point at in the key issue being people who go straight to making their own alliances without any experience. Three of four months is a decent amount of time too; for example Borg did not say how long they were in NPO, but they shortly left to found another alliance. They did not wait a year, and with the pace of the game, a year is probably too limiting.

Players under a certain nation age would simply be unable to apply to those small-player pirate and finance-groups in this example. But they would be able to apply to people who just created an alliance and have a few others there to help grow a small community as a more traditional alliance.

A keyword or tag system to encourage better recruitment and foster community would be a useful addition, I think.

 

7 hours ago, Rossiya said:

Some people don't want to climb through ladders of snot in every game they play.

 

Akuryo addresses much of my feelings here: a lot of casual players will find an alliance community and settle into it. Would I want to play this game that way? No. But there are other people who do. Building those communities across the board is ultimately the end goal.

 

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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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This is just gonna make the making of offshore banks harder for alliances 

Also why do you even care if there are a lot of alliances created by inexperienced players?

Its not like they are hurting anyone 

 

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17 hours ago, Uncle Iroh said:

I mean who really cares if a micro alliance wants to form? Top alliances pretend they don't exist half the time anyways. Let people play as they want, not how the players who have been here for years want just because they disagree with what's being done.

Micro alliances want to form? So much the better; that should be encouraged.

Micro alliances want to flail about, pick up newbies that don't know better, fail them entirely and thus give the new players an awful impression of the game? Not so much.

 

1 hour ago, Roger said:

This is just gonna make the making of offshore banks harder for alliances 

Also why do you even care if there are a lot of alliances created by inexperienced players?

Its not like they are hurting anyone

They are hurting people: new players that end up hecking off because they had a bad experience.

Source: ME. When I first joined back in 2015, I had a pretty lame experience joining BoC, and ultimately quit to focus on other games. That is far from uncommon, and is something that deserves to be addressed. I mention this because it is important to realize that I'm not talking from raw speculation: I know personally that it is true.

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5 minutes ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

Micro alliances want to form? So much the better; that should be encouraged.

Micro alliances want to flail about, pick up newbies that don't know better, fail them entirely and thus give the new players an awful impression of the game? Not so much.

 

They are hurting people: new players that end up hecking off because they had a bad experience.

Source: ME. When I first joined back in 2015, I had a pretty lame experience joining BoC, and ultimately quit to focus on other games. That is far from uncommon, and is something that deserves to be addressed. I mention this because it is important to realize that I'm not talking from raw speculation: I know personally that it is true.

We should just increase the score required to make a alliance

or that no nation that has played for less than 1 year can create a alliance 

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2 minutes ago, Roger said:

We should just increase the score required to make a alliance

or that no nation that has played for less than 1 year can create a alliance 

These are potentially good options, sure. Thing is, they restrict alliance creation rather than directly deal with the problem of noobs being chewed up and spat out.

@Borg you do realize that e404 would easily be allowed to recruit new players under any possible system, right? You're fine. This is an OOC forum, remember? The suggestion is to prevent shit like this:

https://politicsandwar.com/alliance/id=7725

I mean look at that. On top of the lack of theming and IA efforts, they've got at least 3 dead nations and probably one more. Kudos to them for at least having any activity at all in 50% of their nations, but even so what are they offering to their members? ...Exactly. "Low taxes" means little when you're regularly raided with no backup, and "mutual defense" means nothing for the same reason. "Don't tread on me" is therefore not so much a warning than a plea. And that was just the first one I checked.

So, I suppose now that I think about it, my primary complaint isn't so much that little alliances are able to recruit new players, it's that alliances are allowed to engage in misleading and outright false advertising. Since what they are advertising is a game experience that they cannot actually offer, their behavior ultimately reflects badly on @Alex since it is his reputation that these fail alliances are tarnishing and his customers that they are driving off.

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1 hour ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

Micro alliances want to form? So much the better; that should be encouraged.

Micro alliances want to flail about, pick up newbies that don't know better, fail them entirely and thus give the new players an awful impression of the game? Not so much.

 

They are hurting people: new players that end up hecking off because they had a bad experience.

Source: ME. When I first joined back in 2015, I had a pretty lame experience joining BoC, and ultimately quit to focus on other games. That is far from uncommon, and is something that deserves to be addressed. I mention this because it is important to realize that I'm not talking from raw speculation: I know personally that it is true.

Same here also in 2015. I joined along with Cynder but I ended up quitting in less than a week, and didn't return until 3 years later when a friend gave me a Statekraft beta invite and it lead me to PW.

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2 hours ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

org you do realize that e404 would easily be allowed to recruit new players under any possible system, right? You're fine. This is an OOC forum, remember? The suggestion is to prevent shit like this:

https://politicsandwar.com/alliance/id=7725

I'm not worried about 404, I just think it'd be a shame if new players didn't have the same opportunities I had when I started playing this game. 

Spice up the alliance join confirmation page, and emphasize aspects like player activity, and recent war losses RELATIVE to other alliances. 

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1 hour ago, Borg said:

I'm not worried about 404, I just think it'd be a shame if new players didn't have the same opportunities I had when I started playing this game. 

Spice up the alliance join confirmation page, and emphasize aspects like player activity, and recent war losses RELATIVE to other alliances. 

The thing is borg most new players aren't you either. They can't code and won't get hooked on the various little coding projects they can use the API for. 

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6 hours ago, Roger said:

This is just gonna make the making of offshore banks harder for alliances 

Also why do you even care if there are a lot of alliances created by inexperienced players?

Its not like they are hurting anyone 

 

 

Scarfy elaborated some of my feelings here. I would prefer to see inexperienced players have a chance to have a better game experience by playing with established players at the beginning. We do not expect primary school children to know how to conduct grand scientific experiments or formulate economic policy. We teach them foundational principles in a supportive community, and hopefully they go on to do those things themselves somewhere. They are not hurting anyone, per se, but they could have a more integrated game experience than they do.

 

5 hours ago, Roger said:

We should just increase the score required to make a alliance

or that no nation that has played for less than 1 year can create a alliance 

 

That is, more or less, what I proposed in the OP. But, as I have written here, it does not mean it is the best solution, and perhaps there are alternate paths to achieving a solution.

 

4 hours ago, Roberts said:

There are more walls of text in this thread than the recent war declarations...

 

I'll go simple: No thank you to alliance creation restrictions.

 

That seems like a problem with the recent war declarations, and not this thread.

 

2 hours ago, Borg said:

I'm not worried about 404, I just think it'd be a shame if new players didn't have the same opportunities I had when I started playing this game. 

Spice up the alliance join confirmation page, and emphasize aspects like player activity, and recent war losses RELATIVE to other alliances. 

 

Spicing up the alliance join confirmation page is something that I think is a good idea. Even a little more information on that page would be helpful.

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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I dunno man, being in micros isn't the reason why I am massively disgruntled with this game and people who often dwell in micros are there out of choice because they refuse to adhere to the higher standards of a credible alliance. If inexperienced players want to subject themselves to hardship and be zealous to a sinking ship, that's their choice, they clearly ignore the advice and guidance of people who been here longer. I don't see how raising the qualifications would change that mentality especially considering people disengaging and quitting the game among bigger alliances are already a common sight every time a war breaks out on here.

Quitters are an inevitability, unrealistic expectations will get crushed and people will get frustrated and GTFO, that is the way it always went in games with a competitive nature. Albeit at least this way they are forced to know what to expect, I guess? I don't know, I feel like it's just a needlessly tedious obstacle at best. You're still giving the clowns keys to that Bentley, just up on a higher shelf with instructions on how to assemble the step ladder to reach them.

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10 hours ago, Zed said:

 

Scarfy elaborated some of my feelings here. I would prefer to see inexperienced players have a chance to have a better game experience by playing with established players at the beginning. We do not expect primary school children to know how to conduct grand scientific experiments or formulate economic policy. We teach them foundational principles in a supportive community, and hopefully they go on to do those things themselves somewhere. They are not hurting anyone, per se, but they could have a more integrated game experience than they do.

 

 

That is, more or less, what I proposed in the OP. But, as I have written here, it does not mean it is the best solution, and perhaps there are alternate paths to achieving a solution.

 

 

That seems like a problem with the recent war declarations, and not this thread.

 

 

Spicing up the alliance join confirmation page is something that I think is a good idea. Even a little more information on that page would be helpful.

I’m just saying I understand you logic, I don’t disagree with your thought but I disagree with your suggestion.

If you want to take a look at revamping alliance recruitment and the tutorial that’s totally understandable. I agree getting into an alliance and the meta-game of PnW will increase player retention. I don’t think funneling/forcing players to choose an established top ten alliance will benefit the game. If it works, it creates unbalanced “feeder” alliances with inflated member counts.

I think a good middle ground would simply be to rework the tutorial and make the very first suggested thing to be “pick an alliance to join” because joining an alliance can basically bring you all the knowledge and more than what the tutorial offers. Then you can simply put a seven day age requirement to make a new alliance. This “forces” new players to choose an alliance rather than make their own and get bored then quit but doesn’t take away their actual freedom to do so if they’re committed to that course of action.

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Hi all. A little tidbit that I figure is relevant to this thread. I recently got Alex to include only alliances with more than 50k score in the alliance recruitment page, automatically include discord links to the respective alliances on that page, and include a link to that page in the Welcome to P&W message, a move that will hopefully get more players into established alliances. 

Next up, some changes to this proposal: A player can create 2 alliances for free, but after that it costs a credit. This cuts down on constantly moving offshore banks around, and also stops people like Minesome, Nokia, and many other micro people who make new "alliances" on a monthly basis with next to zero potential to succeed.

Alliance creation should be restricted to people with 6 months of game experience. 6 months is an acceptable amount of time to learn the game and its norms, and honestly there's very, very few cases where someone should make an alliance before that (rerolls). This also cuts down on nations that are created to hold the offshore bank as a 1-city nation out of range (guaranteed multis).

 

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I'm generally of the opinion that creating alliances with friends is one of the most fun parts of the game, and instead of trying to limit that maybe we should find ways to help new alliances actually succeed.

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1 minute ago, Alex said:

I'm generally of the opinion that creating alliances with friends is one of the most fun parts of the game, and instead of trying to limit that maybe we should find ways to help new alliances actually succeed.

New alliances made by 13 day old nations who took alliance grants and ran along with two random 3-city nations aren't going to succeed.

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5 minutes ago, Changeup said:

New alliances made by 13 day old nations who took alliance grants and ran along with two random 3-city nations aren't going to succeed.

Which is perfectly fine. It’s not always about becoming a top ten 100+ member alliance with 500k score.

 

sometimes people want to enjoy a game in their own way. Even minesome, annoying though it may be.

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9 minutes ago, Alex said:

I'm generally of the opinion that creating alliances with friends is one of the most fun parts of the game, and instead of trying to limit that maybe we should find ways to help new alliances actually succeed.

Not possible, both with current population and growth dynamics and because of basic politics.

Firstly there's simply not enough people with the skills to actually succeed. Most people who think they have them don't. Those that do actually have them aren't often interested in founding a micro, being well rooted in the gov of a major alliance. Similarly they're not interested in joining some micro to build it up.

Even if such people who could reach that level join the game, now you have to fight player retention. The only reliable way of winning that fight is getting them into an established alliance run by an at least semi competent gov to learn from. If you fail, they'll go the way of myself and scarf in 2015, their capability meaningless.

Major alliances, most of them, already do try to help their protectorates succeed. But doing so especially from scratch requires alot of personal initiative and burn tolerance, because you're going to make mistakes, and get burned, ALOT. That's true for even players who are around over a year before striking out to adventure the land of micros (personal experience valuable here) and the fact is most people don't have that either, as this thread clearly shows with the number of people basically complaining it's too hard to build a successful community from scratch.

At that point you could still succeed, if you protector runs the alliance for you, but I and most others at that point would rather have you merge, or would cut the line.

My last point here, Alex, is it's only fun because of the novelty. They very likely have no idea what the game actually is or that it's yanno, a political simulator, or what it will require to successfully operate and grow. Once they learn, they typically either ignore it and expect to be kept on life support while they slowly die and bring most of their members to the grave with them, or or more rarely they see the light and merge to learn what they're doing first.

Tl;dr being a good leader or gov of an alliance is like being top 1% rank of the playerbase in any MMO. It's not easy there, its not going to be here. The game isn't going to handhold and gift you that rank there, not will it or should it here.

14 minutes ago, Roberts said:

Which is perfectly fine. It’s not always about becoming a top ten 100+ member alliance with 500k score.

 

sometimes people want to enjoy a game in their own way. Even minesome, annoying though it may be.

Why do people keep making this utterly imbecilic argument? Who ANYWHERE has said this is what they want? I've seen alot of people who probably think they're clever claim it's been said and a lot of pointing out it never has been.

If the best argument you can muster is a strawman, please reexamine your position and find what makes it so crap you have to make up stuff to keep it going.

And while you're doing that, consider the other successful alliances that exist and have existed who don't meet your criteria. And remember, even a jackass moron like me made marks that won't be washed away, without hitting your numbers, so it can't be too unreachable, people just don't want to try, they want it hand gifted.

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