Alliance Creation Restrictions

[NightKnight]

 

On 9/3/2020 at 6:20 AM, Borg said:

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

@Borg What makes you drag the OP's alliance into it? I don't know what you have against t$, but if you read his post you would have seen that the problem he is addressing is literally about new player retention and growth. Not all of his ideas were perfect, but that's exactly what forums are for, collaboration. We are here for one purpose, to make the game a better place for new and existing players. I'm sure that is something we can all agree on. There is no reason to bring affiliation into it just because you have a vendetta. If you think the changes are ridiculous, say it without alienating. Your argument is over as soon as you bring affiliation into it. Present your case, don't alienate.

Edited September 4, 2020 by NightKnight

[Sir Scarfalot]

6 hours 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.

And absolutely everyone ITT agrees with the sentiment that we should help new alliances find ways to actually succeed.

Now, perhaps you'd like to expand on that thought beyond wooly platitudes and empty sound bites and consider how to actually achieve this noble goal? Better and more comprehensive tutorials, perhaps? Encourage players to learn the game and be prepared for the rigors of creating an alliance before taking the plunge? Have Mr. Lairotut pay new alliances to make their first treaty? Perhaps while we're at it he could pay new players to apply to an alliance and click their discord?

More importantly, how about those new players? Should they really be encouraged to have an unfulfilling experience with an alliance that can't provide what they promise to? Should their expectations be regularly and deliberately deceived by alliances that do not and never have known what they were doing?

Simply put, how is it going to be 'fun' to go into making an alliance with big dreams, only to be completely crushed due to being insurmountably unprepared for the challenge of doing so?

I mean seriously now, look at this alliance that I linked to earlier:

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

Would you actually say that they're "having fun"? They created an alliance with friends, picked up a couple newbie recruits... and half are not even playing anymore. Yep, that's a surefire sign of a satisfied customer

  

On 9/3/2020 at 2:29 AM, Sketchy said:

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

Yes, that is pretty much the idea at least for my part.

Edited September 4, 2020 by Sir Scarfalot

[Ukunaka]

I think making alliances cost 60 to 20m cash would make people think more about the alliance as an investment, and while it is an easy goal to obtain, it is still both a cost that causes them to think whether they should go c11 or buy this alliance.

If this was implemented along with a small time period after creation, only 10 days or so, I think this would make it to where inexperienced players will seek other alliances to learn how to govern and get a group together, and possibly even help the nanos by overthrowing or becoming a more productive governor than the leader, which helps with new players that dont want to be with anything too established for their liking getting trapped in a player sink and quitting when it greys out.

 

Another good idea, though not sure how it would be implemented in coding, is to make it to were 1 person cant create an alliance at all, there has to be 5 players or some other arbitrary number, this creates an impedement that requires them to interact with the community.

This is also an easy thing to get around, but forces them to think more than just clicking that create button after rushing to some score.

Edited September 4, 2020 by Ukunaka

[Zed]

19 hours ago, Cynder said:

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.

 

The high drop out rate is a problem, yes, but we know it will happen. These games can be slow moving at times, even if you raid. What I would simply rather not see it people subjecting themselves to a hardship when they clearly do not have to. There are alliances out there that will recruit nearly anyone with a pulse. That doesn't mean they are always good at what they do, but there are options out there.

 

9 hours ago, Roberts said:

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.

 

I have never said I want every new player to join a Top 10 alliance. I do not want this. I have spent my entire career here in a Top 10 alliance; I have previously served as its MoFA, and I made great efforts to promote and nurture some smaller protectorate alliances during part of my time there. I was very proud of that; when they formed a bloc of their own with some friends who were not all in our sphere I was very happy. That is the kind of success that is good in this game. Those smaller alliances add value to this game, and they interact with its wider politics and community. This is what I want to see more of. Not every alliance can be a 100+ member alliance with 500k score. And not every alliance should be.

The suggestion you make in the last paragraph would even be a start, in my opinion. If that happened, honestly, I would be pretty happy with the proposal achieving its overarching goal. The bonus for micro types is that if you keep Beige protection as is, then I suppose theoretically you could form your own alliance as a new micro. This is not what I would want to see happen, but it would be a possibility under this idea.

 

8 hours ago, Changeup said:

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).

 

 

I actually disagree a bit with the 50k score requirement. If I got two experienced players to form an alliance with me, and we wanted to recruit new players, even we would not make that threshold. The 6 month requirement, or something similar (Sketchy proposed 4), I think is fine. My original proposal of a year may be too punitive.

 

8 hours 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.

 

Akuryo states a lot of what I would say in response to this. However, yes - I do want new alliances to succeed. Success is not always to be the next Top 10 major power. There are many successful alliances that are not in this range. That is fine.

There have been several more moderate proposals here to what I originally described that I think would be a good fix. There are other suggestions to improving the tutorial and providing more guidance and integration for newcomers that I did not say myself, but which I think are awesome ideas. There a lot of things I hope that you and the administrative team take from the thread in regard to that and implement. Many of those do not propose any new mechanical restrictions at all, but they hopefully would better educate and inform new players about the game and community they are coming to.

 

8 hours 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.

 

This, exactly, is the thing I wrote this post about. I agree entirely.

 

[Arawra]

8 hours 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.

If a group of friends want to lead an alliance together, more power to them, as long as they keep the alliance exclusive to themselves then there's no harm done. However, once they begin recruiting your players and not fulfilling the responsibilities I outlined before, that is when it should become concerning to the community and you. They become a bane once they begin preying on the new, naive players that cannot discern good alliances from bad (score and ranking are not good indicators). Those players get lured in by the same promises made by every alliance, except that these alliances cannot provide and are either blissfully ignorant, or intentionally deceiving.

I think the best way to help alliances succeed, is to force them to spend some time in a decent alliance first and learn the game. A city and/or age restriction could be used, as could a restriction on alliances below a certain member/score threshold. Perhaps if you ever add a recruitment bot into the game itself, you could restrict alliances below 10k score and/or 5 members from using it.

Some warnings about the difficulty, stress, and time commitment of leading an alliance would also serve beneficial. A lot of players probably come here and think leading an alliance is as simple as clicking "create alliance" like it is in other games.

[Sir Scarfalot]

43 minutes ago, Hime-sama said:

Some warnings about the difficulty, stress, and time commitment of leading an alliance would also serve beneficial. A lot of players probably come here and think leading an alliance is as simple as clicking "create alliance" like it is in other games.

I agree~

That said, I've played a good dozen of these games, and I've never actually seen one where leading an alliance is as simple as that. In my experience, leading a group of people is always a massive challenge and requires a very strong and varied skillset no matter what the medium or scale of the organization.

[Arawra]

3 minutes ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

I agree~

That said, I've played a good dozen of these games, and I've never actually seen one where leading an alliance is as simple as that. In my experience, leading a group of people is always a massive challenge and requires a very strong and varied skillset no matter what the medium or scale of the organization.

Games I had in mind were Clash of Clans, Brutal Age, etc. Phone games usually, but popular ones nonetheless.

[De Barra]

R1: I completely agree.  It should cost you something to create an alliance so that you are not continuously creating an deleting alliances.  Having it cost a credit shows you are dedicated to creating and sustaining an alliance.

R2: Players shouldn't be restricted from creating an alliance other than R1.  It would be worth adding a disclaimer when creating an alliance that it is not recommended to create an alliance if you are new and instead suggests joining an alliance (not suggesting any alliances specifically).

R3: Similar to my comment on R2 it shouldn't be restricted but is instead a notification stating that this is a new alliance and it is recommended you join a more senior alliance.  This promotes pushing new players to well established alliances, but does not take away the choose to join a newer alliance.

A1: I'm not sure how this would be implemented without inadvertently pushing players to specific alliances, whether on purpose or inadvertently.

N1: I completely agree. No need to effect existing alliances.

N2: This should be assumed.

N3: I do not think there should be any mechanic restricting a player from leaving or joining any alliance for any reason.  If a player is constantly leaving alliances, then this is up to the alliance to determine that this player is not worth the effort.

N4: Honestly, it shouldn't be a requirement that you know what you are doing in order to create an alliance.  If a player wants to create an alliance without knowing what they are doing then they should be able to.  They will learn very quickly what mistakes were made and can correct those, if they do not learn then they will have to continue to accept the consequences of in game actions.

[Levi-Sama]

Forming an alliance shouldn't be something that new nations would be able to pull-off.

A credit would sound like a good deterrent, but then again, I find nation scores to be more fitting in terms of limiting new players from recklessly spending a ton of ingame money around just to form an alliance and vanish forever ( or return as a "smarter" pw player).

This would solve the problem within alliances (especially micros that give loans, idk why) from having members that conceive the idea of being "the man" and form a ridiculous amount of inactive one-man alliances.

That being said, this is just my opinion and idgaf about what new players do.

I mean, we've experienced being one, what's with the ruckus?