Why I think the current restrictions/stigmas on raiding are bad, how they could be improved and why they won't be.

[Merow]

Hello

Reading this title you're probably either confused or rolling your eyes. So let me clarify a few things first. When I talk about raiding restrictions I'm talking about the restrictions that were put into effect after the NAP (no raiding c10+). But I'm also talking about 90% of AAs having a DNR (Do Not Raid) agreement with atleast the top20 AAs. Before I go too much in depth about these, allow me to share a few facts about raiding. At C20 most people make between 80-120mil net/week farming, A C20 raiding with no DNR can easily make 300m NET/week raiding during peacetime and close to 500m NET/week raiding during wartime. On top of that the amount of money invested into infra is microscopic compared to farming. Yet, only very few people do/have done this due to either not knowing how to do it, or if they do know how to they're not allowed to. But why are we not allowing this, well let's look at a few arguments I've seen.

 

"People don't want to have to be active all the time to defend against raids so getting raided might be causing them to quit the game."

So let's get one thing straight. Any raider that's raiding for profit and is actually halfway decent will only raid nations that have been inactive for a few days. So anyone who's actually reading this is automatically safe from profit raiding, (unless you don't know what "depositing" is). "But bruv, the inactives don't deposit" THEN TELL THEM TO, YOU'RE A  TOP20 ALLIANCE, PLEASE. If they don't respond- well then you either give them warning-> kicking them or you can choose to keep them around for.... *cough* taxes *cough* like a certain few top alliances *cough*. Also I don't want to go too much into whataboutism, but what's more likely to get people quitting? A singular raid or a singularity war against your micro AA for 2 months getting cycled over and over?

 

"Yuh but broskii, my AA just got out of a war and we want to rebuild hurr durr durr"

Alright, besides briefly repeating myself that actives members generally dont get raided (I'll come back to this in my "solution"). I get it. You have this c30 dude in your AA, didnt do much, but we need the absolute most amount of income, so we're forced to get him to 3k infra so that when he goes inactive he gets raided and we lose infra value. Also you don't want to actually play a game you signed up to play, so you don't off-shore often and you lose a bunch of AA bank every time one of your members gets beiged. There's no way either of these could've been avoided, absolutely 0 chance. Okay, look. I know it's super easy for me to say an alliance government doesn't do enough or whatever. People need breaks, I get it. Taking a relatively big loss occasionally is gonna happen then. But that's part of it. Also I thought a big part of this game was being the best AA? Here's one more chance to prove that fact.

 

"Raiding takes effort, not everybody wants to do that"

Well, then don't. Accept the fact you're going to be growing slower than someone who raids and that's that. It's actually quite common for people who are more active on a game to have an advantage over people who are not.

"Arrgh and other micros allow raiding"

True, but those alliance members are isolated from the whole peace-war-cycle and political world. It's sort of just everybody doing their own thing and if you enjoy that, perfect. But I think forcing people to make that sacrifice just to allow them the fastest growth is stupid.

 

So now that I've talked about why i think allowing raiding isn't bad, let me talk about why i think it's good.

 

Raiding is more fun than farming, it's something to do and makes you more interactive with the actual game

Raiding is fun in my opinion, ofcourse it's not for the majority of players. But for the minority that does enjoy it, or will enjoy it without even knowing because they're following DNRS, it's great. Yes it requires effort, but realistically I'd say a solid raider can get away with spending 15minutes spread over a day raiding.

 

Raiding syphons money from the inactives to the actives.

Those who are willing to raid and raid properly are obviously more active on average than those who don't. We're effectively helping a very select few actives to catch up to the long time players/whales. Something that people have said should be made easier.

 

So now that've stated why I think banning c11+ raiding is bad, how would I change the current DNRS?

 

Make nations who are 2+days inactive (red) eligable to be raided at all times.

I think this would greatly benefit those who want to spend that extra 15min/day to catch up to the upper tier faster compared to what we have no. The amount of available targets will increase exponentially. Also friendly reminder that logging in once a day takes literally 5seconds. Hell, you could even do 7+ days inactive  (purple) instead of 2+ days. It wouldn't help as much, but it'd still be better than what we have now,

But I'm going to be realistic here, this won't happen. It's too much of a culture shift. With raiding being punished after wars now aswell (1 day wars at that even) we're shifting in the opposite direction. Ultimately not allowing raiding benefits the mass member AAs who are mostly the ones who decide on what happens in the game. Either way, I still wanted to put this out here because despite this definetly not being changed and the current DNR staying the same. I can only hope the game doesn't continue to go towards the removal of raiding above the micro tier.

 

If you've made it this far, thank you for reading my WoT, let me know if you agree/disagree and have a nice day

[Lysander]

I appreciate the cameo, thank you

[Jacob Knox]

I mean... the primary reason, in my eyes, that most alliances have Do Not Raid (DNR) policies is to avoid unnecessary escalations outside of when an alliance decides to formally declare war for whatever casus belli(s) they desire. Furthermore, it prevents the game, at least for these top alliances, from devolving into being primarily about war rather than involving politics as well.

However, I do agree that NAPs are mostly bad for the game and this one was especially weird with the sub-c10 rule (in my opinion). Furthermore, I tend to like when alliances come to agreements about what types of raids are and are not allowed between their members as well as the terms of such agreements. For example, when I was MA and FA for Aurora, I had seen deals made where an overly inactive member could be raided so long as anything looted from the bank was returned and deals where we mutually agreed to allow applicant raiding under certain conditions.

 

TL;DR: I like rules (DNR) and believe they have a specific purpose, but enjoy seeing alliances make raiding deals.

Edited March 7 by Jacob Knox
Autocorrect doesn't like casus?

[Velyni Vas]

14 minutes ago, Jacob Knox said:

However, I do agree that NAPs are mostly bad for the game and this one was especially weird with the sub-c10 rule (in my opinion).

If this wasn’t added, even the new players in alliances without DNRs get screwed out of fun. If this was a small NAP, it’s one thing, but when it involves the entire game essentially it was definitely needed which is why I brought it up. I’m not a fan of restriction in an area that is already struggling.

[mrbread]

This sounds like hell for MA departments

[Mitsuru]

11 hours ago, Merow said:

Hell, you could even do 7+ days inactive  (purple) instead of 2+ days

We had this before. I'm not sure whether it was 7 or maybe just 5 but the time before a nation went from its regular color to grey used to be much more than simply 2 days. Pretty sure you can thank NPO for that one.