The Problem at the Core of PnW

[Sam Cooper]

Context
There has been a recent debate (or an attempt at it) in the community about "nuke turrets" and while everyone talked about how they function and if they have any possible counters I am far more concerned about why "nuke turreting" is even a prevalent play style in the game and I tried to explain to Buorhann but his ignorance in response was anything but surprising and as I said to him, this ignorance, willful or otherwise is a fairly common trait among veterans which makes sense since we are all part of a community whose favorite insult is "who are you?"
So I'll make another attempt here, with more words.

The Problem
Stagnation, dead game, falling player count call it what you want. The only problem this game faces is that you simply cannot accomplish anything here out of the template set by the major alliances because the game by its design forces you to comply with what they want or be driven out of the game or if you are stubborn, stick around and nuke because that is quite literally only "war" thing you can do without being part of a larger bloc.
And the fact that many (not all) old players have a problem even with that shows the bubble they live in.
The only way you can play this game is by being a government in a major alliance, if you are not there you are either following orders or doing something so insignificant you may as well delete and it wouldn't affect the game one bit.

The Bubble
An ideal game is where everyone gets to participate on equal terms and has a fair chance at success, but not a chance of that in PnW, as the alliances grew in the last few years and consolidated more and more power that can't be easily challenged this game has become more of a spectator sport if anything where it's just the top 20 alliances and their governments actually playing the game and everyone else has to sit and watch them play hoping they some day get to be a part of this group.
Another problem directly related to this is that the group that frowns at the idea of having to engage with lower beings (micros) and wants to play in their exclusive bubbles is more or less in-charge of shaping the game development with their feedback, game development that is basically these players giving their grocery list of what they want to alex and him adding that stuff to the game accordingly. We can never expect to see a change that threatens this status quo, coming from here.
What even is "playing"?
There is an argument that new players should just engage in "politics", and this is so brain dead I was at a loss of words responding to Buorhann. It is like saying "don't be homeless, just buy a house". Your potential at politics is largely dependent on your prowess at war, your words don't mean anything if they can't be backed by actions. I don't see why it comes as a surprise to some but the game is quick and chaotic on smaller scale, there's not much space for politics as there is for war, unlike the FA folks at the top these new players don't make schemes, run perpetual propaganda or engage in that grand scale politics. In any case people should be able to choose what they want to do and this is not the topic of this post, if you disagree ping me in RON debate channel.

The Solution
Give the power back to the individual. A c30 should have a fair chance at any other ~c30 in the game, a group of 10 should be able to take on a group of ~10 around same tiering even if they happen to be part of the largest alliance or the largest bloc. Curb the extremely unreasonable incentive to be in a 200 man alliance.
Are you saying we should kill alliances sam?
No, same as today, you will join an alliance for a reasonable degree of protection, and more importantly to coordinate your actions with a larger group. An alliance should be a group of capable individual players not a huge blob that acts like a body of its own consuming the individuality of players. This is how an ideal alliance should be where the incentive is not with creating the biggest blob in the game but with finding good players that can do things on their own and drive game activity.
Best I can do is mini spheres
No you can't, it was a terrible idea since the beginning, you were going completely opposite to what the game mechanics allow and incentivize, sailing against the stream. The only way spheres and blocs and alliances the size of a bloc (🌹) can be encouraged (not forced, don't panic) to break into smaller more active groups is by removing the incentive of forming a large group.

The 'How'
Does this sound too radical to you? it's not. It may however require drastic changes to how wars are fought. Like Vicic has suggested dynamic war slots, something that restricts your defensive war range based on your current active defensive wars, if you get hit by a massive downdeclare, the remaining slots can only be taken by less punitive wars or restrict the slots to only 2. Just an example, I am sure there are people smarter than me who can come up with even more sophisticated solutions.

@Alex I know you care about the playerbase enough to make coerced deletion illegal, but that is the least of concerns for PnW. This instead is what's holding the game back. A new player is not going to stick around if he can't do anything, it won't help to add a dozen projects, cosmetics or any other content if players simply can't play. This is especially important now as alliances are growing to a point where new players may take forever to reach, they need to be allowed to play freely in their own tier and the game as of now does not.
Yes it is a big ask but can we please make fixing this a priority before anything else? because any other change means nothing.

Please don't derail the topic.

[Alastor]

I agree with the sentiment of the solution and I would point equally at the community and the game mechanics as to both fault and solution:

New nations, new alliances, smaller alliances, or even large alliances who have struggled to find their place in politics are all essentially left out as shark bait for everyone else. You must seek shelter or die.

What can be done to open this game up to a more casual playstyle and become more interesting/rewarding to be small and new?

I liked your mention of dynamic war slots in theory, though I'd want to see hard numbers on how it played out.

I'd also point to the lack of game mechanics that really make PnW a "Nation simulator." There's... not actually a lot of simulation going on, if any at all. Fleshing out internal politics even if it's just for show with a legislature mechanic, giving some meaning and mechanic to the RP stuff like government types, allowing baseball to be superficially adjusted to any sport of your choosing or expanding upon the baseball feature to see some like olympic game type stuff... Meaningless mechanics like the Moon Landing that ultimately add flavor into the game would be huge. The white backdrop with limited color and spreadsheet set-up where you just keep up with numbers for the sake of it is just not appealing to 2024 gamers.

The culture itself needs to be more open to LARPing as a nationstate instead of focusing purely on maximum efficiency. This could come in many forms, only limited by imagination. It's just generally frowned upon to RP after a certain extent.

 

Overall I think PnW does a very poor job of leaning into the genre itself. It's clear from adverts that Alex has a "vision" of what he wants the game to be but it's just not there. I highly doubt there would be more than couple hundred players in this game if it cost $5.99 on the app store, for example. The free-to-play and time-sunk are the two main reasons for most of us remaining I'd guess.

 

I also think the pace needs to slow down. The game needs to be recognized for what it is: FtP feature-starved spreadsheet. The idea that you can go to sleep and wake up to being wiped out in a war is pretty laughable even by IRL standards. Slow the pace of warfare down significantly (and maybe flesh that out too) and I think you'd see higher retention and also more investment into the wars themselves.

[Black Oily Men]

43 minutes ago, Sam Cooper said:

Does this sound too radical to you? it's not. It may however require drastic changes to how wars are fought. Like Vicic has suggested dynamic war slots, something that restricts your defensive war range based on your current active defensive wars, if you get hit by a massive downdeclare, the remaining slots can only be taken by less punitive wars or restrict the slots to only 2. Just an example, I am sure there are people smarter than me who can come up with even more sophisticated solutions.

While the problem is real, i don't think dynamic slots will cut it. The way I see it, if we are talking about a relatively new player (even if he already got the mechanics and general strategies) he will hardly stand a chance against even 2 attackers/raiders (especially if those are downdeclares). It makes it better of course, but the issue will remain. Even if we take 1 full mill guy vs 2 standard mmr guys who militarise after the declaration, it is not hard to calculate that 2 guys will almost always militarise fast enough to win the war.


I think the real problem here is the absolute simplicity of the war system. it isn't strategic in any way, and even players with absolutely 0 skill or knowledge about the game will be able to win against much more experienced solo player, because of well known and absolute winning strategies at each case.

The real solution here would be making the war mechanic such that there is a certain unknown factor to it, mainly through the complication of the war system. Much like in chess, where rules are known but you do not know "perfect" strategies.

This would also help with this:

30 minutes ago, Alastor said:

I also think the pace needs to slow down. The game needs to be recognized for what it is: FtP feature-starved spreadsheet. The idea that you can go to sleep and wake up to being wiped out in a war is pretty laughable even by IRL standards. Slow the pace of warfare down significantly (and maybe flesh that out too) and I think you'd see higher retention and also more investment into the wars themselves.

in a way that wouldn't completely demolish fun war aspect of the game. But ofc a large part of the game might be thrown off by the new complexity. and many large alliances will not be able to function entirely (Like Immortals and most of Eclipse) due to insufficient neuron count.

But i dont think any of this really matters bc Alex would never make it happen. Even on easier updates, game regularly falls apart, i can't imagine what would happen if such a drastic update rolled in. Not to mention most older players would hate any change like this. And even if it did happen, it would take at least a year to code... do idk.

;tldr this is kinda pointless

[General Custer]

I think a way we can open this game up a little more, is normalize bigger alliances having a lot of protectorate. Even if those smaller alliance don't necessarily benefits the macro protecting them economically. This will eliminate the amount of new players that fall victim to joining micros with no protection. Another idea I've had that's more dynamic is proxy/cold wars. Instead of long NAPs where the game literally does nothing for an extended time, what if we saw large alliances and blocs funding, smaller alliances to fight there beef out?? 

 

People say well why would I want to see two micros fight instead of building city 55??? Well because proxy wars could be a new avenue to project power for larger alliances.. without the need for huge blocs, and a whole new avenue of FA.. which again will promote activity. A lot of micros that follow the cookie cutter, to the written T formula never even get a chance at good wars, or that level of community FA involvement until they reach top 30 and they're lucky if the alliance is active long enough to reach that.. this is one way to possibly change the dynamics for new players and even current players

Edited May 13 by General Custer

[Shady_Coltan]

Bruh let the game die in peace 😒

19 hours ago, Sam Cooper said:

 

The Problem
Stagnation, dead game, falling player count call it what you want. The only problem this game faces is that you simply cannot accomplish anything here out of the template set by the major alliances because the game by its design forces you to comply with what they want or be driven out of the game or if you are stubborn, stick around and nuke because that is quite literally only "war" thing you can do without being part of a larger bloc.
 

 

[Anarchist Empire]

Still possible for the individual to fight, since they can nuke I guess. Shouldn't be making it harder on people, like some suggest. (Then again, I cast aside all delusion of preserving infra, etc.)

Edited May 14 by Anarchist Empire

[Sir Scarfalot]

Ultimately, how one plays this game depends on how much one is willing to invest in it in terms of time and effort. I remember back when I first joined, I was a grunt in BoC as part of an effort by the players of Worlds at War to infiltrate P&W. We got into a big war, and despite BoC apparently losing I managed to snag a few kills and ended up profiting more that way than I had in my entire farming career to that point. Then I quit since I figured out a way to break Worlds at War and wasn't having so much fun here. I rejoined the game after a couple years as part of a >Bloc alliance, and realized how powerful fortification could be (this was back when it added resistance). My alliance crumpled like paper after foolishly stealing a major alliances' bank, so I went solo and raided like nuts to buy myself the almighty MLP. Then I went crazy, launching my daily missile at everyone without a care in the world. So much salt was mined, y'all don't even know 🙃

Point is, doing that still took time and effort as well as the mathematical skill to theorize the strat. Fortification bombing went away and turretting took its place, but it still takes time, effort, and math. Politics is no different really, it just takes time, effort, and interpersonal skills. A new player cannot, and should not, be able to get ahead of someone that's invested time, effort, and skill in getting where they are. And they shouldn't be expected to; rather it is on their leadership to provide the opportunities to have fun and excel.

Of course, that does mean that we should try and stay away from one-day wars followed by months of game-wide NAPs

Edited May 15 by Sir Scarfalot

[Alex]

I made a related suggestion here:

 

[Sam Cooper]

On 5/15/2024 at 11:27 AM, Sir Scarfalot said:

Point is, doing that still took time and effort as well as the mathematical skill to theorize the strat. Fortification bombing went away and turretting took its place, but it still takes time, effort, and math. Politics is no different really, it just takes time, effort, and interpersonal skills. A new player cannot, and should not, be able to get ahead of someone that's invested time, effort, and skill in getting where they are. And they shouldn't be expected to; rather it is on their leadership to provide the opportunities to have fun and excel.

Of course, that does mean that we should try and stay away from one-day wars followed by months of game-wide NAPs

I agree a new player should not be able to get ahead of someone that's invested time, effort and skill in getting where they are, I have never been a fan of catch up mechanics that allowed players to quickly build up because it never helped with the retention problem, it just created a whole set of clueless players who were only useful as cannon fodder and would still eventually leave anyway.
This post is not about that, I am talking about the incentive of large groups and a lack of fairness in current war meta, a nation who has invested a great amount of effort and time into the game and built up to c40 stands absolutely no chance against a c40 in a large alliance and this kills any possibility of interaction between these two nations (by politics or war). Both have been equally faithful in their efforts but only one has any chance in the game. This in turn encourages players to form huge alliances and blocs for a chance of survival and leads to a game where anything that happens, happens between blocs or spheres or sometimes alliances.

Edited May 20 by Sam Cooper

[Kihansi Haley]

24 minutes ago, Sam Cooper said:

I agree a new player should not be able to get ahead of someone that's invested time, effort and skill in getting where they are, I have never been a fan of catch up mechanics that allowed players to quickly build up because it never helped with the retention problem, it just created a whole set of clueless players who were only useful as cannon fodder and would still eventually leave anyway.
This post is not about that, I am talking about the incentive of large groups and a lack of fairness in current war meta, a nation who has invested a great amount of effort and time into the game and built up to c40 stands absolutely no chance against a c40 in a large alliance and this kills any possibility of interaction between these two nations (by politics or war). Both have been equally faithful in their efforts but only one has any chance in the game. This in turn encourages players to form huge alliances and blocs for a chance of survival and leads to a game where anything that happens, happens between blocs or spheres or sometimes alliances.

Honestly, It would just be nice to see more stuff being able to be done in the game. Now, fair warning, I *am* getting ahead of myself, but I do think a large problem with PnW's politics is that there aren't many avenues for aggression. Raids, Fun, and anything power related (Hit an alliance before they become stronger than you or form a massive BLOC). I think treasures were made to kind of expand this, but they don't help that much especially because of the threat of large alliances. I think more exotic stuff (with benefits) should be added, and make them alliance specific or very exotic so that its worth fighting over. Why not add a giant mech-suit that gives your alliance a 5% plane buff or something. 

       I also have an idea regarding espionage being allowed to be traced back, in exchange for terrorism (economic) being buffed (like destroying a civil slot). Tracing it back would return like 3 suspects (2 random generated). Purely an idea to generate conversation though.

      So while what you're talking about here (join major AA or die) I do agree is the biggest problem with the game at the moment; However, I don't think that's going to offer an adequate incentive to do more war. I really like what someone else said about alliances having "cold war FA" with micro alliances. Also @Alastor , as someone who spend quite a bit of time in RP (Bulletins), I can confirm it's pretty frowned upon and in no way serves as a place to RP the main game, it's become its own little biology expirement.

[Buorhann]

There is a lot of words there without actually addressing a “problem” and a “solution”.

Turreting is nothing but a grief mechanic currently and beyond your first paragraph, you don’t touch it anymore.

Your problem, if I’m comprehending correctly, is that you can’t compete against similar sized nations in bigger or more coordinated AAs??

[Kihansi Haley]

27 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

There is a lot of words there without actually addressing a “problem” and a “solution”.

Turreting is nothing but a grief mechanic currently and beyond your first paragraph, you don’t touch it anymore.

Your problem, if I’m comprehending correctly, is that you can’t compete against similar sized nations in bigger or more coordinated AAs??

AFAIK

Problem: Join major AA or die (Edit: Cause raiders and alliances will destroy your nation)

Solution: Make it easier to survive without AA (Edit: Dyanmic slots does this by decreasing the amount of attackers, not to say I agree with the current proposal)

Edited May 20 by Kihansi Haley

[Buorhann]

32 minutes ago, Kihansi Haley said:

AFAIK

Problem: Join major AA or die (Edit: Cause raiders and alliances will destroy your nation)

Solution: Make it easier to survive without AA (Edit: Dyanmic slots does this by decreasing the amount of attackers, not to say I agree with the current proposal)

There are multiple non-major AAs in the game that hasn’t died or is even in a threat to “die”.

[Kihansi Haley]

10 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

There are multiple non-major AAs in the game that hasn’t died or is even in a threat to “die”.

I am more specifically referring to Cooper's flowchart at the beginning of the post. There are obviously going to be exceptions, this game isn't as simple as that, but that is the rule (and more importantly, the advice) given to basically all new players when the join the game. The first thing you're bombarded with is recruitment ads, afterall.

[Hatebi]

1 hour ago, Buorhann said:

Turreting is nothing but a grief mechanic currently and beyond your first paragraph, you don’t touch it anymore.

buor, buddy, this has somehow gotten worse than tyrion's crusade against loser weapons. 

[Sam Cooper]

1 hour ago, Buorhann said:

There is a lot of words there without actually addressing a “problem” and a “solution”.

Turreting is nothing but a grief mechanic currently and beyond your first paragraph, you don’t touch it anymore.

Your problem, if I’m comprehending correctly, is that you can’t compete against similar sized nations in bigger or more coordinated AAs??

Turreting is not the subject of the post and is only mentioned because that is what got me to write this post.

I am not sure how else to explain, I would be writing the same thing. I made this part bold.

On 5/13/2024 at 11:39 PM, Sam Cooper said:

The only way you can play this game is by being a government in a major alliance, if you are not there you are either following orders or doing something so insignificant you may as well delete and it wouldn't affect the game one bit.

[Buorhann]

20 minutes ago, Sam Cooper said:

Turreting is not the subject of the post and is only mentioned because that is what got me to write this post.

I am not sure how else to explain, I would be writing the same thing. I made this part bold.

So your issue is something completely different that caused you to cite me twice?

Ok, cool.  Let’s clarify.  My issue is the game mechanic behind turreting and how it can be exploited if only to grief players.  Very rarely is it used to be an effective tool for war.  I could go on with examples of this.

Your issue, which you somehow tied it into my discussion with Hatebi in her thread, is something different.

Going off of your bolder statement, your issue is that players have to join a major alliance’s government to play?

I can agree to an extent with that.  The game is more social driven than mechanical afterall.  If a player doesn’t join an active community or participate in some community outreach, it is hard to retain said players.

Just a sidenote to one of your points.  “Restricted by alliance”.  Not all alliances are the same.  Some are very restricting, some are very flexible.  No alliances own the players.  They’re free to make a choice to join any alliance or community that fits or is as close to the way they want to play.

Edited May 20 by Buorhann

[Sam Cooper]

8 hours ago, Buorhann said:

So your issue is something completely different that caused you to cite me twice?

Yes actually, and if you're confused as to why I think they're related, I believe that players resort to nuking because there is no other viable way to fight a larger group of enemies, you are always going to lose against numbers. In an ideal game where players will be able to fight conventionally without being overwhelmed by sheer numbers there wouldn't as much need to go on a nuke spree and we'd only have players like Hatebi who'd nuke regardless doing it. Most players nuke because they have to not because this is an op strategy with no counters or repercussions, this is why CoA chose to nuke Hollywood for their MDP with Ro$e or UU had to nuke KT for their raids, if they had any chance on conventional they would have done that instead. That is all.
Yes alliances have differences but that the top the alliances that dictate the game they're more similar than different.

[Sir Scarfalot]

1 hour ago, Sam Cooper said:

Yes actually, and if you're confused as to why I think they're related, I believe that players resort to nuking because there is no other viable way to fight a larger group of enemies, you are always going to lose against numbers.

Well, what would you suggest? That people not lose against a higher number of opponents? How would that happen under literally any mechanics? Like some kind of inverse ninja law bonus that causes plane damage to scale with how many wars you've declared? ...actually...

You either win or you don't, and if you don't you toss nukes and missiles. This is not a bad thing, but it hasn't been re-balanced to account for the higher number of cities players have built in the years since NPOLT, so all we really need is a few adjustments to the numbers. That's the way I see it.

[Buorhann]

9 hours ago, Sam Cooper said:

Yes actually, and if you're confused as to why I think they're related, I believe that players resort to nuking because there is no other viable way to fight a larger group of enemies, you are always going to lose against numbers. In an ideal game where players will be able to fight conventionally without being overwhelmed by sheer numbers there wouldn't as much need to go on a nuke spree and we'd only have players like Hatebi who'd nuke regardless doing it. Most players nuke because they have to not because this is an op strategy with no counters or repercussions, this is why CoA chose to nuke Hollywood for their MDP with Ro$e or UU had to nuke KT for their raids, if they had any chance on conventional they would have done that instead. That is all.
Yes alliances have differences but that the top the alliances that dictate the game they're more similar than different.

See, that’s with already established players.  Majority of new players don’t have nukes/missiles yet.  Those aren’t my concern.  Raiders, strangely enough, aren’t my concern either.  As for certain AAs, some of them just suck at organizing military and want to choose the easy way out (They even do nuke/missiles wrong too in a war lol).

Most of those players could fight conventionally.  Hell, most of them did for the longest time.  You’re also not wrong about numbers.  Majority of the time, you will get overwhelmed.  Unless you’re very active and are able to land counters as the hits come.

I’ll stop there though since your problem is much different than mine and I don’t want to derail it any further.  I’ll be starting a new thread about my particular issue(s) later.

[Sam Cooper]

10 hours ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

Well, what would you suggest? That people not lose against a higher number of opponents?

not always, same as they shouldn't always win. The point is that numbers shouldn't have as much effect as they do now. You can see how grumpy had a winning streak while they had the most whales but someone came and built an even bigger whale farm and now suddenly grumpy isn't so invincible anymore. But what we need to look at is that the only way they could beat a mid sized group of whales is by building an even bigger group of whales and that's just poor game design because it puts certain mega alliances in a seemingly invincible position where they can only be threatened if you somehow manage to be bigger than them.

[Buorhann]

4 hours ago, Sam Cooper said:

not always, same as they shouldn't always win. The point is that numbers shouldn't have as much effect as they do now. You can see how grumpy had a winning streak while they had the most whales but someone came and built an even bigger whale farm and now suddenly grumpy isn't so invincible anymore. But what we need to look at is that the only way they could beat a mid sized group of whales is by building an even bigger group of whales and that's just poor game design because it puts certain mega alliances in a seemingly invincible position where they can only be threatened if you somehow manage to be bigger than them.

I get the point you’re making, but you can also point to the fact that Grumpy hasn’t adjusted or adapted to anything to counter other AAs working on a counter for them.

Their growth stagnated (Which is fairly normal for anybody over c40), their recruitment is abysmally low, and their political game left them vulnerable.

The mechanics is one thing, but part of the game design is to work with other AAs or build your AA up to achieve whatever goals you set out for.  Just so happened that Grumpy had rivals that wanted to topple them and they didn’t shift or act on it soon enough.

[Sam Cooper]

On 5/31/2024 at 3:54 AM, Nacho said:

You also have 50 cities and take for granted the tribalism of your alliances that allowed you to even build that many cities. Now you spit in their faces.

You chose the worst possible person to throw that argument at, I am possibly the only C50 who hasn't used any alliance help to get there, maybe apart from the UP Immortals gave me at c11, which I offered to pay back but they refused out of respect for my milcom services there

not sure what to make of the rest of the post, you seem to have a shallow understanding of sociology but you're using it too generously.

 

On 5/31/2024 at 3:54 AM, Nacho said:

And this is the crux of it- How about... don't pick fights with a larger group of people? Seems like in reality that doesn't work so why should it here? You should lose. And especially, when youre picking the fight with a larger group of people.

This arrogance is exactly why I love doing this, you think you should be invincible because you are in Rose but I disagree. So by all means keep whining while you get burned to the ground. Or take the whining to your gov because they're more responsible for this than us.
but congrats on missing the whole point of the post ig.

Edited June 1 by Sam Cooper

[Sam Cooper]

51 minutes ago, Nacho said:

You are the aggressor, not me.

Untrue, Rose is the aggressor, any war declared on Rose will need to be on a nation, that's just how it works, Arrgh is fighting in its defence.

If you disagree with your alliance's actions you should take it up with them or consider leaving to a better alliance.

As for "loser", I think being loser would look more like hiding behind 200 nations for protection and whining on forums when you get hit anyway, or complaining about only the part of war mechanics that don't favour you.

but whatever I would prefer not to use forums for petty arguments.

so DM me or use Arrgh server for further complains, this thread is for a different purpose.

[Hatebi]

1 hour ago, Nacho said:

Ah yes, some debate bro, know-it-all teenager calling me shallow and arrogant. Get real little nino.

Bit rich to be accusing other people of being debate bros after you stumble into a thread a week after it's died just to pick a fight, no?

Like many of your farmer ilk, you're whining and throwing a massive temper tantrum on the forums because some of your 44 ludicrously overbuilt cities are being nuked. This one definitely takes the cake as far as rage-fueled tantrums go. Flinging insults, invoking sociology, I can't imagine how you were able to post any of this without feeling at least a little embarrassed. 

1 hour ago, Nacho said:

As far as this little tantrum you're throwing

Your entire post reeks of projection. Sorry, but when you're calling someone a "baby monkey flinging his poopies" you've made it pretty clear you're the side having a meltdown. 

I get debates aren't really your thing, I'm not a big fan either. If it's more your speed, feel free to respond with a 3 hour long video essay or a tweet thread on why piracy is problematic.