Alliances Should Only Be Able to Tax Nations on Their Color

[Ashland]

Just do a better job vetting your recruits and a better job at KEEPING them in the AA, therefore the game.

Yeah,you totally got me. I'm trying to run the game into the ground 

 

I spend time reporting mutlis so legit players don't get so frustrated with it that they quit

 

Okay.  So there's three types of nations in categories A, B, and C.  Those in category A will be active no matter what you do.  Those in C will be inactive no matter what you do.  Those in B will be active if you do certain things.  By forcing alliances to be more stringent with membership, you will just inevitably be chasing more people from group B to inactivity.  If you deny that, then you're just unreasona- Oh.  Nvm.

[Solomon]

I FULLY SUPPORT THIS IDEA.

 

It adds something to being beiged in war.

 

It also solves the inactive farming.

 

It will also force AAs to interact with their members.

 

please do it.

Good points.

 

If an alliance member can't even be bothered to change their color to the alliance color, why would the alliance want to keep them? I guess the most likely answer is "for taxes".

[Phiney]

Okay.  So there's three types of nations in categories A, B, and C.  Those in category A will be active no matter what you do.  Those in C will be inactive no matter what you do.  Those in B will be active if you do certain things.  By forcing alliances to be more stringent with membership, you will just inevitably be chasing more people from group B to inactivity.  If you deny that, then you're just unreasona- Oh.  Nvm.

 

Please keep politics out of the suggestions area. Being more productive in engaging with your alliance members only forces more people from group B to group A.

[Dark Specter]

If we get alliances to invest more into their membership and force a few to go from b to c then those players already had no interest in sticking around so no point investing a lot money, resources, and time with those nations. If they move from b to a then you have effectively made progress which is what were looking for, quality wins over quantity.

[TheNG]

If we get alliances to invest more into their membership and force a few to go from b to c then those players already had no interest in sticking around so no point investing a lot money, resources, and time with those nations. If they move from b to a then you have effectively made progress which is what were looking for, quality wins over quantity.

Frequently even sizable investments can't stop nations from going inactive, if they are leaving the game or just don't feel like playing it. I think the whole "raising activity" argument misses the real point. If we have 10 nations, and lets say 2 are very dedicated and active nations, while two more is wavering but eventually convinced to stick around. That leaves six who maybe get up to 50 score then slide off into inactivity. Even if the alliance tries its hardest, it is unlikely to change their mind or bring them back. If alliances don't even get a little something from the inactive before they delete, then that just punishes the alliance for even bothering to put the effort in to recruit, manage, and ultimately lose those nations. Even if no money is spent, that is still an awful lot of time wasted for no gain. Taxing grays just gives alliances something for all their effort, its just 30 days of (usually) smaller nations income, not some massive game-ruining amount. Frankly, I don't see why this is even an issue in the first place, its not like the system is broken, and alliances are funding themselves solely from inactives. If promoting activity is really the goal of this, don't do it by punishing alliances for inactive nations that are usually beyond their control to bring back, but let alliances promote activity on their own, or give nations really good reasons to be active. This is really a solution in search of a problem to solve.

[Ashland]

Please keep politics out of the suggestions area. Being more productive in engaging with your alliance members only forces more people from group B to group A.

Yes, but increasing your vetting does the opposite.  It moves them from B to C.  And yes.  Oh, what a travesty it would be for someone to mix political and personal sentiment into the game suggestions thread.  God, I wish I could think of an example of someone doing that before.

[WISD0MTREE]

 for color-bombing if, per say, the upn all went over to brown. 

Why do you think we would do this? W-we would never do this. Yes, we wouldn't. 

[Taureg]

Sheepy, these suggestions that have come up recently related to game activity issues really don't do much to move the game forward and probably do more harm than good. 

 

I certainly understand where you're coming from, share many of your concerns, but when I try to see the bigger picture it's really much ado about nothing.  The "remedies" all result in taking more control over the game and I don't think that's a good thing.  I really don't understand all the angst in these threads about inactives.

 

How long are they a problem, really?  Thirty days max eh?  How much does an alliance really gain from them in that amount of time?  The vast majority of them are lower ranking players who tried the game and left.  Are those taxes really any kind of game changer for an alliance? 

 

More importantly, why exert so many auto-controls over players and alliances that they all look alike?  The auto-controls that have been suggested here and the other thread only serve to force all alliances to act the same.  That's not a good thing in my opinion and only takes a little game out of the game.  These types of auto-controls remove some of the personality of an alliance. Part of the game is actually analyzing those personalities; how is the alliance being managed, drilling down through membership to asses it's strength, looking for weaknesses. This is a part of politics, and war.  Chipping away at fringe parts of the game just because it isn't pretty is still chipping away at the game.

 

I'm on record in many places about how an alliance should handle inactives, but I certainly wouldn't impose that on everyone. That's what many in these threads would have, and what these auto-controls would accomplish. Obviously the subject of inactives is a real problem for some, but the perceived problem and the real problem are two different things.

 

Sheepy please don't add any more controls to the game that just homogenize players and alliances. You've already solved the problem with the 30 day auto-boot.  There is no significant gain to be made by going any further.  Let it be.

[ooohu]

Not really a fan of this either because like before I feel like it's trying to solve an issue that doesn't exist and in the process is creating needless penalties for players & alliances. Inactive nations paying alliance taxes for 30 days makes very little difference in the grand scheme of things and eliminating that income only really serves to punish the alliances willing to take the risk to invest in these players by taking them into their AA in the first place. By adopting this sort of system it would in effect serve to punish alliances that actively recruit which would mean we'd have even less incentive to recruit new people to the game as it'd just be a waste of time for very little benefit.

 

Overall I feel like these recent proposals seem to be creating anti-alliance waves for absolutely little reason at all; as the saying goes down south if it ain't broke then don't fix it and in the case of alliances nothing related to them is broken at all and needing mechanical assistance. Alliances are independent communities that can manage their own affairs without need of assistance from game mechanics.

[Alataq]

Taking money from inactive people, why should it be changed?

[Kim Jong-Il]

It's called trying to get people to be more active in this game. Sheepy doesn't want 100's of nations that just make a nation, join an alliance, and stop playing after a few weeks because they came in late & dont wanna put in the time. He also doesn't want alliances to have fake numbers. Some alliances actually only let in members who are active on both the game and their forums, while others just grab as many nations as they can and sit on a pile of ghost accounts, which doesn't really show the true colors of the leader board.

[Adam9812]

I have no strong feeling on either side. While this may improve the situation of inactive/multi farming, what it doesn't solve is the fact that some alliances will be inevitably marginalized by being forced to assimilate like every other one.

[Taureg]

It's called trying to get people to be more active in this game. Sheepy doesn't want 100's of nations that just make a nation, join an alliance, and stop playing after a few weeks because they came in late & dont wanna put in the time. He also doesn't want alliances to have fake numbers. Some alliances actually only let in members who are active on both the game and their forums, while others just grab as many nations as they can and sit on a pile of ghost accounts, which doesn't really show the true colors of the leader board.

 

Yup those are the talking points that have often been repeated.  None of these concerns are a big enough problem to warrant changes.

 

I have yet to see one person in favor of implementing any of these auto-controls try to quantify just how big these supposed problems really are.  Until that's done it's all just conjecture, and a "fix" looking for a problem.

[Solomon]

I have yet to see one person in favor of implementing any of these auto-controls try to quantify just how big these supposed problems really are.  Until that's done it's all just conjecture, and a "fix" looking for a problem.

Good point. For the sake of a quick and dirty estimate, we can assume that income is roughly proportional to score. I did a quick calculation on the two alliances with the most members as they're the ones which stand to lose most from Sheepy's proposed changes. I calculated the total score of alliance members not on the alliance color as a percentage of the alliance's total score.

 

In the case of UPN, they'd lose about 16% of their tax revenue. The most numerous alliance, FSA, would lose about 36% of its tax revenue. If you think that's an insignificant number, I ask you to make an equally insignificant donation to my nation.

[Reagan]

In the case of UPN, they'd lose about 16% of their tax revenue. The most numerous alliance, FSA, would lose about 36% of its tax revenue. If you think that's an insignificant number, I ask you to make an equally insignificant donation to my nation.

I would label those the exception, not the rule. Furthermore, it's not an ongoing bonus. These nations will be deleted after 30 days. Inactives will come and go, but if people feel it's an unfair advantage, then perhaps they can recruit their own inactive to even things out. It should be about player strategy, in the case of inactives. Allow alliances to decide how they'll handle it. No need to modify the existing structure.

Edited January 10, 2015 by Reagan

[ooohu]

It's called trying to get people to be more active in this game. Sheepy doesn't want 100's of nations that just make a nation, join an alliance, and stop playing after a few weeks because they came in late & dont wanna put in the time. He also doesn't want alliances to have fake numbers. Some alliances actually only let in members who are active on both the game and their forums, while others just grab as many nations as they can and sit on a pile of ghost accounts, which doesn't really show the true colors of the leader board.

Who cares if an alliance chooses to be small and elite or a mass member group? It's not the admins job to determine what types of alliances exist nor anyone else. Alliances should be free to determine their own makeup without any incentive or disincentive in favor of being large or small in membership. All this proposed change offers is a disincentive to be a mass member group. And for what? So FSA an irrelevant backwater can't benefit from their game abuses as easily? Sorry but I don't see FSA as enough of a problem warranting drastically altering future alliances and if you or anyone else really has such a huge problem with FSA I have a solution it's called attacking FSA not lobbying for game wide changes.

 

This whole situation reeks of BoC's spying complaints which resulted in some mechanic changes it's just annoying to have the game constantly being fidgeted with every time some minor thing happens that a few people dislike.

Edited January 10, 2015 by Thulium

[Kim Jong-Il]

Who cares if an alliance chooses to be small and elite or a mass member group? It's not the admins job to determine what types of alliances exist nor anyone else. Alliances should be free to determine their own makeup without any incentive or disincentive in favor of being large or small in membership. All this proposed change offers is a disincentive to be a mass member group. And for what? So FSA an irrelevant backwater can't benefit from their game abuses as easily? Sorry but I don't see FSA as enough of a problem warranting drastically altering future alliances and if you or anyone else really has such a huge problem with FSA I have a solution it's called attacking FSA not lobbying for game wide changes.

 

This whole situation reeks of BoC's spying complaints which resulted in some mechanic changes it's just annoying to have the game constantly being fidgeted with every time some minor thing happens that a few people dislike.

 

I wasn't stating that I agree with Sheepy. I was just stating that above the commoner's word, Sheepy can do what he wants, as this is his game. He decides what to do to improve the players' experience, and he does that by using suggestions. He looks at them carefully, and does as he thinks is best. If he implements this, a small amount of alliances will be affected by it, but most won"t, so it is a vast majority that wont be hindered by it. Sheepy puts a ton of his time into the game, but you and I don't. So, that being said, he probably won't implement this, since a lot of guys opposed this, even if it fixed some of the problems people wanted to be

[Pax]

In my opinion, alliance taxes are used as a form of compensation for services offered (and fund those services entirely)

 

One of the biggest 'services' alliances provide to their members is protection, plain and simple. I've sunk millions of dollars into keeping my alliance's nations floating during raids and into rebuilding funds, etc. All of it's been out of my pocket pretty much because we only recently implemented taxes and they were only at 3/2% (income/resource), and they're even temporarily suspended right now to keep beiged nations from draining alliance bank while dealing with another raider causing issues. And you know what? Most of that effort has been put towards inactives.

 

I want my alliance protecting all of it's members, inactive or not, so that members know that if something comes up irl they can trust us to keep them safe. For that, it would still be best that we had taxes - and we should have the option to use them.

I don't see any benefit to this. If someone was going to play the game for a day or two and then suddenly stop, it's not the AA's fault and there's likely little they could have done

Edited January 13, 2015 by Pax

[Taureg]

Good point. For the sake of a quick and dirty estimate, we can assume that income is roughly proportional to score. I did a quick calculation on the two alliances with the most members as they're the ones which stand to lose most from Sheepy's proposed changes. I calculated the total score of alliance members not on the alliance color as a percentage of the alliance's total score.

 

In the case of UPN, they'd lose about 16% of their tax revenue. The most numerous alliance, FSA, would lose about 36% of its tax revenue. If you think that's an insignificant number, I ask you to make an equally insignificant donation to my nation.

 

Thanks for spending the time to check the math.  Percentages can be misleading though if you don't know what the resulting number is.

 

Regardless of what the real cash number is, it really is insignificant in the scheme of things.  It's 30 days!  It's not an ongoing revenue stream. 

 

Loss of alliance control and flexibility is the bigger issue.  Everybody loses when there are more and more controls. 

[WISD0MTREE]

 only recently implemented taxes and they were only at 3/2% (income/resource), and they're even temporarily suspended right now 

Wasn't Rose's like 50% before the last war? 

[Pax]

I don't know. I keep my taxes low to support my members, I think we've got some of the lowest taxes in-game. It's really down to the alliance's choice

[Shellhound]

I think it'll make beiging your opponents an actual tactic, itll also mean people could skip out on alliance taxes, which at first sounds bad but it'll mean that alliances who are well coordinated and have leaders who interact with their membership and enforce that kin of stuff will be rewarded. I support it.