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On Work: An Appeal


Hereno

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Nobody, not even Admin, would pretend that CyberNations hasn't reached its peak. We're currently on a spiral downward, and that is something that should be frankly admitted. Admitting that there is a problem is the first step to solving a problem, and this post is predicated on the idea that we're all willing to take that first step.

 

One of the biggest problems, historically, especially with micro alliances, are finding enough people willing to actually put in the work of running an alliance to make an alliance run. If you look at alliance governments, they tend to have the same amount of people in them wherever you go. After a certain point, there's only so much that needs to be done; but in smaller alliances, similar amounts of work need to be done. This is the biggest problem that has plagued the start-up of new alliances: the inevitable 4-person team of people taking on the work of 10-20 people and getting burned out because they couldn't attract enough people willing to do the work.

 

There is, however, one other solution to this problem. Making there be less work involved in managing an alliance. Many of the alliances here have some, most, or almost all of their actual non-FA work completely automated. While this has long been accepted as a sort of "we have this person and we're not sharing our secrets with you unless we really like you, since you could just do the work manually yourselves" type of bonus, as the game is collapsing and less alliances are able to function properly, it seems like it might actually be in the interests of those of you with all of these interesting automation programs to share them with the rest of the community. What point is there in dominating a game in which nobody plays because nobody wants to do the - and let's be clear, that's exactly what it is - work involved in playing it. None of us do. And the most successful alliances are the ones who managed to, through luck, skill, or a mixture of both, attract people who were willing to program for them.

 

To push my point further, think about how against the idea of pay-to-win we all are. Now, we know that the pay-to-win scheme goes a bit further in this game than just the $30.00 donation scheme that's in place, but this thread isn't about that stuff. And if you use that sentence as an excuse to close this thread, you're a jackass, and I don't care what shitty reasoning you use to the contrary. What this thread is about is how the ability to do things like program or graphic arts and all the rest - real life abilities that take time and money to do - give some alliances a massive bonus over the competition. There are some things that can't be standardized - we can't have all of the best FA people go around doing everyone's FA for them - but one thing that we can standardize is this. We can make this game less of a job and more of a game. And if the community itself won't fix the problem, I feel that the answer is for Admin to at least provide us with a standard, easy, replicable version of some of these programs that are available for general use. Something has to give, and at the end of the day, this is a game. If our spirit of competition is so fierce that we would rather the game die than give up some of our edge, then that's exactly what's going to happen. No, it's not the only thing, but it's one way that things could be better and that is undeniable.

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Good post. I'll give up MI6's secret: Active people + spreadsheets. And yes, I'm being serious. I'll be more than happy to help alliances set up their spreadsheets to keep track of things, if they don't already have something in place. 

Edited by Voodoo Nova
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Good post. I'll give up MI6's secret: Active people + spreadsheets. And yes, I'm being serious. I'll be more than happy to help alliances set up their spreadsheets to keep track of things, if they don't already have something in place. 

Spreadsheets are easy to set up. I could easily create some. However, I won't. I spent eight hours a day working on spreadsheets. So please understand if I'd prefer to spend my free time on other things.

Edited by Rebel Virginia
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That sure was a lot of words to end up saying nothing.

 

EDIT: Fine I'll actually say something relevant. I agree that more automated tools would be nice. We have a few of them in IRON, but we don't need them. They just make things faster. What we really need is more activity or more players.

Edited by Fox Fire
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The BUHDOODA Alliance supports this completely! We are hard-pressed to keep track of our many allies and enemies. We can't even afford a spreadsheeting program, sadly.

Considering a spreadsheet is free, this is exactly my point. 

At what point do we say that effort is required? You can't build an alliance by yourself, that's for sure. It takes people and it takes effort. 

Cry about it.

Edited by Fox Fire
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