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Amossio

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Considering what happened to alliances like UPN I'm dubious whether expansion into other realms is wise for a CN alliance to do. Community is nice, but it's a sense of mission and purpose that brings the most out of nation rulers, and anytime you become a jack of all trades you sacrifice being exceptional in one area (i.e. CN warfare). If CN died, SNX would simply mass-emigrate as a single unit to another realm... maintaining a presence in multiple realities seems a bit too tenuous to me.

 

Forming alliances in new, interesting worlds is usually a successful strategy for community continuity.

 

Most famously - the New Pacific Order arrived from another world. Their original home remains very much intact. Several other, newer Pacificas have also been successful in various other worlds.

 

UPN is the number one alliance in another world. VE is number two. Pacifica is in the top ten and most of the other prominent alliances stem from CN communities.

 

 

 

 

The original migrants who formed the core alliances of CN back in 2006/07 were very successful in their time as well.

 

GOONS, MK, Fark, LUE, and others.

 

 

 

No it doesn't always work, and that is to be expected - but I wouldn't feel shy about trying.

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It's almost as though IC and OOC are two separate things or something! I play a particular role on the OWF, maybe if you put more effort into actually roleplaying a character rather than circlejerking in backchannels, we'd still have an active community.

Yea yea.

We do have an active community, you know, where a new guy isn't sniped and zingd to hell for wishing his opponent a good luck. Where a simple comment wouldnt be spun and spun into entirely different thing. This community is poison and anathema to new players who get shredded because they aren't loaded with 10 years of history and 10 years of revisionist history and the usual tropes that occur here. A simple discourse is not possible because likes of you are there waiting there to twist things around and attack people based on AAs etc. You are part of the problem actually. OWF is a hostile shitty place for a newbie and really is just a circle jerk these days between a dozen or so people including you. Content has gone down the gutters too. Anybody worth anything doesn't really post much here either, I suppose they do have more important things to do then deal with what essentially is utter silliness that goes around here. Edited by shahenshah
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You'd be amazed at what presenting a semi equal war might do for activity in this game, considering your clique is simply planning a few more curbstomps and then the big prize, you're certainly predicting the future, but that's not the fault of the casual playerbase, its yours for refusing to use the tools available to make said casual playerbase have an ability to have an opinion on the politics.

 

It's unfortunately very very hard to find anyone around here that can have a good war with roughly even odds and not need crates of preparation H shipped to them. And when I do find someone like that I try not to fight them again because I'd rather we fight together against someone with fewer redeeming characteristics.

 

But you're absolutely right. I mentioned the same thing some time back when I tried to stir up some dueling - I did find one good duel partner :) but I seem to have failed utterly at inspiring any broader reform of culture.

 

The problem with the politics side of things is that it can't really involve more than a handful of people in any meaningful way - alliance leaders. The rest of the players are just going along with what's happening and polishing their shiny pixels until they get to use those pixels. The wrong end of a curb stomp sees years worth of pixels disappear and for some rebuilding those pixels starts to look futile.

 

So on one hand - perhaps more alliances. Though even I can see this day that we might want to just get the active players matched up with the dead alliances. But either way...

 

But realistically many people want to play without it becoming the all-consuming waste of time that being an alliance leader is. And that's fine. But they should be more active in judging their leaders, frankly. The people that are 'just' sustaining members in their alliance need to hold their leaders feet to the fire on occasion and ask them tough questions. They need to ask themselves if their current leaders personal friendship with another leader is really more important than all the stuff they ever told themselves about what their alliance stands for.

 

If necessary they need to be able to replace the leaders or leave the alliance.

Edited by Sigrun Vapneir
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Yea yea.

We do have an active community, you know, where a new guy isn't sniped and zingd to hell for wishing his opponent a good luck. Where a simple comment wouldnt be spun and spun into entirely different thing. This community is poison and anathema to new players who get shredded because they aren't loaded with 10 years of history and 10 years of revisionist history and the usual tropes that occur here. A simple discourse is not possible because likes of you are there waiting there to twist things around and attack people based on AAs etc. You are part of the problem actually. OWF is a hostile !@#$%* place for a newbie and really is just a circle jerk these days between a dozen or so people including you. Content has gone down the gutters too. Anybody worth anything doesn't really post much here either, I suppose they do have more important things to do then deal with what essentially is utter silliness that goes around here.

Since you're awfully observant to my own posts, mind showing me where I do that? I call out the blowhards who have spent a decade fellating whomever they could to avoid being rolled, sure, but I am one of the more helpful around here towards newer players. Content has gone down the gutter because your entire sphere is on a comms blackout and refuses to actually put forth any public political intrigue, that used to be the norm but around Karma everyone realized its much safer to just not have public opinions than actually have to put your statistics behind them.

Edited by Mogar
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You'd be amazed at what presenting a semi equal war might do for activity in this game, considering your clique is simply planning a few more curbstomps and then the big prize, you're certainly predicting the future, but that's not the fault of the casual playerbase, its yours for refusing to use the tools available to make said casual playerbase have an ability to have an opinion on the politics.

Any global war will be an increase from peace time activity until people get bored after the first month or so. It's going to happen eventually. There isn't really any such thing as an even war, so eventually one side would have an edge going on or  gain an edge overall and people on the other one would start to lose morale. It certainly wouldn't be as active as in the past due to the diminished playerbase. Then the war is over and the lull sets in again except with many more people having left and rebuilding that takes a long time isn't particularly stimulating either as a cycle reset would take a while(due to people needing to rebuild infra/tech/warchests) and the winning coalition(for the most part) would likely persist for  another war or two or people would wait until a new one could be assembled. There's really no historical basis or evidence for the assertions on a macro level that a particular configuration of war generates long-term interest. It would just mean the same people who post here regularly would have more to talk about for a bit rather than generate a lot of interest from new people. The politics in this game doesn't really appeal to a majority of the players because it's largely based on feuds a small group of people have and getting involved takes a lot of time and effort. I don't blame them.

 

Even when there were a lot more players, they were mostly casual then as well and any interest in politics was based on how it directly affected them(ie. getting rolled) or what their leaders told them.  Most people who are complaining about it being boring in the past supported curbstomps or lopsided wars that served their interests and those ended up helping kill off some of the political diversity there was before. It's perfectly normal for people to be upset if the kind of lopsided wars they want aren't happening, though, so that's understandable. You always reference the Great War era, but most of the players in the League/Aegis alliances didn't persist in CN after they were definitively defeated and started to disband, so it wasn't some sort of golden age that serves as a model for game health. It was a very short time period and it burned a lot of people out on the game. Then the same thing happened with the Unjust War.

 

That leaves the main draw needing to be the alliance communities and when those aren't appealing enough, it's largely a habit and thinking "well, I've had my nation around so long I don't want to give it up just yet but I just can't really justify spending the time I used to because I'm busy with other stuff", so again the geopolitics will always just interest a minority of players for the most part.  For there to be a lot of chiefs on the world stage since they will always be a tiny minority, you need  an active base of  rank and file members to persist in alliances, which requires strong communities.  If there was a reset, which would be the closest thing to being an equalizer, many players would leave. Most alliances aren't even sustainable at this point if they were to lose their remaining current leaderships  and wars won't turn that around. There are some that can weather the constant churn of players out of the game, decline in activity in previously active members, and still maintain a strong internal organization, but it's a very small portion and it's generally the alliance that have more people in them rather than smaller ones. 

 

 

The problem with the politics side of things is that it can't really involve more than a handful of people in any meaningful way - alliance leaders. 

 

This is a good point to raise as well. Due to the need for secrecy, it inherently limits the number of people who can be involved.  Thing is, another problem  at this stage very few people want to be alliance leaders or work for it. It's not a particularly rewarding thing. More people used to want to do it, even if it was still a minority and would try to advance within their alliance. This hasn't been the case for a long long time though.

 

 

It's unfortunately very very hard to find anyone around here that can have a good war with roughly even odds and not need crates of preparation H shipped to them. And when I do find someone like that I try not to fight them again because I'd rather we fight together against someone with fewer redeeming characteristics.

 

But you're absolutely right. I mentioned the same thing some time back when I tried to stir up some dueling - I did find one good duel partner  :) but I seem to have failed utterly at inspiring any broader reform of culture.

 

 

So on one hand - perhaps more alliances. Though even I can see this day that we might want to just get the active players matched up with the dead alliances. But either way...

 

But realistically many people want to play without it becoming the all-consuming waste of time that being an alliance leader is. And that's fine. But they should be more active in judging their leaders, frankly. The people that are 'just' sustaining members in their alliance need to hold their leaders feet to the fire on occasion and ask them tough questions. They need to ask themselves if their current leaders personal friendship with another leader is really more important than all the stuff they ever told themselves about what their alliance stands for.

 

If necessary they need to be able to replace the leaders or leave the alliance.

 

That's good and all for your duels, but there's no real evidence that it created interest long-term. The people who want  could easily have smaller more contained even conflicts if they wanted to right now and as you said, you haven't gotten many takers. The ones that are going on now where people have relatively greater regenerative capacity(low tier range wars) are also ones where people are saying enough is enough.

 

Active players matched up with dead alliances just means more alliances persist as zombies and if people have to spend their time keeping an alliance alive internally, you'll find they won't have a lot of energy for much else. 

 

If people did what you're suggesting, they'd just find there's nowhere better to go, since not only would they want an alliance that stands for something, they'd want one able to do something about it and they'd find those are in very short supply. It's not particularly easy for alliances to be competitive here and it would require a lot of time and effort to get one to a level  where it would be and then they'd have to find enough like-minded alliances that could agree on a plan and pursue those goals. Robust internals take a lot of tedious effort. It would take a lot of time that would just seem like watching paint on the wall in terms of getting all the essentials down. This isn't a setting where you can just generate success out of nowhere and most people don't want to be in a guerrilla alliance that stands for some sort of ideals but is a fringe low tier alliance and on the periphery. If someone is just checking in from time to time and doesn't really put much effort into their own nation persistently because they have other things they prefer to do, they won't bother.  Again, I don't really blame them.

 

 

Since you're awfully observant to my own posts, mind showing me where I do that? I call out the blowhards who have spent a decade fellating whomever they could to avoid being rolled, sure, but I am one of the more helpful around here towards newer players. Content has gone down the gutter because your entire sphere is on a comms blackout and refuses to actually put forth any public political intrigue, that used to be the norm but around Karma everyone realized its much safer to just not have public opinions than actually have to put your statistics behind them.

 

 

It was never the norm for people to speak openly in that period and for there to be public political intrigue except when there were specific fiascos that were unintentional and people don't make those mistakes anymore. There was more activity due to a bigger population, but it was usually just either Vox on the fringe or the people with political power hammering their points in or some of the curbstomp targets trying to defend themselves until they realized it just made their situation worse and shut up. Pretty much everyone has endorsed the cloak and dagger style/lay low style of politics where backrooms are the big deal aside from some people on the fringe except when it's less than beneficial to them(when they aren't achieving the political ends they want)

 

 

 

.

Edited by Monster
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People don't want to admit it but the lower-tier is the most important tier... without new blood alliances stagnate and degenerate until there are only tired old nations left, caught in the drill of building more and more infrastructure.

The lower-tier is where tech production happens, it's the equivalent to oil in the real world and for the rest of this game there will be intercessant lower-tier warfare between multi-tier alliances and groups of barbarians trying to despoil them. We already see alot of alliances giving up the war for new nations, having no lower-tier, very low aid slot usage, and stagnated tech stockpiles. Those alliances will be in a precarious position when facing equivalent nations that have more tech.

We are seeing the beginning of the tech wars, and I don't think we will see alot more in the way of global wars, but there will be plenty of proxy wars and smaller disputes combined with lots of diplomacy.

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Monster, on 04 Mar 2016 - 10:40 AM, said:


That's good and all for your duels, but there's no real evidence that it created interest long-term. The people who want  could easily have smaller more contained even conflicts if they wanted to right now and as you said, you haven't gotten many takers. The ones that are going on now where people have relatively greater regenerative capacity(low tier range wars) are also ones where people are saying enough is enough.

Well I think there has been some long term interest, I know I've seen and heard a bit more of it since, I've had to turn down a couple of duels that I would have liked to have taken actually and I have to take that as a good sign. But yes, results, if any, are modest so far. But the low tier brush wars have actually gotten a LOT more popular and I'm curious to know what you mean about people saying 'enough is enough?' SnX and Animalz et. al. appear to be quite happy to continue their current state indefinitely, it's only other people that for various reasons would rather they stop. It's clear these guys are having a blast.

Active players matched up with dead alliances just means more alliances persist as zombies and if people have to spend their time keeping an alliance alive internally, you'll find they won't have a lot of energy for much else. 

Keeping an alliance going is hard work, it's certainly not for everyone. But that's what people that aspire to lead have to do in any alliance. They can suck up in a big alliance and hope for a shot or they can go try to revive a dead one - for the more ambitious and adventurous the latter is probably a better idea.

If people did what you're suggesting, they'd just find there's nowhere better to go, since not only would they want an alliance that stands for something, they'd want one able to do something about it and they'd find those are in very short supply. It's not particularly easy for alliances to be competitive here and it would require a lot of time and effort to get one to a level  where it would be and then they'd have to find enough like-minded alliances that could agree on a plan and pursue those goals. Robust internals take a lot of tedious effort. It would take a lot of time that would just seem like watching paint on the wall in terms of getting all the essentials down. This isn't a setting where you can just generate success out of nowhere and most people don't want to be in a guerrilla alliance that stands for some sort of ideals but is a fringe low tier alliance and on the periphery. If someone is just checking in from time to time and doesn't really put much effort into their own nation persistently because they have other things they prefer to do, they won't bother.  Again, I don't really blame them..

From my point of view I realized about 6 years ago I could keep telling myself all the reasons why it would not work, or I could just do it and make it work. And again we've actually seen here recently that there *are* a lot of active players that enjoy being in fringe low-tier alliances and basically playing the way they want to play instead of taking the path of least resistance. There are a lot of people doing that right now that would have drifted away in boredom long ago if we hadn't been able to carve out a little sliver of space where they can exist and do their thing. Edited by Sigrun Vapneir
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Well I think there has been some long term interest, I know I've seen and heard a bit more of it since, I've had to turn down a couple of duels that I would have liked to have taken actually and I have to take that as a good sign. But yes, results, if any, are modest so far. But the low tier brush wars have actually gotten a LOT more popular and I'm curious to know what you mean about people saying 'enough is enough?' SnX and Animalz et. al. appear to be quite happy to continue their current state indefinitely, it's only other people that for various reasons would rather they stop. It's clear these guys are having a blast. Keeping an alliance going is hard work, it's certainly not for everyone. But that's what people that aspire to lead have to do in any alliance. They can suck up in a big alliance and hope for a shot or they can go try to revive a dead one - for the more ambitious and adventurous the latter is probably a better idea. From my point of view I realized about 6 years ago I could keep telling myself all the reasons why it would not work, or I could just do it and make it work. And again we've actually seen here recently that there *are* a lot of active players that enjoy being in fringe low-tier alliances and basically playing the way they want to play instead of taking the path of least resistance. There are a lot of people doing that right now that would have drifted away in boredom long ago if we hadn't been able to carve out a little sliver of space where they can exist and do their thing.

 

I'm mostly referring to the majority of people who don't like how things are also don't want to emulate the model you, Methrage and others employ. Duels haven't become widespread, which you acknowledge. It's not  a criticism of you since you're doing what you advocate, it's more I was stating why others won't.   As you mentioned, a lot of external parties(the community at large) don't like it and they get bored of seeing it.

 

The thing is, there aren't a lot of ambitious and adventurous people that would want to do that(join a dead alliance and try to revive it), though and there are also less and less who are willing to do what it takes to advance in a larger alliance. Most people don't want to put in that kind of effort and that's why we are where we're at. The less active members of alliances you described certainly don't in most cases. If they want something to happen,  it's usually they want someone else to make something happen for them, they want it to happen on a massive scale, and they don't want to deal with the practicalities of making it happen so all they'll do is blow off steam once in  a while or quit. I'm just giving the reasons why people won't take your advice rather than giving a value judgement on it.

 

There's a vocal group of people doing what you describe, but they aren't particularly numerous when compared to everyone else or we'd see a lot more of it happening. It's perfectly viable for more of those SNX-LN style conflicts to occur where veteran players in micro alliances duke it out over stuff like senate seats, but people are choosing not to follow that model.

Edited by Monster
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As you mentioned, a lot of external parties(the community at large) don't like it and they get bored of seeing it.

 

 

I don't think that's actually the problem. People that get bored with seeing it just quit reading those threads. I tuned them out myself for several weeks. That's really all it takes if that's really your problem.

 

I think it's more complicated than that. Each side has a few friends and allies. As is expected in this environment, if you chain those alliances out you eventually get to people conflicting that don't particularly want to conflict - the chaining stopped of course but the longer it goes on the more chance of some sort of incident happening that no one wants to happen. SnX have been drawing a lot of aid without any positive results to show for it, and their allies don't want to have to keep funding them forever obviously. There's a lot more going on here than just 'bored of seeing these threads' although that's normally the safest way for those affected to characterize their frustration.

 

I suspect there's even an element of envy in certain cases - people that would very much like to get some action but can't so they go sour grapes and call Sephiroth/Junka/SirKindle names instead.

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You always reference the Great War era, but most of the players in the League/Aegis alliances didn't persist in CN after they were definitively defeated and started to disband, so it wasn't some sort of golden age that serves as a model for game health. It was a very short time period and it burned a lot of people out on the game. Then the same thing happened with the Unjust War.

LUE disbanded, reformed as MK, went on to get their revenge alongside NAAC 2.0 and almost everyone else who was in the defeated coalition of GW2/3, revenge served as an inspiration for MK's rise to power and the supergrievances era. People make it out to be as though revenge is a terrible concept when it isn't always a bad thing, and there's plenty of things to take revenge for just in the past 2 war cycles, its just that'd mean doing something other than stagnating.

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I'm always kind of amazed about this sense of entitlement people have about being entertained in this game. It's always someone else's fault things are boring, no one actually takes on any responsibility to do something that would legitimately hold their interest. That's the single dumbest aspect of these threads - if there really were enough motivated people that wanted to *do something*, nothing stops them in this world but their own laziness/cowardice/ineptitude.

I'm way passed amazed and headed toward laughing.  I doubt I'm the only person here who has noticed how predictable this world has become.  I've been around since 2008 and 2015 was the first year I DON'T remember a global war happening.  Now THAT is something truly different.  

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I'm way passed amazed and headed toward laughing.  I doubt I'm the only person here who has noticed how predictable this world has become.  I've been around since 2008 and 2015 was the first year I DON'T remember a global war happening.  Now THAT is something truly different.  


Doom war ended on 21st February 2015.... Was you away for those 2 months of 2015? Edited by the rebel
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so has the politics of Bob now turned into a kumbaya hippy hipster fest where you all joined hands and &@£! each other off. Where's the hatred gone to make things juicy, it's like peace paradise, it's like being back in the q! The last war wasn't even interesting enough to make a comeback, utter !@#$%^&*, oculus might as well sign a neutrality agreement.

 

You are in Oculus and in the AA that is historically and currently the biggest tie up in the treaty web. If you guys could get your shit together and actually stick to a side instead of playing realpolitik sucking dick 25/8, maybe all the wars wouldn't suck. 

 

And I'm talking a Valhalla level sucking because even when you are on 1 side, you always manage to make sure the other side doesn't hate you. It's the equivalent of nonnuke deals imo.

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Amossio speaks from the standpoint of someone who occasionally pops into the game rather than someone who has to make decisions on an alliance's behalf or even an engaged player, so he's purely a spectator and I don't think his OOC entertainment perspective which he's entitled to has anything to do with the particular alliances he's been affiliated with as you could find detached players from all corners who'd say similar things.

 

Well he should join GPA.

 

#GotEm

Edited by Unknown Smurf
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Yeah but it started in November 2014. Either way, it has been over a year since the last global war.


True, although it was pre-planned to be that way. There was two potential global wars last year but both were either pre-planned to be that way or pre-known to end that way.
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This game was never really meant to be a wargame anyways. I've always considered it a political game first and foremost and to that end, war is a tool, not a goal. If there's been no global war, that just means there's no reason for one. It's not like we're required to have one every year like some sort of ritual mass blood letting.

There are plenty of games out there that are much better at simulating war, both on an individual, national, and global basis.

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You are in Oculus and in the AA that is historically and currently the biggest tie up in the treaty web. If you guys could get your !@#$ together and actually stick to a side instead of playing realpolitik sucking dick 25/8, maybe all the wars wouldn't suck. 

 

And I'm talking a Valhalla level sucking because even when you are on 1 side, you always manage to make sure the other side doesn't hate you. It's the equivalent of nonnuke deals imo.

 

Sorry mate, I will never understand you.

Edited by Amossio
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You are in Oculus and in the AA that is historically and currently the biggest tie up in the treaty web. If you guys could get your !@#$ together and actually stick to a side instead of playing realpolitik sucking dick 25/8, maybe all the wars wouldn't suck. 

 

And I'm talking a Valhalla level sucking because even when you are on 1 side, you always manage to make sure the other side doesn't hate you. It's the equivalent of nonnuke deals imo.

 

Dude, there's loads of nations out there, why don't you talk to them instead of wasting your time on me.

 

Lot of effort, aid, talking. It can actually be more fun than starting wars and crap all the time. Basically how you choose to apply yourself. Let's face it, I'm shit myself, but I've no objectives.  

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