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MaGneT

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  1. MaGneT

    Why is it that...

    By MaGneT,

    Doomhouse can act like complete asses, force the people who I wanted to fight out of the war and be downright arrogant at times...
    ... but for some reason I can't help but like them.
  2. MaGneT
    Lately there have been a lot of moans and groans among the community about how CN's player population is now well below 20,000. A lot of people are talking about how the next war is "the last war" and the game is dying. That's silly. CN, as a game and as a community, is still going strong. The political landscape of alliances is constantly changing and I think that I'm more engaged than I have been since the months leading up to Karma. That being said, I understand their complaints. We are facing a dwindling population and the gameplay has remained stagnant for quite some time.
    The way I see it, there are three distinct camps on this issue. First, we have the people who think that Admin is letting the game die, everything is coming to an end no matter what we do and that things are so boring. Next, we have the people who claim that there is nothing wrong as most of the people who have left were not major political contributors anyway. These are primarily the folks that say that talking about the decline of CN is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Lastly, we have the folks who see flaws and propose them and the other two camps shoot down the proposals. Everyone is a little bit right here and the only proper way to move forward is to analyze why everyone is upset.
    After every major war, there is a lull in the action. People complain about a lack of drama as the main parties of the previous war lick their wounds. Political maneuvering gets done, but it is usually nothing like the rapid treaty action in the immediate buildup before a war. It's the calm after the storm. During wars, there is a lot of in-game action as well as a lot of forum-based political maneuvering. The difference here is in-game action. The problem is, during peacetime, the only in-game way that a single player can affect anything is by growing. You can make friends by being a diplomat or argue on the OWF to make a political impact, but the only thing you are doing as the ruler of your nation is pay bills, buy infra, collect and tech deal.
    The obvious issue here is growth - not necessarily growth itself, but the process of doing so. Many people see the problem as being that it takes far too long to grow back in between wars, so the action is more segmented and further apart. I disagree, I think that just making the intervals between the hands-on part of the game shorter will not solve people's discontent. Instead, I'd suggest making growing a more hands-on process. Infrastructure is not my primary concern, there is a very good suggestion out there to make rebuilding infra easier and that's a step in the right direction. I think we should focus on international commerce. Let's start with aid slots.
    A lot of us have toyed with the idea of uncapping foreign aid. $3,000,000 - heck, even $4,500,000 - is nothing to a nation that has existed for more than a year, 50 tech is insignificant in a world with nations that have over 10,000 tech and 2,000 soldiers won't help a nation above 10k NS. Some have said this takes skill, because you need to manage your aid slots more wisely and you can't drop x-hundred million bucks on a new guy and suddenly make him huge. Understandable objections, but they just don't hold up. This reminds me a lot of when I used to play Starcraft. You were only able to control 12 units at a time and many of us were under the impression that it took a lot of skill to be able to manage a very large army. While that's true, as it forced you to perform a difficult task and certain nuances allowed the player to excel at moving a large army, it turned out to be very limiting. When Starcraft II was released, you were able to control as large a group as you could find to select. It reduced the amount of mindless clicking and allowed me to focus more on strategy. It also enabled me to do more interesting and complex things with my troops, because I didn't have to worry about managing 72 units in 6 different sections.
    Uncapping aid alone would reestablish the importance of bank nations. It would revolutionize tech dealing and growth. It'd be the first in a few steps to add more commerce to the game, but I say it's long since necessary. If enough of us think this is right, we could put a decent and intelligent suggestion together and hopefully Admin and the mods will see where we're coming from.
    Thoughts?
  3. MaGneT

    That Podcast Idea

    By MaGneT,

    For the 5 to 10 of you who were actually interested in listening to the Podcast I was going to make on here, I'm sorry that I haven't gotten to it yet. I've had midterms and I have lots of papers due this week, so I'm pretty much swamped with schoolwork. I'll try to find time to get it done at some point . . . should be fun when I get to it, I hope.
    -Mag
  4. MaGneT
    Howdy world,
    I did my show as planned yesterday, but I did not consider two things. One, the server was incredibly crappy. It was good for the first show, but people said they spent most of their time getting disconnected or buffering. This might be because I'm in a college dorm. That leads me to my second thing. I am in a college dorm and I had to bribe my roommate to keep him and my friends from barging in and laughing at me while I conducted a radio show about imaginary politics. So I'm going to take AirMe's advice that he left on my previous blog and follow his example of just making the damned thing a Podcast. That way I can record it in segments and not have to worry about any losses in quality.
    Considering the technical disaster that last night's show was, I'm probably going to piece together the parts of it that were actually recorded (thank you very much Octalan for recording what you could) and extract the good points to drop into the next show, which will be my real "Episode 1", if you will. I'm looking for people who are interested in being guests and if anyone has anything they would like me to talk about, I'd have a lot of fun with that as well. So drop some suggestions and whatnot.
    Hope you all enjoy the Podcast when I release it. More info coming soon.
    -Mag
  5. MaGneT

    Another radio show

    By MaGneT,

    Howdy world,
    So I figured I'd grace you all with yet another CN radio talk show from someone who probably enjoys this game a little too much (me). The format of my show is very simple. I'm doing it a lot like a real world political talk radio show - that is, I get on the air for an hour, spout my opinion on different matters, have guests and callers and play some music in between segments. I did a trial run of the show tonight, in which I discussed the CSN-DT debacle and all the stuff associated with it. A bunch of people enjoyed it and I really liked hearing myself talk. It's called "Magnet's Soapbox" and I'm going to do it every Tuesday night at 11 PM CN server time (it should last an hour or so, but if it crosses over update, I'd put on some music from 11:59 until at least 12:15 server time during wars). For those who are interested, you can find it at this link. Sorry that I don't have my own SHOUTcast server, but I'm a college student and whatever money I have isn't going towards this. So if you're interested in listening, you'll have to install the Windows Media Player for Firefox plugin. It's pretty handy anyway.
    If anyone (preferably AirMe or bros or someone else who has done a show like this) is willing to be very nice and help me figure out how to do callers and guests with Skype or Ventrilo, as well as recording the show for later listening, I'd be very very grateful. As far as those guests go, if you're interested in being one, leave a comment here talking about your perspective on current events and why you can offer something interesting and new to the program that people would enjoy. The way callers are going to work is pretty simple, I think: I'll have someone in the IRC channel (it's currently being run out of #DT, but I'll register my own channel when I feel like it and post it here) for you to query and he/she will determine if you have something of worth to add to what is being discussed (you don't have to agree with me, I like debates), then I'll connect you during a music break and we'll talk for a few, then I'll disconnect you.
    I'm going to try to be a bit different from other shows by just having it explicitly my own IC opinion and avoiding OOC-style analysis, there are people out there who already do it and they do it better than me, so hopefully people enjoy either agreeing with me or enjoy hating the way I think. I also don't feel the need to come across as aloof, so I won't be avoiding getting mud on my boots and blatantly insulting those who I feel deserve insulting and calling those out who I feel deserve calling out. Pretty much, I want this to be a fun hour of distraction from what's becoming a pretty difficult semester for me and a good time for anyone who decides to listen to me yap about whatever I yap about.
    Hope you guys listen, and if you want to talk about it on IRC, you can find me in #DT as either Maghammad[DT] or MaGneT[DT]. Don't hesitate to query or PM me
    -Mag
    EDIT:
    I've been approached by a few people who can't get the link to work - that's because it's for live shows only. I'm not live at the moment and I didn't record the last show
    Also, IRC channel is #TheSoapBox
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