Marcus Aurelius
-
Posts
92 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Gallery
Posts posted by Marcus Aurelius
-
-
Holy poops, CNG still exists!? I mean... Pit Vipers reporting in!
How's this game doing? I see many familiar faces and few nations.
-
second set from me, hopefully less phallic:
-
Is there a polite way to say that those appear to be a punch of penises?
There, I fixed it!
-
Throwing my idea in:
the retro look, I thought it fitting for this game
I can overhaul them if the lack of a game logo is a problem
-
I agree that players bear a lot of the burden of making the game fun, but it's a hard task these days. The problem with CN itself is that it's actually really boring, and all the fun that's been had here has actually happened despite the game. Games of this type usually use instant gratification to grab players and condition them to stay. CN, on the other hand, has extremely delayed gratification beyond the first few weeks of nation building. It actually discourages you from playing often and forces you to save up and wait for smaller and smaller incremental gains, like two and a half weeks for a sled, ten days for a tech shipment, many months for a warchest. This is suicide for a casual browser game. A noob with a life can forget he even has a nation in two and a half weeks.
This is where alliances step in. They provide a fun environment and a sense of commitment and gratification separate from the game but inextricably tied to keeping a nation running. This was ok, but not great, back when entire online communities were setting up shop here and alliances were huge, active, and engaging, but really lacking with the ghost-town alliances and dead forum we have now.
-
Now that GOONS have shuffled off, has anyone inherited their tracking and data?
-
How accessible are the forums from a mobile browser? Getting people in the game's nice and all, but there needs to be a direct way for them to get into the politics.
-
Ultimately though new players are what's going to save CN, and those are brought in by advertising and positive news stories about the game, whether that happens after a reset and improvements or not.And as I've mentioned, this couldn't be more ridiculously different from what's actually happening. The last reviews are more than half a decade old. The last good buzz is from about 06-07 when people were first discovering it. About a year later is a wave of incredibly pissed former players cursing the game out. After that are sporadic mentions followed by questions of whether the game is still here and still dying, and a few old former players actively discouraging new people from joining. This is what potential players will see when looking for what this game is about. Also the Urban Dictionary and Encyclopedia Dramatica pages. Those are always a good thing to have.
-
I think "the WOW of its genre" is NS. It's been around a few years longer than CN, has over 100k players, and at its lowest point had a few thousand more players than CN had at its peak. It also has no combat system, which makes it 100% debate and community, and might be the thing that kept it going for so long. It could be that people can see themselves joining a community and still being a part of it ten years down the line, but few people can see themselves playing a game for that long, especially not continuously which was the case before inactivity mode. The war mechanic screws that up because people who aren't fully invested in the politics game see their hard work destroyed every few months, and the grind turns to burnout. As for improvements, things like tech and pricing could be rebalanced in a way that flattens the game and makes it relatively quick and easy to get to a strength tier where a new player feels useful, but getting to upper tier would be more of a grind. Tech would be cheap enough to buy on your own to a higher level, but returns from massive tech levels would diminish, so that someone with 2x your tech would not have 2x your military and NS multiplier. That way, powerful players could still be threatened by weaker players and noobs wouldn't feel like they can never catch up to the oldsters. I hear the kids are all into those internet phone things, so a good mobile game client and forum reader wouldn't hurt either ;) .
-
It's what I made it for. Data points are right there in the spoiler if you want them.
-
That data does not exist to us. We only started tracking a few years ago. It would be interesting though.
It exists to me.
Peak Cyber Nations occurred on March 3, 2007, with a total of 40,820 nations.
I'd like to see you plot your recent graphs with the addition of my data set. Putting it together was a fun scavenger hunt.
[spoiler]Column 1: NATION COUNT (291 entries)
6,179
8,002
8,680
11,261
12,858
12,820
18,551
19,099
19,125
19,159
19,908
20,137
20,472
20,995
20,813
20,915
21,059
21,798
21,919
22,077
22,544
22,544
23,120
23,897
23,832
24,387
25,554
27,913
30,732
31,264
30,717
32,355
32,813
33,230
33,169
33,635
33,636
35,634
37,361
37,926
38,376
38,798
39,306
40,001
40,520
40,770
40,820
40,804
40,774
40,420
40,522
40,461
40,577
38,613
37,691
37,509
35,326
36,326
37,311
38,695
38,895
39,080
37,524
37,795
38,157
38,401
38,283
36,994
35,354
35,430
35,407
35,243
33,751
33,318
32,961
31,596
31,503
31,272
31,315
31,535
31,865
31,885
32,037
32,108
32,115
31,860
31,726
32,150
31,964
31,637
31,202
31,335
31,317
31,443
31,305
31,176
30,933
30,980
30,884
30,906
30,898
30,918
30,950
31,030
31,196
31,515
31,446
31,336
31,177
31,171
31,286
31,312
31,537
31,429
31,299
31,307
31,242
31,032
30,874
30,776
30,803
30,790
30,724
30,819
30,899
30,707
30,624
30,700
30,575
30,603
30,329
30,203
29,194
29,078
28,868
28,775
28,708
28,790
28,905
29,056
28,752
28,394
27,629
27,720
27,723
27,733
29,053
29,253
29,408
29,443
29,271
29,787
30,103
30,364
30,396
30,342
30,345
30,236
29,920
29,842
29,807
29,881
30,037
29,602
29,275
28,316
27,626
27,558
27,002
26,709
26,563
27,022
28,098
27,970
27,027
26,993
26,873
27,134
27,069
27,083
26,803
26,626
26,511
26,546
26,365
26,175
25,771
25,883
26,025
25,964
25,955
25,596
25,547
25,580
25,518
25,708
25,762
26,002
26,143
26,181
26,108
25,606
25,214
24,934
24,942
24,956
24,809
24,925
25,490
25,441
25,146
25,089
24,975
24,600
23,935
23,733
22,941
22,761
22,695
22,596
21,945
21,890
21,872
21,104
21,152
21,086
21,059
21,021
20,947
20,853
20,669
20,672
20,681
20,634
20,661
20,697
20,754
20,790
20,763
20,514
20,078
20,053
20,039
20,466
20,540
20,765
20,483
20,270
20,546
20,281
19,580
19,492
19,420
19,274
19,194
19,098
19,077
19,031
18,368
18,315
17,465
17,430
17,342
17,280
17,171
17,068
16,761
16,490
16,382
16,354
16,197
16,046
15,928
15,678
15,799
15,809
15,778
15,564
15,521
15,809
15,409
15,189
15,128
15,120
15,111
15,080
15,106
15,009
14,878
14,782
14,731
END
Column 2: Date Posted (291 entries)
4/8/2006
4/24/2006
5/9/2006
5/27/2006
6/15/2006
6/16/2006
8/14/2006
8/31/2006
9/1/2006
9/2/2006
9/14/2006
9/17/2006
9/30/2006
10/1/2006
10/3/2006
10/7/2006
10/9/2006
10/22/2006
10/23/2006
10/27/2006
10/30/2006
11/1/2006
11/6/2006
11/10/2006
11/11/2006
11/13/2006
11/21/2006
11/27/2006
12/6/2006
12/10/2006
12/12/2006
12/16/2006
12/21/2006
12/23/2006
12/29/2006
1/5/2007
1/6/2007
1/18/2007
1/29/2007
2/2/2007
2/3/2007
2/16/2007
2/20/2007
2/26/2007
3/1/2007
3/2/2007
3/3/2007
3/9/2007
3/10/2007
3/11/2007
3/14/2007
3/15/2007
3/20/2007
3/28/2007
3/31/2007
4/4/2007
4/8/2007
4/23/2007
4/28/2007
5/9/2007
5/14/2007
5/21/2007
5/28/2007
6/3/2007
6/14/2007
6/17/2007
6/19/2007
6/28/2007
7/17/2007
7/25/2007
7/30/2007
8/9/2007
8/15/2007
8/17/2007
8/19/2007
8/28/2007
9/6/2007
9/18/2007
10/2/2007
10/7/2007
10/19/2007
11/1/2007
11/7/2007
11/11/2007
11/15/2007
12/4/2007
12/11/2007
12/17/2007
12/24/2007
12/27/2007
1/19/2008
1/27/2008
1/30/2008
2/2/2008
3/9/2008
3/11/2008
3/15/2008
3/19/2008
3/21/2008
3/22/2008
3/23/2008
4/8/2008
4/10/2008
4/14/2008
4/21/2008
5/4/2008
5/9/2008
5/15/2008
5/18/2008
5/20/2008
5/29/2008
6/2/2008
6/8/2008
6/11/2008
6/18/2008
6/26/2008
6/27/2008
7/8/2008
7/15/2008
7/24/2008
7/25/2008
7/26/2008
7/27/2008
8/4/2008
8/7/2008
8/12/2008
8/13/2008
8/24/2008
8/27/2008
8/27/2008
9/6/2008
9/9/2008
10/6/2008
10/24/2008
11/4/2008
11/13/2008
11/15/2008
11/21/2008
12/4/2008
12/10/2008
12/15/2008
12/21/2008
1/16/2009
1/19/2009
1/24/2009
1/25/2009
2/5/2009
2/9/2009
2/13/2009
2/17/2009
2/19/2009
3/1/2009
3/4/2009
3/7/2009
3/11/2009
3/16/2009
3/19/2009
4/1/2009
4/5/2009
4/11/2009
4/19/2009
4/23/2009
4/30/2009
5/12/2009
5/16/2009
6/1/2009
6/9/2009
6/24/2009
7/12/2009
7/16/2009
7/19/2009
7/25/2009
8/17/2009
8/18/2009
8/30/2009
9/1/2009
9/4/2009
9/16/2009
9/21/2009
9/25/2009
10/4/2009
10/14/2009
10/21/2009
10/28/2009
11/1/2009
11/5/2009
11/20/2009
11/27/2009
12/22/2009
12/27/2009
12/28/2009
1/6/2010
1/10/2010
1/13/2010
1/17/2010
1/25/2010
1/28/2010
2/4/2010
2/8/2010
2/13/2010
2/25/2010
3/11/2010
3/28/2010
4/6/2010
4/17/2010
4/28/2010
5/4/2010
5/12/2010
5/21/2010
5/26/2010
6/7/2010
6/11/2010
6/13/2010
6/23/2010
7/3/2010
7/6/2010
7/26/2010
8/2/2010
8/6/2010
8/8/2010
8/22/2010
8/24/2010
8/26/2010
8/30/2010
9/17/2010
9/21/2010
9/25/2010
10/10/2010
10/19/2010
10/22/2010
11/10/2010
11/12/2010
11/13/2010
11/16/2010
11/29/2010
12/2/2010
12/7/2010
12/13/2010
12/16/2010
12/28/2010
1/10/2011
1/18/2011
1/18/2011
1/24/2011
1/27/2011
2/6/2011
2/16/2011
2/19/2011
3/14/2011
3/22/2011
4/19/2011
4/22/2011
5/10/2011
5/18/2011
5/22/2011
5/26/2011
5/28/2011
5/30/2011
6/19/2011
6/23/2011
7/23/2011
7/28/2011
8/2/2011
8/16/2011
8/24/2011
8/30/2011
9/17/2011
9/22/2011
9/29/2011
10/5/2011
10/12/2011
10/23/2011
11/1/2011
11/27/2011
12/7/2011
12/8/2011
12/22/2011
12/31/2011
1/2/2012
1/4/2012
1/7/2012
1/17/2012
1/27/2012
1/31/2012
2/5/2012
2/19/2012
2/23/2012
3/1/2012
3/11/2012
3/18/2012
3/24/2012
END
The data's spotty at times, especially toward the end when there aren't as many people bragging about their nation rank :rolleyes:
This would have taken five minutes to make if Admin hadn't put the demographics stat page behind a password wall in 06 and let Internet Archive crawl the thing. I could have plotted the number of nations that quit, and highlighted periods of good and bad player retention.
[/spoiler]
Seeing such a broad swathe of CN history really made it clear to me that this game leaves a huge wake of pissed off former players. In 06-07, it's all "look at this cool nation sim, let's make an alliance!" but by 08-09, anyone who brings it up gets shot down with "why are you still playing this ***** game?" There are few fond memories and fewer people who want to come for a second look, and the people who did enjoy it admitted that they liked it despite the game itself and portions of the community.edit: added 60 new data points, getting rid of most of the blind spots
-
If everyone else is getting peace, might as well give it to FAIL as well. If they're just asking you to surrender, I wouldn't call that an unfair peace.
I agree, there's no reason why they shouldn't get peace. They have members, a mission statement, an alliance forum, and a wiki page. They posted a war declaration, and now are suing for peace. Do the gentlemanly thing and give it to them.
-
Excellent point.
I actually like being able to choose whether or not to delete my war activity. If you want to go off the radar, it makes it more difficult, because even if you change AA's you still have a war record for 30 days. I deleted my war reason in my last round for that exact reason.
EDIT: isn't it good enough to have battle reports in your inbox???
This is a pretty good point. War details could be sent to each combatant via in-game message, or put on a category similar to successful spy ops, where they can be seen only by the nations involved once they have been deleted from the war and battle screen, unless someone does a Gather Intelligence operation against them. Going off the radar is a successful strategy that is being used by the underdogs in the current round of wars to hold their ground against numerically superior opponents, and removing such a strategy seriously limits the counterplay opportunities in such a situation, only reinforcing the advantage of superior numbers.
-
[quote name='D34th' date='19 April 2010 - 04:59 PM' timestamp='1271710722' post='2266723']
I'm a bit disappointed, not a bad pip in fact a good one but I have to say that I expected better from MK
This one is beautiful
[img]http://i263.photobucket.com/albums/ii141/bukketofphotos/vantag1.png[/img]
Also can someone provide a link here or via PM to this 107 one? I'm very curious lately
[/quote]
There was a backlash against anything too complex by people who believed everything had been done before by other alliances.
Also, thanks. That was Vanguard's pip from the CnG boards. -
[quote name='Denial' date='19 April 2010 - 05:41 AM' timestamp='1271670101' post='2266126']
The two most likely candidates:
[img]http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/4578/derpj.jpg[/img]
[img]http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/1015/lnpip.png[/img]
[/quote]
And definitely this:
[img]http://i263.photobucket.com/albums/ii141/bukketofphotos/vantag1.png[/img]
And my mark on CN alliance imagery grows yet again
-
[quote name='baskan' date='01 April 2010 - 01:44 AM' timestamp='1270100672' post='2243324']
Did anyone notice this was posted at midnight server time?? making this well idk APRIL 1ST??!!
[/quote]
Someone's not dealing with it
We're really merging. You'll believe it soon enough. -
LUE's flag is a classic piece, especially the war flag.
I couldn't agree more.
*made the high-res flag*
-
All this snuggling leads me to one question : What does a Tiger and a Viper make..?
Some really nasty bite marks.
-
o/
Keep on slithering, my little vipers!
-
Are you sure you know what this war is about? Doesn't seem to me like you do. NOBODY has that right but His Holy Admin.
That's how it should be. After all, the game is supposed to be a business and an income source for him, so allowing players to run his customers off sounds illogical. The official statement, however, is "I'd do it if I had a nation."
-
Well I still remember this big old thread over the EZI pact that alliances signed abolishing EZI and WalkerNinja, then the leader of the ODN, claiming they couldn't do away with the practice.
Apparently, they keep it legal to avoid tying their hands in case they "needed" to use it.
-
TPF or Valhalla anyone?
Now there's something I haven't heard before.
-
New Pink Order was the last. One cannot have a properly stolen house system without four houses after all.
I wonder how the wiki mods got the metal flag up. I thought it was only used for internal stuff.
Oh, LUEicides were the best, never did see that treaty though =/... maybe I wasn't on the forums
Everyone remembers Yaridovich right? Good times, good times...
I've notified Tygaland. There's a gift-wrapped nuke headed your way
-
We lost the original .psd
All is not lost. It's not a psd, but it's a start.
I did sigs for League 1.0, so it's fitting that I help out now
Nation count within CN and trends
in Open World RP
Posted
Mechanics make people come and build up routines. Communities make people stay. This game has always been the complete polar opposite of a Skinner box, a system that does everything in its power to discourage logins and basic repetitive maintenance activities. It's a real testament to the alliances that anyone still plays, despite the game itself.