The Apathy Report

[Saxplayer]

And that's because what matters in this game is connections. Older players have them to build an alliance/FA policy with. New players will be stuck until they can make enough friends to be safe on their own.

For example, I or Mogar could start a one-man AA and still have some relevance.

Honestly, pretty much anyone with experience with being in an alliance's gov, and knowing how to run an alliance could start up their own alliance, and it have some significance

[GeniusInc]

thanks for getting a new mic! By chance how many people outside of IRON do you talk to and how many are gov members <_<

A fair amount. would be tough to get numbers.

[Neo Uruk]

Honestly, pretty much anyone with experience with being in an alliance's gov, and knowing how to run an alliance could start up their own alliance, and it have some significance

This is true, but the IA guys of the world would have considerably less influence outside of the alliances they've been in/allied to. 

A fair amount. would be tough to get numbers.

I didn't mean to come off as rude, legit question. Your perspective seems fairly narrow for someone who's spent a fair bit of time here (again not meant as an insult, it's just the only way I know how to describe it) and I figured it was because most of your conversations were internal/alliance based.

[GeniusInc]

I didn't mean to come off as rude, legit question. Your perspective seems fairly narrow for someone who's spent a fair bit of time here (again not meant as an insult, it's just the only way I know how to describe it) and I figured it was because most of your conversations were internal/alliance based.

I have regular communications with 6 AA's and countless non govt (but those are mainly from former AA's of mine) Edited May 29, 2014 by GeniusInc

[Bob]

In regards to stagnation of the game, I really think that what needs to happen, is that new alliances need to be made, because that was one of the things that really made CN fun in the beginning, and by new alliances, I mean alliances made by new players, with little guidance by the bigger powers. If new alliances were to rise up, it could help to more diversify the world and make it more interesting.

..just no.  We need to get rid of 350 alliances or so, and then go from there (maybe 300).  Cut back, scale up the leadership within alliances.  More 10-20 person alliances would not help the game.

Edited May 29, 2014 by Bob

[Rayvon]

..just no.  We need to get rid of 350 alliances or so, and then go from there (maybe 300).  Cut back, scale up the leadership within alliances.  More 10-20 person alliances would not help the game.

300-350 doesn't sound bad .. A little amalgamation .. There's only 91 alliances with 20 or more nations in it (carrying on in agreeance with Bob's 'more 10-20 alliances would not help') out of 415 alliances on the in-game list (180 of which are one-man AA's) ..

[Saxplayer]

300-350 doesn't sound bad .. A little amalgamation .. There's only 91 alliances with 20 or more nations in it (carrying on in agreeance with Bob's 'more 10-20 alliances would not help') out of 415 alliances on the in-game list (180 of which are one-man AA's) ..

I would agree that all of those pointless 1 man-AA noob alliances need to be deleted, however all alliances start somewhere, and take an alliance like DOOMBIRD DOOMCAVE for instance, (you may say it's an exception) but for the first month or two of it's existance, it was only a one man AA. You could even look at an alliance like Screaming Red Asses, which only has 18 members, yet it continues to grow, and seems to be very stable. And 350 would be too much, I'd say more in the ballpark of 275-300.

[Neo Uruk]

I would agree that all of those pointless 1 man-AA noob alliances need to be deleted, however all alliances start somewhere, and take an alliance like DOOMBIRD DOOMCAVE for instance, (you may say it's an exception) but for the first month or two of it's existance, it was only a one man AA. You could even look at an alliance like Screaming Red Asses, which only has 18 members, yet it continues to grow, and seems to be very stable. And 350 would be too much, I'd say more in the ballpark of 275-300.

Actually, the first two months of DBDC it was at war and averaged maybe 6 nations or so

[Saxplayer]

Actually, the first two months of DBDC it was at war and averaged maybe 6 nations or so

Probably thinking of a different Alliance...

[Rayvon]

I would agree that all of those pointless 1 man-AA noob alliances need to be deleted, however all alliances start somewhere, and take an alliance like DOOMBIRD DOOMCAVE for instance, (you may say it's an exception) but for the first month or two of it's existance, it was only a one man AA. You could even look at an alliance like Screaming Red Asses, which only has 18 members, yet it continues to grow, and seems to be very stable. And 350 would be too much, I'd say more in the ballpark of 275-300.

Yes - every alliance does start somewhere ... That doesn't mean those hundreds and hundreds of existing alliances are going anywhere though .. One or two exceptions to the rule do not make a dozen or two dozen exceptions to the rule by default .. Certainly some of those small alliances are viable - but if you do some due diligence and click through the vast majority of them you'll find that there is nothing viable there .. No structure, no motion, no organization, no nothing that can really define them as alliances other than that they have an AA with multiple nations on it ..

18 nations is greater than 10 nations, and I did range "10 - 20" ..

[Saxplayer]

Yes - every alliance does start somewhere ... That doesn't mean those hundreds and hundreds of existing alliances are going anywhere though .. One or two exceptions to the rule do not make a dozen or two dozen exceptions to the rule by default .. Certainly some of those small alliances are viable - but if you do some due diligence and click through the vast majority of them you'll find that there is nothing viable there .. No structure, no motion, no organization, no nothing that can really define them as alliances other than that they have an AA with multiple nations on it ..

18 nations is greater than 10 nations, and I did range "10 - 20" ..

Understandable, I can agree with that.

[Kzoppistan]

Listened to both podcasts. I like it and recommend it to others.

Edited May 29, 2014 by Kzoppistan

[Mandrivia_2]

In response to the people saying that CyberNations needs a larger player base;  I've noticed over the past two months or so that the steady haemorrhaging of players has stopped lately and the number of players seems to be staying about the same or even increasing.  Whether this is due to the new rules or to more new players staying on, I don't know.

 

As to Saxplayer's suggestion, maybe if all those little 10-20 member micro-alliances merged, they could become a contender as a larger alliance?  

[White Chocolate]

Nice job. I especially like # 2. In fact, I think the discussion about alliances and size come back to some extent to your points about keeping people interested when they first log in.
 

300-350 doesn't sound bad .. A little amalgamation .. There's only 91 alliances with 20 or more nations in it (carrying on in agreeance with Bob's 'more 10-20 alliances would not help') out of 415 alliances on the in-game list (180 of which are one-man AA's) ..

As someone who has been in alliances under 50 all my CN career, I can tell you for a fact that if I logged in, found only alliances of in the range of 200+ members and that's it I would of just allowed my nation to expire and that would of been the end of that...

People have this idea in their minds of a "cookie cutter" new person of high school age who has no real social experience and acts like an idiot unless he or she has the guidance of more experienced players. Sorry - all types of people log on to CN. By the time I logged on to CN (over 5 years ago) I had an advanced degree and plenty of actual networking (etc.) experience. The last thing I want is more "school" (call it what you will).

Keep in mind that when people sign up for CN, what they are signing up for is "A Nation Similiation Game." It's not "Cyber Alliances" - a person doesn't come here to be a cog in a machine. The leader of a nation is someone powerful, someone special, someone worthy of respect. I think that's the experience a lot of people expect and when a new person starts out making an alliance it's because he or she is playing the game for that reason and is disappointed to find that as an individual new nation, short of being spammed by mail the first day or so of existance, no one cares.

My attraction to smaller alliances has always been that it's easier to "be someone" in that case. Better to be small and soverign than supposedly well protected and be told by some small group at the "top" of a 200+ man AA what to do. I can go to "work" and be told what to do by a boss in real life, I don't want to be just another worker here.

In terms of keep older players, being that's where I'm at now I can tell you that at this point in my CN career the LAST thing I want to be is some "bank" yet that's what most nations at high tiers get assigned to. On the other hand, I'm tired of being in leadership too. So much responsibility, very BAD pay scale :P

You can see what solution I've found by looking at my AA :D Edited May 29, 2014 by White Chocolate

[Rayvon]

As someone who has been in alliances under 50 all my CN career, I can tell you for a fact that if I logged in, found only alliances of in the range of 200+ members and that's it I would of just allowed my nation to expire and that would of been the end of that...

--

Keep in mind that when people sign up for CN, what they are signing up for is "A Nation Similiation Game." It's not "Cyber Alliances" - a person doesn't come here to be a cog in a machine. The leader of a nation is someone powerful, someone special, someone worthy of respect. I think that's the experience a lot of people expect and when a new person starts out making an alliance it's because he or she is playing the game for that reason and is disappointed to find that as an individual new nation, short of being spammed by mail the first day or so of existance, no one cares.

My attraction to smaller alliances has always been that it's easier to "be someone" in that case. Better to be small and soverign than supposedly well protected and be told by some small group at the "top" of a 200+ man AA what to do. I can go to "work" and be told what to do by a boss in real life, I don't want to be just another worker here.

The 300-350 number was about how many of the current "alliances" we could stand to lose off the list (considering 180 of them are only 1man and then there's the 2, 3 and 4 man alliances which are of no validity, use, purpose or intent to develop further), not the size at which alliances "should" be .. I agree if every alliance was that size it would suck .. I wouldn't have stayed here for 8 years and counting either .. I wouldn't have taken a chance and founded my own alliance .. Edited May 29, 2014 by Rayvon

[Bob]

300-350 doesn't sound bad .. A little amalgamation .. There's only 91 alliances with 20 or more nations in it (carrying on in agreeance with Bob's 'more 10-20 alliances would not help') out of 415 alliances on the in-game list (180 of which are one-man AA's) ..

And this isn't a statement, to White Chocolate's point, that all small alliances are bad.  Small alliances can have their place, but recognizing your alliance is quite frankly, shit, and moving on to learn more rather than just keeping a <500,000 strength 15 man alliance running seems to be more productive. There are exceptions where a 10-20 member alliance can be ok obviously, but its definitely not the norm. 

[GeniusInc]

Transcript courtesy of AngelCruzdelaSant

[spoiler][Intro Music]
“From the depths of the OWF comes your weekly dose of drivel from the most uninformed

man on Planet Bob. I’m your host Genius Incorporated. [Intro Music fades]

 

Hello and welcome to The Apathy Report. Wow. Just wow. I am shocked.

The first episode of The Apathy Report last week has
gotten 141 listens. I was expecting something more in the arena of like maybe
12 or 13. But no, 141. Now I am curious to find out how many of you guys will actually
stick around for episode 2. Hopefully it will just keep going up. But let’s
take a look at the feedback that you guys gave me. I was actually surprised that
there wasn’t very much negativity and for that I thank you. Looking at the
comments on OWF post, it seems like at least a few of you guys like it. There does
seem to be a common confusion though. A lot of you told me that it seemed like
I cared. Now usually I wouldn’t respond to this kind of thing and just leave it
alone but since there’s so many of you I figured I’d respond at least once. I
care about what I’m talking about, I don’t care if it offends people and I’m
just going to leave it at that. So looking at the comments a few of the
specifics: I’m sorry Lord Hershey, I can’t do subtitles, mainly because [in] The
Apathy Report I speak off the cuff. I do have some show notes, but beyond that
it’s all off the top of my head and to transcript the whole thing would just be
an absolute pain so I’m not going to do subtitles.

 

Let’s start out by taking a look at the OWF. Let’s take a look at the news of the
day. It appears that quite a few alliances have had their birthday[s] within
the last couple of days. Viridian Entente is turning seven, I believe that was
last weekend. Invicta is turning seven, three days ago I believe. And the New
Polar Order is turning eight, either yesterday or today. So congratulations to
all of you. It will be interesting to see what happens in this next year,
especially for the New Polar Order because they- the New Polar Order just does
not seem to not know what to do with itself. Now I don’t mean that in a bad
way. It’s just that they don’t know how to be a top ranking alliance. And they
have arguably the most power in this game right now and they are not doing a
single thing with it. It’s like they think that because they won the last war
everything’s going to be fine. But they’re stagnating and I was a member of the
New Polar Order for a year and this is an opinion I’ve had since about halfway
through that time in the New Polar Order. At first I thought it was you know,
they were just like a sleeping giant; they had the power to do what they wanted
to do, they just chose not to. But as time went on I realized that it wasn’t
that they chose not to, it was more like they weren’t aware that they had it.
And it wasn’t until the War of the Orders that they seemed to start
understanding, but even now they don’t know because look at the incompetency
that took place in the War of the Orders. That’s not something that an alliance
that had the power- knew it had the power-knew how to use it like New Pacific
Order of old would have done. So it’ll be interesting to see what happens in
the next year. See if their government can get it into gear and stop this
stagnation and the loss. Because the New Polar Order has been shrinking in over
the past year as opposed to the growth that they were having for the years
before that. They’re losing members, their government really hasn’t changed in
a while. [The] New Polar Order needs to have a mindset change, whether that
requires an entirely new leadership or not. They need to change their mindset
if they want to have their next year be any improvement.

 

[missing/not transcripted]

 

Next step is the academies. A few academies are good. And a few academies are down
right atrocious! I mean they are horrible! Take R&R for example. Now, I don’t
know if they’ve changed it since I became aware of what their academy was like,
or not. But, it is horrible! It will take you at least three weeks to get
through that academy. And until then you are locked out of the community and
the rest of the forums. You only have access to what you need to have access
to. It has five levels with five tests that you have to complete one part
before you can get to the next, and on some of the levels you have to do stuff
like set up for a trade circle, which doesn’t sound hard. The next level is “complete
a tech deal.” Yes, a tech deal. This kind of academy is horrible! On average
from what I’ve noticed, attrition rates through academ[ies] are approximately
20-50%, which in of itself is bad. I wouldn’t be surprised if an academy like
R&R’s had a 70% attrition rate, because that’s the first impression you’re
giving a new player. They come to Cybernations. They come to have fun. This is
a game. A game! I’m not sure if you guys are aware of that, but this is a game!
They come to have fun! And that’s what you give them. You bore them out of
their minds. You force them to go through something to teach them how to play .
And it’s not like this is going to affect much. We have ONE war a year, which I’ll
touch on later. We have one war a year. They have anywhere from six to nine
months to learn how to play the game before they’re ever going to be in a
situation where it affects them or their nation[s]. Academies like Sparta[‘s] if
I’m remembeing correctly and IRON[‘s], they have it right. The nation is
allowed about 70% access to the forums. And the academies are simple. Apologies
for the banging if you hear it. I can’t go through and edit out all of it.
There’s construction next to my house. So, apologies for that. However, IRON
has the right idea with academies. The nation comes in, they get admitted
quickly and I believe Sparta has the same type of academy. They get admitted
quickly, they’re in an academy, they have access to the forums, they’re
integrated into the communities, they can get a job, become a recruiter, join
the press team, maybe working as a lower rank military official, get joined
into the community, have fun while simultaneously learning about the game. That’s
how it should be. That’s what we should be presenting toward new players. Our
academies should have an attrition rate of about 5% maximum. We should be
retaining 95% of our players at least that go through the academies, not losing
20-50%. That’s just horrible.

 

Next step in the retention of players is keeping them around once they’re older. In
the amount of time I’ve been here in CyberNations which is two years, we have
lost 2,000 nations. A net loss of 2,000 nations. And most of those were nations
that have been around longer than I have. Why are we losing our older nations?
I think it’s because this game is not interesting enough. They were around
during the golden age of CyberNations. When it was fun, it was interesting, it
was fast-paced, it was moving, and it was fun. And now, CyberNations is dying.
I once talked to an older player about a year ago, I’m not going to say who it
was. But, I asked them how long they think CyberNations had. They said “about
two years.” That was a year ago and I can see that happening now. We are
steadily losing nations, older nations and we’re not pulling in enough newer
nations. CyberNations isn’t fun anymore. We need to make CyberNations fun on
two levels: both the alliance level and the nation level. And so this week I’m
going to talk mainly about the nation level and maybe next week address the
alliance level of all of this.



Let’s take a look at the new updates. Last week I talked about the Crime Index
and gave my opinion on it. Since then it appears admin has taken it down due to
the general dislike of it. I don’t know if he’s planning on bringing it back or
not. I know he said he had the code saved somewhere in case he wanted to bring
it back but it doesn’t appear to be coming back in the near future. And to be
honest, I feel sorry for Admin. I mean, that was the first real thing in a
while that he had tried to implement that would significantly change
CyberNations and it fell flat on its face. And I feel sorry for Admin because
he put some effort into it finally. We’ve been saying as a community that he
really doesn’t put much effort into it and he started to put some effort into
it and it didn’t work. Admin, if you’re listening to this I’d like to thank you
for trying. For putting an effort forward. For trying to do this. And it
appears given your recent track record that you’re going to keep doing this and
so I’d like to thank you for that. Thank you for trying to keep this game
alive.

 

However, addressing us players now, there is stuff that we should be doing to make
CyberNations a better game. And one player, Bilrow from the New Pacific Order
seems to have taken hold of this idea and started running with it. He has
posted a thread called “Thoughts on New Updates/Improvements” –this is in the “Open
World RP” part of the CyberNations forums- and in there he started talking
about how we as players need to; this wasn’t the original point of the thread
but it generated into we as players need to take our role in helping revitalize
CyberNations. He said that the New Pacific Order is brainstorming internally
how to help CyberNations grow and they will be posting the best of these ideas
in the “Suggestion Box.” So, applause to the New Pacific Order for doing this.
For taking the first step. My question is, can the rest of us do this? Can we
put aside any and all political differences and work together to make
CyberNations a better game?

 

 

 

I managed to get a[n] interview with Bilrow. A little bit of introduction for
him. He appears to be a returning player and is currently an Imperial Councilor
for the New Pacific Order. I was told that this means he’s like an Imperial
Officer, which is a Minister, except he doesn’t have a specific ministry. So,
basically an overview. So, I was able to get an interview with him.
Unfortunately, it was not a Skype interview so I can’t actually insert a
recording here but I’ll give you a basic gist of what he said. I asked if he
could share with us his basic plan for in his effort to get people to help
revitalize CyberNations and he said “to help bring awareness to this campaign, I
am visiting alliance forums and offering this challenge: get ideas internally
and let’s get suggestions posted up for Admin.” “Get ideas internally and let’s
get suggestions posted up for Admin.” This is brilliant! What better way to
help Admin improve the game how we want it improved than to tell him ourselves?
And you may be thinking “well GeniusInc, we do this already with the Suggestion
Box.” Yes, but how much effort do we put into it? Do we get together as entire
alliances to help flush out ideas and give legitimate, well thought-out ideas
to Admin, or do we individually go and put up wants and desires? I think if we
started going as alliances with ideas that have been completely thought out,
then we can start changing CyberNations. I then asked Bilrow how he was, inside
of the New Pacific Order, taking care of this. And he said that he’s posted a
thread –in their Body Republic I would assume- and they are talking about these
ideas and then fleshing them out and he’s going to take the best of them and
put them in the Suggestion Box. This guy is brilliant. He’s doing what we
should have been doing. But it’s not too late for us to start. I’ve seen Bilrow’s
posts in a few of the alliance forums. Now I would challenge the rest of you
guys to do the same thing. Think about this as an alliance. An idea I really
think could help CyberNations, if you guys could flesh this out, is the
specialization of nations. And this is something that seems to have spawned
from the new improvements Admin has added. Admin added six improvements just
the other day, all militaristic. He said that he didn’t want to add any econ
improvements at the moment. Three of these improvements were offensive
improvements and three of them were defensive improvements and they are
mutually exclusive. You have to choose between being offensively here or be
defensively here. And this is brilliance! Imagine if we could change
CyberNations so that nations are no longer photocopies of each other. In Bilrow’s
thread on the last page currently, King Wally from the Nuclear Proliferation
League said, “I find this game, as old as it is now, provides something of a
photocopy nation every step of the way.” And he’s right! Once nations reach
approximately 30,000-50,000 NS they become photocopies. They’re all identical,
the only difference being the amount of money they have and the amount of score
they have. In every other way they’re identical. They all have all the
improvements and most of the wonders depending on their age. They are
photocopies. Now what if we could specialize our nations. This is something
that Operative from New Pacific Order said in Bilrow’s thread on the OWF, he
said “while I’m still new, I find the idea of specializing your nation quite
intriguing, as it has the potential to add a whole new dynamic to the game. It
would add strategy not only for the individual but for alliance as a whole. I’d
like to see more improvement/wonders etc that add this type of decision making
to the fold.” And I agree with him 100%. Unlike the crime index which would
only keep us busy for about a week, specializing nations would add a dimension
to the game that would keep us busy for the life of the game. It would add strategy
to nation building. Imagine if you could build your nation specifically for
economics, or specifically for war either offensively or defensively. Imagine
how many ways we could come up with if we put our heads together and thought
about this. Imagine how many ways we could specialize nations so that they
cease to be photocopies. This is a brilliant, brilliant idea and I think this
could be one step towards making CyberNations once again an interesting game
and keeping our older players around.

 

And next week I’m going to be talking about this second step and it’s how to make the
alliance side of the game more interesting to keep our players around. But
until then, if you have any tips or anything you want me to talk about, drop me
a message in-game at nation ID: 503547. Or you could hit me up on IRC Coldfront
#theapathyreport. Two other options are the IRON forums and the CyberNation
forums. Links to all of these can be found in the OP for the Apathy Report post
on the OWF. [Music fades in] So hit me up. Tell me what you want me to talk about and I’ll be
more than glad to talk about it. Until next week, take it easy guys.

 

 

 

[Music stops]

[/spoiler]

Edited May 30, 2014 by GeniusInc

[Lord Hershey]

Thank you soooooo much for providing a transcript of the Apathy Report, AngelCruzdelaSant! :)

[Kyriakos Raanb Dorou]

It will take you at least three weeks to get through that academy. And until then you are locked out of the community and the rest of the forums. You only have access to what you need to have access to. It has five levels with five tests that you have to complete one part before you can get to the next

Advanced security techniques.

 

"OK I admit it I'm a spy just don't make me do all these tests!"

[Malkavian]

I actually enjoy his [GeniusInc] broadcast stint: the tonality is nonchalant and is holistically rather unvarnished from heedless censorship and political correctness to boot. The newscast is fresh and daring. I generally support this show and it's purpose, really. I enjoyed the second installment and will look forward toward the next session, GeniusInc.   

Edited May 30, 2014 by Malkavian

[Bilrow]

Thanks for taking the time to interview me, I did not expect it.

[GeniusInc]

Episode 3

June 4th, 2014

OsRavan | Guinness/LT | NPO Cancellation | Happy BDay NPL | IRON #1 again | ODN & CnG | AAs Improving CN

[Knights111]

I would be fine with doing a question and answer if you have the time. Just send me some questions.

[SoADarthCyfe6]

I really do like these sort of things.

 

If it's ok with you, GeniusInc, I'd really love to be apart of one of your next episodes, or at least be in a segment. You can conduct an exit interview on me. I think that I have garnered an interesting perspective being GATO's Minister of Foreign Affairs for 5 out of the last 7 terms, of which those two I wasn't, I had a very strong influence on what we did. I hate to offer you another CnG perspective, but it could be interesting to see how the dynamics of the bloc work from two insider's point of view. 

 

Just an offer. :)

[IYIyTh]

needs more mi6