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How is this place still alive?


IYIyTh

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4 hours ago, jerdge said:

Except maybe Hakai wasn't talking of the number of players?

 

While at macro level your reasonings about activity, seniority etc are largely correct (IMHO), at micro level it's still possible to have areas ("islands") of activity and engagement, and it's probably true that Oculus stands in the way of these islands of activity, "unnecessarily" making difficult for them to play and to enjoy the game in an environment open to possibilities.

(I say "probably" because I didn't really pay any attention to it.)

 

The one thing that could probably help this game to (at least) allow the active minority (which is out there) to still have some fun, would be the disbandment of all the ancient alliances that aren't doing anything anymore, but which are still statistically significant.

(Yeah, the GPA could disband too, I'd actually welcome it... on the other hand the GPA is definitely not part of what renders CN this stale.)

I mean get the point is the death of the game is tied to the level of  political competition. However, when there was a previous megabloc that lasted a year and a half, there was a downturn in overall player activity and decline in the playerbase when it collapsed, so it's never really borne fruit. People were plenty willing to do whatever it took to avoid getting stomped by the Continuum and were invested in the game nonetheless. The player count is usually reflective of the pool of potentially active players.   In essence, the "Oculus killed the game" argument is that political competition/warring  encourages long-term activity and keeps the game alive when it's clearly proven to not be the case in CN due to the ramifications of wars being quitting points for most rank and file players.

 

What does encourage long-term activity is infusion of new blood that can replace old players that quit, which hasn't happened often here.  It's been traditionally a cycle of people quitting due to normal reasons like wanting to focus on other games/rl(which is why most alliances are inactive) or getting rolled into nothing. TPF was a huge alliance before Karma. For instance, the game was a lot more politically diverse in 2008/2009.  Then some point after that people like Superfriends and XX took too many hits due to the underlying inactivity in their alliances that had previously been ameliorated by winning wars and players started exiting the game once they had nothing left to lose. That's just the natural progression. TOP lost in BiPolar and had started with 200+ members. Within a year they were no longer anywhere near that. The game was at the peak of its activity in 2007. The numbers started  decline majorly after Karma. People were making topics about the game dying when it went down from 30k+ to 28k+.  Ragnarok was once one of the biggest alliance in the game from 2008 - 2009. By 2010 it was a rump state. People naturally wear down over time and conflict doesn't actually keep the game alive because people quit after wars.  Wars mean that money they saved up might have run out. The other things they accumulated gone.

 

To add onto that, the active minority that complains/ed a lot tends to essentially posit if there had been no Oculus, there would be a competitive environment and this would save the game when it would ultimately have a similar result with the top two alliances being allied and sharing an NAP with no interest in ever fighting each other. Even if they did fight given the mechanics of the game, whichever won would have an insurmountable tech advantage going forward over the other and it would kill competition. All the cheerleaders and hecklers never had the ability to  do much of anything and would be equally powerless and complaining in that scenario. It just means perhaps some of the lower membercount alliances would have disbanded sooner probably. An inactive bloc is not stopping anyone from having islands of activity in terms of people being able to do stuff independently of Oculus interference.  Usually most of the complaints are that it's rolling people who aren't active and can't pose a threat. A lot of people had years of not fighting between Doom War - 2017. As of now, since the Maroon War which concluded sometime last year, Oculus has been inert aside from the GPA war. 

 

The issue is, mostly people expect the big alliances to put the work into create entertainment for the active minority. The big alliances aren't interested in doing it anymore due to the labor cost, lack of interest in their own alliances, and so forth. They don't owe it to anyone. Conflict happens when there's an incentive to action and organic tension.  Oculus can't project strength past a certain point and the mid tier has always been a place where the other alliances could put up a fight in. NG was able to give IRON a fight in the mid tier. There's plenty of wiggle room hence all the micro tier conflicts.

 

I agree with the latter assessment as those alliances disbanding would remove the active minority's excuses to not have to act.  I would prefer it that way. 

Edited by Monster
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On 12/1/2018 at 9:47 PM, AlmightyGrub said:

 

Hi Junka. 

You have contributed more to people leaving this world than I ever have (fact).  Your continual ''its all about me me me'' dribble continues to toxify this planet more than any other factor.

You made up the content of the above comment, without regard to facts or evidence.  Terminator may well have said some 'direct' things about you, but you bought every insult aimed at you directly on yourself.  Seriously, stop inventing a narrative based on a delusion.  You are global warming, you are the hole in the ozone layer, you are rising sea levels.  You were not ever good enough, not ever.  Nothing you ever did was significant, you will not be remembered as anything other than a loud mouth failure. 

 

For the record, Bob is dead because it is time for it to be dead, not particularly because anyone did anything to anyone.  The fact there is a few people still going through the motions when they have the time is not the reason thousands of people found other things to do.... they just found other things to do.  Competence will always lose to active. 

 

I used to be your hero, you used to worship me, but you are naive and stupid and immature, even for a try hard. 

 

Stick a fork in it, it is done

 

This is barely worth responding to, but leave it to Grub to respond to my facts and logic with bloviated ad hominems. And top it off with a fictional narrative about me somehow worshipping him (citation needed). 

 

A good example though of the lessened quality of remaining government leadership in Cybernations. Glad I have moved on to develop a cult following in more fertile realms.

 

gvnBjKz.gif

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1 minute ago, The Zigur said:

 

This is barely worth responding to, but leave it to Grub to respond to my facts and logic with bloviated ad hominems. And top it off with a fictional narrative about me somehow worshipping him (citation needed). 

 

A good example though of the lessened quality of remaining government leadership in Cybernations. Glad I have moved on to develop a cult following in more fertile realms.

 

gvnBjKz.gif

 

Yes the fertile grounds of the local children at the park while you catch yet another Magikarp.  Since you know even with the "lessened quality of remaining government leadership" you remain perhaps Planet Bobs greatest failure.  You know the old saying, if you can not beat them, go someplace else.

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2 minutes ago, The Big Bad said:

 

Yes the fertile grounds of the local children at the park while you catch yet another Magikarp.  Since you know even with the "lessened quality of remaining government leadership" you remain perhaps Planet Bobs greatest failure.  You know the old saying, if you can not beat them, go someplace else.

 

Al contraire, my stature as a Meme God has only grown as I have captured the rapt attention of lustful admirers as well as the hardcore tankers I call for. You could say an obsolete browser game constrained the greatness of my spirit.

 

Don't worry though, I shall remain here to remind you of your insignificance.

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1 hour ago, The Zigur said:

 

Al contraire, my stature as a Meme God has only grown as I have captured the rapt attention of lustful admirers as well as the hardcore tankers I call for. You could say an obsolete browser game constrained the greatness of my spirit.

 

Don't worry though, I shall remain here to remind you of your insignificance.

 

Go catch them all little guy. 

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14 hours ago, Monster said:

since the Maroon War which concluded sometime last year,


Maroon War 2.0, you offend me as a survivor of the orginial Maroon War. :P

As for Oculus, CN's pop would drop whether Oc existed or not. This is true. Our time here would probably be more interesting tho with less treaties. I would certainly say Umb/NG dropping their treaties has made things more interesting. Imagine if IRON/NPO dropped all their treaties too, even if they didn't get aggressive and stayed allied to each other, it would be a very interesting shake-up. Still won't save CN, but it'll make our remaining time here more enjoyable. Do it IRON/NPO! :D

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To add onto that, the active minority that complains/ed a lot tends to essentially posit if there had been no Oculus, there would be a competitive environment and this would save the game when it would ultimately have a similar result with the top two alliances being allied and sharing an NAP with no interest in ever fighting each other. Even if they did fight given the mechanics of the game, whichever won would have an insurmountable tech advantage going forward over the other and it would kill competition. All the cheerleaders and hecklers never had the ability to  do much of anything and would be equally powerless and complaining in that scenario. It just means perhaps some of the lower membercount alliances would have disbanded sooner probably. An inactive bloc is not stopping anyone from having islands of activity in terms of people being able to do stuff independently of Oculus interference.  Usually most of the complaints are that it's rolling people who aren't active and can't pose a threat. A lot of people had years of not fighting between Doom War - 2017. As of now, since the Maroon War which concluded sometime last year, Oculus has been inert aside from the GPA war. 


Even while rank and file members decreased, wars tend to create friction in internal alliances and create the actual gameplay that many "active" members thrive upon in order to have fun. When they are denied this experience, they become inactive. Maybe it has no bearing on the literal decline of the game (Oculus did not make more nations leave than would have normally?) but I think it's a sham to say they didn't murder active members (lel MI6), RIP DK, etc. through political realities that are derived from admin's unwillingness to add mechanics to change our current gamestate.

 

Certainly I have "played" the game most actively during wars, and it was a war that got me to transfer from being an inactive member who sent his aid out sometimes to a guy who actually participated. (Thanks IRON/TOP/Valhalla). I know it's not wise to necessarily rely on anecdotal evidence, but I think that core activity is much more relevant than the literal number of nations, and the cores of many alliances that were once much stronger and more stable (ie: Polaris forums, see Dajobo's post) are being eroded by a variety of factors, one of which is the lack of revitalizing members through more dynamic political experiences.

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3 hours ago, Tevron said:


Even while rank and file members decreased, wars tend to create friction in internal alliances and create the actual gameplay that many "active" members thrive upon in order to have fun. When they are denied this experience, they become inactive. Maybe it has no bearing on the literal decline of the game (Oculus did not make more nations leave than would have normally?) but I think it's a sham to say they didn't murder active members (lel MI6), RIP DK, etc. through political realities that are derived from admin's unwillingness to add mechanics to change our current gamestate.

 

Certainly I have "played" the game most actively during wars, and it was a war that got me to transfer from being an inactive member who sent his aid out sometimes to a guy who actually participated. (Thanks IRON/TOP/Valhalla). I know it's not wise to necessarily rely on anecdotal evidence, but I think that core activity is much more relevant than the literal number of nations, and the cores of many alliances that were once much stronger and more stable (ie: Polaris forums, see Dajobo's post) are being eroded by a variety of factors, one of which is the lack of revitalizing members through more dynamic political experiences.

 

 

It doesn't last long enough. Traditional pattern is for there to be a decline in activity in an alliance after wars are done. They inspire some people to become active, but not enough to sustain an alliance.  While they were active, rather than cultivating new players, MI6 basically relied on ex-gov from various alliances and the game  already being in severe decay  in 2013 to be attractive to people from declining alliances on the premise that an alliance of active people despite being less than big statistically could have an impact of political events due to its relative activity. It's ultimately rather than adding to the game, a cannibalization of the existing  active playerbase. Plenty of people could do the same thing without MI6's FA style of being as provocative as possible. Obviously such a model of recruitment along with a provocative FA stance attracted negative attention. MI6 raised the stakes in terms of subverting other communities. Such an alliance is going to attract heat regardless of the exact political configuration. MI6 was never above 120 or so members at most.  DK was never more than 50 or so people and didn't have a recruitment base. These aren't exactly sustainable nor do they carry a war coalition themselves. They relied on the alliances where the leaders would have to rouse the rank and file. It's ultimately  a decision by the alliance that getting rolled hard enough times means you have to disband. 

 

Edit: Went to the Polar forums to check real quick. Came out with this.

 

J8g6k52.png

 

I didn't include 2008 since it was when those forums were created halfway through the year during the NPO/NpO crisis. The Polar forums experienced a decline of posts except for 2012(not sure what happened then aside from the war started the previous year, maybe a spam contest or something). Then from 2012-2015, 30k posts per year, then then 22.5k posts per year from 2015-2016, it was 17k posts, per year.  2017 and 2018 have a 22.5k gap  2018(perhaps due to increased discord use but not anything unusual)

 

With your example, Polar had the "dynamic" experience of getting rolled twice in the same year in 2011 and having reps put on them. If they truly thought that such experiences made their members more interested and would keep them in the game, they could always do things that lead to that situation.  The wars where they got stomped and had higher activity were nowhere near even hence the reps being forced. By then it was Polar's 3rd time getting rolled. There are mechanical limitations with "dynamic" political experiences within CN anyway and it's never been a game of dynamic experiences. It's been usually piling onto whoever is the most disliked at the time. There have been only a few alliances with the playerbases and economic potential where they could recover member losses and grow. Those are the ones in the best position now.  

 

There was someone recently who posted a topic saying "buying 200 tech for 6m" and was mocked for it. In those alliances, they're getting those rates still and since they exclusive access to such a pool of sellers, it's an insurmountable advantage essentially being a game winner in itself. Even when large coalitions were amassed, no one had the numbers of active nations to decisively break the resistance of those alliances, so their dominance is a fait acompli. Everyone used to say NPO returning to dominance was paranoia and so on despite it being far more organizationally effective  than most alliances along with having the potential to use the tech system to its own ends. They buried their heads in the sand and continued practicing noncompetitive ways of playing. It has little to do with any specific political configuration and all to do with who has the mechanical capacity and willpower to win.

 

On the other hand, you could have plenty of wars by basically ignoring Oculus since they won't move and  fighting alliances of a similar size to yours. With the common tech rates, growth is clearly not a priority for most players so there could be tons of action at low tech levels. It would entirely feasible to set up a parallel political system due to the NS range disparity at this point and just limit the upper amount of NS you'd reach. If active people want action, rather than expecting dinosaur alliances to move like chess pieces(very different).

Edited by Monster
added Polar forum stats
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On 11/28/2018 at 7:56 PM, IYIyTh said:

I keep checking back twice a year hoping to see some decent prose in declarations of war, but it seems it's about the same as it has been for nearly 5+ years.

 

 

 

Since you kindly asked.

 

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"Silence is the only answer you should give to the fools. Where ignorance speaks, intelligence should not give advices."

 

The Empress of Peace.

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12 hours ago, Monster said:

 

 

It doesn't last long enough. Traditional pattern is for there to be a decline in activity in an alliance after wars are done. They inspire some people to become active, but not enough to sustain an alliance.  While they were active, rather than cultivating new players, MI6 basically relied on ex-gov from various alliances and the game  already being in severe decay  in 2013 to be attractive to people from declining alliances on the premise that an alliance of active people despite being less than big statistically could have an impact of political events due to its relative activity. It's ultimately rather than adding to the game, a cannibalization of the existing  active playerbase. Plenty of people could do the same thing without MI6's FA style of being as provocative as possible. Obviously such a model of recruitment along with a provocative FA stance attracted negative attention. MI6 raised the stakes in terms of subverting other communities. Such an alliance is going to attract heat regardless of the exact political configuration. MI6 was never above 120 or so members at most.  DK was never more than 50 or so people and didn't have a recruitment base. These aren't exactly sustainable nor do they carry a war coalition themselves. They relied on the alliances where the leaders would have to rouse the rank and file. It's ultimately  a decision by the alliance that getting rolled hard enough times means you have to disband. 

 

Edit: Went to the Polar forums to check real quick. Came out with this.

 

J8g6k52.png

 

I didn't include 2008 since it was when those forums were created halfway through the year during the NPO/NpO crisis. The Polar forums experienced a decline of posts except for 2012(not sure what happened then aside from the war started the previous year, maybe a spam contest or something). Then from 2012-2015, 30k posts per year, then then 22.5k posts per year from 2015-2016, it was 17k posts, per year.  2017 and 2018 have a 22.5k gap  2018(perhaps due to increased discord use but not anything unusual)

 

With your example, Polar had the "dynamic" experience of getting rolled twice in the same year in 2011 and having reps put on them. If they truly thought that such experiences made their members more interested and would keep them in the game, they could always do things that lead to that situation.  The wars where they got stomped and had higher activity were nowhere near even hence the reps being forced. By then it was Polar's 3rd time getting rolled. There are mechanical limitations with "dynamic" political experiences within CN anyway and it's never been a game of dynamic experiences. It's been usually piling onto whoever is the most disliked at the time. There have been only a few alliances with the playerbases and economic potential where they could recover member losses and grow. Those are the ones in the best position now.  

 

There was someone recently who posted a topic saying "buying 200 tech for 6m" and was mocked for it. In those alliances, they're getting those rates still and since they exclusive access to such a pool of sellers, it's an insurmountable advantage essentially being a game winner in itself. Even when large coalitions were amassed, no one had the numbers of active nations to decisively break the resistance of those alliances, so their dominance is a fait acompli. Everyone used to say NPO returning to dominance was paranoia and so on despite it being far more organizationally effective  than most alliances along with having the potential to use the tech system to its own ends. They buried their heads in the sand and continued practicing noncompetitive ways of playing. It has little to do with any specific political configuration and all to do with who has the mechanical capacity and willpower to win.

 

On the other hand, you could have plenty of wars by basically ignoring Oculus since they won't move and  fighting alliances of a similar size to yours. With the common tech rates, growth is clearly not a priority for most players so there could be tons of action at low tech levels. It would entirely feasible to set up a parallel political system due to the NS range disparity at this point and just limit the upper amount of NS you'd reach. If active people want action, rather than expecting dinosaur alliances to move like chess pieces(very different).


I agree with most of what you say here, but what I was talking about is members that stimulate the activity that drives enjoyment. Small alliances like Monsters Inc. seemed to have a blast due to consolidated activity, and I think it was a mistake of Oculus to target active alliances politically or otherwise (and certainly MI6 deserved to be rolled), but rather should have focused on rolling inactive husks away. At this point, we're in an awkward situation where the game continues its normal decline, but without anyone really seeming to care. Alliance leadership still strive to do things, but you're right, many rank and file are sitting on their hands. The tier issue is partially true, but it neglects the fact that alliances such as my own are tied heavily to Oculus and want our allies to succeed. The "Oculus" problem that I have laid out is not the bloc's responsibility solely. The problem that I think is frequently understated is that very active alliances were the ones that Oculus decimated. They did not go hit the laundry list of inactive blobs (most of which have since decayed into nothingness). I do think this is a multifaceted issue, but I think that politics should not be reduced to simple likes/dislikes. Maybe that's the case for your decisions as the leader of Umbrella and Bal-Masque over the years, but in every alliance I've been in except maybe INT we would not have declared war on someone simply because we dislike them.

 

Quote

They buried their heads in the sand and continued practicing noncompetitive ways of playing. It has little to do with any specific political configuration and all to do with who has the mechanical capacity and willpower to win.


This is no doubt true to some extent, but as I said, I agree with your overall dynamic understanding of how the game declines, I just think that our political actions have spurred on additional inactivity, and it is worth noting that we drove active members from the game instead of ones who sit around and collect every twenty days.

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12 hours ago, Tevron said:


I agree with most of what you say here, but what I was talking about is members that stimulate the activity that drives enjoyment. Small alliances like Monsters Inc. seemed to have a blast due to consolidated activity, and I think it was a mistake of Oculus to target active alliances politically or otherwise (and certainly MI6 deserved to be rolled), but rather should have focused on rolling inactive husks away. At this point, we're in an awkward situation where the game continues its normal decline, but without anyone really seeming to care. Alliance leadership still strive to do things, but you're right, many rank and file are sitting on their hands. The tier issue is partially true, but it neglects the fact that alliances such as my own are tied heavily to Oculus and want our allies to succeed. The "Oculus" problem that I have laid out is not the bloc's responsibility solely. The problem that I think is frequently understated is that very active alliances were the ones that Oculus decimated. They did not go hit the laundry list of inactive blobs (most of which have since decayed into nothingness). I do think this is a multifaceted issue, but I think that politics should not be reduced to simple likes/dislikes. Maybe that's the case for your decisions as the leader of Umbrella and Bal-Masque over the years, but in every alliance I've been in except maybe INT we would not have declared war on someone simply because we dislike them.

Monsters Inc isn't particularly eager to grow or consolidate politically so it lets them take more risks. The same goes with some of the other alliances. Both DK and MI6 played the game in a more conventional matter which makes them seem like a threat to people. If they were just playing to fight in a Monsters Inc fashion, it'd probably have been a non-issue. With MI6, the real issue was it was either you supported them 100% or they hated you and you knew you had to watch out for them act on that anger since it was part of their internal dynamic  to feel they deserved to have more of a say.  When  TBC splintered off, they weren't particularly scrutinized. While some of the alliances that ended up having DK members like SLAP did get scrutiny at times, they were never given the same level of scrutiny as DK as they played it a lot more lowkey. T

 

Most of the alliances Oculus has fought have actually been less than active ones. War for Maroon Dominance is the best example along with GPA. NG wanted to play up the color dynamic to make a war, so they did it and mainly targeted alliances that don't do much. GOD had been dead for a long time. CRAP doesn't do much.  TTK isn't really known for being big political players or active.  Dislike is rarely a sole reason for hitting someone. It's more if they're perceived to be hostile and willing to act on the hostility and if they upset enough people to get a consensus on it.  The issue is more the extended  web includes a lot of inactive alliances and most people are playing for the sake some sort of legacy and won't disband.  I know a few alliances have even had disbandment votes that failed to pass. A reset would have been more logical in terms of consolidating activity.

 

People could play TE if they're looking for the ability to be active and don't care about numbers. TE is devoid of a lot of the issues CN faces(foreign aid system, wars frequently,  actual goals to reach, resets)   but is lacking in players at the moment.  The issue however is people want to accumulate and long-term accumulation is a major problem with CN.

Quote

 


This is no doubt true to some extent, but as I said, I agree with your overall dynamic understanding of how the game declines, I just think that our political actions have spurred on additional inactivity, and it is worth noting that we drove active members from the game instead of ones who sit around and collect every twenty days.

More who collect every 20 days have been driven out as they were more of the footsoldiers. A lot of DK is still around in some form.  Someone's decision to quit if they're active is ultimately on them. If they need to feel they can win to stay in a game, it can't really be helped.

Edited by Monster
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Hello IYIyth,

 

One NATOan still peaks in here, but the time of Bob and Cybernations has past.  I am still friends with many who have left the game, some have gotten married and had kids even.(Tommyknocker!)  It has run it's course, some of us are just sticking around to watch the whole sand castle wash away....

 

glad to see you are still doing well.  ~Lenny

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On 12/4/2018 at 6:27 PM, Canik said:

  
Sounds like someone is still butthurt. xD

 

BpKjPkw.jpg

 

dutt heart? no i had a gr8 time slaughtering ur sheeps. brut hert sounds more like whoever the leader of ftw is, got he panties in a wad when 7 individuals joined CORBA, making the odds almost insurMOUNTable!

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Don't sell COBRA short, they're one of the tougher micros in the game. The war ended with equal terms, no winner or loser defined. You say you had a great time slaughtering our sheep. Seems I should've been more scared and brought in more allies, if anything. My respect for COBRA's military capability, as high as it was, should've been even higher.

If you really want to turn this into a loss for COBRA tho, acting bitter and whining that we didn't take it easier on you, I'm cool with that. :)

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On 12/1/2018 at 2:17 AM, Vaslov said:

When people get tired of CyberNations, where do they go? To other games or sims? I know CN was originally inspired by a certain nation simulation that I apparently cannot name here (it is censored).

I nearly quit because of Skyrim. There are lots of games out there; probably a good number of former CN players are now playing smartphone games or MMOs.

 

But also, one basic thing about games is that as people get older most of them don't play games as much. In the boom time of CN, a lot of players were high school or college students, and well they graduated. The catch was that the new batch of students weren't showing up in the same numbers.

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On 11/29/2018 at 9:49 PM, Monster said:

Not really sure what you expected to happen. It's a game with a limited lifespan and people don't have infinite regenerative capacity.  The only recruiting alliances that maintained recruitment well for a long time are NPO/IRON/Polar. Everyone else didn't want to do the work of integrating new players, my alliances included, and the more you kept relying on old players to stick around forever to make non-recruiting alliances work, the worse it was going to get, especially as there was a decision to not grow the game. The game is a business at the end of the day and not a public service and the owner made the decision not to try increase the playercount after a certain point.  It's not the player job to make the admin money outside of the donations so if he wanted to expand the game and replace losses, he could have done a number of things.  The tech transfer level being increased was also terrible. The focus has been on older players for a long time and it wasn't a good business model for growing the game. 

 

The fact that the notion that the game would be vibrant without Oculus is still prominent just means you haven't been paying attention to the patterns of people quitting. It was hard to keep people caring at all even 5 years ago. Even 7 years ago, I had players had started in 2011 telling me they weren't going to play forever.  When I rejoined after a 10 months hiatus between 2012 and 2013 a lot of people had already started leaving and most alliances had difficulty getting people to declare and I had to basically put in a lot of effort to deal with the rampant inactivity in my alliance at the time and some people just were done.  The big merger alliances like NG and TLR showed signs of rotting away for years. People ultimately aren't making the decision to disband because of the politics of the game rather because they're moving on.  Basically all that would happen is someone would lose and wouldn't be able to recover their tech levels while NPO would be able to continue to build up its tech levels.  As long as there are only two alliances that can recruit and move tech around at highly efficient levels due to having the perma tech sellers then there was never going to be much competition in terms of the tech race within a war or two.   Most alliances do not have enough control over their members and haven't for years.

 

At the end of the Oculus isn't particularly formidable below 150k NS, so you could orchestrate plenty of action below that strength level. They have a ton of strength locked up out of range which you can easily avoid.  You could siege a decent amount of people in these alliances even. It's your decision to expect NPO/IRON/etc. to do all the entertaining for you and put the manhours into coalition planning. I can tell you the past big wars like Karma and BiPolar took a lot of effort that people in this game aren't interested in putting. You can have all these forces on paper but when people have been out of touch with their alliance in any real capacity for years, it means nothing.

 

unknown.png

 

Anyway the numbers don't really prove your case.  They may show Oculus is the reason a few alliances quit the game, but that's about it. I remember in Oculus' first war, STA was already on its last legs along with plenty of other alliances.

 

 

If the number of people in the game who actually want to play the game actively were the only ones counted, the game's member count would be around 1000 or so at most. The game has been propped by people leaving their nations as online memorials. 

 

Here you go, somebody rationally predicted the current count 5 years ago rather than basically "the game would be awesome if it went *my way*  instead"

 

 

I actually update this every year! Somehow my last post is still on the front page despite being nearly 1 year old. Stay tune next month for the next update! (and for a sneak peak, we've lost ~25% of the remaining population in the last year, and are on track to hit 2k around early-mid 2020)

 

 

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Everything Roq said is correct. 

 

I'm sure it's true that a few players who were already on the verge of quitting saw Oculus get formed and said "screw it, I'm done" a year or two earlier than they would have otherwise, but that's all. A few more were lost with MI6's death, but MI6's death was essentially an assisted suicide. 

 

Oculus wasn't a cause of the game's death; Oculus was evidence of the game's death. The game had gotten to a point where it was actually "winnable," and we and our allies won it. That wouldn't have been possible to do if there had still been a vibrant community or young growing alliances around. The game was basically dead well before 2015; we just planted a flag in the corpse. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Noob here, throwing my own two cents in. I see lots of old geezers reminiscing on better times. Some of you seem optimistic that change is possible, some seem resigned, many of you seem to be carrying a lot of bitterness. None of you seem to be looking at this from the perspective of someone who has no !@#$@#$ clue what they're supposed to do or why they should even care. You join a game that promises to be 'political' you expect conflict, you expect diversity, you expect to be the underdog, and you expect teamwork to be your only chance in hell of ever overcoming the odds. What you actually get here is quite different.

 

When I started playing the game I took a look at the leaderboards and browsed the information index. Very quickly I realized there was 0 chance that the game mechanics would be enough to keep me here, there seemed to be some sort of hard cap on 'nation strength' where the strength part of that equation becomes irrelevant. The 75%-133% range thing for wars seemed helpful, but that bubble burst when I read 'or +250/-250 strength ranking'... Suddenly the crazy OP bastard capped at 1m can attack me before I even reach 200k (20%)? !@#$%^&*, and the worst part is that it's a nail in the coffin that will only get larger as the community gets smaller. The less players there are the steeper the climb gets for any new players daring to try, the easier it gets to push them down.

 

The only thing that has kept me here is the fact that I got an invitation into a small little alliance that linked me to a discord server where I was lucky enough to find a friendly community to keep me engaged in the game. Providing that community shouldn't be a veteran player's responsibility any more than it should be my own, it should however be the responsibility of those who hold positions of authority to at least try. Those with authority, who for any reason refuse to wield it to the best of their ability, can only watch while the world crumbles around them. Those without authority, who see the problem and refuse to do anything less than everything in their power to seize that authority and wield it, can only watch as they themselves crumble. Unfortunately for everyone here that second group is more likely to just walk away rather than play at being sisyphus.

 

EDIT: amusing commitment to censorship you guys got here xD

Edited by SquidTheJim
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