Positive brainstorming

[Kzoppistan]

[quote name='Blacky' timestamp='1282863362' post='2432111']
I will probably never quit.
Even though I stopped caring months ago.

Explain that to me and you'll find an answer as to how to retain new rulers.
[/quote]

Insanity. That's the secret.

[Axolotlia]

[quote name='mattski133' timestamp='1282857966' post='2432040']
1) Retaining New Nations- When you join as a new nation rather than starting as "None" AA, sometime in the registration process you are given a drop down listing of alliances in the game ranked top to bottom by their score and a color indicator by their name. You click an alliance, and underneath the drop down menu an alliance-submitted description appears outlining pros of joining, alliance links, treaties, whatever. Current alliance members would be responsible for maintaining this description for submission. Once you've settled on the alliance you wish to join you click "OK". Your AA changes to this alliance and the nation name is sent to a new area on the Alliance Statistics page, joining all the other new additions to the alliance of that day. In this way alliances could keep tabs on their new members/ghosts.

There would be no way to start the game without completing this. This way people don't grounded and pounded in the opening weeks of their existence (despite this being exactly what happened to me when I joined...what like almost 4 years ago). This kind of beginning would kick-start interest in the best part of the game (alliances) by getting new members immediately in touch with people who know what they're doing and allow alliances to immediately start working with nations to show them how to play. By focusing these new nations on established, more attractive, and stable places where they can grow they'd be more likely to stay. Incentive to be higher on the list would fuel rivalry between alliances that means more than a sanction. It'd mean your alliance would be visible immediately to everyone entering the game.

2) Retaining Old Nations- Needs more wonders and improvements. Hands down. I haven't bought a wonder in a year, I think. I every 2000 infra I have something to look forward to but even that well runs dry after like five or six more. There should be so many wonders a player has to make a conscious choice in becoming a military power, and economic power, whatever. After a while we're all the same. THAT's one big reason this game is boring to me. I've got nothing to do but buy tech or put something on the Moon for $200,000,000 in three months (so as not to interrupt the building of my warchest).

Why can I only build 5 churches? What, my 60,000 people all cram their @#$% into 5 churches? Every 500 people I should be able to put up a new church. One Harbor? Must be a busy harbor. No wonder my people have such a hard time finding a trade. Open up a new harbor option for every 25,000 citizens. And so on. Give me a reason to keep building. Don't even get me started on Border Walls. I think one should suffice. Maybe 2 if you're paranoid. Who needs 5 concentric rings around their nation? It's not even profitable to have 5, if what I've read is correct.

Make the game REAL. Add some, realness. Reality, if you're a wordsmith.

-ski
[/quote]

These seem very reasonable and would work (I think) The only thing is, how to code the alliances and their treaties and pros and cons (and who would determine that). Maybe instead of pros/cons, a link to their CN Wiki.

[Swanfield]

[quote name='Banksy' timestamp='1282863293' post='2432110']
This is certainly true. But the reason this thread was created was because of the large loss in the total number of players, which is most affected by new players (look at the number of people on the None AA). However, most of the suggestions are about helping current (active) players. This is not catering to the majority of people who play this game. Suggestions such as a reset would only be interesting for a handful of players who are already active, most people (who play to collect taxes and fight in wars - they only play because of the amount of time they have already put into their nations) would not benefit from this. The various game play suggestions mentioned here and in other arenas seem to be aimed at active players as well. If the aim is to reverse the net player drain then the issue to examine is the drop in new players and try to cater to them.
[/quote]

I only saw one person advocating for a proper reset, people like myself want what is called a "soft reset" so that the older nations keep their nations intact. It would cater for the newer players certainly and would probably address the retention rate.

However, that won't solve the issue with the low number of registration for the game of late. It's not one single solution that will addresses the issues with this game currently, it needs at least two solutions; one to increase the retention rate of new players and the other to increase the amount of new nation registrations.

I hope that Admin takes the time to have a look at some of the suggestions in the suggestion box as there are many good ideas there that never seems to be addressed by Admin directly and that is a concern as it indicates he is losing interest in updating the game and happy to merely keep as it is. Surely the whole idea of the suggestion box is to promote new ideas for the game that would keep it fresh and interesting and if it is never looked at by Admin then what is the point of it being there?

[Crymson]

I'm surprised that absolutely nobody has mentioned the treaty web. Perhaps world leaders could stop signing dozens of mutual defense pacts? The umpteen interlocking treaties virtually eliminate the need for mutual defense, because they nearly eliminate the chance of war.

This game was teeming with the most activity and the most entertainment back when there were two absolutely defined sides of the treaty web and leaders weren't making the nonsense decision to make treaties across the web. This is a political simulator; it's meant to be active.

[Ardus]

[quote name='Crymson' timestamp='1282864695' post='2432126']
[b]I'm surprised that absolutely nobody has mentioned the treaty web. Perhaps world leaders could stop signing dozens of mutual defense pacts? The umpteen interlocking treaties virtually eliminate the need for mutual defense, because they nearly eliminate the chance of war.[/b]

This game was teeming with the most activity and the most entertainment back when there were two absolutely defined sides of the treaty web and leaders weren't making the nonsense decision to make treaties across the web. This is a political simulator; it's meant to be active.
[/quote]
See my WoT response to Impero. I approach it from a different angle than you are, but I did mention it.

[Swanfield]

[quote name='Crymson' timestamp='1282864695' post='2432126']
I'm surprised that absolutely nobody has mentioned the treaty web. Perhaps world leaders could stop signing dozens of mutual defense pacts? The umpteen interlocking treaties virtually eliminate the need for mutual defense, because they nearly eliminate the chance of war.

This game was teeming with the most activity and the most entertainment back when there were two absolutely defined sides of the treaty web and leaders weren't making the nonsense decision to make treaties across the web. This is a political simulator; it's meant to be active.
[/quote]

Perhaps every single leader in the game should agree to default on all of their treaties with other alliances and then agree to a 6 month long war match-up with a similar alliance in terms of total membership, total NS and AvNS. Also force the neutrals to get involved and if they don't then we can just curbstomp them beforehand

[Un4Gvn1]

The suggestions are very interesting and it is enjoyable to read posts made in the manner of the vast majority of posts in this thread.

Welcoming new players by being polite and helpful here on the forum is something that everyone reading this is able to do.
Sure, we get the occasional trickster pretending to be new and hoping to get a chuckle out of fooling us, but the great majority of new posters here are just that -- new posters. The manner we address each one tells that new poster a lot about us as a community.

As Lenny N Karl said: [url="http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=91112&st=180"]http://forums.cybern...ic=91112&st=180[/url]
[quote]I still hold out hope that the more intelligent and mature individuals that play this thing will FINALLY say enough is enough and start promoting a more realistic professional way of dealing with alliance diplomacy.

IF you really do have control over your alliances, lets see a month of professionalism from your crew in here and in all matters of diplomacy. Do you think you can do it?

... surely you all aren't [b]14[/b] out there.
[/quote]


As II Impero Romano said: [url="http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=91309&st=20"]http://forums.cybern...pic=91309&st=20[/url]

[quote]There are literally thousands of pages full of examples of this that have popped up in the past few months, which, conveniently enough, is the time period in which the population has declined. I have spoken with veterans who leave, not because they are angry, but because its just simply not interesting to read 50 pages of [b]7th grade style[/b] argumentation every time anything of minor significance, or even of no significance sometimes, happens. I have spoken with promising new players who say the same...shortly before they go inactive and delete. Lots of things that the community may find interesting are kept wholly under the table and in back channels, not because of some cool old boys club trying to keep the pleb out of the loop, but because no one wants to deal with the mind numbing crap that will be flung in post after post both supporting and decrying whatever the issue at hand may have been. [/quote]


14 and 7th grade style. <<<<< THIS. NOTE: We have a wealth of very young players that don't act this way. I know one that is so intelligent and diplomatic and mature in all dealings that I thought he was an old married (with kids) guy.

Unfortunately it isn't coming entirely from the youngest players, but it can be dealt with if the rest of the community will put its collective foot down and say[b]
[/b][center][b] "Knock It Off"[/b].
[/center] It is possible.

We can invite newly-created rulers to this forum with a nice PM and a link. We can welcome them with posts that are helpful to them and encouraging them to get to know the community. We can show them through our posts to one another that we are not all constantly trying to pick a fight with one another. We can show that we try to act the part of rulers that engage in diplomatic behavior.

[Fernando12]

I think our biggest problem is that we are trying to attract new players to the game. Sounds weird doesn't it.

Don't you think if we make this game better for ourselves first and make it where we like what we are doing that naturally the new nations that are created daily will also naturally begin to last longer and stay with us.

The more we focus on making ourselves happy with the game the more others will stay and play with us.

The fix to grow the community in game is easy really. Have there be more stuff to do and more ways to grow your nation. Tech deals to grow your nation forces people to join communities that they may not want to join so early on. These forced tech deals to be able to grow are not keeping people here, so we need to make it easier for people to grow their nations early on without having to rely on joining an alliance. Why can't you be independent and still grow at a faster rate. $50,000 is nothing. Perhaps 4 years ago you could do with that but now you can't. Simple in game changes will grow the community in game.

That's the decline we are seeing, we are still a very active forum community. Those of us here that post daily have been here and haven't gone anywhere. If we saw 100 people daily vanish from the forums then I would be concerned. Let me emphasize that.

We are an active forum community and we are not losing active forum people daily. We are just losing people in game. More to do in game will grow the community in game. The forum community will remain constant and grow if we fix in game issues.

Now...

Tech deals to grow your nation is what really kills the game for many new players.

I think tech should be completely eliminated from the foreign aid slots and it should be replaced with land and land should be a bigger factor in wars. The larger your land the tougher it should be for nations to ground attack you because invading forces would have to cover more land and your defending forces would see them coming. Your "cities" would be protected because your "radar" would detect aircraft coming in and the largeness of your land would enable you to engage aircraft farther away from your "cities" or "industrial zones". More land should mean greater odds in war or lesser damage to tech or infra.

I really think adding ways to grow faster rather than having to tech deal will keep people interested alot longer. I was trying to come up with an idea for a market system to add bonus money. My idea would be that every 10 days you could "place" your resources on the market to be sold. The average tech of nations that decided to put their resources on the market that day would determine the bonus your nation would receive. In other words the higher the tech avg the higher the quality and therefore the higher the bonus.

Average Tech * 1,000 = Bonus Received

1,000 Avg Tech * 1,000 = $1,000,000

Now, this wouldn't be much at all for larger nations but they don't need it and large nations generally won't delete at the same rate as new nations. Nations would receive this Bonus the day after they placed there resources on the market so that all nations that wanted to place resources on the market could do so using the full update to update range of time. So approximately a few minutes after update all these nations would have the Bonus added to their surplus and an in game message telling them what the average tech was and what their bonus is.

Another thing I would like to see is bonus purchase time reduced from 30 days to 20 days. It seems it would be a simple change in the code from the number 30 to the number 20. This would make wonder purchasing sooner and make many of us that are buying wonders very happy. New players would also see faster rates of growth by being able to accumulate wonders more quickly.

[Xellos]

Once again, I'll remind everyone to keep gameplay related suggestions [url=http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showforum=57]in the suggestion box[/url]. If it requires Admin to change something, it belongs [url=http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showforum=57]there[/url], not here.

[Williambonney]

[quote name='Swanfield' timestamp='1282865043' post='2432130']
Perhaps every single leader in the game should agree to default on all of their treaties with other alliances and then agree to a 6 month long war match-up with a similar alliance in terms of total membership, total NS and AvNS. Also force the neutrals to get involved and if they don't then we can just curbstomp them beforehand
[/quote]
Sarcasm really doesn't do much for helping anything.

[Swanfield]

[quote name='William Bonney' timestamp='1282866192' post='2432141']
Sarcasm really doesn't do much for helping anything.
[/quote]

I wasn't being sarcastic.

That scenario happening would effectively mean a reset of the game.

Edited August 26, 2010 by Swanfield

[Axolotlia]

hmmm maybe we should start something like this in the Suggestion box....

[Williambonney]

[quote name='Swanfield' timestamp='1282866367' post='2432143']
I wasn't being sarcastic.

That scenario happening would effectively mean a reset of the game.
[/quote]

Or alternatively alliances put alot more consideration into who they treaty with. It's unfortunate that this is dependant on the current state of the game and not how well you've known the alliance, but that's how politics is. Alliances that wind up signing mdp's with two seperate alliances that they know aren't on the best of terms is what has made a disaster of the treaty web today.

[Rebel Virginia]

[quote name='Swanfield' timestamp='1282865043' post='2432130']
Perhaps every single leader in the game should agree to default on all of their treaties with other alliances and then agree to a 6 month long war match-up with a similar alliance in terms of total membership, total NS and AvNS. Also force the neutrals to get involved and if they don't then we can just curbstomp them beforehand
[/quote]
[color="#0000FF"]Staged wars and politics is not going to make the game exciting. The reason the little drama we have now gives us any satisfaction at all is because it is real and natural. We take away that and it just loses its effect.

You sunk my battleship.[/color]

[Uralica]

There are a lot of good ideas that have been brought up in here, and some I don't necessarily agree with as well, but here's one I will chip in.

People should be careful not to misuse colour sanctions. I've seen a tendency for people to just outright sanction upon request regardless of the situation, or to misuse their own sanction. Now for people who go all haphazard nuking people randomly, or people who are constantly acting the bandit (RUKUNU or Freudenschade for example) to alliances' lower ranges are fine to sanction IMO. But when you start sanctioning one-off non-nuke rogues or even ghosts that haven't done anything but ghost, you're on a slippery slope that would inevitably drive people that might otherwise turn out to be productive members out of the game.

Also, I definitely agree about trying to make new players feel more welcome. Although with that would have to come some responsibilities to teach them how to post in such a way that they won't make a speedy pariah of themselves by slinging mud at everyone who doesn't go along with their get-popular-quick schemes or excessive butthurt over getting hit for a legitimate reason.

And let's be frank here, there are times I wish certain posters in certain threads were gagged, for being far too vitriolic. (This always depends on the thread.)

Anyway, that's my two penniä.

Edited August 27, 2010 by Uralica

[Hime Themis]

Gentle Persons

If I may once again be permitted to offer an idea or two.

For newer nations
1. Add a free zone of 10 days not 5 for new nations in peace mode.
2. Confirm and send to each new nation a nation building guide approved by Admin that removes some of the more nebulous aspects of the earl stage building.
3. Eliminate the ability to choose an AA for a nation less than 11 days old.
4. Offer a direct and automatic link to an OWF forum account as part of the initial nation creation package.
5. Offer a direct link to the Player created alliance thread as part of the initial nation start up package.
6. Prevent any nation from attacking a nation less than 60 days old unless they are under that age themselves.
7. Prevent recruitment messages from being sent until a nation is 6 days old.
8. Provide a happiness bonus for every day a nation is active until the nation is 30 days of age.
9. Change activity from collection of taxes to logging in to the nation. This will provide us a far greater understanding of the true activity level of nations and alliances.
10. Reduce the peace mode penalty during the first two months of a nations existence

.For Older nations

1. Allow mentoring assignments. Allow each nation under 60 days to have an assigned mentor chosen randomly from a volunteer list. The mentor would have access to view an assigned nation much as nation sitting but would not have access to actually do any actions.
2. Give access to every nation the ability to purchase nuclear weapons BUT restrict the maximum regardless of to 1 nuclear weapon per 10,000 NS starting with 1 at 0 NS.
3. Reduce incoming and out going war slots. As I had suggested in another thread. 1 incoming war slot and 2 outgoing would make wars, wars not possible curb stomps. Also allows smaller nation to fight larger ones where skill becomes more important.
4. Reduce the effects of anarchy as they stand now the aggressor has all the advantage if they can first strike and knock a nation into anarchy. If we want nations to fight then give them an incentive.
5. Force nation into battle fatigue. No more than 14 straight days of war before they are kicked into an enforced peace mode for 5 days. This would encourage wars to be far more tactical and strategic along with the other recommendations.
6. Increase the maximum aid that may be sent per slot to a nation at war. If a nation is currently fighting they can receive double the normal cash aid only.Make the Federal Aid commission effect one way required. If I have it I can send more.
7. Let there be a rogue designation that prevents a nation from continuing in war. If one senator of each colour agrees then that nation is kicked from war mode to peace mode.
8. Provide bonuses to nations for length of time in game, Infra level, Tech level, land levels but these bonuses may only be sent to another nation not used by the receiving nation.
9.Promote longevity of a nation through OWF and in game awards. Such as a new flag choice, mod for a day , free warn reduction, in game PM signature etc......
10. Allow the voting for one specific upgrade each quarter. 1 vote for every 100 days of nation existence

.For alliances.

1. Approval of any nation using the alliance AA designator or alliance flag.
2. Declaration of an alliance war where more than 5% of nation attack a specific AA. This allows a 5% bonus to all attacks. But a 5% to all counter attacks.
3. Make treaties worth something. +1 happiness for 10 days to an AA that signs a PIAT, +2 for ODP or OAP, + 3 For MDP, MAP or MADP. However no attack possible on that AA until treaty broken. Double the bonus as a loss if the treaty is broken.
4. AA kick for a nation if three designated alliance leaders approve.
5. Happiness bonus for alliances like above for alliance age, number of nation levels, avg nation strength levels, and average alliance nation age for example.

Just some thoughts. I appreciate the opportunity to give some possible options.

Update
The above were posted to elicit discussion not as direct suggestions for change.. They will now all be posted to the appropriate suggestion thread.Thanks to the mods for the reminder and Good Sal Paradise for the suggestion.
Respectfully
Dame Hime Themis

Edited August 27, 2010 by Hime Themis

[Swanfield]

[quote name='Rebel Virginia' timestamp='1282868910' post='2432175']
[color="#0000FF"]Staged wars and politics is not going to make the game exciting. The reason the little drama we have now gives us any satisfaction at all is because it is real and natural. We take away that and it just loses its effect.

You sunk my battleship.[/color]
[/quote]

It still does not detract from the fact that the monstrous entity known as the treaty web map is a whole heap of !@#$ at the moment, it is so entwined in all the corners of Planet Bob that it is simply impossible to start a war without annoying one of your treaty partners as Crysmon pointed out earlier. A major overhaul in every aspect of the game badly needs to be carried out to save it from an early grave.

I accept that there is little prospect of everyone mutually agreeing to limit their treaties with other alliances because they are too selfish with their precious pixels to worry about the welfare of the game.

$%&@ it, politics is staged and it always has been.

Edited August 27, 2010 by Swanfield

[Fernando12]

[quote name='William Bonney' timestamp='1282868332' post='2432168']
Or alternatively alliances put alot more consideration into who they treaty with. It's unfortunate that this is dependant on the current state of the game and not how well you've known the alliance, but that's how politics is. Alliances that wind up signing mdp's with two seperate alliances that they know aren't on the best of terms is what has made a disaster of the treaty web today.
[/quote]
Don't you think that's intentional. Sign with both sides and go with the side that will end up winning.

Prime example is NpO. They are tied to the two largest blocs. Once that relationship falls apart NpO will prolly go with the side that has the most power.

Alliance keeping a small amount of treaties is completely dangerous. If alliance A, B, C, D are all great friends and only treaty each other essentially forming a small bloc and having no outside ties...guess what, they can get rolled and they have no security that ties them to the treaty web to prevent them from being rolled.

2 giant power clusters is more security than having 50 small power clusters. Why?

Because at any point 10/50 small clusters can agree to roll 5/50 small clusters and the remaining 35-50 small clusters could decide its of no concern to them.

Being tied to someone directly or to someone that is tied to someone in the treaty web gives any alliance security. Its not going to change. Any alliance needs only one treaty with any one of these: MK, NpO, RoK, GOD, STA, NV, FARK, plus many more etc. to avoid ever being rolled.

The treaty web is here to stay and it has nothing to do with growing the player base as truely new nations will have no idea about it and its not the cause of them leaving. It may be the cause of old nations leaving.

[Rebel Virginia]

[quote name='Swanfield' timestamp='1282869739' post='2432188']
It still does not detract from the fact that the monstrous entity known as the treaty web map is a whole heap of !@#$ at the moment, it is so entwined in all the corners of Planet Bob that it is simply impossible to start a war without annoying one of your treaty partners as Crysmon pointed out earlier. A major overhaul in every accept of the game badly needs to be carried out to save it from an early grave.

I accept that there is little prospect of everyone mutually agreeing to limit their treaties with other alliances because they are too selfish with their precious pixels to worry about the welfare of the game.

$%&@ it, politics is staged and it always has been.
[/quote]
[color="#0000FF"]The politics in the game more or less unfolds naturally. If it is being staged then a lot of people are going to be peeved if that ever comes out. I'm just saying staged wars won't be a fix, and it won't be the same as wars as they are now.

But you are right about people being too selfish to cancel a few of their 40+ treaties.[/color]

[Williambonney]

[quote name='Fernando12' timestamp='1282869800' post='2432189']
Don't you think that's intentional. Sign with both sides and go with the side that will end up winning.

Prime example is NpO. They are tied to the two largest blocs. Once that relationship falls apart NpO will prolly go with the side that has the most power.

Alliance keeping a small amount of treaties is completely dangerous. If alliance A, B, C, D are all great friends and only treaty each other essentially forming a small bloc and having no outside ties...guess what, they can get rolled and they have no security that ties them to the treaty web to prevent them from being rolled.

2 giant power clusters is more security than having 50 small power clusters. Why?

Because at any point 10/50 small clusters can agree to roll 5/50 small clusters and the remaining 35-50 small clusters could decide its of no concern to them.

Being tied to someone directly or to someone that is tied to someone in the treaty web gives any alliance security. Its not going to change. Any alliance needs only one treaty with any one of these: MK, NpO, RoK, GOD, STA, NV, FARK, plus many more etc. to avoid ever being rolled.

The treaty web is here to stay and it has nothing to do with growing the player base as truely new nations will have no idea about it and its not the cause of them leaving. It may be the cause of old nations leaving.
[/quote]


I wouldn't entirely blame the alliances that sign a treaty with both just to remain neutral, also the alliances that they are signing with. If alliances don't bother to look at another's treaty web when they sign it, and don't bother to periodically check up on the political climate of they're partners, the cluster is what we get.

[Banksy]

[quote name='Crymson' timestamp='1282864695' post='2432126']
I'm surprised that absolutely nobody has mentioned the treaty web. Perhaps world leaders could stop signing dozens of mutual defense pacts? The umpteen interlocking treaties virtually eliminate the need for mutual defense, because they nearly eliminate the chance of war.

This game was teeming with the most activity and the most entertainment back when there were two absolutely defined sides of the treaty web and leaders weren't making the nonsense decision to make treaties across the web. This is a political simulator; it's meant to be active.
[/quote]
It's an awful idea.

"Removes treaty web"

"X alliances sign MADPs and MDoAPs making strong coalitions and blocs"

"Treaty web 'stuck' again"

[Delta1212]

[quote name='Rebel Virginia' timestamp='1282868910' post='2432175']
[color="#0000FF"]Staged wars and politics is not going to make the game exciting. The reason the little drama we have now gives us any satisfaction at all is because it is real and natural. We take away that and it just loses its effect.

You sunk my battleship.[/color]
[/quote]
This is really what's wrong with the calls that things are boring because there are no wars so somebody should go attack someone. In reality, lack of entertainment and lack of wars both derive from a lack of conflict. A war with no drama is just a negative slope on a graph. People seem to get hung up on this idea that war equals drama and, therefore, entertainment. In general, this is an understandable association because drama has a tendency to come out swinging when shots are fired, but it is simply a case of missing the forest for the trees.

Take, for example, the period of January-April of 2009. Those four months were, by far, the most entertaining the game had been since the WUT/Leagis days. And that wasn't just for me. The forums were active, the rhetoric and proselytizing on par with the period of the Great Wars and the nation count shot up to levels it hadn't been at since the end of GWIII. In that four month period, only ten of the days had fighting in a politically relevant war and all at the very end. The war breaking out was fun, but all of the drama leading up to it gets lumped in with the war, rather than the war getting lumped in with the drama the way it should be.

There are a couple of problems with the way Karma turned out, and very few of them are the ones that get tossed around so frequently on here. First and foremost, the Karma War seems to have provided the climax to a years-long story for a lot of people. The conflict between Pacifica and the CoaLeagiswhatever, the dominance of NPO and their ultimate fall from power. With the addition of smaller conclusions such as the end of WUT and 1V and the completion of operations for Vox, the war resulted in a ton of people feeling as if they'd finished their CN game and simply walking away. This is a direct cause of a lot of the deletions by high profile and background players alike.

There is also the related problem that, post-Karma, we all pretty well squandered a lot of the potential in the world at that point. We'd spent the last three years of the game with pretty definite structures in place around which everything else functioned, be it the League/WUT rivalry or the Continuum dominance. Everybody knew who the major players were and how they related to each other, one way or another. Post-Karma, we had half a dozen (more or less, depending on how you divided things) clusters of power all of which had very complex relationships with the other power clusters. That seems like pretty fertile ground for drama. The problem was that no one had any real experience dealing with that sort of situation, and the fact that there were a lot of people either burnt out or left dazed by Karma. By the time we started to figure out what we were doing, so many people had made dumb decisions that a lot of the power centers outright collapsed and everyone just wound up getting shoved into groupings that were more arbitrary than they were interesting.

Now, we're all carrying so much baggage from previous eras (and I do mean all of us, regardless of sides) that it's impossible to make a move to do anything remotely interesting. We have our options restricted by other people's level of willingness to permit them and our own unwillingness to entertain the idea of following through with options we do have because we're convinced that we don't like them. The saddest part is that the very same people who are here in these threads advocating that someone do something interesting will be the first in line to jump on and tear to shreds anyone who tries ensuring that no one else will ever make another attempt.

[Swanfield]

[quote name='Delta1212' timestamp='1282871123' post='2432217']
snip
[/quote]

I don't think that people like you should have a right to discuss this topic considering you are leading an alliance that currently has 31 treaties and yes I did check.
So, how about dropping some of those treaties and to be honest there is really no need for that many treaties to be frank.

Edited August 27, 2010 by Swanfield

[supercoolyellow]

[quote name='Swanfield' timestamp='1282871594' post='2432223']
I don't think that people like you should have a right to discuss this topic considering you are leading an alliance that currently has 31 treaties and yes I did check.
So, how about dropping some of those treaties and to be honest there is really no need for that many treaties to be frank.
[/quote]

While having that many treaties may be part of the problem, it doesn't make what Delta is saying any less true.

[Learz]

[quote name='Ardus' timestamp='1282855487' post='2432010']
Get out, hippy. We need villains, not heroes.
[/quote]
Funny story brah, it turns out villains get curbstomped and/or driven from the game. Who'd have thought it?


*EDIT* In other words, by making it easier for villains to exist (less consequences, helping let villains run wild, etc) you'll have [i]more[/i] out there. Otherwise, I (as well as others) sure aren't going to stick our necks out. [size="1"]Again.[/size]

Edited August 27, 2010 by Learz