Fleeing The Game

[Cortath]

[quote name='bros2' timestamp='1293866201' post='2559923']
so if your friend hadn't been attacked we wouldn't have Emperor Chuckles?
[/quote]

Eh, it would have some eventually, to be quite frank. I had a high level of activity in that other, unnamed world, and it was only a matter of time before I would have figured things out here.

[Vandal]

Sheer boredom after 4 years. The politics on the OWF haven't changed much. People still hold gripes and grudges from GWII and so on even, when the people that were instrumental during that time no longer play. The aid system sucks. After the last war, I lost over 1000 Tech, Gave out another 2000 in Reps, and was ZI'd after reaching a pinnacle of 11,999 infra. Even with a billion dollar warchest and 500mil after peace was declared, I'm still only at half my NS from before the war.

It's also a lot harder to find a decent trade. They drop without warning and it's nearly impossible to get another one because most players now will create a new ns, get sucky resources, and then delete and try again until they get what they want.

I've come close to quitting after 2 trades dropped due to inactivity. One was over 1000 days of active trade. I had to go outside the color sphere to get what was needed. Their inability to get a decent trade circle is the only thing that keeps him from dropping me.

So my take? Alot of players are leaving out of frustration due to many factors. Weak gameplay, inability of new players to actually come close to reaching the top 20%, lack of large groups of new players signing in because of game decline, and an overall pall of apathy that has been taking hold in the game over the last few years.

[Sigrun Vapneir]

[quote name='Vandal' timestamp='1293911017' post='2560224']
Sheer boredom after 4 years. The politics on the OWF haven't changed much. People still hold gripes and grudges from GWII and so on even, when the people that were instrumental during that time no longer play. [/quote]

I cant agree. The politics really has changed, a lot, in some ways for the better and in some ways not but this is certainly a very different atmosphere than when I started. Holding gripes and grudges... you say it like it's a bad thing. The game has NO rational cause for conflict otherwise, and even a hippy like me understands that conflict has to be a part of the mix for this to be interesting.


[quote]It's also a lot harder to find a decent trade. They drop without warning and it's nearly impossible to get another one because most players now will create a new ns, get sucky resources, and then delete and try again until they get what they want I've come close to quitting after 2 trades dropped due to inactivity. One was over 1000 days of active trade. I had to go outside the color sphere to get what was needed. Their inability to get a decent trade circle is the only thing that keeps him from dropping me .[/quote]

This is where people that claim politically uninvolved micros and nones are "not contributing" have completely lost the thread. Even if all a person does is log in once a week and hold resource trades, they are contributing. Driving them out of the game and then wondering why trades suck... that and stupid ****-waving colour blocs/treaties and senate abuse and it's a wonder there are as many of us left as there are.

[Prime minister Johns]

[quote name='Vandal' timestamp='1293911017' post='2560224']
Sheer boredom after 4 years. The politics on the OWF haven't changed much. People still hold gripes and grudges from GWII and so on even, when the people that were instrumental during that time no longer play. The aid system sucks. After the last war, I lost over 1000 Tech, Gave out another 2000 in Reps, and was ZI'd after reaching a pinnacle of 11,999 infra. Even with a billion dollar warchest and 500mil after peace was declared, I'm still only at half my NS from before the war.

It's also a lot harder to find a decent trade. They drop without warning and it's nearly impossible to get another one because most players now will create a new ns, get sucky resources, and then delete and try again until they get what they want.

I've come close to quitting after 2 trades dropped due to inactivity. One was over 1000 days of active trade. I had to go outside the color sphere to get what was needed. Their inability to get a decent trade circle is the only thing that keeps him from dropping me.

So my take? Alot of players are leaving out of frustration due to many factors. Weak gameplay, inability of new players to actually come close to reaching the top 20%, lack of large groups of new players signing in because of game decline, and an overall pall of apathy that has been taking hold in the game over the last few years.
[/quote]
I agree with the boredom bit, there is precious little politics that makes it to the public eye apart from the usual propaganda in world affairs and alliance announcements. I would love to see a monthly or semi-monthly leaders summit on WA where the leaders discussed matters of world importance in a public manner then opened the floor to questions from the public.

As for trades, I have taken what I can get. I agree it used to be a LOT easier to get a 8BR trade circle in the old days. But now I am happy to keep my trade slots filled and get whatever bonuses I can.

One of the things this game needs is a new 'invasion alliance' from another board to revitalize the politics. But that is not likely to happen until this game is more newbie friendly.

[Bob Janova]

[quote]So by this logic, we're losing players because they're being beamed up by aliens.[/quote]
If you can show the existence of aliens who particularly target CN players who are uninvolved in the community, then sure. I hope I don't need to provide evidence that there are raiders who pick on the unaligned.

[King Srqt]

Boredom. You need more and better drama.

People think you need more war but that is not really the case you need more of the suspense that leads to war. You need lively debate that can capture the interest of the average player and you need players that can not only articulate themselves well but who are also not afraid to have their nations blown up for speaking out and fanning the flames.

[TypoNinja]

[quote name='King Srqt' timestamp='1294017424' post='2561294']
Boredom. You need more and better drama.

People think you need more war but that is not really the case you need more of the suspense that leads to war. You need lively debate that can capture the interest of the average player and you need players that can not only articulate themselves well but who are also not afraid to have their nations blown up for speaking out and fanning the flames.
[/quote]

I agree with this, its what happens just before a war that's exciting and engaging. Once the war actually breaks out its almost anti-climatic. There's a few days (weeks) where the outcome is still up in the air over if it escalates or not, but once that's settled it almost becomes routine, the war system itself isn't very engaging (that's one think that always confused me about raiders, I never found using the war system to be inherently any more entertaining than buying infra or importing tech, its all buttons. And its not, expect by accident, interactive with your opponent. But that's another subject). War settles down into a routine pretty quickly and the buzz wears of. Karma was a blast, for about the first week (or so) when the outcome was still up in the air but the next two and a half months after that were pretty boring.

The first DoW's had everybody biting their nails, the Coalition of Cowards incident was earth shattering. The massive thread over NPO's reps that was spawned was nothing short of epic. But the actual fighting got fairly boring fairly quickly.

On the other hand, lets not play down the fact that CN's biggest weakness's also tend to be its strengths. A lot of us like the fact that you don't need to babysit CN 50 times a day. People with tight schedules LIKE the idea of 30 second to 3 minutes a day, with the ability to skip out for a week without real worry (assuming their back collection cycle isn't too far gone).

[KingEsus]

[quote name='TypoNinja' timestamp='1294043855' post='2561764']
lets not play down the fact that CN's biggest weakness's also tend to be its strengths. A lot of us like the fact that you don't need to babysit CN 50 times a day. People with tight schedules LIKE the idea of 30 second to 3 minutes a day, with the ability to skip out for a week without real worry (assuming their back collection cycle isn't too far gone).
[/quote]

Hear hear. That's what I love.

I think the game needs a little rule (in-game mechanics i mean) overhaul. Mods could be nicer. Maybe make it look prettier for the FaceBook generation. There's some simple stuff like in-game alliance management that most games have had for ages, and as has been stated, bouncing back form war should be easier. My main problem is the importance of tech, that's annoying me. It' hard to get and too expensive to buy.

The IP thing might be a problem y'know. Other games i've played you got lots of people from the same workplace / university hall / school playing. Maybe more sophisticated cheat protection could be investigated rather than just bluntly looking at IPs.

[TypoNinja]

[quote name='KingEsus' timestamp='1294180442' post='2563488']
Hear hear. That's what I love.

I think the game needs a little rule (in-game mechanics i mean) overhaul. Mods could be nicer. Maybe make it look prettier for the FaceBook generation. There's some simple stuff like in-game alliance management that most games have had for ages, and as has been stated, bouncing back form war should be easier. My main problem is the importance of tech, that's annoying me. It' hard to get and too expensive to buy.


[/quote]

Its not that the mods are not nice, its that you only remember the bad things and distrust even the actions you might agree with. Its just kinda the way humans think combined with the opaqueness of the mod team. Humans automatically distrust things we don't understand, its a survival trait, if you aren't sure if something new is going to try to eat you or not, the humans who treated every new thing like it might lived a lot longer than the ones who didn't.

So combine that basic thought pattern with the fact that the mods all have secret identities, and that we aren't allowed to discuss moderation issues and you get a system where we don't know whats really happening. So we instinctively distrust every decision that comes out of it because we don't know how that decision was reached. Intellectually you have to know that the mods are doing good things for us, because who wants the board to degenerate into mindless spam and flame wars, or the game overrun with multies? But we all focus on the decisions that effect us negatively, like the IP rules that stop friends and family from joining us, or completely shafts the college players who live on campus, because we understand those decisions (sort of) we see a policy that is causing us problems so we have something to blame. Its just the way humans think.

But I don't think the difference in moderation/management techniques is all that relevant. A small fraction of the game uses these forums, though it is also admittedly the most active fraction so its probably a toss up in terms of actual effect on the player base.

Also, while some might feel the more restrictive moderation environment is detrimental in some area's we gain benefits from it in others. While many of us constantly bemoan the level of quality (or lack there of) of discourse on the boards, the fact is we've got it pretty good. I'd invite any doubters to go check out say the Eve Online forums, or some of the other popular browser games. Evony's stand out in my memory as being just hideous.

[quote]The IP thing might be a problem y'know. Other games i've played you got lots of people from the same workplace / university hall / school playing. Maybe more sophisticated cheat protection could be investigated rather than just bluntly looking at IPs.[/quote]


I was actually around when they changed that rule, when the game started they were not nearly as strict about possible multies, I think you just needed to make a forum post before nation creation in the mod forum. (it was some years ago, pardon me if I got the details wrong.) I even was one of those who took advantage, me and my roommate at the time both played. (no longer alas, just me now )

Problem is this lee way was abused, pretty heavily. I remember one case, It turns out that one guy was operating 4 or 5 accounts, his whole "family" played. Brothers, sisters, parents. They were all even active on the OWF, I'd never have guessed they were all multies. Guy got outed when he got too clever for his own good. Somebody convinced him to post a picture of his "sister" and the image he posted happened to be a Korean pop idol (or some such), somebody recognized the her and called !@#$%^&*. That was that. I remember there being quite a big deal over that.

[Qaianna]

[quote name='TypoNinja' timestamp='1293851651' post='2559789']
This is true, when I first joined CN I was raided by someone much larger than me (A whole 1000 NS! ). It was rather disheartening to log in one afternoon and find my nation in ruins. I was days into the game. I had no clue at all the scope of time nation building plays out in (and you thought Eve Online skill training took patience) I didn't understand why I'd been attack, or who was coming after me. It was long long before warchest, hell it was before the idea of even back collecting.

But then my alliance explained to me about raiding, sent me money (400k! Holy !@#$ I was rich!) and walked me trough how to kick some raider ass. Unbeknownst to me, they had obviously engaged in some diplomacy on the side as well to get him cleared for counter attack.

That got me active, curious and involved. I had to get on IRC to get war instructions, and damn if I never ever got off IRC after that. Seriously I think I've been logged off IRC longer than the time it takes to reboot maybe twice in the last year. When the world goes quiet and nothing is happening on the OWF, IRC is alive and well. This game would have vanished years ago without the IRC. There are dozens, if not hundreds of incidents that never make it off IRC, or involve many hours of IRC but result in 5 minute OWF announcements. And if those are not enough you always have your friends to kick back with and just shoot the !@#$.

There are several players who just don't bother with their nation at all, because its a side show, your infra farm is a means to an end, not the goal. I build my nation so that I may be a force to be reckoned with should I be called to war, but buying a wonder every 30 days and importing tech as I can isn't exactly exciting. You know whats exciting? Sitting in back channels on the eve of war, tabbing back and forth from the forums looking for DoW's while you scan a half dozen channels on IRC trying to keep up with rumors, and dealing with your own government duties at the same time as the member only channel explodes to 5 times its usual population and its all people with questions, people who were silent till war broke out but now everybody needs instructions at once. All the while screaming at the CN login page because its 4 minutes till update and the 10,000 people hammering f5 just brought the sever to its knees.

I'm getting a buzz just talking about it.
[/quote]
That's about how I ended up paying more attention. I actually signed on long ago aiming to be one of the faceless grunts, do the work, follow orders, et cetera. That lasted until someone took a potshot at me for turning down an off-colour semi-redundant trade. When he saw that I'd gotten so much aid soldiers were floating in the North Atlantic, having fallen off the Islands (and having visited him a couple of times), he got the hint about attacking aligned nations.

I think alliances really can be a good way of getting someone more involved in the game, short- and long run. It's a nice step between 'I have a nation!' and the big boards here. Of course, some folks get a taste of what's here and, despite the best efforts of the higher ups, figure the best way to touch this place is with a ten-foot hazmat pole.

How newbie-friendly would you guys say this place is in general?

[TypoNinja]

[quote name='Qaianna' timestamp='1294210922' post='2564178']
How newbie-friendly would you guys say this place is in general?
[/quote]

Not at all and that's the sad truth of it. Sometimes new guys get corrected with a minimum of fuss and some ridicule, sometimes they get stepped on.

Remember when some random guy showed up and decided that he was gonna reform /b/? the thread was instantly full of people saying VE was gonna flatten him for it, but he had no clue what was going on. That's just one example of multitudes of land mines new players can step on. Tech raiding is another big one, lots of browser games follow a similar formula of being able to pillage your neighbors for resources, and in most the attacks mean a lot less, the game dynamic is a farm or be farmed mentality. In CN its a big damn deal, if you raid the wrong AA your ass is toast.

There are just so many things about the way CN functions that we all take for granted knowing about them, that a new player is clueless about. So much history, no amount of academy primers can do anything but give the most general of overview. So much has gone on and gone past, there are parts of history that are meaningless to a wide variety of players that play a big role in politics. There are pieces of alliances history that were big deals when they happened but have faded to obscurity since. The /b/ VE grudge was nothing short of epic, but that piece of history is just a dry summary to newer players. The same goes for any number of major history points from all over the place.

Alliance forums are definitely an excellent middle ground, a place where a new player can learn from the older members, get shown the ropes, and issued a bull !@#$ detector before being subjected to the OWF.

Alliance forums are also a place many never feel the need to move away from, for larger alliances there is more than enough purely internal work to keep a multitude of people busy.

[Mirreille]

[quote name='bros2' timestamp='1293747473' post='2558605']
I could write an essay on why there is the emigration from Cybernations, but I can narrow it down to four dates:
July 15th 2006
January 15th 2007
March 27th 2007
August-September 2007

(Guess what they are and win nothing)
[/quote]

I seriously can't agree with your ideas there. Not one of those dates is less then 3 years old. Any effect they might have had on the population base is long over, and I wouldn't be surprised if more then half the game's nations were not even created by the latest event in your list. I'm one of them, and I have no idea what happened on those dates, though they are probably on the CN Wiki.

[KingEsus]

[quote name='TypoNinja' timestamp='1294188595' post='2563657']
Its not that the mods are not nice, its that you only remember the bad things and distrust even the actions you might agree with. Its just kinda the way humans think combined with the opaqueness of the mod team. Humans automatically distrust things we don't understand, its a survival trait, if you aren't sure if something new is going to try to eat you or not, the humans who treated every new thing like it might lived a lot longer than the ones who didn't.

So combine that basic thought pattern with the fact that the mods all have secret identities, and that we aren't allowed to discuss moderation issues and you get a system where we don't know whats really happening. So we instinctively distrust every decision that comes out of it because we don't know how that decision was reached. Intellectually you have to know that the mods are doing good things for us, because who wants the board to degenerate into mindless spam and flame wars, or the game overrun with multies? But we all focus on the decisions that effect us negatively, like the IP rules that stop friends and family from joining us, or completely shafts the college players who live on campus, because we understand those decisions (sort of) we see a policy that is causing us problems so we have something to blame. Its just the way humans think....
[/quote]

Whilst i respect and understand many of your points, i have played many games similar games and I would humbly suggest that the moderation here is quite unusual, the fact that moderation issues cannot, technically, even be discussed off game, i.e. on private forums and the like is quite incredible. And it is not much of an exaggeration to say that a irl mortgage agreement i recently signed was not much longer than the rules, and i could cut and paste the small print for that agreement. Over the years I have made a not insignificant financial contribution to the game, and given the T&C that is perhaps not a great idea for some people. I have have no evidence of course except IRL friends who disliked the overall 'tone'.

You're probably right though, it not a big issue for most.

The IP thing is a bigger deal though i'm sure, as mentioned, other MMOBBGs played have large numbers from similar IRL groups. There is always abuse, but many games, take Travian, have quite sophisticated methods including multi hunters and other mechanisims. Multi-hunting is fun and can be player lead!

[tamerlane]

Admin needs to create a wonder that allows for rebuilding at triple the current rates. (30 infra, 150 tech, 60 land)

Also, not enough war and resilience to fight wars for IC reasons. Thank you GWII and beyond for ruining it for the rest of us.

[Bob Janova]

[quote]I'm one of them, and I have no idea what happened on those dates, though they are probably on the CN Wiki. [/quote]
I believe they're GW1, 2, 3 and the Unjust War.

The mod staff here are better than on many forums ... just venture into the forums of another game for a little while to see that. It's annoying when you end up on the wrong end of a decision, of course, but I don't believe people are leaving because of that.

Honestly, I think most people who anyone knows who are leaving are just bored with the game. It happens with all games. The problem is that we aren't getting newbies to stick; they join CN, probably get raided, if they post here they get ridiculed, and they get 20 spam messages within the first hour that they don't know what to do with. To keep them interested in CN we need to let them enter the community at their own pace. [i]People shouldn't raid nations under 5k NS[/i] – and that's not IC moralism, that's a practical OOC point to let new players get to grips with CN and work out how to play it before destroying their nations. (And when they do poke their noses into this forum we should be friendly, too.)

Edit: Oh yeah, and the other problem is at Admin's feet: the game feels rather dated, in terms of its style (could easily be fixed with a nice CSS and a day with a web designer) and has some major annoyances (like only being able to buy infra in 10s or tech in 20s) which just get in the way with the modern ability to do an aid-funded back collection and skip the early game entirely by buying 2000 infra.

Edited January 6, 2011 by Bob Janova

[Lestari]

Honestly, the game is boring as !@#$ and the gameplay has nothing going for it. Personally, the only reason I stay is 1) for the Boiler Room and 2) for CNRP. I guess also the alliance dynamics, and rising through an alliance's ranks, would motivate people to stay.

[essyweb]

That's because the people who quit because of getting raided probably never made it into the alliance-based community and therefore never talked to you (or me or anyone else who posts here).

[Ordinator]

Gravedigs are bad.