Identifying competitive agendas

[Banned]

This is forked off bwtmc's post on another thread.

Of course, alliances don't have to be the centre of the game as they are now.

I think we can identify a few agendas here.

People who think that PA should be playable competitively on the individual level (a lot of Ascendancy people play by this agenda). For these people a planet should be built primarily by its players actions.

Some people feel that the competitive edge should be at the galaxy level. A strong galaxy equates a good planet. I'd argue that people who espouse the current galaxy system are assuming this agenda, though they'll probably say other things are more important in the end (alliance, probably).

I don't think anyone feels that the competitive edge should be at the cluster level, which I find a bit curious considering the origins of many legendary alliances (such as Fury, Legion and BlueTubas) as cluster alliances. What about a round with no tag defense bonus, forcing people to organize their clusters?

The alliance competition agenda is a popular stance, stating that success should require convincing other people in one's tag to secure one's planet. This is often stated as being 'team play', which is erraneous. Team play is an agreement within a tag to guarantee a certain level of support (usually best effort, with some fairness guidelines) to everyone in the tag (as opposed to an agreement to provide exceptional support to a single planet or subset of the tag).

All of this is a bit confused by there being 3 rankings (it's fairly obvious that there being no official ranking for clusters has contributed to no one caring about clusters as competitive units).

I think PAteam needs to identify which of these they are trying to fulfill and allow the remaining to be incidental. The reasoning here is that changes one way are likely to counteract balance in others. A change that promotes the alliance agenda will hurt planets without a tag to support them. Changes that promote the planetary agenda will reward tags full of planets that don't actually support eachother.

[The Real Arfy]

I think the shift to favouring alliances over clusters and galaxies stems from the declining player base, the aging of the game and the lack of private galaxies.

The game is old, and the alliances you mentioned were all formed around r2 (I may be wrong here since I only started playing "properly" in r9.5) and nobody knew anybody else and I assume they didn't really care if they screwed anyone else over. After 5 years of people playing together in both galaxies and alliances, people have grown loyalties to those who are there every round as opposed to those that will leech* off them for the next 8 weeks. This is why alliances are prevailing. Its like when people start at a new school, you don't really fall into a permanent group of friends right away. Give it 5 years and you know exactly who you're mates with.

*this seems to be the general feeling towards clusters at the moment.

Secondly, private galaxies were abundant (again, I'm not entirely sure) in r2ish and this links into the last paragraph in the way that alliances (especially with the low member limits and 25-man galaxies from the olden days) are almost the closest thing to having a private galaxy again.

While you're correct that PAteam needs to identify which direction they want the game to go, I can't help but think that the loyalties between alliance players is simply too strong to re-introduce clusters.

P.S. Apologies for the lack of writing skill in this post.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by The Real Arfy

I think the shift to favouring alliances over clusters and galaxies stems from the declining player base, the aging of the game and the lack of private galaxies.

If you've seen the game shift from favoring galaxies and planets to favoring alliances, you're seeing it differently than me. In r3 the top planet was the guy who got his entire galaxy to donate to him, it being the largest galaxy this is pretty clearly galaxy agenda.

In r4 the top planet was the guy who got to farm his alliance (this held for most of his competitors as well etc). This is alliance agenda, not planet agenda.

Its like when people start at a new school, you don't really fall into a permanent group of friends right away. Give it 5 years and you know exactly who you're mates with.

Agenda has nothing to do with who you play with. I played with my best friends last round, but I played very strongly on planetary agenda, just like almost all of Ascendancy.

Secondly, private galaxies were abundant (again, I'm not entirely sure) in r2ish and this links into the last paragraph in the way that alliances (especially with the low member limits and 25-man galaxies from the olden days) are almost the closest thing to having a private galaxy again.

Private galaxies were introduced in r4. In r3 you could carry on planets from your r2 galaxy. In both rounds account swapping to create private galaxies was fairly common (especially between r2 and 3 to make privateish galaxies for the new round).

While you're correct that PAteam needs to identify which direction they want the game to go, I can't help but think that the loyalties between alliance players is simply too strong to re-introduce clusters.

I think you're wrong. Players will play for what the game rewards. It's pointless to play on the competitive level otherwise.

Let's keep in mind that what I'm talking about here is entirely independant of what will drive players away, or draw new players. This is just modelling what drives players and how features support and work against them.

[The Real Arfy]

Yes, I think I might have misinterpreted your original post

[Banned]

Originally Posted by The Real Arfy

Yes, I think I might have misinterpreted your original post

That's fair enough, it's all fairly vague at this point. I hammered it out a bit with Lokken on IRC, but not to the point where I can add much that will explain it better yet.

[Wishmaster]

100% random
10 clusters
-1 eta in C
not allowed to attack in C.

or

-1 eta for attacking in c and -2 eta for deffing in C.

If u plan to have no alliance tags though, I d prefer not having to worry about neighbours in C.

Would make a 10 alliance round... could be doable for a summer round imo, as we c a tendancy for alliancesa to have problems these rounds. will also give HC / officers a round off, or a round to do something else, and will be a great chance to get to know new people for nubs.

I might be far off here..I m just dreaming :/

[JonnyBGood]

I really really really like the cluster idea for a round. Really really really really really like it. I think the new contacts for people the round would bring about and the interesting quirks that would arise in playing style would be very interesting for say, a six week round or something.

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

I really really really like the cluster idea for a round. Really really really really really like it. I think the new contacts for people the round would bring about and the interesting quirks that would arise in playing style would be very interesting for say, a six week round or something.

Six weeks in Summer free inbetween rounds round? A cluster round with no tag ETA bonus would force people into getting defences from wherever they can in cluster, hence taking newbies in to it too. I remember cluster/parallel alliances (the small and large) used to be a gateway between elite and new players back in the old days.

[bwtmc]

I think they'd have to actually set aside a proper round for it, there's not six weeks to play with if they're to finish before christmas. Not if we're having any breaks at all anyway!

[ComradeRob]

Originally Posted by Banned

I don't think anyone feels that the competitive edge should be at the cluster level, which I find a bit curious considering the origins of many legendary alliances (such as Fury, Legion and BlueTubas) as cluster alliances. What about a round with no tag defense bonus, forcing people to organize their clusters?

I think there's a good argument for rotating between different agendas. We've already seen a tendency for some alliances to have 'off rounds', eXilition have done it and other alliances like Insomnia and LCH have disappeared for a round or two and reformed later. A cluster-based round would give players a chance to get to know some new people, to experiment with different roles and to play without the burden of past failures or achievements. The two rounds in which I've experienced strong cluster alliances (in fact they were parallel alliances) were rounds 4 and 9.5 and both were highly enjoyable. Meeting new people was interesting, and it contributed to a considerable levelling between 'elite' players and relative newbies.

[Alki]

so basically, planetarion needs a change, but what are the chances of the team ever listening to what the players want

[Appocomaster]

There do seem to be compelling arguments put forward. However, I'm not naive enough to believe that if we said "right, Round 18 has 0 alliance bonuses but cluster alliances have a -2 eta bonus", even if we don't introduce cluster eta bonuses for attacking, the alliances will still create NAPs within the alliance and those who have more friends will obviously still benefit more and form cluster alliances.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Alki

so basically, planetarion needs a change, but what are the chances of the team ever listening to what the players want

Planetarion doesn't need change so much as it needs the people who make changes to understand what motivates players. This is not the same thing as listening to what the players 'want'.

Since I made the above posts, I've realized that all of the agendas listed are personal ways to optimize planet rank. Whether galaxy or alliance rank result from it are incidental. The planets, galaxy, (clusters,) and alliances that correctly identify and exploit the round's 'optimal' agenda will obviously do best, and this will carry over to galaxy and alliance ranks.

[Appocomaster]

i.e. the best way to make a more competitive playing field is to work out the best way to play before the top alliances work it out and announce it, or try and make sure there's several good ways of playing and mention them all.

i.e. public strategy guides!

The issue is that in most online games, people are ok publishing them as they're usually level 120 and a level 2 player looking at it might benefit, and other similar players might further improve it or find alternatives that are similar. With Planetarion, you're competing almost directly, until around mid round. Few will be willing to announce ways of getting an advantage until they've used it enough that no one can catch them up - that's the fun of a competitive game of this style.

[ComradeRob]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

There do seem to be compelling arguments put forward. However, I'm not naive enough to believe that if we said "right, Round 18 has 0 alliance bonuses but cluster alliances have a -2 eta bonus", even if we don't introduce cluster eta bonuses for attacking, the alliances will still create NAPs within the alliance and those who have more friends will obviously still benefit more and form cluster alliances.

This is true. But the advantages gained by players with good contacts would be reduced under such a scenario, which is a good thing.

The most important point is the change in incentives, in particular the marginal benefit of in-cluster cooperation. In an alliance-driven round, it's only worth cooperating with a relatively small number of people - often that number is below the alliance limit. The reasons for this are that you always need to have enough targets to hit, so you can't ally/NAP with everyone, and to a lesser extent it's only practical to maintain an organisation with so many people in it - 150-200 has always been the upper limit for stable single-wing Planetarion alliances (this is not coincidence. For humans, Dunbar's number is 147.8).

Greater cluster ETA bonuses increase the benefit of in-cluster cooperation to the point where it becomes worthwhile to cooperate with the entire cluster, including the newbies/lowbies. Because the other 90% of the universe remains as a valid target, cluster alliances will never reach the point at which they reject members - the marginal utility of new members remains high. This should break down the elitism and social barriers that prevent new players getting into better alliances.

[Appocomaster]

Greater Cluster ETAs? All defence fleets ETA 7 sort of thing? That'd be a bit harsh on cr/bs fleets, so they'd have to be compensated for.
-2 generally would be eta 6/7/8 for incoming appearing eta 7/8/9, and would obviously make clusters beneficial.

[bwtmc]

I wouldn't worry much about (irrelevant) details, it's the change in approach that matters.

[Banned]

Reviewing this a bit, I've come up with 3 currently viable agendas, based on the rankings. With the additional historical agenda for clusters/parallels. In addition, each of these has different styles of cooperation. Under the original definitions the use of 'agenda' was a bit of a misnomer. Let's see if this doesn't clear things up a bit:

Each player has one primary agenda, and one primary cooperative organization to optimize this agenda.

The agendas are planet, galaxy, cluster/parallel and alliance. Each agenda represents the player's desire to optimize the rank of the relevant unit.

A planetary agenda means that a player is working primarily to optimize the rank of a planet (not necessarily their own). A galaxy agenda means that a player is working primarily to optimize the rank of a galaxy (again, not necessarily their own). Similar for alliance, under the assumption that membership of a tag implies what alliance is one's own.

For clusters and parallels (let's call them clusters for now) it's a bit different. There's never been an official ranking of clusters or cluster alliances. In some rounds, people have played very aggressively 'for' their cluster alliances. The question becomes, did they do so because they were optimizing their planet rank, or did they sacrifice planet rank in favor of whole?

The 4 cooperative styles to optimize these agendas include:

• Through planet management. This is primarily utilized by newbies who haven't got the contacts to play other ways. People who play a good planet, but contribute little in the ways of ingame interaction can provide score for both galaxies and alliances.
• Galaxy cooperation. Strong cooperation with the galaxy either for mutual benefit (contrast to the galaxy agenda, where the goal is explicitely galactic rank) or on the assumption that a favor will be repaid.
• Cluster cooperation. Strong cooperation with the cluster, again either for mutual benefit or on the assumption that a favor will be repaid. It's clear that strong cluster alliances in the past have worked on this form of optimization.
• Alliance cooperation. Strong cooperation with members of the same alliance. The form the cooperation takes is usually laid out by a group of command members.

It's pretty clear to me that most players are working with a planetary agenda. That is, they want to optimize their own planet rank (or score, value, whatever. They define or think of their goals in terms of their planet.)

Most 'serious' players cooperate primarily with an alliance to optimize their agenda.

A question people often put to eachother (and in fact, PA often puts to players), is "Which is more important, galaxy, cluster or alliance?" It would be easy to equate this to agenda, but I think this would be wrong.

When people choose which to put first, it's often based on who is more likely to cover their back when the shit hits the fan.

I think that top planet often (but in no way always!) goes to the planet who gets as many people in cooperative units (galaxy, cluster, alliance) to play for the planet agenda 'optimize potential top planet's rank'. Many alliances have built in limitations on how their cooperation works to prevent this. This is because it often hurts the alliance agenda, which is what the command members are usually playing for.

I'd hold that an alliance whose HC are playing on an agenda other than the alliance agenda is going to have more difficulty succeeding than an alliance whose HC have the alliance agenda first, but this is another discussion entirely.

Since this thread has turned into 'how to get a cluster round going', I'd say that the best way to get a cluster round going is to make the cluster the most reliable cooperation for optimizing planetary agenda. This means that you have to find a way for the cluster to become a more important and more reliable source of defense than the alliance.

I think that the first way to do this is to give the cluster an ETA advantage over the alliance. I also think that some countermeasure against fakenicking will be required. People who fakenick do so primarily to hide their alliance, as part of an alliance cooperation (that is, they protect their alliancemates' planets by hiding what alliance they are in.) Therefore, I think that removing the alliance tag system is a necessary step. So long as there are command members playing to optimize their alliance, they will work counter to cluster cooperation because it presents several dangers to their goals.